‘I understand that,’ Maria says. ‘I’m not saying you should take any of these pills right now. But I can see you’re not feeling good.’ She pushes the bottle over the table towards Klara. ‘This is all I have.’

Klara lifts up the bottle. Flunitrazepam Mylan, she reads on the label. ‘Rohypnol,’ Maria says with a shrug. ‘Bad reputation, but it works if you need to keep going.’

There’s something so unexpected about the well-to-do lady in her sixties on the other side of the table giving her this bottle of Rohypnol that Klara just has to smile. She meets Maria’s eyes.

‘So I’m headed back to Brussels for an anonymous meeting armed with nothing more than a bottle of roofies,’ she says.

Maria drinks her coffee and shrugs her shoulders. ‘You do what you need to make it through the day,’ she says. ‘But you seem to have come to terms with that.’

*

Right after lunch Klara jumps into a taxi waiting about a block from Gabriella’s front door. Maria’s shown her a way out of the house through the laundry room, which takes you to another door further down the street, so she can slip past anyone who might be following her.

‘Bromma Airport,’ she says to the driver, leaning back in her seat.

The temperature has fallen during the night and the snow drags on. The streets are black and slippery. She looks up at the sunroof, but the sky is such a bright blue and the autumn light so unusually bright that she has to close her eyes.

She turns around and looks out the back window. The street seems empty, but just as the taxi turns the corner, a pair of headlights on a parked Volvo light up, and she flinches. Before she can see if it’s following them, the taxi has turned the corner and the Volvo has disappeared from sight.

Brussels, she thinks with a sigh. She shakes her head to get rid of that suffocating feeling, but it doesn’t help. Her pulse quickens, her temples are pounding, and her breath has become quick and shallow.

‘Is everything okay?’

She opens her eyes and sees the taxi driver’s worried look in the rear-view mirror. She nods as calmly as she can.

‘Didn’t sleep well,’ she manages to get out.

She looks through the rear window trying to avoid the driver’s gaze. They’re driving across Central Bridge and Klara can see the parliament towering up on one side and Norstedts’ blue neon sign on the other.

And in between those iconic buildings, on the road, just a few cars behind her taxi: a black Volvo. She can’t be sure, but somehow she knows it’s the same car that was parked outside Gabriella’s front door.