‘As you know, they’re pretty trigger-happy down here, so we keep ourselves busy. But correct me if I’m wrong. You didn’t call to catch up, did you?’

‘Maybe you remember talking to me about Hugo Elvin at the funeral?’

‘Yes, you mentioned something about him being depressed and wanting a sex change.’

‘That’s the official explanation, though I have to admit I feel more and more doubtful, personally.’

‘It sounds insane, if you ask me. I don’t understand where they got that from. Did he leave a suicide note?’

‘No, but there was quite a bit of women’s clothing in his flat. Knickers, bras, all sorts. And he was wearing make-up and a dress when we found him. His browsing history was full of various sites with information about gender reassignment and—’

‘Okay, that’s enough,’ Stubbs broke in. ‘That Hugo was a woman trapped in a man’s body is nonsense. Suicide, maybe. He was in his head a lot even back when we knew each other, and if I’m not mistaken, it’s not something that eased with time. But that stuff about his gender identity doesn’t hold water. It’s as likely as me going vegetarian.’

‘But how can you be so sure?’

‘Let me make myself absolutely clear. Both during and after our student days, Elvin and I were more than just friends, and without going into salacious detail, let me simply assure you that the last thing he doubted in this life was his manhood.’

11

Seen from above, the area between Klippan and Kvidinge was nothing but an open wound in an otherwise beautiful landscape. Instead of a harmonious jigsaw puzzle of fertile fields in various shades of green and rapeseed yellow, the area looked like someone had deliberately attempted to destroy that idyll.

Since Kvidinge Stone Crushers first broke ground there in 1963, the company had continued to dig deeper and deeper into what was now an area the size of fifty football fields. Voices had been raised to stop the devastation and replace the quarry with something else. But so far, none of the suggested fairgrounds, music festivals or shopping malls had been given the green light.

For that reason, Kvidinge Municipality had, while waiting for a proposal everyone could get behind, opened a temporary refugee reception facility in one of the many pits the diggers had left in their wake.

The facility, which consisted of a number of interlinked two-storey barracks whose first floors were served by external staircases, occupied only a fraction of the pit. Even so, it housed one hundred and eighteen asylum seekers, most of whom were on their way to bed when the four-wheel pickup slowly rolled down into the pit with its lights off.