She moved into the bedroom, closed the door behind her. Mikael got to his feet, didn’t hesitate for a second. When he pushed open the bedroom door Eden gave a start.

‘Okay, fine,’ she said, and ended the call.

‘Who was that?’ Mikael was using what he had begun to call the New Voice. The one that was so harsh it immediately made Eden and the children look uneasy.

She was holding her mobile with both hands.

‘Who was that?’ he repeated.

‘Alex Recht.’

Mikael let out a sigh of relief. Alex was a good person, not the kind to bother them with unnecessary problems.

‘Does he want you to go back to work?’

Eden was surprised. ‘No. No, he didn’t say anything about that.’ She laughed. ‘Anyway, Alex was never my boss.’

‘So what did he want?’

He felt foolish – why was he asking the question? Eden didn’t have to report back on conversations with former colleagues, if Alex fell into that category.

‘He wanted to speak to you,’ Eden said.

Now it was Mikael’s turn to be surprised.

‘Okay . . .’

‘I said you weren’t home.’

‘What the—?’

She interrupted him.

‘It was about the murder of Malcolm Benke. You were right – he is dead. I asked Alex to call back later.’

Chapter 5

The air conditioning hummed quietly, bringing a welcome coolness. Alex had gathered the team for a quick run-through before he and Fredrika met their colleague from London. He wasn’t sure whether that conversation would be of any use at this stage, but it was worth a try. He glanced at his watch, the second hand racing along. Time was passing, and they were getting nowhere fast.

‘I’m assuming we’ve had the list of calls from Benke’s mobile by now,’ he began. ‘Who’s looked at them?’

A female investigator sitting next to Fredrika raised her hand. At that moment Alex’s phone rang. Diana. For the second time that day he rejected her call.

‘As far as we can see, Benke had only one mobile, and the phone company has been very helpful,’ the investigator said. ‘He might have had other phones, of course, but in that case they were pay-as-you-go, which means we can’t follow them up. Unless we find them.’

‘Nothing turned up when the house was searched?’ Fredrika asked.

‘No, and we’ve also checked his cars and his summer cottage this morning.’

‘Okay, so we work on the theory that this was Benke’s only phone,’ Alex said impatiently.

His colleague nodded. ‘The strange thing is that there seems to have been very little traffic. People often make and receive dozens of calls a day, but in Benke’s case we’re looking at no more than a handful.’