Heloise needed the peace up here to focus, to digest the week’s impressions. In a matter of days, she had been on the verge of losing her job, a wanted and mentally ill murderer had become fixated on her, and she had found out that Jonna Kiel had—or at least at one time had had—a serious gambling problem. She had found Ulrich Andersson’s body, and her apartment had been broken into.

Or had it?

She still couldn’t seem to make all the pieces fit together. Who had taken the picture from her balcony and posted it on Instagram?

No matter what angle she tried to approach the case from, her thoughts constantly returned to the same riddle.

Martin.

Martin was the one who had given her the documents about the Skriver case that had caused problems at the newspaper. He was the one who had shown up the same night as Anna Kiel’s Instagram picture, and now the police had told her he had a record, for assault. The more she thought about it, the more she was convinced that she didn’t really know anything about him, just his outermost shell, the smooth facade he let the world see.

She reached for her phone.

He answered on the first ring. “Hi!”

There was a crisp freshness to his voice that made Heloise’s chest feel effervescent, and she could hear that he was outside somewhere, on the go.

“Hi, where are you?” she asked.

“I’m on my way home. How about you?”

Heloise got right down to business. “Why do you have a conviction for assault on your criminal record?”

She could hear that he had stopped.

“Excuse me?”

“The police lifted your fingerprints when they were in my apartment after the break-in, and you’re in their system.”

After a brief pause, he replied, “Yes.”

“Yes? Is that all you have to say?”

“What do you want me to say?”

“I want you to tell me why you’ve served time.”

He was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “I punched a guy. It’s not something I’m particularly proud of, but trust me when I tell you that he had it coming.”

“Had it coming?” Heloise furrowed her brow. “Who deserves getting four teeth knocked out? You’re going to have to explain that to me, Martin.”

“It’s not important who—”

“It’s important to me.”

She could hear him exhale heavily. Then he said, “A guy by the name of Thomas Berggren.”

“And who’s Thomas Berggren?”

“He was my best friend for twenty-four years. Until I found out that he was sleeping with my wife.”

Each word landed like an ax, chopping wood.

Zak, zak, zak.

Heloise didn’t say anything.