‘I thought back to my previous meeting with Malcolm,’ he said. ‘I was afraid Bernhard had been working on him, persuaded him to do something stupid. And his friends didn’t fill me with confidence; they didn’t seem stable, they were much too emotional.’

‘So you went along to make sure the encounter didn’t end in disaster?’

‘That was the general idea, but it was all a lot less dramatic than I’d feared. Beata’s husband broke down completely as the three of them yelled at him. Eventually everyone calmed down, and we managed to discuss things on a more constructive level. I don’t think I saw anything that could be described as criminal behaviour.’

You don’t think?

‘No threats were issued?’ Fredrika asked.

‘Not as far as I can recall. Well, no direct threats. No death threats anyway.’

Fredrika didn’t press him to be more precise.

‘Were any pictures taken on that occasion?’

‘Yes – I thought that was very strange. Malcolm asked Richard to photograph us before we left.’

Fredrika wondered if she’d misheard.

‘He asked his son-in-law to take the picture?’

She’d assumed Beata had been behind the camera.

‘That’s right.’

‘Beata wasn’t home?’

‘No – God, no.’

The priest was blaspheming, which pleased Fredrika no end.

‘Sten Aber claimed that he didn’t recognise the photo,’ she said. ‘He even pretended not to recognise you. Can you think of any reason why he would do that?’

It was a shot in the dark; Mikael Lundell wasn’t responsible for Sten’s silence.

‘I can imagine that Sten would have been very stressed after the event,’ Mikael said. ‘He wasn’t the most driven of the three men; he might even have got it into his head that he was somehow to blame for Beata’s death.’

So Sten Aber had lied to protect himself.

Not unusual, but it didn’t exactly make him a model citizen.

‘So what was your assessment of the situation when you left? Did you think you’d managed to improve things for Beata?’

‘I’m embarrassed to answer that question,’ Mikael said, ‘but yes, I thought everything would be fine. It wasn’t, of course. As I found out almost straight away.’

Fredrika was still looking at the picture.

‘When did this meeting take place?’

Mikael’s voice suddenly sounded thin.

‘Two days before she died.’

Chapter 12

Alex Recht was sitting with the phone in his hand, hesitating. He ought to call Noah Johansson back; he was curious to find out what the funeral director wanted. But first he had to staunch the flow of memories. Didn’t Johansson realise what he’d stirred up?