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group of American tourists.
    Another time he walked boldly into the Lindgård restaurant on Strandgatan and ordered a real feast consisting of five courses with wine, strongbeer, aquavit, and cognac. Afterward he asked for a cigar imported directly from Havana, which he puffed on as he enjoyed yet another liqueur. When the bill was presented, he openly admitted that, unfortunately, he was unable to pay due to a shortage of funds. The police were called. They took the sated and tipsy man down to the police station, but he was released a few hours later. Dahlström probably thought all the trouble was worth it.
    Knutas hadn’t seen Dahlström’s wife in years. She had been notified about the death of her exhusband. Knutas hadn’t yet spoken to her, but she was scheduled to be interviewed later in the day.
    He sucked on his unlit pipe and leafed through Dahlström’s file. A few minor misdemeanors, but nothing serious. His friend Bengt Johnsson, on the other hand, had been convicted twenty or more times, mostly on burglary and minor assault charges.
    It was strange that they hadn’t heard from him.
    Emma Winarve sat down on the worn sofa in the teachers’ lounge. She was holding her mug of coffee in both hands to warm them. It was drafty in the old wooden building housing the Kyrk School in Roma. Her mug was inscribed with the words: “World’s Best Mom.” How ridiculous. A mother who had cheated on her husband and who, for the past six months, had also neglected her children because her mind was always on something else. She was fast approaching forty, and also fast losing all control.
    The clock on the wall told her that it was nine thirty in the morning. Her colleagues were already crowding around the table, chatting congenially. The smell of coffee had permanently seeped into the curtains, books, papers, file folders, and the dirty-yellow wallpaper. Emma didn’t feel like taking part in the conversation. Instead, she looked out the window. The leaves on the oak trees hadn’t yet fallen. They were in constant motion, sensitive to the slightest gust of wind. In the yard next to the school, shaggy gray sheep stood huddled together, grazing. Their jaws were grinding as they ceaselessly chewed their cud. Roma’s stone church with eight hundred years of history behind it stood there as steadfast as always.
    Everything was going on as usual, no matter what storms might be raging inside of someone. It was incomprehensible that she could sit here, seemingly unperturbed, sipping endless cups of coffee, and no one even noticed a thing. Such as the fact that her mind was in the grip of a psychological battle. Or that her whole life was in the process of going to hell. But her colleagues merely sat around her, carrying on subdued conversations. As if nothing were happening.
    In her mind’s eye, video clips were playing in rapid succession: her daughter Sara’s birthday when all Emma could do was cry; she and Johan rolling around in a hotel bed; her mother-in-law’s searching eyes; Filip’s cello concert, which had totally slipped her mind; her husband Olle’s face when she once again rejected him.
    She had gotten herself into an impossible situation.
    Six months earlier she had met a man who had ended up changing everything. They got to know each other in connection with last summer’s police hunt, when Emma’s best friend became one of the killer’s victims, and she herself came very close to meeting the same fate.
    Johan had stepped into her path, and she couldn’t just walk by him. He was so unlike everyone else she had ever known; so alive and intense about everything he did. She had never laughed so much with anyone else or felt so calm, almost spiritual. He made her discover sides of herself that she didn’t even know existed.
    She quickly fell madly in love with him, and before she knew it, he had totally invaded her life. When they made love she was filled with a sensuality that she had never experienced