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of income for the firm. His situation was probably the same as many others’. When you drank, your private life was the first thing to fall apart.
    She still felt the prickle of humiliation when she thought about last year’s office Christmas party. Måns had danced and flirted with all the other female lawyers during the evening. Toward the end of the party he had come over to her. Crumpled, drunk and full of self-pity, he had put his hand round the back of her neck and made a rambling speech that had ended in a pathetic attempt to get her to go home with him, or maybe just into his office, who knows. After that she was at least clear about what she was in his eyes. The last resort. The one you have a go at when you’ve tried everybody else and you’re half a millimeter from unconsciousness. Since then relations between Rebecka and Måns had been frosty. He never laughed or chatted in a natural way with her as he did with the others. She communicated with him mostly via e-mail and notes placed on his desk when he wasn’t in. This year she hadn’t gone to the Christmas party.
    “We’ll call it holiday, then,” she said without a hint of a smile. “And I’ll take the laptop and do some work from up there.”
    “Fine, it’s all the same to me,” said Måns, his voice heavy with regret. “After all, it’s your colleagues who’ll have a heavier workload. I’ll give Wickman’s to somebody else.”
    Rebecka forced herself not to clench her fists. Bastard. He was punishing her. Wickman’s was her client. She had brought in the business, she had developed an excellent relationship with them, and as soon as the tax arrears assessment was out of the way, they were going to start preparing the legal transfer of the small company to the younger members of the family. Besides which, they liked her.
    “Do whatever you think is appropriate,” she answered with an almost imperceptible shrug, and allowed her eyes to wander along the fringes of the Persian rug. “You can reach me via my e-mail address if anything comes up.”
    Måns Wenngren felt the urge to go up to her, grab hold of her hair, yank her head backwards and force her to look him in the eye. Or just give her a slap.
    She turned to leave the room.
    “So how are you getting up there?” he asked before she got through the door. “Do they have flights all the way up to Kiruna, or will you have to catch the reindeer caravan in Umeå?”
    “There are flights,” she replied neutrally.
    Just as if she had taken his question completely seriously.

 
    I nspector Anna-Maria Mella leaned back in her office chair and looked listlessly at the documents spread out in front of her. Stale and old. Investigations that had ground to a halt. Unsolved cases: robberies from shops, stolen cars—all several years old. She picked up the folder nearest to her. Domestic violence, a nasty one, but the woman had later withdrawn the charge and insisted that she’d fallen down the stairs.
    That was a bloody awful case, thought Anna-Maria, remembering the unpleasant photographs taken at the hospital.
    She picked up another file. Stolen tires from a firm down on the industrial estate. A witness had seen someone cutting the wire fence and loading the tires onto his Toyota Hilux, but during a later interview the witness was suddenly unable to remember a single thing. It was as clear as daylight that he’d been threatened.
    Anna-Maria sighed. There was no money for witness protection or anything else when it came to a few poxy tires being nicked. She typed “Toyota Hilux” into the computer and made a note of the owner’s name. Petty criminals, little tyrants who take whatever they want. It was more than likely that she would come across him in some other context in the future. She ran a multiple query on the owner. Convictions for assault and illegal possession of a firearm. He was also listed as a suspect several times.
    Pull yourself together, she told herself. Don’t just sit