Read Missing in Malmö: The third Inspector Anita Sundström mystery (Inspector Anita Sundström mysteries) for Free Online

their sex lives had been. Even when things had started to go wrong, the sex had been good right up to the end. Anita left him to go out for a run round Pildammsparken. It was her way of letting off steam or giving herself time to think.
    She ran through the trees that lined the path and into the park. At the end was the area called “The Plate”, a large, circular, grassy space surrounded by tall beeches, clipped to form an imposing boundary. It was one of the city’s most popular destinations. At midsummer it was full of picnickers listening to live entertainment. Anita’s normal routine was to run three circuits of “The Plate”, but this time she veered off and headed to the lake on the other side of the park. She skipped up the bank and stopped at the top. She surveyed the calm water, which was glinting in the weak sun. A middle-aged woman was feeding the geese, who were noisily gobbling up the bread thrown in their direction. Anita suddenly felt tired and looked for an empty bench. She found one with a view of the old water tower, its conical roof looking like a wizard’s hat, on the other side of the lake.
    She hadn’t slept much. Björn’s reappearance in her life had been unsettling. Her ex-husband had been the only man she had fallen in love with – until Ewan. But she knew that with Ewan her relationship was totally abnormal. With Björn she had always thought that it was a meeting of kindred spirits, though, if she was being honest, she had also been rather in awe of him. He was eight years older than her and, after her father had died in the
Estonia
ferry tragedy, Björn had helped to fill the void. Of course, Björn was super-intelligent and was already starting to make an impact in academic circles. Maybe the real attraction – other than the lashings of lust which were imaginatively served up – was that he was so different from the people she knew and mixed with. He was exciting, and his cerebral world of ideas had been a good counterpoint to her own practical one of facts. Björn had enjoyed her being a policewoman. It shocked his friends that the great liberal was married to a figure representing the conservative establishment. Had their relationship simply been his way of being provocative? Certainly, she was often made to feel uncomfortable in the presence of the academic set. Despite all this, Björn had loved her and cared for her. He was thrilled with the arrival of Lasse, and for a few years she had never been happier.
    Then it slowly began to dawn on her that if she wanted Björn, she was going to have to share him. He had always had a roving eye. She had had her suspicions, but the instincts she was developing in her career as a cop helped her to consolidate them. Then the lies became more frequent. His weakness for younger versions of herself became too obvious to ignore. Eventually, she asked him to leave. It wasn’t a decision taken lightly, as Lasse had worshipped Björn. Till yesterday. Her son had disappeared first thing that morning, and she could understand why. He couldn’t bear to see his father in such an emotional state. He had come into the kitchen just as Björn had broken down in tears. The look of horrified distain on Lasse’s face would remain with Anita the rest of her life. The fall of a hero. In many ways, her reaction had been the same. She had never seen Björn so out of control. So powerless. And all because of some stupid girl. But this was different. The great stud, who had simply moved on to the next conquest when he got bored, had made the mistake of falling in love. It had turned him into a pitiful old man. That was what Anita was finding so hard to come to terms with as she levered herself up from the bench and started to jog back in the direction of her apartment.
    Anita took a thermos of strong coffee into the living room. She had showered and changed after her run and was now in a pair of black jeans and a white top. She put the thermos on the table next