“When I arrived, the front door downstairs was ajar, so I came in without buzzing you, and once I got up here, I saw him. Your door was open, and he …” Martin stopped. He ran his open hand over his mouth and swallowed a couple of times. “He was sitting on top of you and you were lying with your face smashed down into the sofa, and he … he was smiling.”

Heloise looked at him but didn’t say anything.

“That motherfucker was smiling, and I … I just lost it. I yanked him off you and started punching him. I kept hitting him until I couldn’t do it any longer. I … I can’t actually really remember what happened then. But I called the police after I tied him up. I pulled a wire out of your TV and tied his hands behind his back. Then that Erik Schäfer guy showed up with a bunch of other police officers. An ambulance came, no, two ambulances, I think … Anyway, there were a bunch of paramedics here. They drove you away, cuffed the man, and questioned me right here at this table.”

Heloise could see that he was shook up, even though he was trying to hide it. She bit her lower lip. “Are you okay?”

“Me? You’re the one who got attacked, and you’re asking me if I’m okay?”

“It must have been pretty traumatic for you too.”

He nodded. “I have a ton of questions that keep filling my head. I told the police everything I know about that night, but no one has told me anything at all.”

Heloise swallowed. The movement made her throat hurt. “What do you want to know?”

“Who was he?”

“His name is Stefan Nielsen.”

“Did you know him?”

“No.” Heloise shook her head. “But Schäfer told me that in addition to the charges for attacking me, he was also charged for the murder of a journalist named Ulrich Andersson.”

“The guy from Ekspressen?” Martin blinked a couple of times.

Heloise nodded. “You know him?”

“No, but in this morning’s paper, it said that he had been murdered in his home.”

“I’m the one who found him.”

Martin’s eyes widened.

“The police think it was the same man who did that,” she continued.

“What the fuck, Heloise, that’s … How did you … Why would a psycho like that be out to get you?”

“I think it’s because I’m investigating a—”

They were interrupted by Heloise’s phone. There was no number showing on the caller ID, and she answered with a simple, “Hello?”

She could hear static on the line, silence, a delay. And then:

“Heloise?”

For some reason or other, the hoarse female voice made a cold sensation trickle through Heloise’s body, and her eyes went to Martin’s.

“Who is this?”

“You know who this is.”

“… Anna?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Anna Kiel?”

“I told you that you knew.”