‘Happenstance? Are you sure? Because Einar never liked Ingvar. Nor did I, for that matter.’

‘Why not?’

Flora paused before replying, as though she felt a need to weigh her words carefully before letting them out. She was just about to speak when a phone started ringing somewhere in the house. An old phone with a mechanical ringer. ‘Excuse me. Have a refill and some biscuits while you wait.’ She got up and disappeared into an adjoining room.

Fabian seized the opportunity to look around the kitchen and compare it to the pictures in the old investigation. From what he could see, nothing had changed since the accident. It was the same fridge and hob, the same yellow cupboards, and it even looked like the same kitchen towel hanging on its hook. The dishwasher was the same as well, an old avocado-green Husqvarna that looked like it had survived itself several times over.

He opened it. The smell that greeted him begged for someone to run a programme even though it was only half full. Several forks and spoons in the cutlery basket were placed handle down, but the knives were all put in handles up.

Afterwards, he couldn’t recall whether it was that or something else that had triggered his epiphany. And it didn’t matter. What mattered was that now he knew what Hugo Elvin’s notes might have been referring to.

He pulled out both racks and checked to make sure the top one couldn’t be lowered and raised. Then he started searching the drawers until he found what he was looking for.

The kitchen knife.

He checked that the length of the blade and the handle matched the information in the case file. Then he placed it in the cutlery basket point up and pushed both racks back in, and yes, the knife was in fact so tall it blocked the spinning spray arm. It was, in other words, highly unlikely that Einar Stenson would have put the knife in the basket himself.

Was that what Hugo Elvin had realized? That it had actually been Molander who had waxed the floor and placed the knife in the dishwasher? All to make it look like a tragic accident instead of murder. It was far-fetched in a number of ways, but by no means impossible.

The question was why? What had Einar Stenson done to deserve to die? What was the motive for taking the risk inevitably associated with ending the life of another human being? And of a close relative at that.

Einar had evidently never liked his son-in-law, and that feeling had likely been mutual. But not liking someone was very far from what could be counted as a motive. There must have been something else. Something that constituted a concrete threat and made Molander feel he had no choice.

‘No, I don’t need your help any more,’ he heard Flora shouting into the telephone. ‘Because someone already came by and fixed it.’