The walls began to beat in time to his heart and the whole room spun. Then came the retching. Lelle crawled to a corner and spewed up a stinking pool of bile and utter despair. His body began to shake and something ruptured deep inside. He felt it. The very life was running out of him.

His eyes played tricks on him, he couldn’t keep them focused. But he saw Birger by the door, one hand on the handle and the other holding the gun, as if he was afraid. Lelle hoped he planned to shoot him. He crawled as close as he could.

‘My daughter died last Christmas, you say? So you let her sit in a bunker for two and a half years, like some kind of toy for your deranged son?’

‘We had no choice, Lennart. You have to understand that. The damage was already done. If we had let Lina go we would have lost everything. Our whole life’s work, ruined. And I can’t let the state take our son. Over my dead body.’

Lelle’s heart felt like it was exploding, as if it couldn’t take any more. He clasped his hands to his chest and pictured Lina as he closed his eyes.

‘I want to see her. I want to see my daughter.’

‘I’m afraid there isn’t much to see. But you will be buried side by side, I promise you.’

Lelle didn’t know if he was alive or not. Neither his body nor his head would obey him. Time had stood still and become something else, something duplicitous and intangible. He could hear Birger’s voice right beside him, but it wasn’t to Lelle he was speaking.

Soon they were over him. Tall, thin figures who put their hands under his arms and round his ankles and lifted him as if he weighed nothing. They lugged his body between them down a corridor and up a flight of stairs, where every step felt like an axe in his ribcage, and out into a winter night that seemed blinding after hours in the dark.

Lelle was slung about roughly in their hands. Outside, the stars burned above and the cold that got in under his clothes cleared his head. He could see their pale faces under their winter hats – young men, that was all, but with gritted teeth and eyes that avoided contact with his. He heard himself swear at them, saying he would murder them all. The tallest of the three had a smile on his pitted face and Lelle made a grab for him with his tied hands. That only made him smile even more.