He had closed the drawer again without examining the contents and not given it a second thought until he bumped into his old colleague from Stockholm, Crime Scene Technician Hillevi Stubbs. As it happened, she knew both Elvin and Molander because the three of them had done their police training together. She had laughingly dismissed the claims that Elvin had wanted to undergo gender reassignment, which put the entire suicide theory in a new light.

Fabian put his coffee cup down and went over to the whiteboard, which was completely empty, waiting to be filled with pictures, hunches, clues and theories. He didn’t want to put any of Elvin’s conjectures and clues up; he was going to fill the board with his own conclusions and facts he had verified himself.

From now on, this was his investigation. Not Elvin’s. And as though to underline that, he put up one of the pictures he’d taken of his former colleague after finding him hanging from his own swag hook, wearing a floral dress, earrings and bright red lipstick.

The first step was to examine every last detail relating to Elvin’s death to determine whether there was the slightest possibility Molander was behind it. He pulled out his phone, found Stubbs’s number and waited while it rang.

In the best of worlds, he would come to the conclusion that Elvin really had taken his own life and that everything was a big misunderstanding. That way, no one ever had to find out what he had been up to in his basement, and they could all continue working together like the close-knit, efficient team they were.

‘Well, well, if it isn’t Fabian Risk.’ To Fabian’s great relief, Stubbs sounded almost happy.

‘I hope this isn’t a bad time.’ He knew no one who disliked being called up more than Stubbs. During their years together at the Stockholm Police, she’d always been the one to call if she wanted something. For him, and everyone else for that matter, contacting her had always been out of the question.

‘Of course it’s a bad time. What other kind is there?’ she said without any trace of irony in her voice. ‘But I’d be lying if I said I was surprised, though I had expected your call straight after the funeral. And speaking of which, what happened to you? You just disappeared.’

‘I don’t know if I had time to tell you, but my daughter, Matilda, was seriously injured. It was actually so bad we didn’t know if she was going to pull through.’

‘That’s right, you did mention something like that. How is she now, then?’

‘She’s getting there, and she’s actually being discharged this weekend.’

‘Thank goodness. It must have been awful.’

‘You can say that again. And you? Enjoying Malmö? Or do you miss fast-paced Stockholm?’