Fabian repeated the words inwardly. The pointer had moved across the board. He’d seen it with his own eyes. Could it have been Esmaralda deliberately guiding it to try to reassure Matilda? To help her to put all the death and misery behind her? But if that was the case, why wouldn’t she have spelled out I was wrong? Or simply no one.

All you know is wrong.

The explanation was, of course, that the pointer moved so easily across the board the girls were unaware that they were in fact the ones moving it.

All you know is wrong.

And this particular time, chance had made the letters form a full sentence that could possibly help to reassure Matilda.

All you know is…

He hadn’t even noticed the sheet being pulled aside. Suddenly, Matilda was just standing there, pointing at him.

‘I told you something was off.’

76

Lilja dropped her clothes on the floor, stepped into the shower, which had been on for a while to warm up, filled one hand with shower gel and started washing off her make-up under the hot jet. She was fully aware there were special make-up removal products, but she didn’t keep things like that at home and, if she knew herself, she never would.

For the first time in her career, the newspapers had called her a hero following her arrest of Assar Skanås. She’d gone from being the left-wing extremist pointed out by Sievert Landertz to the protector of the city, the reason people felt safe letting their children play in parks again.

But hero and protector was the last thing she felt like. Her face was still tender where Hampus had struck her, and the hot water, coupled with her lack of sleep over the past few days, was helping tiredness triumph over anger. It was only quarter past eight, half eight at most. And yet she would have no problem falling asleep standing up in the shower.

She’d been running on fumes for the past few days, with Skanås evading them and making them look like fools. At least he was now in intensive care and would likely have a colostomy bag for the rest of his life and would never be able to get it up again, no matter how randy he felt.

She could have aimed for his shins, but she hadn’t, even though that was exactly what she was going to claim in the impending investigation. It was hardly her fault he’d suddenly bent over just as she pulled the trigger. Guilty was the last thing she felt. Whatever she’d done to Skanås, it would never come close to the trauma Ester Landgren must have gone through. And what would have happened if she’d found them five minutes later didn’t bear thinking about.