Silence.

“If any of you need a little personal time, or want to take a break to think for a while, do it, please. You all know our deadlines.”

Silence. She noticed that some people were nodding their approval.

“Go to work, boys and girls,” she said in English in a low voice.

Holmberg threw up his hands in a helpless gesture. Bublanski and Modig looked dubious. Andersson’s expression was neutral. They were scrutinizing the results of the preliminary investigation that Holmberg had completed that morning.

“Nothing?” Modig said. She sounded surprised.

“Nothing,” Holmberg said, shaking his head. “The pathologist’s final report arrived this morning. Nothing to indicate anything but suicide by hanging.”

They looked once more at the photographs taken in the living room of the summer cabin in Smådalarö. Everything pointed to the conclusion that Gunnar Björck, assistant chief of the Immigration Division of the Security Police, had climbed on to a stool, tied a rope to the lamp hook, placed it around his neck, and then with great resolve kicked the stool across the room. The pathologist was unable to supply the exact time of death, but he had established that it occurred on the afternoon of April 12. The body had been discovered on April 19 by none other than Inspector Andersson. This happened because Bublanski had repeatedly tried to get hold of Björck. Annoyed, he finally sent Andersson to bring him in.

Sometime during that week, the lamp hook in the ceiling came away and Björck’s body fell to the floor. Andersson had seen the body through a window and called in the alarm. Bublanski and the others who arrived at the summer house had treated it as a crime scene from the word go, taking it for granted that Björck had been garrotted by someone. Later that day the forensic team found the lamp hook. Holmberg had been tasked to work out how Björck had died.

“There’s nothing whatsoever to suggest a crime, or that Björck was not alone at the time,” Holmberg said.

“The lamp?”

“The ceiling lamp has fingerprints from the owner of the cabin – who put it up two years ago – and Björck himself. Which says that he took the lamp down.”

“Where did the rope come from?”

“From the flagpole in the garden. Someone cut off about two metres of rope. There was a Mora sheath knife on the windowsill outside the back door. According to the owner of the house, it’s his knife. He normally keeps in a tool drawer underneath the draining board. Björck’s prints were on the handle and the blade, as well as the tool drawer.”

“Hmm,” Modig said.

“What sort of knots?” Andersson said.

“Granny knots. Even the noose was just a loop. It’s probably the only thing that’s a bit odd. Björck was a sailor, he would have known how to tie proper knots. But who knows how much attention a person contemplating suicide would pay to the knots on his own noose?”

“What about drugs?”

“According to the toxicology report, Björck had traces of a strong painkiller in his blood. That medication had been prescribed for him. He also had traces of alcohol, but the percentage was negligible. In other words, he was more or less sober.”

“The pathologist wrote that there were graze wounds.”

“A graze over three centimetres long on the outside of his left knee. A scratch, really. I’ve thought about it, but it could have come about in a dozen different ways… for instance, if he walked into the corner of a table or a bench, whatever.”

Modig held up a photograph of Björck’s distorted face. The noose had cut so deeply into his flesh that the rope itself was hidden in the skin of his neck. The face was grotesquely swollen.

“He hung there for something like twenty-four hours before the hook gave way. All the blood was either in his head – the noose having prevented it from running into his body – or in the lower extremities. When the hook came out and his body fell, his chest hit the coffee table, causing deep bruising there. But this injury happened long after the time of death.”

“Hell of a way to die,” said Andersson.

“I don’t know. The noose was so thin that it pinched deep and stopped the blood flow. He was probably unconscious within a few seconds and dead in one or two minutes.”

Bublanski closed the preliminary report with distaste. He did not like this. He absolutely did not like the fact that Zalachenko and Björck had, so far as they could tell, both died on the same day. But no amount of speculating could change the fact that the crime scene investigation offered no grain of support to the theory that a third party had helped Björck on his way.

“He was under a lot of pressure,” Bublanski said. “He knew that the whole Zalachenko affair was in danger of being exposed and that he risked a prison sentence for sex-trade crimes, plus being hung out to dry in the media. I wonder which scared him more. He was sick, had been suffering chronic pain for a long time… I don’t know. I wish he had left a letter.”

“Many suicides don’t.”

“I know. O.K. We’ll put Björck to one side for now. We have no choice.”

Berger could not bring herself to sit at Morander’s desk right away, or to move his belongings aside. She arranged for Magnusson to talk to Morander’s family so that the widow could come herself when it was convenient, or send someone to sort out his things.

Instead she had an area cleared off the central desk in the heart of the newsroom, and there she set up her laptop and took command. It was chaotic. But three hours after she had taken the helm of S.M.P. in such appalling circumstances, the front page went to press. Magnusson had put together a four-column article about Morander’s life and career. The page was designed around a black-bordered portrait, almost all of it above the fold, with his unfinished editorial to the left and a frieze of photographs along the bottom edge. The layout was not perfect, but it had a strong moral and emotional impact.

Just before 6.00, as Berger was going through the headlines on page two and discussing the texts with the head of revisions, Borgsjö approached and touched her shoulder. She looked up.

“Could I have a word?”

They went together to the coffee machine in the canteen.

“I just wanted to say that I’m really very pleased with the way you took control today. I think you surprised us all.”

“I didn’t have much choice. But I may stumble a bit before I really get going.”

“We understand that.”

“We?”

“I mean the staff and the board. The board especially. But after what happened today I’m more than ever persuaded that you were the ideal choice. You came here in the nick of time, and you took charge in a very difficult situation.”

Berger almost blushed. But she had not done that since she was fourteen.

“Could I give you a piece of advice?”

“Of course.”

“I heard that you had a disagreement about a headline with Anders Holm.”

“We didn’t agree on the angle in the article about the government’s tax proposal. He inserted an opinion into the headline in the news section, which is supposed to be neutral. Opinions should be reserved for the editorial page. And while I’m on this topic… I’ll be writing editorials from time to time, but as I told you I’m not active in any political party, so we have to solve the problem of who’s going to be in charge of the editorial section.”

“Magnusson can take over for the time being,” said Borgsjö.

Erika shrugged. “It makes no difference to me who you appoint. But it should be somebody who clearly stands for the newspaper’s views. That’s where they should be aired… not in the news section.”

“Quite right. What I wanted to say was that you’ll probably have to give Holm some concessions. He’s worked at S.M.P. a long time and he’s been news chief for fifteen years. He knows what he’s doing. He can be surly sometimes, but he’s irreplaceable.”