Alex crouched down in front of the dead man and studied the bloodstains on his shirt. Malcolm Benke had been shot in the chest. The bullet had passed straight through his body and through the back of the chair before burying itself in the wall.

Who gets shot sitting in a favourite armchair in front of the fire? Alex wondered.

There were no obvious signs of a disturbance in the room, which could lead to the assumption that Benke and the killer had known each other. Or that Benke had been taken by surprise, hadn’t even heard the perpetrator coming. It was this kind of tentative speculation you had to love if you were going to be a police officer. It was important not to jump to conclusions, and to avoid getting frustrated over all the things you didn’t know.

‘The bullet tore a substantial hole in his chest,’ said Renata Rashid, the medical examiner, who was standing beside him. She gently moved Benke’s shirt aside, exposing the wound.

Alex pulled a face.

‘A horrible way to die,’ he said.

Although that wasn’t really what he meant. On the contrary – he had very few objections to the way in which Benke had died. A bullet in the back of the neck or the chest seemed like a dream in comparison with the way many others met their end. However, Alex did have a major problem with the location. He was always particularly angered when people were subjected to crimes in their own home, the one place on earth where they had the right to feel safe.

‘As far as I can see there are no other obvious injuries,’ Renata said. ‘Although of course we won’t know for certain until I’ve carried out the post-mortem.’

Alex looked closely at Benke’s face. His expression was peaceful – or was it resigned? He’d seen faces frozen in horror at the moment of death. Not a pretty sight.

Benke was wearing a shirt, trousers, slippers. A jacket was draped over the back of the chair. According to records he was seventy-two years old and lived alone. He and his wife had divorced ten years earlier. They’d had two children, but only one was still alive. Their daughter had died six months before her parents split up, at the age of thirty. A quick internet search told Alex that Benke had been a successful property developer, involved in a number of notable projects in Stockholm.

A young colleague came to join him; much to Alex’s embarrassment, he couldn’t remember his name. He wasn’t part of Alex’s team, but had been deployed as an extra resource. He was bubbling with enthusiasm, the adrenaline coursing through his veins.

I was like you once upon a time. I used to think it was exciting when someone died.

‘So what do you think?’ said the young man.

‘Nothing.’

‘A disgruntled client who wanted to settle a score?’