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shiny with rain. He thought about Molin. A vague thought had been nagging at him since he’d read the report in the paper at the hospital. Now it came back to him.
    Once they had been chasing an escaped murderer through the woods north of BorÃ¥s. It was late autumn, like now. Lindman and Molin had somehow become separated among the trees, and when Lindman eventually found him he’d approached so quietly that he surprised Molin, who turned to stare at him with terror-stricken eyes.
    â€œI didn’t mean to scare you,” Lindman said.
    Molin just shrugged.
    â€œI thought it was somebody else,” he said.
    That was all. I thought it was somebody else.
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    Lindman remained standing at the window. The drunks had dispersed. He ran his tongue over his top teeth. There was death in that tongue of his, but somewhere there was also Herbert Molin. I thought it was somebody else.
    It dawned on Lindman that he’d known all the time. Molin had been scared stiff. All those years they had worked together his fear had always been there. Molin had usually managed to hide it, but not always.
    Lindman frowned.
    Molin had been murdered in the depths of the northern forests, having always been frightened. The question was: of whom?

Chapter Three
    G iuseppe Larsson was a man who had learned from experience never to take anything for granted. He woke up on October 26 when his backup alarm clock rang. He looked at his frontline clock on the bedside table and noted that it had stopped at 3:04. So you couldn’t even rely on alarm clocks. That’s why he always used two. He got out of bed and opened the blinds with a snap. The television weather forecast the night before had said there would be a light snowfall over the province of Jämtland, but Larsson could see no sign of snow. The sky was dark, but full of stars.
    Larsson had a quick breakfast made for him by his wife. Their nineteen-year-old daughter, who still hadn’t left the nest, was fast asleep. She had a job at the hospital and was due to start on a weeklong night shift that evening. Shortly after seven Larsson forced his feet into a pair of Wellington boots, pulled his hat down over his eyes, stroked his wife’s cheek, and set off for work. He was faced with a drive of a couple of hundred kilometers. This last week he’d made it there and back several times, apart from one occasion when he was so tired, he’d felt obliged to check into a hotel in Sveg.
    Now he had to drive there yet again. On the way he had to keep an eye out for elks while also trying to summarize the murder investigation he was involved in. He left Ostersund behind, headed for Stenstavik, and set his cruise control to 85 kilometers per hour. He couldn’t be sure that he’d be able to stay under the speed limit of 90 kilometers per hour if he didn’t. An average of 85 would get him there in good time for the meeting with the forensic unit arranged for 10 A.M.
    He seemed to be driving through tightly-packed darkness. The
northern winter was at hand. Larsson was born in Ostersund forty-three years ago, and couldn’t understand people who complained about the darkness and the cold. As far as he was concerned, the half of the year usually described as winter was a time when everything settled down and became uneventful. Needless to say, there was always somebody now and then who couldn’t stand the winter any longer and committed suicide or beat some other person to death—but that was the way it had always been. Not even the police could do anything about that.
    However, what had happened not far from Sveg was hardly an everyday occurrence. Larsson found himself having to rehearse all the details one more time.
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    The emergency call reached the Ostersund police station late in the afternoon of October 19. Seven days ago now. Larsson was on the point of leaving for a haircut when somebody thrust a telephone into his hand. The woman at