‘Hi, we’re home!’ Patrik closed the door and set Maja down on the floor in the hall. She immediately headed off, so he had to grab her jacket to stop her.

‘Just a minute, sweetie. We have to take off your shoes and jacket before you go running to see Mamma.’ He got her undressed and then let her go.

‘Erica? We’re home!’ he shouted. No reply, but when he stopped to listen, he heard a clacking sound from upstairs. He picked up Maja and went up to Erica’s workroom, setting the little girl down on the floor.

‘Hi. So this is where you are.’

‘Yes, I’ve rattled off quite a few pages today. And then Anna came over and we had coffee.’ Erica smiled at Maja and held out her arms to her daughter. Maja toddled over to press a wet kiss on Erica’s lips.

‘Hi, sweetheart. What have you and Pappa been doing today?’ She rubbed her nose against Maja’s, and the little girl gurgled with delight. Eskimo kisses were their speciality. ‘You’ve been gone a long time,’ said Erica, shifting her attention back to Patrik.

‘Well, I had to jump in and do a little work,’ he said enthusiastically. ‘The new officer seems great, but they hadn’t really thought through all the angles, so I drove over to Fjällbacka with them to make a house call, which gave us a lead so we were able to pinpoint the two-day time frame when Erik Frankel was most likely murdered…’ He trailed off mid-sentence when he saw Erica’s expression, realizing that he should have given it more thought before he opened his mouth.

‘And where was Maja while you “jumped in to do a little work”?’ asked Erica with ice in her voice.

Patrik squirmed. This would be a good time for the smoke alarm to go off. But no such luck. He took a deep breath and launched right in.

‘Annika took care of her for a while. At the station.’ He couldn’t understand why it sounded so bad when he said it out loud. Until now it hadn’t even occurred to him that it might not be such a good idea.

‘So Annika took care of our daughter at the police station while you drove out on a job for a couple of hours? Am I understanding this correctly?’

‘Er… yes,’ said Patrik, searching frantically for a way to turn the situation to his advantage. ‘She had a great time. She had a big lunch, and then Annika went for a walk with her so she fell asleep in the pushchair.’

‘I’m sure that Annika did a super job as the babysitter. That’s not the point. What makes me upset is the fact that we agreed you would take care of Maja while I worked. It’s not that I expect you to spend every minute with her until January; of course we’ll need babysitters once in a while. But I think it’s a bit much to start leaving Maja with the station secretary so you can run off on a job after only one week of paternity leave. What do you think?’

Patrik wondered for a second whether Erica’s question was purely rhetorical, but when she seemed to be waiting for him to answer, he realized that wasn’t the case.

‘Well, now that you put it that way, I… okay, it was a stupid thing to do. But they hadn’t even checked to see if Erik had… and I got so involved that… All right, it was stupid!’ he concluded his confused excuse. He ran his hand through his hair, making it stick straight up.

‘From now on. No working. Promise me. Just you and Maja. Now give me a thumbs up.’ He stuck up both thumbs, trying to look as trustworthy as he could.

Erica let out a big sigh and got up from her chair. ‘Okay, sweetie, it doesn’t look as if you’ve suffered any. Shall we forgive Pappa and go downstairs to fix dinner?’ Maja nodded. ‘Pappa can cook carbonara for us, to make up for today,’ said Erica, heading downstairs, balancing Maja on her hip. Maja nodded eagerly. Pappa’s carbonara was one of her favourite dishes.

‘So did you reach any conclusions?’ asked Erica later as she sat at the kitchen table watching Patrik fry bacon and boil water for the spaghetti. Maja was installed in front of the TV watching Bolibompa, so the adults had some peace and quiet to themselves.

‘He most likely died sometime between the fifteenth and the seventeenth of June.’ Patrik moved the bacon around in the pan. ‘Damn it!’ Some of the grease spattered his arm. ‘That hurts! Good thing I don’t fry bacon naked.’

‘You know what, darling? I agree. It’s a good thing you don’t fry bacon naked.’ Erica gave him a wink, and he went over to kiss her on the lips.

‘So I’m your “darling” again, eh? Does that mean I’m out of the doghouse?’

Erica pretended to think about it for a moment. ‘I wouldn’t go that far, but you might be soon. If the carbonara is really good, I might reconsider.’

‘So how was your day?’ asked Patrik, returning to his cooking. He cautiously lifted out the pieces of bacon and placed them on a paper towel to absorb the grease. The trick to making a good carbonara was really crisp bacon; there was nothing worse than limp bacon.

‘Where should I begin?’ said Erica, sighing. First she told him about Anna’s visit and her problems as the stepmother to a teenager. Then she recounted what had happened when she went to see Britta. Patrik put down the spatula and stared at her in surprise.

‘You went over to her house to ask her questions? And the old woman has Alzheimer’s? No wonder her husband yelled at you. I would have too.’

‘Oh, thanks a lot. Anna said the same thing, so I’ve heard enough criticism about that, thank you very much.’ Erica sulked. ‘I didn’t actually know about her condition when I went over there.’

‘So what did she say?’ asked Patrik, putting spaghetti into the boiling water.

‘You realize that’s enough for a small army, right?’ Erica said when she saw that he’d put almost two-thirds of the packet into the pot.

‘Am I cooking dinner or are you?’ said Patrik, pointing the spatula at her. ‘Okay, so what did she say?’

‘Well, first of all it seems that they spent a lot of time together when they were young, Britta and my mother. Apparently they were a close-knit group, the two of them and Erik Frankel and somebody named Frans.’

‘Frans Ringholm?’ asked Patrik as he stirred the spaghetti.

‘Yes, I think that’s his name. Frans Ringholm. Why? Do you know him?’ Erica gave him a quizzical look, but Patrik just shrugged.

‘Did she say anything else? Has she had any contact with Erik or Frans? Or Axel, for that matter?’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Erica. ‘It didn’t seem as though any of them had kept in touch with each other, but I could be wrong.’ She frowned, rerunning the conversation in her mind. ‘There was something…’ she said hesitantly.

Patrik stopped stirring as he waited for her to go on.

‘She said something… something about Erik and “old bones”. About how they should be left in peace. And that Erik had said… No, then she slipped into a fog and I couldn’t understand anything else. She was really confused, so I don’t know how much weight to attach to what she said. It was probably just nonsense.’

‘Not necessarily,’ said Patrik. ‘Not necessarily. That’s the second time today I’ve heard those words in connection with Erik Frankel. Old bones… I wonder what it could mean?’

And as Patrik pondered, the pasta water started to boil over.

Frans had carefully prepared before the meeting. The board convened once a month, and there were numerous issues they needed to discuss. It would soon be an election year, and their biggest challenge lay ahead of them.

‘Is everyone here?’ He glanced around the table, silently surveying the other five board members. They were all men. Equality between the sexes hadn’t yet reached the neo-Nazi organizations. And presumably it never would.

The premises in Uddevalla had been leased from Bertolf Svensson, and they were now seated in the basement room of the block of flats that he owned. The space was otherwise used as a community hall, and there were still traces of the party that one of the tenants had held over the weekend. The group also had access to an office in the same building, but it was small and ill-suited to board meetings.