They followed him into the building. It was immediately cool and shaded inside, the brightness of the day falling in long strips through the large windows. They both looked left and then right. The house was a series of interconnecting, open airy salons, high-ceilinged with old, worn strip-wood floors. There didn’t seem to be much furniture but what there was – stickback chairs, diamond-doored cabinets, curvy long-case clocks – was very old and seemed to be largely pale and peeling, in the old Gustavian style, a baroque fashion that was very different to the Mogerts’ modern, minimal aesthetic. Bell had the impression of peering through bright light and dust, even though the place was clearly spotless; everything was muted, hushed, as though a veil of silence had been hung over the roof, in distinct contrast to the bright, almost shouty exterior. She tried to imagine Linus haring about in here, and couldn’t. It wasn’t that it was grand per se, just that it was somehow disapproving of frivolity.

They caught up with Måns on the stairs – which wasn’t hard – treading slowly behind him, their eyes casting nervously around at the dark oil paintings on the walls, up at the crystal lights, hands gliding over the polished elliptical handrail. They swapped glances in silence, noticing every creak of the floorboards, the sheer scale of the house dwarfing them. Bell felt like it was swallowing them whole.

Upstairs, the house felt a little cosier, but it was a matter of mere degrees – maybe half a metre off the ceiling heights? There was more furniture, though, dressing the spaces and making it feel like a home rather than a museum – rugs at spaced intervals on the floors, an antique smiling wooden horse on bows.

Måns walked towards a closed door at the end of the corridor, furthest from the stairs. ‘Master Linus, you will be sleeping in the room that your father had when he was a child. He was most insistent it should now be yours. Everything has been kept exactly as it was, including all his old toys.’

Bell arched a quizzical eyebrow, but said nothing. Clearly neither Måns nor his employer knew the first thing about kids. They wanted new and they wanted tech; old Action Man figures – or whatever the guy had played with as a boy himself – weren’t going to cut it with his press-ganged son.

‘Your father is waiting for you in here.’ Måns paused, as though about to say something else, but he appeared to think better of it, and turned away and knocked on the door instead.

There was no reply, but he opened the door anyway and entered. ‘Your guests, sir.’

Bell and Linus looked at one another as they stood on the threshold. ‘You okay?’ she mouthed to him.

He nodded, but she could see the tension in the downward pull at the corners of his mouth. The man they were about to meet had threatened this poor child’s mother with a ruinous court case, public shaming and loss of custody. How could she put a positive spin on that?