Maybe it wasn’t a code at all, but a phone number. He tried calling it with the local area code, but was greeted by an error message informing him the number didn’t exist. He got the same result when he tried the Malmö, Landskrona, Göteborg and Stockholm area codes, after which he put the white keys aside and focused his attention on the two blue ones, the ones he’d given the least thought.

The larger of the two was also marked with numbers. This time four of them: 0388. The key was a normal pin tumbler key and the four numbers were likely an entry code to a building or some such. The question was, which building?

The smaller one was more noteworthy. The head was asymmetrical, oval in part. It almost looked like a cranium in profile. He took out his magnifying glass to get a closer look at the details. There was no doubt it was old. Scratches, dirt and oil covered the surface. Nothing strange about that. What was strange were the small white dots, which under his magnifying glass looked like tiny crystals.

When he gingerly touched one of them with the tip of his index finger, it skittered down on to the table like gravel. Maybe he should have let Hillevi Stubbs run an analysis of whatever substance it was, but instead he ran his own by gathering them up with his index finger and placing them on the tip of his tongue.

As expected, they tasted salty.

He couldn’t say if it was the peculiar shape of the key’s head or the salt that gave him the idea. Probably a combination of the two. Either way, he took the key off the ring and started removing the tape, which after so many years left sticky glue marks in its wake.

But once the head was reasonably clean and he could see the Neiman logo in which the first N continued to form a kind of roof over the rest of the letters, he was sure.

The key was an ignition key, probably for an old Volvo Penta, one of Sweden’s by far most common inboard motors.

Two years had passed since he’d left Stockholm for Helsingborg and started working with Hugo Elvin. Two years of lunches, coffee breaks and long sit-downs. Not once had Elvin mentioned anything about owning a boat. Nor had Molander, for that matter, if it turned out to be his. On the other hand, both men had turned out to harbour so many secrets, he’d long since stopped feeling surprised.

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