‘Anyone else have the feeling that Benke didn’t usually wear his daughter’s wedding ring?’

Several people nodded.

‘We need to speak to the ex-wife,’ Fredrika said. ‘About Benke, but also about their late daughter.’

Alex felt the weight of unpleasant memories. The hardest memories of all – those involving parents who had lost one or more of their children. It was something they all seemed to learn to live with, but could never really put behind them. Alex had felt as if something died inside him the day his wife Lena passed away from cancer. One minute she was there, then she was gone. He had said it was the worst thing that could happen, and he had meant it. He had honestly believed that he loved her more than their children – until the day his son became entangled in a plane hijacking that could have gone badly wrong.

I would never have recovered, he thought. It would have been unbearable.

He pulled himself together. ‘What do we know about the daughter’s death?’

‘Not nearly enough. She’d been living in England with her husband for several years when she died,’ Fredrika informed him.

Alex looked around the room.

‘Anyone else have anything to contribute? CSI – where are we with the murder weapon?’

‘All I can tell you is that it’s notable by its absence,’ a female technician said. ‘Our initial assessment suggests that the bullet came from a Colt 45. We’ve checked all the doors and windows – no sign of forced entry. And as those of you who were at the crime scene could see, there was nothing to suggest that a struggle had taken place in the house.’

‘So Benke knew his killer,’ Fredrika said. ‘Well enough to let him in, at least.’

‘Either that or he was taken by surprise,’ the technician countered. ‘It wouldn’t be impossible to pick the lock on the front door and sneak inside – if you knew what you were doing.’

‘In other words, the perpetrator has found his way through locked doors before,’ Alex said slowly.

‘Exactly.’

‘Do we even know if the door was locked?’ Ivan wondered.

‘The cleaner who found Benke said it was locked when she arrived in the morning. It’s a classic dead latch – you don’t need a key to lock it.’

Alex reached for the computer.

‘How far have we got with house-to-house enquiries?’ ‘Ongoing,’ Ivan replied. ‘Nothing to report as yet.’

So no witnesses either. Great.

Alex clicked on the notes he’d made when Renata Rashid called him just before the meeting.

‘In Renata’s opinion, Benke had been dead for between ten and twelve hours when he was found at nine o’clock in the morning, so we’re looking at between nine and eleven the previous evening. However, that tells us nothing about when the perpetrator arrived, how long they were together before Benke died.’

He glanced up.