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tiny embroidered roses between the cups; it was very low cut, leaving the nipples partly exposed.
    “So you’ve never seen Alexandra with a bra like that?”
    “Never!”
    The response was unequivocal, and Marina Hallwiin unconsciously stood up a little straighter.
    “Do you know which bra she was wearing when she disappeared?”
    “It must have been a black one. I bought her two of those, and there’s only one here.”
    When Irene had shown the parents a photograph of the lace bra the previous day, neither of them had reacted. The shock of being told their daughter was dead was too great. Both of them had simply shaken their heads and said they didn’t recognize it, but now Marina had had time to digest the information, and she had reached the same conclusion as Irene: when Alexandra was found, she was wearing a bra that didn’t belong to her. The killer must have forced the girl to put on the sexy scrap of lace, or else he had done it himself after the murder. Or she could have put it on of her own free will. That seemed unlikely, but it couldn’t be ruled out at this stage of the investigation.
    According to her details, Marina Hallwiin was forty-three, but right now she looked significantly older. Her husband was fifty-six.
    “Do you have any other children?” Irene asked.
    “Janne has two, but they’re grown up. Thirty-one and twenty-nine.”
    “Do they live here in Göteborg?”
    “No, they stayed with their mother in Gävle, and now both boys live in Stockholm. Janne moved here . . . when we got together.”
    The tears spilled over once more.
    “Perhaps we should go downstairs?” Irene suggested, turning toward the door.
    “Perhaps . . .” Marina said. She slipped into the bathroom opposite Alexandra’s room. Irene heard her blowing her nose, followed by the sound of running water.
    As always in cases involving young homicide victims, Irene felt powerless. There were no words to lessen the grief, no words to bring solace.
    “Miserable bastard,” Jonny said, sounding his horn crossly as a cab pulled out in front of their car.
    Irene knew he was referring to Jan Hallwiin rather than the cab driver.
    “Because he was drunk?”
    “Because he was so aggressive and stupid. Although that was probably because he was drunk. It’s still no excuse.”
    Irene noted his point of view with a certain amount of satisfaction. A few years earlier Jonny himself had had major problems with alcohol. Rumor had it his wife had given him an ultimatum: stop drinking, or I’m leaving and taking the four kids with me. Irene had to give him credit for the fact that he seemed to have managed it so far. Over the past three years she had never seen him under the influence or hungover.
    “He didn’t have anything interesting to say?” she asked.
    “No. He just kept sounding off about how incompetent the cops are, about this pathetic society of ours that lets killers out of jail after twelve months. They don’t face any real punishment nowadays. You know how it goes—same old same old.”
    Irene nodded. She had heard it all before, many times.
    Was it possible that Alexandra’s murderer had a record? He might not have killed before, but could he be a rapist who had been released? She decided that her priority for the rest of the day would be to check Alexandra’s homicide against previous cases where the victim had sustained similar injuries, but not necessarily been killed.

Irene couldn’t get used to the silence that met her when she opened the front door.
    She had to accept that her twin daughters had flown the nest once and for all. Jenny was on a cookery course in Malmö; she would be there for at least another year, then she was intending to apply to a cookery school in Amsterdam, which provided specialist training. Her goal was to become a high-class vegan chef.
    Katarina and Felipe would be home in a few weeks after spending five months in Brazil. They were in Natal, working on the same capoeira project they