Charlotte regretted what she had said to Erica yesterday. Right now she and Niclas needed to stick together; her suspicions were just making everything worse. She could see that he was suffering, and if this tragedy couldn't bring them back together, there was really no hope for them.

Since she'd emerged from her sedated fog, Charlotte had hoped that Niclas would be the man she always knew he could be. Tender, considerate and loving. She had seen glimpses before, and it was this side of him that she loved. Now she wanted nothing more than to be able to lean on him; she wanted him to be the stronger one. But it hadn't turned out that way. He had shut himself off, gone back to work as quickly as he could, leaving her here among the broken pieces of their life.

Her foot struck something. Charlotte started to bend down but stopped abruptly. She'd asked Niclas to move all Sara's things out of sight, and he'd spent a whole morning putting everything in boxes and taking them up to the attic. But he'd missed one thing. Sara's old teddy bear lay halfway under the bed, and that was what Charlotte had felt with her foot. She gently picked it up and then had to sit down on the edge of the bed when everything started spinning before her eyes. The teddy bear felt grubby in her hands. Sara had refused to let them wash it, so it looked like it had been through a street fight. The bear also gave off an odd smell, and presumably it was this smell that absolutely mustn't be lost in the washing machine and replaced by the scent of laundry detergent. One eye was missing from the bear, and Charlotte touched the threads that had once held the button eye in place. It had been two hours since she'd last wept, the longest dry spell since the police had brought the news of Sara's death. Now the sobs began rising in her chest again. Charlotte hugged the teddy bear and lay down on her side on the bed. Then her grief took over.

'Will wonders never cease?' Pedersen said on the telephone. 'For the first time in the history of the world we got an analysis result back sooner than they predicted.'

'Hold on, I just have to pull over,' said Patrik, looking for a suitable spot. Ernst pointed to a little forest track on their side of the highway that would do.

'All right, I'm not a danger to traffic anymore. So, what did the tests show?' he said. It was clear from his tone of voice that he wasn't expecting much. They'd probably only managed to identify what Sara had eaten for breakfast. As for the water in her lungs, Patrik had done a little investigating on his own and found out that there wasn't much hope of identifying exactly what brand of soap was involved. Pedersen confirmed this at once.

'As I said before, the water was ordinary tap water, and the particular mixture of substances found in the water shows without any doubt that it was from the Fjällbacka area. Unfortunately the traces of soap couldn't be linked to any specific brand.'

'Well, that's not much to go on,' Patrik sighed. He was discouraged and once again felt the case slipping out of his hands.

'No, not as far as what was found in her lungs,' said Pedersen with a mysterious tone of voice. Patrik sat up straighter in the driver's seat.

'What else have you got?' he said, holding his breath as he waited for the answer.

'All right, here goes, even though I don't know what it means,' the M.E. replied. 'Analysis of the contents of the girl's stomach confirms what the family said she ate for breakfast, but…' Then he paused and Patrik almost screamed with impatience. 'There was something strange in her stomach. It seems as though the girl had eaten ashes.'

'Ashes?' said Patrik with a gobsmacked look on his face.

'Yes,' Pedersen said, 'and since we found them in the stomach, the lab did another check of the water in her lungs and found minute traces of ash there too. We missed them in the first analysis.'

'But how the hell could she have got ashes inside her body?' Out of the corner of his eye Patrik saw Ernst give a start and turn to stare at him.

'It's impossible to say for certain, but after looking at the data and going over the post-mortem report again, my theory is that someone forced the ashes into her orally. We did find traces in her mouth and oesophagus as well, even though most of it was flushed out by the water.'

Patrik didn't say a word, but his thoughts were tumbling round in his head. Why in the world would anyone have forced the girl to eat ashes? He tried to collect himself and focus on what he ought to ask about.

'But why would she have ashes in her lungs, if she had been forced to swallow them?'

'Once again, it's only speculation on my part, but it's possible the ashes went down the wrong way when they were stuffed in her mouth. If she was already in the bathtub when she was force-fed the ashes, some could have ended up in the water. And when she was drowned, the ash in the water could have then got into her lungs.'

With alarming clarity Patrik could see the whole scene before him. Sara in a bathtub, an unknown, menacing figure forcing a handful of ashes into her mouth and then holding her nose and mouth shut to force her to swallow. The same hands that later held her head underwater until bubbles stopped rising to the surface and everything was still.

A rustling sound came from the woods outside the car and broke the oppressive silence. In a low voice he said to Pedersen, 'Can you fax all this to us?'

'Already done. And the lab will be doing more tests on the ashes to see if they can find anything useful there. But they didn't want to wait for the results; they thought it was better to give us this information right away.'

'Yes, they were right about that. When do you think we can get more info on the ashes?'

'By the middle of next week, I should think,' said Pedersen. Then he added quietly, 'How's it going? Are you getting anywhere?'

It was unusual for the M.E. to ask questions about the investigation, but it didn't really surprise Patrik. Sara's death seemed to have affected so many people, even the most jaded. He thought for a moment before he replied.

'Not really, I'm afraid. To be honest, we don't have much to go on. But hopefully this will give us a lead. Not that I can see how at the moment, but it's an odd enough piece of information that it might break open the case.'

'Yes, let's hope so,' said Pedersen.

Patrik then gave Ernst a brief rundown of what he'd found out. They both sat in silence for a while, as the rustling continued in the bushes outside the car. Patrik was half-expecting to see a bull elk come rushing towards them, but it was probably just some birds or squirrels rummaging about in the fallen red leaves of autumn.

'What do you think, is it time to take a closer look at the Florins' bathroom?'

'Shouldn't we have done that already?' asked Ernst.

'Could be,' Patrik replied bitterly, well aware that Ernst had a point. 'But we didn't, so it's better to do it late than never.'

Ernst didn't answer. Patrik took out his mobile and made the necessary calls to summon backup and the technical team from Uddevalla. With Ernst's words ringing in his ears, he made his request sound as urgent as he could and was promised that the team would come out that very afternoon.

With a sigh Patrik started the car and put it in reverse. In his head whirled thoughts of ashes. And death.

FJÅLLBACKA 1924

Agnes hated her life. Even more than she'd thought possible on the day when she'd arrived at her new home. Never in her wildest dreams could she have imagined that everything would be so impoverished and miserable. And as if the physical setting weren't bad enough, her body had swollen up and made her ugly and awkward. She sweated all the time in the summer heat, and her hair, before so carefully coiffed, hung in lank strands. She wished for nothing more than that the creature who had transformed her into this repulsive figure would come out; at the same time she was terrified of the process of childbirth. The mere thought of it made her feel faint.