There was a programme open on the screen, which reminded Fabian of the sound-processing software Molander used. There were various rectangles with sound waves on a timeline; he clicked on one of them.

Monotone noise streamed out of the computer’s speakers; it took him a while to identify it as the sound of a vacuum cleaner. But why record a vacuum cleaner? The most recent recording was from Tuesday 19 June at 11.26 a.m. Which meant Elvin hadn’t recorded it himself; it had to be automated.

It looked like there were two recordings from the day before. One at some point in the morning and the other later that night. It was only when he checked the exact time stamp in the top left corner of the rectangle that he realized it was the same time he’d paid a visit to Gertrud.

He clicked it and heard his own voice.

‘This won’t take long.’

‘Isn’t he a sweetheart?’

‘I’m sorry, who?’

‘Reidar, who else? The man you were talking to yesterday. Water?’

‘No, thank you, I’m good.’

Had Elvin installed a hidden microphone in one of the owls? Was that why he had a collection here?

It was far too technical for Fabian to understand exactly how it worked. That should have been true of Elvin as well. He was, if anything, even worse at technology than Fabian. The only explanation was that he’d somehow used Molander’s know-how against him.

He clicked the second recording from the same day, and got Molander’s voice.

‘Fondue. Can’t remember the last time we had that. What are we celebrating?’

‘Nothing at all.’ Gertrud could be heard replying. ‘No need to panic.’

‘That’s a relief. I was worried there for a second. I thought I’d forgotten our anniversary or something.’

‘No, I was just cleaning the kitchen cupboards and I found our—’

Suddenly, the playback stopped and the time marker, which had turned red, jumped to the present.

Fabian was instinctively reaching for the mouse to move the marker back to the conversation he’d been listening to when he realized it was recording something new.

‘Hold on a minute. What did you talk about?’ Molander was saying. ‘Gertrud, I said wait!’

‘Ingvar, you’re scaring me.’

‘I want to know what you talked about!’

‘I’m going to have to ask you to calm down.’

‘I am calm! I just need to—’

‘No, you’re not! And besides, it’s late. We’ll have to discuss this some other time, because I’m going to bed in the guest room. And I would appreciate it if you would respect my privacy.’

‘I’ll give you all the privacy you want, as soon as you tell me what in God’s name Fabian Risk was doing here!’

About the author and translator