Sven pauses before going on: ‘You don’t think it could be anyone else? Someone you put away who wants to cause trouble?’

In the car on the way to see Sven, Malin had thought through who might want to get back at her. There were a lot of names, but no one she thought would go as far as coming after the police officer who caught them.

Murderers.

Rapists.

Muggers.

A biker gang? Hardly.

But it would make sense to check if anyone had been released and was putting some sort of warped plan into action.

‘Not that I can think of,’ Malin replies. ‘But we should check if anyone I put away has just got out.’

‘OK, we’ll do that,’ Sven says, and his wife comes into the room, says hello to Malin and asks: ‘Would you like a cup of tea? You look half-frozen.’

‘No, thanks, I’m fine. Tea stops me sleeping.’

And Sven chuckles and his wife gives him a curious look, and Sven says: ‘Just a private joke,’ and Malin laughs, feeling it’s the only thing she can do.

‘I’d like a cup,’ Sven says, and his wife disappears into the kitchen and when she’s gone he asks Malin how she is.

He asks the question slowly, in a voice Malin knows he wants to sound both sympathetic and hopeful, and she replies: ‘I had a bit of a slip-up last night. I’m sorry you had to see me like that this morning.’

‘You know I ought to do something?’

‘Like what?’

Malin leans further forward over the table. Asks again: ‘Like what, Sven? Send me to rehab?’

‘Maybe that’s exactly what you could do with.’

And Malin stands up, hissing at him angrily: ‘I’ve just had a threatening letter containing pictures of my parents taken in secret, and you’re talking about rehab!’

‘I’m not just talking about it, Malin. I mean it. Pull yourself together, or I’ll have to suspend you and get you checked in for some sort of treatment before you can come back to work. I’ve got strong grounds to force you to do that.’

Sven’s voice without any softness now, the boss, the man in charge, and Malin sits down again and says: ‘What do you think I should do with Mum and Dad?’

‘It might do you good, Malin. Get you back on track again.’

‘Should I tell them?’

‘Think about it. Once this case is cleared up.’

‘Can we ask the police in Tenerife to keep an eye on them? And on Goldman?’

‘That’s what we’ll do, Malin.’

‘Do what?’

‘Wait and see, as far as you’re concerned. As for the rest, we’ll contact the local police on the Canary Islands. I presume you’ve got a contact there?’

Malin feels the last remnants of the day’s nausea leave her body. Rehab.

Over my dead body.

Got it, Sven?

Not a chance in hell. I was just a bit down. I’m dealing with it, you’ve got to believe me, Sven.

A hand on Sven’s shoulder, a cup of tea on the table in front of him.

‘Your tea, Earl Grey, extra strong, just the way you like it.’

The rain is tapping stubbornly at the car roof.

Her stale breath fills the car as she pulls out her mobile and brings up Jochen Goldman’s number, but there’s no ringing tone, just a bleep followed by a message in Spanish, presumably saying that the person cannot be reached, or that the number is no longer in use, or something equally bloody irritating. Malin clicks to end the call, puts the mobile phone on the passenger seat, and wonders if it’s her or the damp air making the car smell of mould.

She starts the car.

Won’t tell Dad. Or Mum.

She drives home to her empty flat, hoping that she’ll be able to sleep.

Malin can’t sleep. Instead she looks out of the window, at the rain drawing jerky lines on the night sky.

Her body is warm under the covers, calm, not screaming for alcohol or anything else. She dares to allow the extent of her longing for Janne and Tove into the room.

She pulls the covers over her head.

Janne is under there. And Tove as a five-, six-, seven-, eight-, nine-year-old, every age she has ever been.

I love the idea of our love. That’s what I love. Isn’t it?

A knock at the window.

Twelve metres above the ground.

Impossible.

Another knock, the familiar sound of glass vibrating slightly.

She stays where she is. Waits for the sound to stop. Is there something rustling out there? She pulls off the covers. Leaps the few metres to the window.

Rain and darkness. An invisible body drifting above the rooftops?

Drink. Drink.

The words throbbing in her temples now. And then the knocking at the window, three long, three short, like a cry for help from some distant planet.

Am I the one crying out? Malin wonders when she’s back under the covers a few seconds later, waiting for more knocking that never comes.

I’m a long way away from you now, Malin.

But still close.

You know who was knocking, don’t you? Maybe it was me, unless it was just your alcohol-raddled brain playing tricks on you.

Drink, Malin.

Darkness is snapping at your throat and you’ve shown yourself to be weak.

If only for alcohol, money or love.

I myself gave up on love on that New Year’s Eve. After that, I focused all my attention on money. I knew even then, there in my student room in Lund where I can see myself huddled over my law books, that money was the only way I would ever find love. That’s why I so eagerly ran my fingers over the thin, soft paper of those law textbooks.

Lund, 1986 and onwards

The young man taps his finger against the silken paper of the law textbook.

He’s got plugs in his ears to shut out all the noise of his corridor in the block for students from Ostergotland in Lund. He uses his implacable blue eyes to photograph the pages of the book. Look, see, memorise. Law is the simplest of subjects for him, words to fix in his memory, and then use as required.

He is in Lund for three years. He doesn’t need any longer to accumulate the points and the marks he needs to serve at the district court in Stockholm. Three years of forgetfulness, to suppress the narrowness of a city like Linkoping, of a school like the Cathedral School, of a life like his has been.

Of course they are here as well, people with surnames that are inscribed with quill pens in the House of Nobility, but less notice is taken of them here.

He scales the facade of the Academic Association’s handsome building one night. Down below the girls stand and scream. The boys scream as well. He travels to Copenhagen to buy amphetamines so he can stay awake and study. He smuggles the pills beneath his foreskin, smiling at the customs officials in Malmo.

He keeps to the edges of the carnival that takes place during his second year. He arrives late at pubs and bars, shows his face, fuelling the rumours about who’s the smartest of all the smart students, about who gets the prettiest girls.

He is merely a body in Lund. Yet also whispers and guesses. Who is he, where does he come from, and one evening he beats up a boy from Linkoping in a car park behind one of the student union buildings. He had told anyone who wanted to know who Jerry Petersson really was: a nobody. A nobody from a nothing flat in a nothing area of a nothing city.

‘You know nothing about me,’ he screams as he stands over the prostrate boy, who is no more than a black shape in the light of a solitary street lamp. ‘So you won’t say anything. You let me be whoever I want to be. Otherwise I’ll kill you, you bastard.’ He leans over, picks up a piece of metal from the ground, holds it like a knife against the boy’s throat, screams: ‘Do you hear this, do you hear them? Do you hear the lawnmower, you bastard?’

He learns all about the female gender. Its softness, its warmth, and that they’re all different and can be transformed in different ways, and that they can act as his chrysalis and give birth to him time after time after time.