But Apparatjik seemed to be bucking that trend. With members from Mew, A-ha and Coldplay, this constellation was considerably more interesting than its constituent parts.

He lowered the volume back down when he had to slow the car to avoid running over all the ice-cream-eating beach tourists who had braved the overcast sky and in many ways typical June weather. Fifty yards further on, he crossed a small bridge, parked by the side of the road and climbed out to walk the last bit.

Whether Hugo Elvin had ever come out here was impossible to say from the sparse notes in the margins of the investigation. He had reacted, that much was certain. To what exactly, other than a few minor details, was hard to say. Maybe he had simply been interested because the victim was Molander’s father-in-law, and maybe he had eventually concluded that it really had been an accident, however unusual.

The whitewashed house was located in the middle of a hilly garden, less than a hundred feet from Ringsjö Lake. It was undeniably beautiful, a small, completely secluded piece of paradise.

This was where Molander’s father-in-law, Einar Stenson, was impaled on his own kitchen knife, in the couple’s summer house. His widow, Flora Stenson, lived in the house year-round now, and walking around the corner he spotted her on her knees, weeding, despite being eighty years old.

There was an old transistor radio next to her on the ground; Jessika Gedin was holding forth about the perfect breakfast and exactly how many millimetres wide the peels should be in orange marmalade to create optimal satisfaction.

‘Excuse me, are you Flora?’ he called out from afar so as not to scare her, but he still noticed her starting before turning the radio down.

‘Hi, my name’s John.’ Fabian held out his hand to the woman, who stood up and wiped her hands on her apron before taking it.

It wasn’t a lie. His name was John, or to be exact, it was John Fabian Gideon Risk. John was after his grandfather, who had changed his first name from Johan in 1963, after the American president was murdered. Where Gideon came from, he had no idea, and when he’d asked his parents once as a teenager, the mood had turned so uncomfortable he’d never mentioned the subject again.

‘Yes?’ the old woman said, looking him up and down with a sceptical air. Then she shook her head. ‘I don’t want to buy anything.’

Fabian let out a small laugh. ‘No need to worry. I’m not here to sell you anything.’