‘I’m convinced he’s known we’re on to him for a while. All he has to do is open a newspaper. And it will hardly come as a shock that we have his number, since it’s in the phone book. What’s weird is that he’s turned it on again, which suggests he’s not in control of his own actions. Sure, we run the risk of him turning the phone back off or getting rid of it the moment he realizes it’s us. But that should still give us a few valuable seconds of information about where he might be. Besides, we’ll have a chance of persuading him to give up.’

Lilja nodded, even though she found it hard to tune out all the potential consequences. ‘All right, let’s give it a try.’ There was no time to debate the merits. If they wanted even a slim chance of getting to him before it was too late, they had to take a shot in the dark and cross their fingers. ‘Let’s do it in Ingvar’s lab, so he can record and analyse.’

Klippan nodded. ‘He’s ready and standing by.’

So they’d already discussed it behind her back and made the decision. What if she’d said no? Would they just have done it anyway?

‘It’s like this,’ explained Molander, who was sitting by the control panel in the van with headphones around his neck and his eyes on one of the screens, which showed a map of the search area. ‘I’ve prepared a number of unregistered numbers in case we have to call—’

‘What do you mean, unregistered?’ Lilja broke in. She took a seat on one of the little stools as Klippan pulled the sliding door shut behind her.

‘They’re anonymous and can’t be searched. At the same time, though, they turn up like any normal number on the screen, rather than it saying “unknown number”.’ He handed the headset to Lilja. ‘If you’re ready, let’s do this.’

As soon as she heard the first beep, she cleared her throat to make sure everything was working. When the third ring rang out, she could almost picture Assar Skanås interrupting whatever he was doing and considering whether to pick up his ringing phone or not.

‘The number you are calling is not available at the moment. Please try again later.’

Molander ended the call and turned to the others.

‘Shouldn’t we give it another go?’ Klippan said.

‘No, we shouldn’t,’ Lilja replied.

‘Why not? What if it was on silent and he didn’t get to it in time?’

‘I’m actually inclined to agree with Klippan,’ Molander said, nodding to underline how right he was.