But it wasn’t Klippan’s voice, it was a woman’s.

Lilja was the first to react. She rushed over to stop the boy’s mother from throwing herself on top of her son. But the woman fought her like it was a matter of life or death; it was only when Klippan stepped in that they managed to overpower her and usher her out of the laundry room.

‘Calm down,’ Lilja bellowed.

But the boy’s mother continued to kick and flail her arms about in her attempts to get free of Klippan and refused to give up until several minutes later.

‘There now,’ Lilja said as Klippan slowly relaxed his hold on her.

The woman collapsed in tears, which after a while morphed into a kind of wailing lament.

‘There now,’ Lilja said again, and gently put her arms around her.

‘She’s in shock, she needs something to calm her down,’ Klippan said, breathing heavily and wiping sweat off his brow. ‘I suggest Helsingborg Hospital. Then we can interview her later this afternoon after the meeting.’

Lilja nodded and started leading the woman down the basement corridor.

*

What had made them crawl out of their lairs? Was it the sweet smell of death that had drawn them? Or was the blue-and-white police tape fluttering in the wind enough to make people crowd in and gawk at them curiously?

It had only been an hour and twenty-five minutes since Lilja arrived. At that point, the area had been virtually deserted. Now she estimated the crowd to be at least forty people, who followed every step she and Klippan took as they guided the boy’s mother to the car.

Luckily, she could see no telephoto lenses, which indicated the media hadn’t yet joined the fray.

‘This is the victim’s mother, Adena Ganem,’ Lilja told one of the two uniformed officers, and she was about to instruct them to take the woman to Helsingborg Hospital when she spotted a gangly man in the crowd on the other side of the police cordon.

He was watching them, but that wasn’t what made her react and have Klippan take over. Everyone was watching them. Nor was it that she’d seen him crossing the street when she first arrived, nor his slightly unusual appearance with jeans pulled up high, blindingly white trainers and a beige jacket with the Sweden Democrats logo on the chest.

It was his smile.

A smile that made him, unlike everyone else, positively beam with glee. Could it be the perpetrator was still here? It wouldn’t be the first time. Contrary to what people might think, it was not at all unusual for a perpetrator to stay near the scene of his or her crime to keep an eye on the police’s work and, first and foremost, other people’s reactions.