She pouted as seductively as she could and snuggled up to him. She took his arms and put them round her waist and then stood on tiptoe so she could reach his lips with hers. She tentatively stuck in the tip of her tongue, and it didn’t take many seconds before she felt a response from him. He pushed her away after a moment and looked steadily into her eyes.

‘You’re forgiven for this time, but don’t ever do it again, do you hear me? Now I think we should heat up the rest of the lunch in the microwave and take care of this rumbling stomach of mine.’

Erica nodded, and arm in arm they went back to the dining room where lunch still lay mostly uneaten on the plates.

When Patrik had to get back to the station and was on his way out the door, Erica remembered what else she had wanted to tell him.

‘You know, I told you that I had a vague memory that there was talk about something in connection with Alex just before her family moved away, and that it had something to do with school. I tried to check up on it, but didn’t find out very much. But I was reminded that there was another connection between Alex and Nils, besides the fact that Karl-Erik worked at the cannery. Nils was a substitute teacher at the middle school for one semester. I never had him as a teacher, but I know that he taught Alex’s class from time to time. I don’t know if this has any significance, but I thought I’d tell you about it anyway.’

‘So-o-o, Alex had Nils as a teacher.’ Patrik stopped to think on the front porch.

‘As you say, maybe it’s of no importance, but right now all connections between Nils Lorentz and Alex are of interest. We don’t have too much else to go on.’ He gave her a serious look. ‘There was one thing Dan said that really stayed with me. He said that towards the end Alex had talked a lot about having to settle up with her past. That it was important to dare take care of things that were difficult, so she could move on. I wonder whether that could have any connection with what you’re saying, Erica.’

He fell silent for a moment but then jerked himself back to the present and said, ‘I can’t rule out Dan as a suspect, I hope you understand that.’

‘Yes, I understand, Patrik. But go easy on him if you can. Are you coming over tonight?’

‘Yes, I just have to go home and get a change of clothes and things. But I’ll be here around seven.’

They kissed good-bye. Patrik went back to his car. Erica stood there on the steps watching him until the car vanished from sight.

Patrik didn’t drive straight back to work. Without actually knowing why, he’d brought along the keys to Anders’s flat as he was leaving the station. He decided to stop there and have a look round in peace and quiet. What he needed now was something, anything, that could give him an opening in the case. It felt as though he was running into blind alleys wherever he turned, and as though they would never find the killer, or killers, whoever it was. Alex’s secret lover, just as Erica had said, had been at the top of the list of suspects, but now Patrik was no longer so sure. He wasn’t prepared to write off Dan completely, but he had to admit that the trail no longer felt as hot.

The mood in Anders’s flat was eerie. In his mind’s eye Patrik still could see the image of Anders slowly swaying back and forth from the rope, even though he had already been cut down by the time Patrik saw him. He didn’t know what he was searching for, but he put on a pair of gloves so as not to disturb any evidence. He stood right underneath the hook in the ceiling where the noose had been fastened and tried to get an impression of how it was done. How had Anders been hoisted up there? It was simply impossible to figure out. The ceiling was high and the noose had been tied directly below the hook. It must have taken considerable strength to raise Anders’s body that high. Of course he had been quite thin, but in view of his height he still must have weighed a good deal. Patrik made a mental note to check Anders’s weight when the autopsy report arrived. The only explanation he could find was that several people had lifted him up there together. But how come there weren’t any marks on Anders’s body? Even if he had been sedated somehow, lifting the body up there should have left some marks. It just didn’t add up.

He went further into the flat and looked closely at everything. Since there wasn’t much furniture besides the mattress in the living room and a table with two chairs in the kitchen, there wasn’t a lot to examine. Patrik noticed that the only things providing storage space were the kitchen cabinets, and he went through them one by one. They had already been gone through once before, but he still wanted to make sure that nothing had been missed.

In the fourth drawer he checked, he found a notepad, which he took out and placed on the kitchen table for closer inspection. He held up the pad at an angle to the window to see whether there were any impressions on it. He saw quite rightly that what had been written on the top page had made an impression on the paper underneath, and he used an old proven trick to try to make out some of the text. Using a pencil he found in the same drawer, he lightly rubbed the side of the pencil lead across the page. He could only make out parts of the text, but it was enough to tell him what the message was about. Patrik gave a low whistle. That was interesting, very interesting. It set all his gears in motion. He carefully put the pad into one of the plastic bags he’d brought along from the car.

He continued his search of the drawers. Most of the contents were sheer junk, but in the last one he went through he did find something interesting. He looked at the piece of leather he was holding between his fingers. It was exactly like the one he had seen at Alex’s house when he and Erica were there. It had lain on her nightstand and he had read precisely the same burned-in inscription that he now read here: ‘T.T.M. 1976’.

When he turned it over he saw that just like the one at Alex’s house, there were some blurry spots of blood on the reverse. The fact that there was a link between Alex and Anders that they didn’t yet understand was nothing new. But what did puzzle him was the gnawing feeling he got when he looked at the piece of leather.

Something in his subconscious was demanding attention. Something was trying to tell him that the little patch was significant in some way. Patrik was obviously missing something here; he just couldn’t see it. But he did know that the patch told him that the connection between Alex and Anders went far back in time. At least until 1976. The year before Alex and her family moved away from Fjällbacka and vanished without a trace for twelve months. A year before Nils Lorentz disappeared for good. Nils, who according to Erica had been a teacher at the school that both Alex and Anders had attended.

Patrik realized that he needed to talk to Alex’s parents. If the suspicions that were beginning to take shape in his mind were correct, they were the ones in possession of the final answers, the answers that could put together the pieces he already thought he could see.

He picked up the notepad and the leather patch in their plastic bags and glanced once more at the living room before he left. Again he saw the image of Anders’s pale, skinny, swaying body in his mind’s eye. He vowed to get to the bottom of this, to find out why Anders had ended his sad life in a noose. If the glimpses he had seen so far were right, it was a tragedy beyond all comprehension. He sincerely hoped that he was wrong.

Patrik found Gösta’s name in the phone book and dialled the number to his extension at the station. He would probably be interrupting him in a game of solitaire.

‘Hi, it’s Patrik.’

‘Hi, Patrik.’ Gösta’s voice sounded as weary as always on the other end. Boredom and despondency had given him both an outer and an inner weariness.