As she sat there in the dark she felt her hatred towards Father swelling like a huge monster inside her. In the daytime, up in the light, she had to hide this hatred of him behind smiles and curtseys, pretending everything was fine. But down here in the dark she could allow the monster out, letting it grow in peace and quiet. She actually got on well with the monster. It had turned into an old, dear friend, the only friend she had.

'You can come up now.'

The voice from upstairs was clear and cold. She opened herself up and drew the monster inside. There it would have to stay until she ended up in the cellar again. Then it could come out and resume growing again.

Patrik received the call just as he was supposed to escort Kaj to the interrogation room. He listened in silence and then went to get Martin. As he was about to knock on his door he remembered that Annika had said that Martin had gone to Fjällbacka, and he cursed to himself when he realized that he would have to take along Gösta instead. He didn't even consider Ernst. The mere thought of him made the rage rise up in his throat. If the guy knew what was good for him he would stay as far away from Patrik as humanly possible.

But he was in luck. Just as he was heading with heavy steps towards Gösta's office, he heard Martin's voice out in the reception and hurried out to find him.

'There you are. Damn, this is great. I thought you wouldn't get back in time. You have to come with me at once.'

'What happened?' said Martin, following Patrik, who hurried out the main entrance after giving a hasty wave to Annika behind the glass.

'A young man has hanged himself. He left a note that mentions Kaj.'

'Oh, shit.'

Patrik got behind the wheel of the police car and put on the blue light. Martin felt like an old lady as he automatically reached out for the handle above the door on the passenger side, but with Patrik in the driver's seat it was a matter of sheer survival instinct.

A mere fifteen minutes later they pulled up in front of the Ryden family's house in the part of Fjällbacka that for some reason was called 'The Swamp'. An ambulance was parked in front of the low brick house, and the EMTs were doing their best to lift a gurney out of the back. A little man with thinning hair in his forties was running back and forth on the driveway and seemed to be in a state of shock. As Patrik and Martin parked and climbed out of the car, one of the ambulance guys went over to the man, wrapped a yellow blanket round his shoulders, and seemed to be trying to talk him into sitting down. The man finally obeyed. With the blanket wrapped tight around him he sank down on a low kerb that marked the border between the driveway and the flower bed.

They had met the ambulance personnel before and didn't bother introducing themselves. Instead they simply greeted each other with a nod.

'So what happened?' asked Patrik.

'The stepfather came home and found his son in the garage. He hanged himself.' One of the EMTs nodded towards the garage door, which somebody had pulled down so that nothing inside could be seen from the street.

Patrik looked over at the little man sitting a few yards away. What that man had just seen was something no one should ever have to see. He was shivering now, as if from the cold, and Patrik recognized it as a sign of shock. But that was something for the EMTs to handle.

'Can we go inside?'

'Yes, we thought we'd just check with you before we lifted him down. He's been hanging there a couple of hours, so there was no reason to hurry. We're the ones who pulled down the garage door, by the way. It seemed unnecessary to let him hang there in public view.'

Patrik patted him on the shoulder. 'Quite right, good thinking. In case there's any connection with our ongoing homicide investigation, I've called the techs in too. So it was good that you didn't cut him down. They should be here any minute, and they'll no doubt want as few people as possible stomping around in there. I suggest that Martin and I go in and that you wait out here for the time being. Do you have the situation under control?' He nodded in the direction of the stepfather.

'Johnny will take care of him. He's in shock. But I'm sure you can talk to him in a little while. He told us that he found a note in the boy's room. He didn't bring anything out, so it's probably still up there.'

'Good,' said Patrik and headed slowly towards the garage door. He grimaced, steeling himself as he bent down to take hold of the handle and raise the door.

The sight was just as horrible as he'd expected. He could hear Martin gasp behind him.

For a moment it felt to Patrik as if the boy was staring right at them, and he had to stop himself from turning and running away. A choking sound behind him made him realize that he should have warned Martin how they needed to proceed in such cases. But now it was too late. He turned round in time to see Martin running out of the garage and over to a bush where he emptied his stomach.

He heard another vehicle pull up next to the police car and the ambulance and assumed it was the tech team arriving. He tried to move carefully so as not to draw the wrath of the team. Above all he didn't want to disturb any evidence if all was not as it seemed. But nothing he saw contradicted his assessment of suicide. A thick rope hung from a hook in the ceiling. The noose was around the boy's neck and a chair had been kicked over and lay on the floor. It looked like a kitchen chair brought from inside the house. The chair had a cushion upholstered in a lingonberry pattern, and its bright cheerfulness offered a sharp contrast to the macabre scene.

Patrik heard a familiar voice behind him.

'Poor devil, he wasn't very old, was he?' Torbjörn Ruud, chief of the technical team from Uddevalla, stepped into the garage and looked up at Sebastian.

'Fourteen,' said Patrik, and they were silent for a moment, faced with the incomprehensible fact that a boy of fourteen could find life so unbearable that death was the only way out.

'Is there any reason to believe that it's not a suicide?' asked Torbjörn as he prepared the camera in his hand.

'No, not really,' said Patrik. 'There's even a note, which I haven't seen yet. Although the note names a person involved in a homicide investigation, so I won't leave anything to chance.'

The girl?' said Torbjörn, and Patrik nodded.

'Okay, then in other words we'll treat it as a suspicious death. Ask one of the others to take care of the note, so it's not handled by too many people before we get our mitts on it.'

'I'll do it right now,' said Patrik, relieved to have an excuse to leave the garage. He went over to Martin, who was self-consciously wiping his mouth with a paper napkin.

'Pardon me,' he said, gloomily looking at his shoes which had been sprayed by his lunch.

'It doesn't matter. I've done it myself,' said Patrik. 'But now the techs and then the ambulance guys will have to deal with the body. I'm going to check on that note, and you can go see whether it's possible to talk to the stepfather.'

Martin nodded and bent down to wipe off his shoes as best he could. Patrik waved to one of the techs from Uddevalla. She brought her bag of equipment and followed without a word.

The house was uncannily quiet when they went inside. The boy's stepfather had watched them as they went in the front door.

Patrik looked around.

'I'd guess it's upstairs,' said the tech. He thought her name was Eva. She was one of the techs who'd done the examination of the Florins' bathroom.

'Yeah, I don't see anything down here that looks like a boy's room, so you're probably right.'

They climbed the stairs and Patrik suddenly had a flashback to his own childhood home. The houses all seemed to have been built around the same time, and he knew the style well, with fibre wallpaper on the walls and light pine stairs with a wide banister.