She could hear crackling on the other end of the line; Alex was in a windy spot.

‘Lovisa Wahlberg.’

The name meant nothing to Fredrika, but she wondered how this was going to work. They were already investigating one murder; they couldn’t possibly take on another. Unless there was a connection.

Her heart skipped a beat.

‘I hope she didn’t die sitting in front of an open fire,’ she said quietly.

Alex’s voice almost broke as he answered.

‘I need you here. This whole thing is so sick I can’t understand what the hell is going on.’

*

Alex was waiting when she drove into the car park. He was smoking. Fredrika couldn’t believe her eyes. She closed the car door and went over to him.

‘What are you doing?’

‘I’m sinning. This is my first cigarette in thirty years.’

He tossed it aside and set off.

‘Don’t say “this is the worst thing we’ve ever seen”, because we both know it can’t be,’ Fredrika said as she followed him.

Alex didn’t speak. The sun was burning down. Today of all days.

‘Who found her?’

‘A young lad who was cutting the grass. Ivan can question him later – he’s in hospital.’

‘Injured?’

‘Suffering from shock.’

Fredrika remembered how old she’d been when she saw a dead body for the first time: nine. Her uncle had died during a family dinner. She recalled the commotion, the chaos. So many adults losing control at the same time. That had frightened her far more than the death.

They reached the tennis court. Fredrika’s gaze swept the empty seats, the court itself.

‘Have they already taken her away?’

‘Oh no. She’s over there.’

There was a cordoned-off area in the middle of the open green space, but Fredrika still couldn’t see any sign of a body.

‘Come with me,’ Alex went on. ‘I told them to leave her until you got here.’

His breath smelled of cigarette smoke.

My first cigarette in thirty years.

Fredrika’s unease grew with every step. What was so bad that Alex had felt the need to smoke for the first time in three decades?

‘So what do you think?’ he asked when they were a metre or so away from the dead woman.

Fredrika gasped, then found she couldn’t exhale. She thought she was going to be sick, then she wanted to turn around and go straight back home. She crouched down, wordless and empty.

‘Are you okay?’

‘No,’ she whispered.

Someone had buried Lovisa Wahlberg beneath the smooth surface of the tennis court, but left her hands and feet sticking up out of the ground. The sharp blades of the mower had inevitably done a certain amount of damage.

‘Her face?’ Fredrika asked. She didn’t want to find out the answer by looking for herself.