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somewhere, a woman from National Crime called and introduced herself as Gunilla Strandberg. He didn’t think she sounded much like a police officer, and she didn’t look like one either when they met for lunch in Kungsträdgården. She was in her mid-fifties and had short black hair with a scattering of gray, beautiful brown eyes, smooth, healthy skin. That was the first thing that struck him, her skin. She looked younger than her years, healthier somehow. Gunilla Strandberg made a calm, stern impression, lightened every now and then with a little smile. The calm that she radiated seemed to be based on circumspection, together with a sort of reflection upon everything that happened. Something she seemed to have actively chosen over impulse and spontaneity. She behaved maturely, like someone who had learned that things could go wrong just because they happened too fast. And all of this was illuminated by a deep intelligence; she was smart and knowledgeable and seldom indulged herself with either exaggeration or understatement. She saw the world in a clear, uncluttered way. He felt smaller than her, but it didn’t matter, that was just how it was — it felt natural.
    She had told him about the working group she had been asked to put together, a sort of pilot project in the fight against organized crime, primarily international, and that they were being given precedence by the prosecutor’s office to bring things to resolution. She said she had read his report and had found it interesting. Lars had tried to conceal the pride welling up inside him. He had accepted the job before she finished explaining to him what it would involve.
    Two weeks later he was transferred from the factory-farm team in the Western District to the more analytical group in Östermalm. He stepped out of his uniform and became a plainclothes officer at the age of thirty-six, got a raise, and was struck by the realization that this was how he had always imagined his career in the force — that someone would recognize and appreciate his talents and skills, which he himself felt stood out in comparison to all the other officers.
    After shadowing Aron and Hector for a while without any results, the turning point had arrived, as Gunilla had predicted: she had said the nurse would pop up and become one of the focal points of the investigation. He had forgotten her prediction, but that morning as he watched from a distance as Aron held the car door open for the nurse outside the hospital, he realized once again just how good Gunilla was.
    He parked outside the local police station on Brahegatan. He made his way through the station, nodding to fellow cops whose names he didn’t know, until he came to the tower block behind the single-story police station.
    Three rooms in a row, an office like any other; standard-issue municipal furniture, box files on pale pine bookshelves, uninspiring pieces of art on the walls and windowsills; long, striped curtains that must have been there since the mid-’90s.
    Eva Castroneves nodded to him as she went past. She was typing on her cell with one hand and had a sandwich in the other. She was always on the move, always going somewhere, moving quicker than everyone else. Lars nodded back, she didn’t see. He went in; Gunilla and Erik were in the room, Gunilla at her desk with the phone to her ear. Erik, her brother, his face blood-pressure red as usual, was transferring the chewing tobacco from the little plastic tub it came in into his own brass one with a Viking motif on the lid. Erik Strandberg lived off nicotine, caffeine, and fast food. He made a rather slovenly impression with his scruffy beard and unkempt gray hair. He was a loudmouth and always managed to give the impression that he was a bully, which Lars guessed was the result of misdirected youthful self-confidence that no one put a stop to early enough. But there was a side to him that Lars appreciated; Erik had welcomed him in a friendly and natural way when