‘Have a seat,’ said Patrik.

Gösta pulled out a chair for Signe, and then everyone else sat down too. Patrik cleared his throat. Gunnar wanted to cover his ears with his hands; he couldn’t bear to hear more about what the voice on the phone had insinuated. As Patrik began speaking, Gunnar looked down at the table. It was all lies – incomprehensible lies. But he realized what was going to happen. The lies would be printed in black and white and become truths. He glanced at Signe and saw that she too understood. The more the police officer talked, the emptier her expression became. He had never seen anyone die before, but that’s what he was seeing right now. And there was nothing he could do. Just as he’d been unable to protect Matte, he was now paralysed as he watched his wife disappear.

He felt a rushing inside of his head. A roaring sound filled his ears, and he thought it strange that none of the others reacted. The sound got louder with the passing of every minute, until he could no longer hear what the policemen were saying. He was merely aware of their lips moving. He felt his own lips move, forming the words to tell them that he needed to use the toilet. He felt his legs standing up and then carrying him towards the hall. It was as if someone else had taken over and was manipulating his body. And he obeyed in order not to listen to the words that he didn’t want to hear, in order to get away from that empty look in Signe’s eyes.

Behind him they continued to talk as he staggered along the hall, past the toilet, and over to the door that was next to the front entrance. His hand moved of its own accord, pressing down on the handle to open the door. He stumbled but then regained his balance, and slowly, step by step, made his way downstairs.

The basement was shrouded in darkness, but he had no intention of turning on the light. The darkness suited the roaring sound, and it propelled him forward. Fumbling, he opened the cupboard next to the furnace. It wasn’t locked, as it should have been, but that didn’t matter. If he’d found it locked, he would have smashed it open.

The butt was a familiar shape in his hand after all the elk hunts earlier in the year. Without thinking, he took a bullet out of the box. He wouldn’t need more than one, so there was no need to waste time by putting in more. He loaded the bullet, hearing the click, which was strangely audible through the roaring noise that kept getting louder and louder.

Then he sat down on the chair near the workbench. Without hesitation, his finger located the trigger. He gave a start when he felt the steel scrape against his teeth, but after that his only thought was how right this was, how necessary.

Gunnar pulled the trigger. The roaring stopped.

Mellberg had an unfamiliar pressure in his chest. It was unlike anything he’d ever felt before, and it had started the moment that Patrik phoned from Fjällbacka. An uncomfortable pressure that refused to go away.

Ernst was whimpering in his basket. In his own dog-like way, he seemed to sense his master’s depressed mood. He got up, shook his huge body for a moment, and then padded over to Mellberg and lay down at his feet. That helped a little, but the unpleasant feeling remained. How could he have known that this would happen? That the man would go down to the basement, stick his hunting rifle in his mouth, and blow his head off? Surely no one could expect him to have foreseen that? Try as he might to cling to such thoughts, they refused to take hold.

Mellberg stood up abruptly, and Ernst gave a start as his pillow suddenly vanished.

‘Come on, old boy, let’s go home.’ Mellberg took the dog’s lead from its hook on the wall and fastened it to Ernst’s collar.

It was eerily quiet as they stepped out into the corridor. Everyone was holed up in their offices behind closed doors, but he could sense their reproach through the walls. He’d seen it in their eyes. And for perhaps the first time in his life, he was forced to do some soul-searching. A voice inside of him was saying that they might be right.

Ernst was tugging on the lead, so Mellberg hurried out into the fresh air. He pushed away the image of Gunnar lying on a cold gurney, waiting for the post-mortem. He also tried not to think about the wife – or rather, the widow, since that was her status now. Hedström had said that she had seemed totally out of it, and she hadn’t uttered a sound when the shot was fired in the basement. Patrik and Gösta had rushed downstairs, and when they came back to the kitchen, they found that Signe hadn’t moved. She’d been taken to hospital for observation, but the look in her eyes told Hedström that she would never really be alive again. He’d seen it happen a few times in the course of his career. People who looked as if they were alive, who were breathing and moving about, and yet they were completely empty inside.

Mellberg took a deep breath before opening the door to the flat. He was on the verge of panic. He wished he could get rid of the pressure in his chest, he wished everything would return to normal. He didn’t want to think about what he’d done or not done. He’d never been very good at dealing with the consequences of his actions, nor had it ever bothered him very much when things went wrong. Until now.

‘Hello?’ Suddenly he longed desperately to hear Rita’s voice and feel enveloped by her calm, which always made him feel so good.

‘Hi, sweetheart! I’m in the kitchen.’

Mellberg unfastened Ernst’s lead and kicked off his shoes. Then he followed the dog, who ran towards the kitchen, wagging his tail. Rita’s dog Señorita came to meet Ernst, wagging her tail just as happily as they sniffed at each other.

‘Dinner in an hour,’ said Rita, her back turned to him.

Something on the stove smelled delicious. Bertil pushed his way past the dogs, who always seemed to take up as much space as possible, and went to wrap his arms around Rita. Her plump body felt warm and familiar, and he hugged her hard.

‘Wow, what brought that on?’ laughed Rita, turning around to put her arms around his neck. Bertil closed his eyes, realizing how fortunate he was and how rarely he thought about that. This woman in his arms was everything he’d dreamed of, and he couldn’t understand even for a second why he’d ever thought that life as a bachelor was the best way to live.

‘So what’s going on?’ She pulled out of his arms so she could get a proper look at him. ‘Tell me what’s happened.’

He sat down at the kitchen table and let the words spill from his mouth. He didn’t dare look at her.

‘But, Bertil,’ said Rita, squatting down next to him. ‘That sounds like it wasn’t such a great move on your part.’

Oddly enough, it felt good that she didn’t try to offer platitudes to comfort him. She was right, after all. It hadn’t been a good idea to contact the press. But he could never have imagined anything like this would happen.

‘What do you see in me?’ he asked at last. He looked her in the eye, as if he wanted to see what Rita’s answer would be, and not just hear the words. It wasn’t often that he made the effort to see himself through someone else’s eyes. Finding it uncomfortable and embarrassing, he’d always tried his best not to do so, but he couldn’t avoid it any longer. And right now he didn’t want to avoid it. For Rita’s sake, he wanted to be a better person, a better man.

She looked at him without moving for a long time. Then she caressed his cheek.

‘I see someone looking at me as if I were the eighth wonder of the world. A man who is so full of love that he’d do anything for me. I see someone who helped bring my grandson into the world, and who is always willing to help when needed. Someone who would sacrifice his own life for a little boy who thinks that his grandpa Bertil is the best thing on earth. I see someone who has more prejudices than anybody I’ve ever met, but who is always ready to let them go when life proves that he’s wrong. And I see a man who has his flaws and faults, and perhaps thinks a little too highly of himself, but who is suffering in his soul right now because he knows that he did something stupid.’ Rita took his hand and squeezed it. ‘No matter what, you’re the one that I want to wake up next to every morning, and to me you’re as perfect as you could be.’