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a lot of questions. We have to come up with the solution quickly; it’s a matter of showing how efficient the Linköping Police are.’
    Malin thinks that it sounds like Karim’s words are being spoken by an automaton. No one talks like that in real life, and the competent individual in front of her is playing the role of a competent individual, when he would really prefer to relax and show . . . well, what? . . . his vulnerable side?
    Then Karim turns to Sven. ‘Have you allocated resources?’
    ‘Fors and Martinsson are in overall charge. They have all necessary resources at their disposal. Jakobsson and Svärd will assist as much as they can. Andersson is off sick and Degerstad is still on her course in Stockholm. That’s the situation right now.’
    Karim takes a deep breath, holding the air in his lungs for a long time before breathing out.
    ‘Okay, this is what we’re going to do. Sven, as usual you will have overall responsibility as primary investigator, and you other four can form a team. Everything else will have to wait. This has the very highest priority.’
    ‘But—’
    ‘This is how it has to be, Martinsson. I don’t doubt that you and Fors are very capable, but right now we need to focus our resources.’
    Sven’s stomach seems to have grown even larger, the furrows on his brow even deeper.
    ‘Do you want me to contact the National Criminal Investigation Institute? We don’t yet know formally that he was even murdered.’
    Karim is heading towards the door.
    ‘No National Crime. We’re going to sort this out ourselves. You’re to report to me every three hours, or whenever there are any new developments.’
    The noise of the door slamming behind him echoes round the room.
    ‘You heard what he said. You can divide the work up between you and report back to me.’
    The children playing on the other side of the nursery windows are gone. A yellow, Calder-inspired mobile is swaying gently beneath the checked curtains.
    Blue, fat-mottled skin.
    Beaten and alone in the ice-cold wind.
    Who were you? Malin wonders.
    Come back and tell me who you were.

6
     
    Now they have erected a tent beneath me, its green colour turned grey by the evening. I know they are warm in there, but none of that warmth reaches me.
    Can I even feel warmth any more? Could I ever? I lived in the land beyond, free in one way from your world, but what a freedom it turned out to be.
    But I no longer have any need of your warmth, not as you understand it; there is warmth around me. I am not alone, or rather I am exactly that, alone, I am loneliness, I am the core of loneliness. Perhaps I was the core of loneliness when I was alive? The most basic substance of loneliness, the mystery whose solution we are approaching, the chemical reaction, the seemingly simple yet all-encompassing process in our brains that gives rise to perceptions which in turn give us consciousness, the precondition for the reality we believe to be our own. The lamps burn late in researchers’ laboratories. Once we have cracked that code, we will have cracked them all. Then we can rest. Laugh or scream. Stop. But until then?
    Wandering, working, searching for the answers to all manner of questions.
    It’s hardly surprising, the way you carry on.
    The snow melts, trickling away, but you won’t find anything, so get rid of the tent, bring in a crane and get me down. I’m a strange fruit, I’m not supposed to hang here; it spoils the balance, and it’s starting to make the branch creak. Even the tree is protesting, can’t you hear it?
    Well, exactly, you’re all deaf. Just think, how quickly we actually forget. Think what the meanderings of our thoughts can do to us, where they can lead us.
    ‘Mum, have you seen my eye-shadow?’
    Tove’s voice from the bathroom sounds desperate, annoyed and resigned all at the same time, yet simultaneously full of a resolved, focused and almost frightening determination.
    Eye-shadow? That hasn’t happened for a