Were they going to drive her into the woods and put a bullet in her head? Or were they going to lock her in the boot while the car was crushed into a small cube at the nearest junk yard? She wouldn’t be the first police officer to disappear without a trace.

‘Help!’ she heard herself scream. ‘Klippan, I’m here. On the other side!’

The reply came in the form of a fist against her cheekbone. An inch or two lower and her jaw would have been knocked out of joint. Instead, she passed out and had no way of knowing that she was put into the boot of the parked car and driven away.

19

Fabian emptied the brown evidence bag and the clutch of keys clattered on to the desk in the basement. There were seven keys in all. Seven keys, each different, and each one marked with coloured gaffer tape around their heads. Of the two blue ones, one was marked with a four-digit code, and on one of the two white keys, a longer code of six digits was printed. The other had a drawing of a fish. The three green keys all looked completely different and had question marks on them.

He used his phone to take pictures of each of the keys in turn. He had no idea what the different markings meant, but they all fitted in a lock somewhere and he wasn’t going to give up until he knew the purpose of each one.

The discovery that the photograph of the young Elvin wearing a dress had been doctored had prompted him to delve into the Molander investigation in earnest. He had spent all evening and soon half the night in the basement, going over and photographing some of the contents of Elvin’s locked desk drawer.

He had already flipped through some of the calendars. With a few exceptions, virtually every day had been marked with the initials I.M., presumably for Ingvar Molander, followed by two times of day. One in the morning when he arrived at the station and one later in the afternoon or evening when he left.

Sometimes, Elvin had drawn a face that was either happy, grumpy or simply had a dash for a mouth, and on some pages there was further information, which could be anything from Molander changing his phone number and which investigations he was working on to whether he had been on leave or just happened to make an odd comment during a meeting. On certain pages there was also a third time noted, which as far as Fabian could make out indicated when Molander got home, which suggested Elvin had at times gone so far as to stalk him.