Lelle took his coffee to the computer. Lina smiled at him from the screen saver. The air in the room was heavy and stale. The blinds were down and dust whirled in the light that seeped in between the slats. A half-dead pot plant drooped on the windowsill. Everywhere sorrowful reminders of his decline, of what he had become. He logged into Facebook and saw the post about Lina’s memorial service. One hundred and three people had liked it and sixty-four had registered to attend. Lina, we miss you and will never give up hope, one of her friends had written, followed by exclamation marks and crying emojis. Fifty-three people liked this comment. Anette Gustafsson was one of them. Lelle wondered if she was ever going to change her surname. He went on clicking, past poems and photos and angry comments. Someone knows what happened to Lina, time you stepped forward and told the truth! Angry, red-cheeked emojis. Ninety-three likes. Twenty comments. He logged out. Facebook only made him depressed.

‘Why can’t you get involved on social media?’ Anette used to nag him.

‘Get involved in what? A virtual pity-party?’

‘It actually concerns Lina.’

‘I don’t know whether you’ve noticed, but my focus is on finding Lina, not grieving for her.’

Lelle sipped his coffee and logged into Flashback. Nothing new had been added to the thread about Lina’s disappearance. The last entry was dated December the previous year and was from a user with the name ‘truth seeker’.

The police need to check out the HGV drivers using the Silver Road that morning. Everyone knows it’s a serial killer’s favourite job, just take a look at Canada and the USA. People disappear every day on the highways over there.

All one thousand and twenty-four contributors to the Flashback forum seemed touchingly unanimous in their belief that Lina had been picked up and abducted by someone driving a vehicle before the bus arrived. The same theory as the police, in other words. Lelle had phoned round couriers and haulage companies, asking which drivers had passed through the area at the time of Lina’s disappearance. He’d even met some of them for coffee, searched their vehicles and given their names to the investigation team. But none of them seemed to be a suspect and no one had seen anything. The police didn’t like his persistence. This was Norrland, not America. The Silver Road wasn’t a state highway. No serial killers lurked there.