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ownership.
    But he hadn’t managed to pursue the thought through to its conclusion, hadn’t summoned up the energy to ask her.
    And then she left. Took their nine-year-old son and moved in with another bastard social worker in Malmö.
    She dared. But he knows she was scared, maybe still is.
    But there’s no need.
    I’d never be like my compatriots, the brother and father we caught a month or so ago. They make me sick.
    Divorce.
    A better word for loneliness and confusion. He’s tried to take refuge in work, in his new book, looking at issues of integration from an entirely new perspective, but it’s slow-going. Instead he has tried to come up with activities to keep their son amused when he visits.
    An every-third-weekend dad. She wanted sole custody and he gave in. It wouldn’t have suited his rota at work to be a single parent every other week. And it was geographically impossible.
    Bajran is with her and the other man this weekend.
    In September they spent his birthday in Stockholm, and his son went with him to Götrich where he got some new suits, and he even let Bajran choose a couple of ties.
    The suits are made of fine, soft wool. Cashmere. An extravagance that an upstart police chief like him can indulge himself with. That and a Mercedes.
    He pulls the covers tighter around him, hearing the rain clatter on the windowsill and thinking how much he wants to move to a flat in the city, closer to everything. Lambohov is too reminiscent of Nacksta and Sundsvall.
    But of course things could be worse. And Karim sees Börje Svärd’s face before him, the detective’s bold twisted moustache. He’s on sick leave at the moment: Anna, his wife, has MS and needs round-the-clock care, help with her breathing, the illness has hit the nerves controlling the muscles around her lungs.
    ‘She might have six months,’ Börje said when he applied for leave so he could be her carer.
    ‘Take all the time you need to look after your wife,’ Karim replied. ‘There’ll always be a job for you here.’
    And Malin Fors. Something’s going to crack there, Karim thinks. But can I do anything about it? She drinks too much, but, God knows, we need her in the department.
    Sven Sjöman, superintendent and head of the investigative unit of Linköping Police’s Violent Crime Division, likes to think that he’s coaxing the innermost secrets out of wood: its beauty, and the functional, attractive shape that lives within it.
    It’s an absurdly romantic notion, of course, but if having woodwork as a hobby isn’t romantic, it can still be full of love.
    The lathe rumbles. The sawdust sprays up onto his blue T-shirt with the logo of the Berg Lumberyard.
    Sven’s workshop, in a soundproof room in the basement of his house in Valla, smells of fresh wood-shavings, of varnish and polish, of sweat.
    The hour he spends down here each morning is the best but also the loneliest hour of the day.
    He’s never liked loneliness.
    Prefers the company of other people.
    His wife’s, for instance. Even if they don’t say more than they need to each other after all these years.
    His colleagues.
    Karim.
    And Malin. How are you doing, Malin? She hasn’t had a good year, Sven thinks as he takes the rough bowl off the lathe. Then he switches off the machine and enjoys the silence that quickly fills the room.
    It probably wasn’t a good idea for you to move back in with Janne again. Not a good idea at all, but I could never tell you that. You have to take care of your own life, Fors. I can sometimes show you the way at work, but that’s happening less and less; there’s no longer much need for it.
    But in life.
    You reek of drink more and more. You look grey, exhausted, sad.
    Oh well.
    As long as it doesn’t get any worse. Janne, your husband, or rather the ex-husband that you’re back together with, called me, wanted me to do something. He told me about your drinking, and it’s certainly pretty obvious. At least sometimes. And I made him a promise.