‘And this is something people pay you for?’

‘Yes. It pays really well.’

‘What’s the name of your company?’

‘PetFrame. Initially, I called it BeautyPet, but that made everyone think it was a beauty salon for pets, so I came up with PetFrame instead, which says exactly what it’s about. Right?’

The door opened and before Lilja could react, Klippan was standing in the middle of the room. ‘Högsell has just been on to me about not having enough to hold Landertz. Just so you’re on board with us releasing him.’

‘I’m not on board. We know he had something to do with the fire, and I’m fairly certain he knows who killed Moonif. So Landertz stays. Also, I’m in the middle of something.’

‘Okay, we’ll talk more about it later.’ Klippan sighed. ‘That’s not why I’m here.’

‘Fine. But whatever it is, it can wait until I’m done here.’

‘Not really,’ Klippan said and walked up to her desk.

She was aware that she was tired and had been running on fumes for the last few hours, and she was aware that she was about to completely overreact. But she’d had it up to here with his bullying. He’d been in charge for twenty-four measly hours, but was already walking around like he owned the whole fucking building.

‘I’m sorry,’ the man said. ‘But are we done or did you have more questions?’

Lilja raised her hand apologetically to the man and stood up to give Klippan the kind of chewing out she normally reserved for Hampus. But seeing the photograph he’d just put down on her desk took the wind out of her sails.

‘Assar Skanås, forty-eight years old, single, no children.’ Klippan met her eyes. ‘Isn’t he the one you’re looking for?’

How the hell had he managed this? She picked up the picture and studied the smiling man she’d spent the last two days trying to track down.

23

The first track had consisted mainly of piano clinking and down-pitched voices. But as soon as the marching drums and angelic chorus of the second track came on, Fabian knew Apparatjik was the exception that proved the rule.

It was the first time he’d listened to the disc since buying it, and since the GPS informed him his destination in Ringsjöstrand was still nine minutes away, he turned the volume up.

He actually didn’t have a lot of time for so-called supergroups. They seemed intrinsically unable to amount to anything other than a watered-down compromise. The Power Station with Robert Palmer and members of both Chic and Duran Duran was maybe one of the more embarrassing examples, though the Traveling Wilburys with giants like George Harrison and Bob Dylan weren’t really much better.