She shook her head, tried to get her thoughts into some kind of order.

What kind of place would it have to be? Or was the place irrelevant? Ross could have hired guards on the quiet; maybe he didn’t need a nuclear bunker.

She heard Spencer leave the bedroom and go into the bathroom.

The uncertainty about what he’d done – or not done – was driving her crazy.

After a little while he stuck his head around the living-room door:

‘Are you coming back to bed?’

She didn’t look up. ‘I have to work for a while longer.’

The clock on the wall ticked.

And yet time seemed to stand still as the man Fredrika had loved for so many years turned and walked away.

Chapter 2

A thunderstorm raged for most of the night. One flash of lightning after another lit up the bedroom where Malin and the children had sought refuge. Malin, Hedvig and Max. There were only the three of them left now. Dan was gone, he was never coming back. The man had taken him with him when he left.

‘The rest of you are staying here!’ he’d yelled.

He had been badly shaken, shocked. As if Dan’s death hadn’t been part of his plans at all.

‘No!’ Malin had screamed. ‘No, you can’t leave us!’

The children had been so traumatised they’d stopped crying, and Malin had been unable to hold it together. She’d broken down in front of them, lost her balance on the slippery blood and ended up lying on the floor while the man dragged Dan away. Hedvig and Max had remained sitting with their backs to the wall as if they were paralysed, until Malin found the strength to get up and take control of the situation. She had to clean up the blood, calm the children. It was many hours before they fell asleep.

Now it was seven o’clock in the morning, and Malin had hardly slept. Again.

Maybe you can get used to it. Maybe you can give up sleeping.

Neither Hedvig nor Max moved when she got out of bed. She found this terrifying, and leaned over them to make sure they were breathing. They were. They were alive. So was Malin. Nothing else mattered.

Nothing else mattered.

That was how she must think from now on. As long as they stayed alive, everything else could be fixed. There were psychologists and drugs for every eventuality.

She went to the bathroom, sat down on the cold plastic toilet seat. She couldn’t get rid of the pictures in her head, Dan rushing out of the closet, Dan dying, the moment when she killed him.

It was him or me and the kids.

Madness had burned like a forest fire in his eyes. It had all happened so fast that she hadn’t had time to think, not when she hurled herself at him, grabbed the knife, pointed it at him.