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youth enabled him to offer that her successful academic contemporaries couldn’t: better sex.
    ‘I thought you were leaving,’ said Ann-Marie.
    She wouldn’t meet his eye. Her body must still have been wet when she pulled on her T-shirt; there were darker patches and her short, straight hair was still dripping. She put on a dressing gown as if she wanted to cover herself up. She rubbed a towel over her hair half-heartedly.
    ‘Let me help you with that.’
    ‘No.’
    Ann-Marie hesitated, or at least that was how it seemed to him, before squatting down with her back resting against the sofa. Henrik wrapped the towel around her hair and pressed against the fabric with his palms and fingertips, then he removed the towel and continued to stroke her wet head.
    She sighed heavily, her body trembling. He gently pulled her head backwards. She let it happen, but he could feel that her neck was stiff and reluctant.
    ‘Listen,’ she said after a while. ‘I . . . ’
    He was surprised to hear a sob as her body contracted and convulsed beneath his hands, her shoulders quivering and tense. He didn’t know what to do as the storm of weeping passed, but it only lasted a few seconds.
    ‘We need to talk,’ she said eventually, as if her tears had given her a sense of resolve. ‘Everything has to come to an end.’
    We need to talk . Words that seldom boded well; frustration was making his jaw muscles clench. He would have liked to be able to see the expression on her face. Suddenly every utterance, every actionseemed horribly crucial. He would have liked more time, but realised that maybe that was just the way things were, and that their time had come.
    A second later, the doorbell rang.
    The doorbell?
    ‘Is that my doorbell?’
    Henrik shrugged, even though she couldn’t see him. They waited for a moment in silence. Henrik had an unpleasant feeling in his throat. It was rare, perhaps unheard of, for Ann-Marie to have unexpected visitors.
    He should have cycled home a long time ago. Every thought he had entertained about Rebecca soured the taste in his mouth.
    The doorbell rang again, and Ann-Marie got to her feet. She wiped her eyes with a corner of her dressing gown and quickly cleared her throat. She didn’t look at him.
    ‘Yes, it’s definitely my door.’
    ‘Are you expecting anyone?’
    ‘No, but . . . ’
    If she had opened the door between the living room and the hallway, Henrik would have been able to see down the darkened hallway, and he would have been visible to the person standing at the door, silhouetted agains the light pouring in from the stairwell.
    Instead she went through the kitchen.
    She was already in the hallway.
    Henrik felt distinctly uneasy; he began to feel afraid. He wanted to call out as he imagined the safety catch being flicked up, perhaps he tried, but his words didn’t come out. She wouldn’t hear him anyway. Or didn’t he want to make himself heard? Did he want to remain invisible to the unknown for as long as possible, coward that he was? All he really knew was that something was about to kick off, and that he was afraid of the consequences.
    ‘Oh . . . hello?’
    The tiny muscles in Henrik’s body, which had been as taut as piano strings for the past two minutes, relaxed slightly as he waited for what came next. Ann-Marie hadn’t sounded panic-stricken. But nor had she sounded completely normal. Surprised, more than anything.
    He lowered his eyes, still listening. The door closed with a loud bang.

6
    The car was being taken to the garage via Linnéplatsen to have its gearbox looked at; the officer at the wheel had reported that first and second were difficult to engage. But first it was redirected to an apartment block occupied by one Anna-Klara Stenius. The call had come in during the night.
    ‘Ann-Marie Karpov. Noise reported by a neighbour in the early hours of the morning,’ Granberg explained to Andersson. ‘There was a scream and the sound of something heavy falling on the