‘You’re kidding!’ said Erica, and they both laughed.

‘He learned after a while. Lars was a good father to Patrik and Lotta when they were growing up. I can’t complain. But those were different times.’

‘Speaking of different times,’ said Erica, seizing the opportunity to turn the conversation to the reason for her visit. ‘I’m doing a little research into my mother’s life, her childhood, and so on. I found some old things in the attic, including several old diaries, and well, they got me to thinking.’

‘Diaries?’ said Kristina, staring at Erica. ‘What was in them?’ she asked in a sharp tone of voice. Erica looked at her mother-in-law in surprise.

‘Nothing especially interesting, unfortunately. Mostly teenage musings. But the funny thing is that there’s a lot about her friends from back then. Erik Frankel, Britta Johansson, and Frans Ringholm. And now two of them, Erik and Britta, have both been murdered within a few months of each other. It could just be a coincidence, but it seems strange.’

Kristina was still staring. ‘Britta’s dead?’ she asked, and it was obvious that she was having a hard time taking in the news.

‘Yes, didn’t you hear about it? I thought you would have heard it on the grapevine by now. Her daughter found her dead two days ago, and it seems that she died from suffocation. Her husband claims that he killed her.’

‘So both Erik and Britta are dead?’ said Kristina. Thoughts seemed to be churning in her head.

‘Did you know them?’ asked Erica.

‘No.’ Kristina shook her head. ‘I knew only what Elsy told me about them.’

‘What did she tell you?’ asked Erica, eagerly leaning forward. ‘That’s exactly why I’ve come over here. Because you were my mother’s friend for so many years, I thought that you, of all people, would know things about her. So what did she tell you about those years? And why did she stop writing in her diary so abruptly in 1944? Or are there more diaries somewhere? Did Mamma ever tell you about them? In the last diary she mentions a Norwegian who had come to stay with them, a Hans Olavsen. I found a newspaper clipping that seems to indicate that all four of them spent a lot of time with him. What happened to him?’ The questions came pouring out so fast that even Erica could barely keep up with them. Kristina sat across from her, not saying a word, with a shuttered expression on her face.

‘I can’t answer your questions, Erica,’ she said at last. ‘I can’t. The only thing I can tell you is what happened to Hans Olavsen. Elsy told me that he went back to Norway right after the war ended. After that, she never saw him again.’

‘Were they…’ Erica hesitated, not sure how to formulate her query. ‘Did she love him?’

Kristina didn’t speak for a long time. She plucked at the pattern of the oilcloth on the table, weighing what she wanted to say. Finally she looked at Erica.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘she loved him.’

It was a splendid day. Axel hadn’t thought about such things for a very long time. The fact that certain days could be nicer than others. But this one truly was. Right on the cusp between summer and autumn, with a warm, gentle breeze. The light had lost the glare of summer and started to assume the glow of autumn. A truly splendid day.

He went over to the bay window and looked out, his hands clasped behind his back. But he didn’t see the trees outside. Or the grass that had grown a bit too tall and was starting to wither as cooler weather approached. Instead he saw Britta. Lovely, lively Britta, whom he’d never regarded as anything but a little girl back then, during the war. One of Erik’s friends, a sweet but rather vain girl. She hadn’t interested him. She’d been too young. He’d been preoccupied with everything that needed to be done, with what he needed to do. She’d had only a peripheral place in his world.

But he was thinking about her now. The way she was when he saw her the other day. Sixty years later. Still beautiful. Still slightly vain. But the years had changed her. Turned her into a different person than she’d been back then. Axel wondered if he had changed just as much. Maybe. Maybe not. Perhaps the years he’d been imprisoned by the Germans had changed him enough for a whole lifetime, so that afterwards he hadn’t managed to change any more. All the things he’d seen, the horrors he’d witnessed – maybe that had changed something deep inside of him which could never be healed or redeemed.

Axel pictured other faces in his mind. Faces of the people he’d hunted and helped to capture. It didn’t happen the way they showed it in the movies, with thrilling high-speed chases. Just hours of laborious work, sitting in his office and indefatigably following up five decades of paper trails, calling into question identities, payments, passenger lists, and possible cities of refuge. And so they’d brought them in, one by one. Made sure that they were punished for their sins, which were receding further and further into the past.

They would never catch them all. He knew that. There were still so many of them out there, and more and more of them were now dying. But instead of dying in prison, in degradation, they were dying the peaceful death of old age, without having to confront their deeds. That was what drove him. That was what made him refuse to give up; he was constantly searching, hunting, going from one meeting to the next, combing through archive after archive. He refused to rest as long as there was a single one of them out there that he might help to catch.

Axel stared unseeing out the window. He knew that it had become an obsession with him. The work had consumed everything. It had become a lifeline that he could grab hold of whenever he doubted himself or his humanity. As long as he was engaged in the hunt, he didn’t need to question who he was. As long as he was working to serve the cause, he could slowly but surely chip away at his guilt. Only by refusing to stand still was he able to shake off everything that he didn’t want to think about.

He turned around. The doorbell was ringing. For a moment he couldn’t tear himself away from all those faces flickering before his eyes. Then he blinked them away and went to open the door.

‘Oh, so it’s you,’ Axel said when he caught sight of Paula and Martin. For a second he felt overwhelmed by fatigue. Sometimes it seemed this would never end.

‘Could we come in and talk to you for a few minutes?’ asked Martin in a kindly tone of voice.

‘Of course. Come in,’ said Axel, again leading the way to the veranda. ‘Is there any news? I heard about Britta, by the way. Dreadful business. I saw her and Herman just a couple of days ago, you know. It’s so hard for me to imagine that he would…’ Axel shook his head.

‘Yes, it’s really tragic,’ said Paula. ‘But we’re not about to jump to any hasty conclusions.’

‘But from what I heard, Herman has confessed. Isn’t that true?’ asked Axel.

‘Well, yes,’ said Martin hesitantly. ‘But until we’re able to interview him…’ He threw out his hands. ‘That’s actually why we’ve come to talk to you.’

‘All right. Although I don’t really see how I can help.’

‘We’ve taken a look at the phone records – calls that were made from Britta and Herman’s house – and your number appears on three occasions.’

‘Well, I can tell you about at least one of them. Herman phoned me a few days ago and asked me to come over to see Britta. We haven’t had any contact for years and years, so it was a little surprising. But from what I understood, she had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. And Herman seemed to want her to see someone from the old days, in case that might help.’

‘And that’s why you went over there?’ asked Paula, studying him intently. ‘So that Britta could see someone from the old days?’

‘Yes. At least, that’s the reason Herman gave me. Of course, we weren’t exactly close back then. She was actually my brother Erik’s friend, but I didn’t think it would do any harm. And at my age, it’s always pleasant to talk about old memories.’