‘Sure, I know that,’ said Martin, but he didn’t sound convinced. ‘I just think that it’s a hell of a time for you to be on leave right now. We could have used your help.’ He smiled to take away the sting of his words.

‘Believe me, you’ll be in the same boat someday. And when you’re washing nappies, I’ll be back at the station, working my head off.’ Patrik winked at Martin before closing the door behind him.

‘So, we’re off to Göteborg tomorrow, you and I,’ he said to Maja, dancing around with his daughter in his arms.

‘We just have to sell the idea to your mother first.’

Maja nodded her agreement.

Paula felt exhausted. Exhausted and disgusted. She’d been surfing the Internet for hours, looking for information about Swedish neo-Nazi organizations, and Sweden’s Friends in particular. It still seemed likely that they’d had something to do with Erik Frankel’s death, but the problem was that the police had nothing concrete to go on. They hadn’t found any threatening letters. All they had were the hints in the letters from Frans Ringholm, saying that Sweden’s Friends didn’t appreciate Erik’s activities and that Frans could no longer shield him from these forces. Nor was there any technical evidence linking any of them to the crime scene. All the board members had voluntarily, albeit without disguising their contempt, provided their fingerprints, with the kind assistance of the police in Uddevalla. But the National Crime Lab had concluded there were no matches with any of the fingerprints found in the Frankel library. The matter of alibis hadn’t given them any leads either. None of the board members could offer an airtight alibi, but most had one that wouldn’t be worth challenging unless the police found evidence that pointed in their direction. Several of them had confirmed that Frans had been visiting a sister organization in Denmark during the relevant days, and that gave him an alibi too. Another problem was that the organization was so big, much bigger than Paula had imagined, and they couldn’t very well check up on the alibis and take fingerprints of everyone associated with Sweden’s Friends. That was why they had decided, for the time being, to focus their attention on the board members. But so far without results.

Annoyed, Paula continued her search on the Internet. Where did all these people come from? And where did their hatred come from? She could understand hatred that was directed at specific individuals, at people who had wronged them in some way. But to hate others simply because they were from a different country, or because of the colour of their skin? No, she just didn’t get it.

She herself hated the thugs who had murdered her father. Hated them so much that she wouldn’t hesitate to kill them if she ever had the chance, assuming they were still alive. But her hatred stopped there, even though it could have reached upwards, outwards, expanded further. She had refused to succumb to that much hatred. Instead, she had limited her animosity to the men who held the guns that fired the bullets into her father’s body. If she hadn’t limited her hatred, it would have eventually made her hate her native country. And how could she do that? How could she hate the country where she’d been born, where she’d taken her first steps, where she’d played with friends, sat on her grandmother’s lap, listened to songs in the evening, and danced at fiestas? How could she hate all that?

But these people… She scrolled down, reading one column after another proclaiming that people like herself should be eradicated, or at least sent back to their home-lands. And there were pictures. Plenty of them from Nazi Germany, of course. The black-and-white photos that she’d seen so many times before – the heaps of naked, emaciated bodies that had been tossed aside like trash after the people had died in the concentration camps. Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Dachau… all the names that were so horribly familiar, for ever associated with the worst of all evil. But here, on these websites, they were hailed and celebrated. Or denied. For there were also the deniers, like Peter Lindgren. He insisted the holocaust had never happened. That six million Jews had not been expelled, killed, tortured, gassed to death in the concentration camps during the Second World War. How could anyone deny something like that when there was so much evidence, so many witnesses? How had the twisted minds of these people managed to deny history?

She jumped when a knock on the door interrupted her.

‘Hi, what are you working on?’ Martin was standing in the doorway.

‘I’m checking up on all the background information I can find about Sweden’s Friends,’ she said with a sigh. ‘But it’s enough to scare the shit out of you, poking around in this stuff. Did you know that there are approximately twenty neo-Nazi organizations in Sweden? Or that the Sweden Democrat Party won a total of 281 seats in 144 municipalities? Where the hell are we headed in this country?’

‘I don’t know, but it makes you wonder,’ said Martin.

‘Well, it’s fucking awful,’ said Paula, angrily throwing down her pen, which slid off the desk and landed on the floor.

‘Sounds like you need a break from all this,’ said Martin. ‘I was thinking of having another talk with Axel.’

‘About anything in particular?’ asked Paula, getting up to follow Martin out to the garage.

‘Not really. I was just thinking that it might be good to check in with him again. After all, he had the closest relationship with Erik and knew him best. But there is one thing I do want to ask him about.’ Martin paused. ‘I know that I’m the only one who thinks there’s some connection with the murder of Britta Johansson, but someone recently made a phone call from their house to Axel, and another one back in June, although it’s impossible to know if the call was intended for Erik or Axel. I’ve just looked through the Frankels’ phone records, and in June someone from that house called Britta or Herman. Twice. Before they’d called the Frankels.’

‘It’s worth checking out, at any rate,’ said Paula, fastening her seatbelt. ‘As long as I can get out of reading about all those Nazis for a while, I’ll go along with any theory, no matter how much of a long shot it is.’

Martin nodded as they drove out of the garage. He could totally understand Paula’s feelings. But something told him this wasn’t really such a long shot.

She’d been in a daze all week. Only on Friday did Anna feel like she could even begin to take in the information. Dan had handled it much better. After the initial shock had subsided, he’d gone around humming to himself. He’d blithely dismissed all her objections, saying, ‘Oh, it’ll work out. This is going to be so great! A baby of our own – this is fantastic!’

But Anna couldn’t really go along with ‘fantastic’. Not yet. She found herself touching her stomach, trying to imagine the tiny lump inside. So far unidentifiable, a microscopic embryo, which in only a few months would become a baby. Even though she’d been through it twice before, it still seemed unfathomable. Maybe even more so this time around, because she hardly remembered being pregnant with Emma and Adrian. Those memories had disappeared into a haze, where the fear of being beaten had dominated her every waking hour, even encroaching on her sleep. All her energy had been directed at protecting her stomach, protecting their lives, from Lucas.

This time that wasn’t necessary. And absurdly enough, that frightened her. This time she could be happy. Was allowed to be happy. Should be happy. She loved Dan, after all. Felt safe with him. Knew that he would never even think of harming her or anyone else. Why should that frighten her? That was the question she’d spent the last few days trying to fathom.

‘What do you think? Boy or girl? Any feelings one way or the other?’ Dan had slipped behind her, wrapping his arms around her and patting her still flat stomach.