Going south towards the city centre seemed the most obvious choice. But that assumed there was someone he could meet up with there. Otherwise, the train or ferries to Denmark could be his goal.

But fleeing the country cost money and required some kind of plan, and Theodor had neither. This wasn’t a premeditated getaway. It was an emotional reaction. To the panic and fear of what awaited him in that courtroom. In fact, if there was one place in the world he wouldn’t want to go to right now, it was probably Denmark.

Based on that reasoning, Fabian decided to go in the opposite direction, towards Pålsö, while he fought to suppress the thoughts that had been gnawing at him for the past few hours and were now threatening to overwhelm him.

He took a right on Johan Banérs Gata and then a left on to Romares Väg with Pålsjö Forest on his left.

He didn’t even believe in the supernatural. That there were spirits on the other side with the ability to see the future, and that all you needed to communicate with them was a board with letters on it. For him, the future had always simply been the result of various chain reactions in which one consequence led to another.

Without any real thought as to why, he turned left on to Christer Boijes Väg at the roundabout and continued past the crematorium with its moat and into Pålsjö Forest, whose dense foliage effectively blacked out the bright summer night.

Even so, he found he couldn’t dismiss Matilda’s concern. It was real, there was no question. She’d clearly felt it a month ago but hadn’t been able to tell them before being shot in the stomach and collapsing on the floor. When she woke up in the hospital after all those surgeries, it was the first thing she’d wanted to talk about.

If she had survived, who in the family was going to die?

The bike path ran alongside the road on the right, further into the trees, but he saw neither a bike light nor anything else to suggest he was on the right track.

Science, logic, common sense told him he should dismiss it. But much as he wanted to, he couldn’t ignore the theme that had run through Theodor’s whole life from his first school years all the way to the present.

Everything required to explain and understand was there, in hindsight. All the actions and consequences that over the years had colluded to paint him so far into a corner he could no longer see the way out.

Supernatural or not. What difference did it make?