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It’s a higher threshold to cross. Next time he might be ready to use a knife. Maybe he doesn’t like close physical proximity.”
    “He did carry her up to the church.”
    “But by then he’d already finished with her. By then she was nothing, just a piece of meat. Okay, he lives alone, or he has access to a completely private space, for example a hobby room where nobody else is allowed to go, or a workshop, or maybe a locked outhouse. That’s where he keeps his newspaper cuttings. He probably likes to have them on display, preferably pinned up. He’s isolated, bad at social contacts. It’s not impossible that he’s using something physical to keep people at a distance. Poor hygiene, for example. Ask about that if you have a suspect, ask if he has any friends, because he won’t have. But as I said. It doesn’t have to be a copycat. It could be somebody who just flew into a temporary rage. If we are unfortunate enough to have another murder, we can talk again.”
    Sven-Erik’s thoughts were interrupted as he passed a motorist exercising his dog by holding the lead through the open car window and making the dog run beside the car. He could see that it was an elkhound cross. The dog was galloping along with its tongue lolling out of its mouth.
    “Cruel bastard,” he muttered, looking in the rearview mirror. Presumably he was an elk hunter who wanted the dog in top form for the hunt. He considered turning the car around and having a chat with the owner. People like that shouldn’t be allowed to keep animals. It was probably shut in a run in the yard for the rest of the year.
    But he didn’t turn back. He’d recently been out to talk to a guy who’d broken an injunction banning him from going anywhere near his ex-wife, and was refusing to come in for an interview although he’d been sent for.
    You spend day after day arguing, thought Sven-Erik. From the minute you get up until you go to bed. Where do you draw the line? One fine day you’ll be standing there on your day off yelling at people for dropping their ice cream wrappers in the street.
    But the image of the galloping dog and the thought of its torn pads haunted him all the way into town.
    * * *
    Twenty-five minutes later Sven-Erik walked into Chief Prosecutor Alf Björnfot’s office. The sixty-year-old prosecutor was perched on the edge of his desk with a small child on his lap. The boy was tugging happily at the light cord dangling above the desk.
    “Look!” exclaimed the prosecutor as Sven-Erik came in. “It’s Uncle Sven-Erik. This is Gustav, Anna-Maria’s boy.”
    The last remark was addressed to Sven-Erik with a myopic squint. Gustav had taken his glasses and was hitting the light cord with them so that it swung to and fro.
    At the same moment Inspector Anna-Maria Mella came in. She greeted Sven-Erik by raising her eyebrows and allowing the hint of a wry smile to pass fleetingly across her horse face. Just as if they’d seen each other at morning briefing as usual. In fact it had been several months.
    He was struck by how small she was. It had happened before when they’d been apart for a while, after holidays for example. It was obvious she’d had time off. She had the kind of deep suntan that wouldn’t fade until well into the dark winter. Her freckles were no longer visible because they were the same color as the rest of her face. Her thick plait was almost white. Up by her hairline she had a row of bites that she’d obviously scratched, little brown dots of dried blood.
    They sat down. The chief prosecutor behind his cluttered desk, Anna-Maria and Sven-Erik side by side on his sofa. The chief prosecutor kept it short. The investigation into the murder of Mildred Nilsson had come to a standstill. During the summer it had taken up virtually all the available police resources, but now it had to be given a lower priority.
    “That’s just the way it has to be,” he said apologetically to Sven-Erik, who was gazing out of the window with