Linder frowned and stuck the baton into her belt at the small of her back. She checked that she had the Mace canister in her right-hand pocket and that the laces of her trainers were securely tied. She walked back to Berger’s house and slipped into the garden.

She knew that the outside motion detector had not yet been installed, and she moved soundlessly across the lawn, along the hedge at the border of the property. She could not see him. She went around the house and stood still. Then she spotted him as a shadow in the darkness near Beckman’s studio.

He can’t know how stupid it is for him to come back here.

He was squatting down, trying to see through a gap in a curtain in the room next to the living room. Then he moved up on to the veranda and looked through the cracks in the drawn blinds at the big picture window.

Linder suddenly smiled.

She crossed the lawn to the corner of the house while he still had his back to her. She crouched behind some currant bushes by the gable end and waited. She could see him through the branches. From his position Fredriksson would be able to look down the hall and into part of the kitchen. Apparently he had found something interesting to look at, and it was ten minutes before he moved again. This time he came closer to Linder.

As he rounded the corner and passed her, she stood up and spoke in a low voice:

“Hello there, Fredriksson.”

He stopped short and spun towards her.

She saw his eyes glistening in the dark. She could not see his expression, but she could hear that he was holding his breath and she could sense his shock.

“We can do this the easy way or we can do it the hard way,” she said. “We’re going to walk to your car and-”

He turned and made to run away.

Linder raised her baton and directed a devastatingly painful blow to his left kneecap.

He fell with a moan.

She raised the baton a second time, but then caught herself. She thought she could feel Armansky’s eyes on the back of her neck.

She bent down, flipped him over on to his stomach and put her knee in the small of his back. She took hold of his right hand and twisted it round on to his back and handcuffed him. He was frail and he put up no resistance.

Berger turned off the lamp in the living room and limped upstairs. She no longer needed the crutches, but the sole of her foot still hurt when she put any weight on it. Beckman turned off the light in the kitchen and followed his wife upstairs. He had never before seen her so unhappy. Nothing he said could soothe her or alleviate the anxiety she was feeling.

She got undressed, crept into bed and turned her back to him.

“It’s not your fault, Greger,” she said when she heard him get in beside her.

“You’re not well,” he said. “I want you to stay at home for a few days.”

He put an arm around her shoulders. She did not to push him away, but she was completely passive. He bent over, kissed her cautiously on the neck, and held her.

“There’s nothing you can say or do to make the situation any better. I know I need to take a break. I feel as though I’ve climbed on to an express train and discovered that I’m on the wrong track.”

“We could go sailing for a few days. Get away from it all.”

“No. I can’t get away from it all.”

She turned to him. “The worst thing I could do now would be to run away. I have to sort things out first. Then we can go.”

“O.K,” Beckman said. “I’m not being much help.”

She smiled wanly. “No, you’re not. But thanks for being here. I love you insanely – you know that.”

He mumbled something inaudible.

“I simply can’t believe it’s Fredriksson,” Berger said. “I’ve never felt the least bit of hostility from him.”

Linder was just wondering whether she should ring Berger’s doorbell when she saw the lights go off on the ground floor. She looked down at Fredriksson. He had not said a word. He was quite still. She thought for a long time before she made up her mind.

She bent down and grabbed the handcuffs, pulled him to his feet, and leaned him against the wall.

“Can you stand by yourself?” she said.

He did not answer.

“Right, we’ll make this easy. You struggle in any way and you’ll get the same treatment on your right leg. You struggle even more and I’ll break your arms. Do you understand?”

She could hear him breathing heavily. Fear?

She pushed him along in front of her out on to the street all the way to his car. He was limping badly so she held him up. Just as they reached the car they met a man out walking his dog. The man stopped and looked at Fredriksson in his handcuffs.

“This is a police matter,” Linder said in a firm voice. “You go home.” The man turned and walked away in the direction he had come.

She put Fredriksson in the back seat and drove him home to Fisksätra. It was 12.30 and they saw no-one as they walked into his building. Linder fished out his keys and followed him up the stairs to his apartment on the fourth floor.

“You can’t go into my apartment,” said Fredriksson.

It was the first thing he had said since she cuffed him. She opened the apartment door and shoved him inside.

“You have no right. You have to have a search warrant-”

“I’m not a police officer,” she said in a low voice.

He stared at her suspiciously.

She took hold of his shirt and dragged him into the living room, pushing him down on to a sofa. He had a neatly kept two-bedroom apartment. Bedroom to the left of the living room, kitchen across the hall, a small office off the living room.

She looked in the office and heaved a sigh of relief. The smoking gun. Straightaway she saw photographs from Berger’s album spread out on a desk next to a computer. He had pinned up thirty or so pictures on the wall behind the computer. She regarded the exhibition with raised eyebrows. Berger was a fine-looking woman. And her sex life was more active than Linder’s own.

She heard Fredriksson moving and went back to the living room, rapped him once across his lower back and then dragged him into the office and sat him down on the floor.

“You stay there,” she said.

She went into the kitchen and found a paper carrier bag from Konsum. She took down one picture after another and then found the stripped album and Berger’s diaries.

“Where’s the video?” she said.

Fredriksson did not answer. Linder went into the living room and turned on the T.V. There was a tape in the V.C.R., but it took a while before she found the video channel on the remote so she could check it. She popped out the video and looked around to ensure he had not made any copies.

She found Berger’s teenage love letters and the Borgsjö folder. Then she turned her attentions to Fredriksson’s computer. She saw that he had a Microtek scanner hooked up to his P.C., and when she lifted the lid she found a photograph of Berger at a Club Xtreme party, New Year’s Eve 1986 according to a banner on the wall.

She booted up the computer and discovered that it was password-protected.

“What’s your password,” she asked.

Fredriksson sat obstinately silent and refused to answer.

Linder suddenly felt utterly calm. She knew that technically she had committed one crime after another this evening, including unlawful restraint and even aggravated kidnapping. She did not care. On the contrary, she felt almost exhilarated.

After a while she shrugged and dug in her pocket for her Swiss Army knife. She unplugged all the cables from the computer, turned it round and used the screwdriver to open the back. It took her fifteen minutes to take it apart and remove the hard drive.

She had taken everything, but for safety’s sake she did a thorough search of the desk drawers, the stacks of paper and the shelves. Suddenly her gaze fell on an old school yearbook lying on the windowsill. She saw that it was from Djurholm Gymnasium 1978. Did Berger not come from Djurholm’s upper class? She opened the yearbook and began to look through that year’s school leavers.