He and Anders had found each other at once. Two poor fucks, they used to say, laughing bitterly. Bengt harboured an almost fatherly affection for Anders and felt greater sorrow over his fate than over his own. He often wished that he could have done something to turn Anders’s life in a different direction. But because he also knew the seductive siren song of alcohol, he knew how impossible it was to tear yourself away from the demanding lover that booze had become over the years. She demanded everything and gave nothing back. All he and Anders could do was give each other a little consolation and companionship.

The path up to the front door of Anders’s building had been carefully sanded. So Bengt didn’t have to tread cautiously because of the bottle in his inside pocket, as he had done many times during the hard winter just past, when the ice lay shiny and slick all the way to the stairs.

The two flights up to Anders’s flat were always a challenge. There was no lift. Several times he had to stop to catch his breath, and twice he made sure to take a bracing swig from the bottle in his inside pocket. When he finally stood outside the door to Anders’s flat he was panting hard. He leaned against the door jamb for a moment before he opened the door, which he knew Anders never locked.

It was quiet in the flat. Maybe Anders wasn’t home. If he was sleeping it off, his deep breathing and snuffling snores could usually be heard all the way out in the hall. Bengt looked in the kitchen. Nobody there, except for the normal colonies of bacteria. The bathroom door stood wide open, and there too it was empty. When he turned the corner he had a horrible feeling in the pit of his stomach. The sight in the living room made Bengt stop short. The bottle he was holding in his hand fell to the floor with a heavy clunk, but it didn’t break.

The first thing he saw was the feet dangling freely a bit above the floor. The naked feet swung slightly, swaying back and forth. Anders had trousers on but nothing on his upper body. His head hung at an odd angle. His face was swollen and discoloured, and his tongue looked too big for his mouth as it stuck out between his lips. It was the saddest sight Bengt had ever seen. He turned and quietly left the flat, but not before he picked up the bottle from the floor. He tried to find something inside himself to grab hold of, but found only emptiness. Instead he grasped at the only lifeline he knew. He sat down on the threshold of Anders’s flat, put the bottle to his mouth, and cried.

It was doubtful whether he had a legal blood alcohol content, but Patrik wasn’t worrying about that right now. He drove a little slower than usual for safety’s sake, but since he was dialling numbers on his mobile and talking on the phone, it was debatable how much help that was to traffic safety.

His first call was to TV4, which confirmed that Separate Worlds had been cancelled on Friday the twenty-second because of the hockey match. Then he rang Mellberg, who not unexpectedly was overjoyed to hear the news. He demanded that Anders immediately be brought back in. With his third call, Patrik got the backup he requested and drove straight towards the residential complex where Anders lived. Jenny Rosén must have simply mixed up the days. Not an uncommon occurrence among witnesses.

Despite his excitement at a possible break in the case, Patrik couldn’t really focus on the task. His thoughts kept returning to Erica and the night they had just spent together. He caught himself grinning like a fool from ear to ear, and his hands involuntarily drummed little rhythms on the steering wheel. He turned on the radio to an oldies station and got Aretha Franklin with ‘Respect’. The upbeat Atlantic sound fit his mood perfectly and he turned up the volume. At the refrain he sang along at the top of his lungs and danced as best he could from a sitting position. He thought he sounded damned good, at least until the radio cut out and he heard only his own voice roaring ‘R-E-S-P-E-C-T’. His eardrums reverberated, but not in a good way.

The entire past night felt like an intoxicated dream, and it wasn’t only because of the amount of wine they had drunk. It was as though a veil or hazy curtain of emotion, love, and sex had settled over those night-time hours.

He was reluctantly forced to put aside his thoughts of yesterday as he turned into the car park at the residential complex. The backup patrol cars had arrived unusually fast. They must have been in the vicinity. He saw two cars with blue lights flashing and frowned slightly. Typical that they would misconstrue the instructions. He’d asked for one car, not two. As he approached he saw that there was an ambulance behind the police cars. Something wasn’t right.

He recognized Lena, the blonde policewoman from Uddevalla, and went over to her. She was talking on a mobile phone, but as he approached she signed off. He heard ‘Bye’ and she stuffed the phone into a holder she wore on her belt.

‘Hi, Patrik.’

‘Hi, Lena. What’s going on?’

‘One of the winos found Anders Nilssori hanged in his flat.’ She nodded in the direction of the main door. Patrik got an ice-cold feeling in his stomach.

‘You haven’t touched anything?’

‘No, what do you think we are? I just talked to dispatch in Uddevalla and they’re sending over a team to examine the crime scene. We also talked to Mellberg so I assumed you came because he rang you.’

‘No, I was on the way over here anyway to bring Anders in for more questioning.’

‘But I heard he had an alibi?’

‘Yes, that’s what we thought, but it just fell apart so we were going to bring him back in.’

‘Well, this is fucking bad luck then. What the hell do you think it means? I mean, the probability that there would suddenly be two murderers here in Fjällbacka must be almost zero. He must have been killed by the same person who killed Alex Wijkner. Do you have any other suspects besides Anders?’

Patrik pulled himself together. It was true that this changed everything, but he still wasn’t ready to draw the same conclusions as Lena, that Anders had been killed by the same person who murdered Alex. Of course it was almost statistically impossible. There hadn’t been a murder here in decades, and suddenly two separate killers were on the loose. But he wasn’t prepared to rule out the impossible either.

‘Well, let’s go up so I can have a look. Then you can tell me what you’ve found out so far. How did the call come in, for instance?’

Lena led the way, entering the stairwell ahead of him.

‘Well, as I said it was one of Anders’s alky pals who found him, Bengt Larsson. He came over this morning so they could start drinking and get a head start on the day. He usually just walks right in, and that’s what he did today. When he entered the flat he found Anders hanging by a rope tied to the hook for the ceiling lamp in the living room.’

‘Did he call it in right away?’

‘Actually no. He sat on the threshold of the flat and drowned his sorrows in a bottle of Explorer vodka. But then a neighbour happened to come out of his flat and in passing asked Bengt how things were going. That’s when he blurted out what he had seen. Then the neighbour rang us. Bengt Larsson is too drunk to be questioned in more detail, so I just sent him off to your drunk tank.’

Patrik silently wondered why Mellberg hadn’t rung to tell him about all the action, but resigned himself to the fact that the ways of the superintendent were most often utterly inscrutable.

Patrik took the stairs two at a time and passed Lena. When they reached the second floor the door was wide open and he saw people moving about inside the flat. Jenny was standing in the doorway to her flat with Max in her arms. When Patrik went over to them, Max waved his chubby little hands in delight and showed his gap-toothed smile.