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help thinking of the managing director of SEB, Annika Falkengren, who had earned twenty million kronor the year the crisis hit, and intended to increase her regular salary still more. The way her leadership had contributed to driving people into misery while she grabbed what she could without any inhibitions at all.
    A heavily made-up vampire slurping champagne in a castle out in the smart Stockholm suburb of Djursholm.
    Someone might well have wanted to blow her sky-high. Or everything she stood for.
    Numerous times in recent years Malin has felt utterly nauseous at the greed of bank directors. And she isn’t alone in that. The directors ought to be begging in the streets, the way other people have been forced to now.
    So should those onlookers be there? So close to the bank?
    What if this is a terrorist attack? What if there’s another blast?
    A pram on its side.
    What would it take to knock me off balance? Malin thinks as she sees the pigeons pecking at that scrap of meat whose origins she absolutely does not want to think about.
    Some firemen she doesn’t recognise are lying yellow plastic sheets over other pieces of meat, other fragments of people. A foot. A small foot, an eye, a face, what the hell has actually happened here, what the hell is this? Pieces of two faces. No.
    The greyhound barks.
    It shakes its bloody, glass-splintered paws, spraying blood over the broken glass and pavement, then Malin sees the solid figure of Börje Svärd catch hold of the dog’s lead, kneel down and pull it towards him, calming it with measured strokes.
    Nauseous.
    Thirsty.
    When does the Hamlet open? A beer and a tequila would slip down very nicely right now, and those pigeons really shouldn’t be pecking at that, they’re back again.
    A stretcher with a drip attached is being lifted into an ambulance by the hotel entrance, a doctor that Malin recognises at its side. His blue tunic is covered in blood.
    The pigeons.
    She moves towards them again.
    Keep your head cool now, Malin, stay focused, pull yourself together, and she sees Janne, he’s wearing a yellow Gore-Tex jacket over his new suit, and he is calmly and methodically taking care of two wounded students that no one has had time to look at before now. He is bandaging the small cuts on their arms, talking to them, Malin can see his mouth moving, and even though she can’t hear what he’s saying she knows he’s professional to the core, a solid, warm tree of a man who can prevent shock from taking hold. Once again she feels like running away to the Hamlet.
    But that won’t do.
    The pigeons.
    They’re pecking at the flesh, the skin, the hair, the child’s hair. Malin is running now. Her arms outstretched to mimic a bird of prey.
    Unseemly.
    She rushes at them and the pigeons take off into the sky, joining the low-flying swallows.
    She stops beside what the birds were pecking at.
    Sinks to her knees.
    Adjusts the black cloth of her dress.
    Feels her stomach clench, but manages to hold back the urge to vomit.
    A scorched cheek. A child’s beautiful cheek, torn from the head and cheekbone with perfect destructive force.
    Then the eye, still in place, just where it should be, just above the cheek, as though it can still see.
    A small, brown eye, open and staring at Malin, wanting to tell her something, ask her for something.
    She looks away.
    Calls to the firemen with the yellow plastic sheeting.
    ‘Over here. Come and cover this up.’
    Is that me you’re looking at, Malin Fors, or is it my twin sister?
    I don’t know, I can’t bear to look, to see the remains of what used to be me, us, my sister and me.
    We were six years old, Malin.
    Six.
    How short a life is that?
    We want more.
    Maybe you could give us more life, Malin. And Daddy, where’s he? Why isn’t he here, he ought to be here and we want him to be here, because Mummy’s over there in the ambulance, not far from us, isn’t she?
    It’s lonely and dark here, and the bleeding white dog dancing isn’t