The painting of the man and woman with the suncream is hanging in front of him.

The rooms of the castle. One after the other.

The telephones. She’s only a phone call away. He sits beneath his paintings and chants the number like a mantra.

It never occurs to him that she might be angry about what he has done, that she might think he has torn her family’s history from their hands.

But he never dials her number. Instead he throws himself into the practical business that comes with a property like this, sorting out the tenant farmers, and labourers of all different trades, visiting the whores he finds on the Internet, even in Linkoping, often middle-aged women with an unnaturally high sex-drive who may as well make a bit of money from satisfying their lust. He considers calling the young solicitor he bedded when the contracts were signed, but thinks that things might get a bit too close to home if he did that.

Some evenings and mornings he heads out into the estate. Drives through the black landscape, past houses and trees and fields, the field that seems to encompass the three beings that he is: past, present, and whatever is to come tomorrow.

He imagines he can see green light streaming from the moat and has green lanterns installed along it, as a response to the optical phenomenon down in the water.

He stands on the other side of the door, resting inside himself, waiting for a call, for a car he wants to come and pull up in front of the castle, but which never arrives. He stands still, takes detours around the love he can never bring himself to open up to for a second time. That is the fear he can never conquer.

Instead he receives a letter through the post. Handwritten.

He reads the letter at the kitchen table, early one morning that autumn, when the skies have opened and seem to be raining corrosive acid onto the world of men.

He folds the letter, thinking that he needs to deal with this, cauterise it once and for all.

60

Saturday, 1, Sunday, 2 November

Push the bar up.

You’re alone in the gym, Malin, if you can’t manage it the bar will crush your throat and that’ll be an end to all your problems.

To all your breathing. To all love.

Seventy kilos on the bar, more than her own weight, and she pushes it up another ten times before letting it slip back into the supporting frame.

Janne. Now he’s telling me what I can and can’t do.

To hell with that.

But maybe he’s right.

Tove. I want to say I’m sorry. But you’re right to leave me alone for a while, aren’t you?

How could I?

Her body wet with sweat. As if she’s been running through the rain she can see through the little windows along the ceiling.

They’ve put up new wallpaper in the room. In place of the old vomit-green, there is now an even worse pink wallpaper with little purple flowers.

This is a gym, Malin thinks. Not a fucking girl’s bedroom.

She lies down on the bench again.

Ten more reps and she feels her muscles working, the effort suppressing every thought of drink. Rehab. Bollocks. I don’t need that.

Every time she lifts the bar towards the blinding-white ceiling, she tries to get closer to the core of the investigation.

Lactic acid is burning through her body and she gets up, boxing the air, shaking life into mute, oxygen-starved tissue, and says as she punches: ‘I. Am. Missing. Something. But. What?’

In the sauna, after first a long cold shower, then a hot one, she reads Daniel Hogfeldt’s latest article about the murders, the pages of the Correspondent hot on her fingers.

He goes through the connections between the murders and says that sources within the police are convinced they are linked, but that they don’t know for sure yet.

In a separate article he gives a well-informed account of Fredrik Fagelsjo’s failed financial investments, and how the family came to lose Skogsa. He concludes: ‘Suspicion may now be focused on the Fagelsjo family, who some people claim would do anything to get the estate back.’

He doesn’t mention the family’s new money, the inheritance they’ve received. But there are pictures of the houses they currently live in. Probably new photographs. The vultures never leave the bereaved in peace.

Then a picture of Linnea Sjostedt by her cottage tucked away near Skogsa. Daniel reports her as saying: ‘Of course they might have wanted revenge on Fredrik for losing the estate. It means everything to them.’

Ninety degrees in here.

Ten minutes and her body is shrieking, the sweat streaming from every pore, but Malin is enjoying the pain.

Nor has Daniel found out about Axel Fagelsjo’s old conviction for actual bodily harm. Nor that Jerry Petersson was driving the car on that fateful New Year’s Eve. That’s good, maybe there are fewer leaks in the police station now. And Daniel is a decent person, really. He’s never pressed her for information when she’s been drunk, never tried to turn her into one of the leaks.

Malin stands naked in the changing room.

One message on her phone.

Daniel Hogfeldt’s number, by coincidence, and she assumes that he must want a session that evening. She calls the messaging service to hear what he had to say.

‘Daniel here. I was just going to say that I’ve had an anonymous tip-off about your investigation. Call me?’

Daniel.

He doesn’t usually give us anything. Keeps any tips he receives for himself. And these days people keen for money and media attention often call the papers with tip-offs and leads instead of calling us.

How did that happen?

‘Daniel.’

‘It’s me. I got your message.’

‘Yes, I just wanted to say that I got a tip-off about Fagelsjo over the phone. That it had to be the father and daughter who killed Fredrik. As revenge. That they’re responsible.’

‘I can’t deny that we’ve considered that.’

‘Of course, Malin. But this informant was particularly insistent. He sounded relieved when I said I was already thinking of writing about the connection.’

‘A nutter?’

‘No, but there was something about him. Something that didn’t fit.’

‘What was his name? Did you get his number?’

‘No, no number came up. No name. And that’s pretty unusual as well.’

He’s using this as an excuse to call me, Malin thinks.

He’s got nothing. They get loads of tip-offs.

Anonymous.

About all sorts of things.

‘I know what you’re thinking, Malin. But this one was different. The fact that he was so insistent scared me.’

‘Did he have anything new to say?’

‘No.’

‘OK,’ Malin says. ‘You can come around to mine at nine o’clock tonight, then you can have what you want.’

Daniel is silent.

Malin sees herself in the changing-room mirror, careful not to look at her tired face, looks instead at her toned body.

‘You really are something, Fors, aren’t you? I was thinking I could actually help you with your work for once.’

‘What, with that?’

‘With the fact that it was a man and not a woman who called, for instance.’

‘Are you coming?’

The line breaks and goes silent.

He’s coming.

Tell me you’re coming. Then everything will be all right, if only for half an hour or so. That’s enough.

Malin is lying on her bed in her dressing gown, waiting for Daniel to come, feeling the urge to have him inside her.

Nine o’clock comes.

Half past.

Ten o’clock. And she feels like calling him, but knows that such humiliation would be pointless, that he actually didn’t want her and really was only trying to help.

In his own awkward way, with a meaningless tip-off.

Someone who wants things to be a particular way. Who wants to direct them to look in one direction when they ought to be looking elsewhere. The thought pops up again.