Others have done similar things, behaved atrociously and evaded all responsibility, but I don’t want you to remember me that way. That’s why I want to tell you that I’m different from those people. I am actually trying to take responsibility, in spite of all the years that have passed. As an author once said: I am putting everything right.

At that point Fredrika’s heart stopped, every single time she read the letter.

I am putting everything right.

I am putting everything right.

I am putting everything right.

Only words, taken from a little-known author, but that was of minor importance. Because certain things just couldn’t be true. It was very simple. The fact that Spencer was going to die was one of those things. The idea that he’d turned into a serial killer, driven by guilt, was another. Wasn’t that what he was saying? He was going after people who he thought should pay with their lives, for one reason or another.

It can’t be true.

Not one single word.

Waves of panic coursed through her body.

Sick in the head.

That’s what he was, quite literally.

But was he sick enough to have lost his mind?

Could the tumour have transformed him into a psychopath?

‘For fuck’s sake!’ Fredrika shouted, and hurled the letter at the wall. The three sheets of paper drifted to the floor, mocking her with their silence.

She hurried over and picked them up, afraid that someone would have heard her outburst and would come to see what was wrong.

She had to pull herself together, try to think clearly.

How the hell was she supposed to do that?

At best she was married to a man who had run over another human being. At worst this incident had turned him into a serial killer.

Fredrika’s hands were shaking. Who else would be able to work out that Spencer had written the letter? She glanced through the text yet again, searching for revealing details. It was obvious that the writer was a man with two children, who’d been involved in a car accident and who worked in Uppsala.

Not good. Not good at all.

Then she calmed herself. She hadn’t told anyone at work that Spencer was dying and that Noah Johansson had been his funeral director. However, it was only a matter of time before they went through Noah’s client records and found Spencer’s name.

Her breathing was laboured.

The letter didn’t necessarily prove that Spencer was the murderer they were looking for. Quite the reverse. It was illogical to think that Spencer was trying to atone for running over the woman by killing a series of innocent people – people she was certain he didn’t even know.