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happened?” Jenny asked. “Come on, Mum, you know we won’t tell anybody.”
    “Has somebody died?” Gustav said. “I bet it’s somebody I know.”
    “No, it’s not somebody you know,” Mella said.
    She turned to Robert.
    “I’ve got to go. You’ll have to …”
    She finished the sentence with a hand gesture covering the breakfast and the mess in the kitchen and the children and Robert’s family and the car trip to Junosuando and back with all the youngsters.
    She could feel a flush spreading over her cheeks.
    Stabbed with a thin, pointed weapon, she said to herself.
    Her heart was beating calmly in her chest now.
    Multiple stab wounds, maybe a hundred. And in Kurravaara of all places!
    “Give my love to Auntie Ingela,” she said to the children.
    She turned to Robert, with an expression she hoped looked like disappointment.
    “And to Grandma,” she said. “I’m really—”
    “Cut it out,” Robert said.
    He pulled her close and kissed her hair.

Sivving could not stand still. He was swaying from side to side, gazing towards the forest.
    “You’ll find him,” he said to Eriksson. “I know you will.”
    They were still outside Sol-Britt Uusitalo’s house. Forensics officers and pathologists were on their way. Eriksson glanced at Martinsson. She was talking on her mobile.
    They were still looking for the boy. The bed in his upstairs room was unmade. They had checked the woodshed and the old barn, and searched the area around the house. Shouted for him. No Marcus.
    Eriksson muttered an inaudible answer as he put the working jacket on Tintin, Sivving was still swaying from side to side behind him.
    Eriksson was used to this. There were always people shuffling about behind him – the parents of children who were lost in the forest, grown-up children whose senile parents had wandered off and lost their way. Everybody who hung around listlessly behind him always wanted a happy ending. He and Tintin were their big hope.
    But Tintin had no feelings of worry or anguish. She was whimpering away, eager to get started. Full of canine enthusiasm and desire to start work.
    Eriksson suddenly felt gloomy. He was not looking forward to finding the boy dead. There was so much that could have happened to him. His imagination provided him with so many alternatives to the happy ending.
    Somebody is carrying the boy out to a car. He’s kicking and wriggling in his captor’s arms. He has a bleeding wound in his head, and a rag stuffed into his mouth. Another scenario: a madman stabs a woman to death in her bed. The boy wakes up and is also stabbed, but manages to escape into the darkness. Staggers along for a short while, then dies a solitary death in the forest.
    The plan had been to go for a stroll through the forest with Martinsson and the dogs today. It would be one of the last days when walking in the forest would be possible. The snow would soon be here.
    At least the boy hadn’t been lying in his bed, stabbed to death. There had been a jumper lying on the floor. Black, with a pattern that could just be made out despite all the many washings. Presumably he had been wearing it the day before.
    Eriksson let Tintin sniff at the jumper, then gave her the command: seek! They began by circling the house. The lead was stretched tightly. At the back of the house she branched out, sniffing at the parched autumn grass. She continued through the rowan trees with their masses of blood-red berries and into the coniferous trees, down into the ditch, up again, past an old bathtub sunk into the moss. They passed a pile of sawn planks covered by a green tarpaulin.
    Then she raised her nose. The scent in the air was very fresh. They must be close now. She led him through the pine trees, along a narrow path. Now they were out of sight of the house.
    And there, not far ahead, was a children’s playhouse.
    If you could call it that. The decrepit cabin was made of plywood sheets, painted with Falun red paint, and had a roof of tarred