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have entered the wrong password. Please try again.’
    She tried three more times. Each time the same message. She swallowed hard.
    Something’s going wrong. Really wrong.
    And another part of her mind threw up the thought: should she, in fact, be scared?

STOCKHOLM
    Peder and Joar drove in silence through Kungsholmen, over St Erik’s Bridge and on towards Odenplan where the elderly couple had been found dead. Peder was at the wheel, racing to every red light. A suspicion had planted itself in the back of his mind after the croissant incident in the staff room. Joar had not even cracked a smile when Peder came out with his funny cock joke. That was bad. Clearly a sign. Peder had got better at observing those over the years. Signs. Signs that a colleague was of the other persuasion. Batting for the other side. Gay.
    Not that he had anything against it. Absolutely not. Just as long as he didn’t try it on with him. Then he’d see him in hell.
    He squinted sideways at Joar’s profile. His colleague’s face was remarkably finely drawn, almost like a painting. A face like a mask. The eyes were ice-blue, the pupils never dilated. The lips were a little too red, the eyelashes implausibly long. Peder screwed up his eyes to get a better look. If Joar wore make-up, he could take his own car in future.
    The traffic lights turned from green to red and Peder had to put his foot down to get through. He did not need to look at Joar to know his colleague disapproved.
    ‘Hard to know whether to stop or speed up when it’s like that,’ said Peder, mainly to have something to say.
    ‘Mmm,’ responded Joar, looking the other way. ‘What was the name of the street?’
    ‘Dalagatan. They lived on the top floor. Big flat, apparently.’
    ‘Are the bodies still there?’
    ‘No, and forensics are supposed to be finished now, so we can go in.’
    They said nothing as Peder parked the car. He fished out the parking permit and slunk after his colleague into the building. Joar ignored the lift and set off up the five flights of stairs to the couple’s flat. Peder followed, wondering why the hell they weren’t taking the lift when it was so many floors up.
    The stairwell was freshly decorated, the walls white and shiny. The steps were marble, the window frames painted brown. The lift shaft in the middle was an old-fashioned, wrought-iron affair. Peder’s thoughts went to the woman from whom he had separated, Ylva. She hated confined spaces. Peder had once tried to seduce her in his parents’ guest cloakroom during a boring family dinner, but Ylva found making love in such a small space so stressful that her skin came up in bumps and she couldn’t breathe properly.
    They had laughed over that story countless times.
    But not this past eighteen months, Peder observed bitterly. There hadn’t been much bloody laughing at all.
    There was no sign of forced entry to the couple’s front door. The label on the letterbox simply said ‘Ahlbin’. Joar rang the bell and a uniformed police officer opened the door. He and a crime-scene technician were the only ones there.
    ‘All right if we come in?’ asked Peder.
    The officer nodded.
    ‘They’re just doing the windows, then they’ll be finished on the forensic side.’
    Peder and Joar advanced into the flat.
    ‘Was it rented?’ asked Joar.
    The officer shook his head.
    ‘Owner-occupied. They’d lived here since 1999.’
    Peder gave a whistle as he went round the flat. It was spacious and had high ceilings. All the rooms had beautiful stucco work and the expanses of white wall were sparingly hung with paintings and photographs.
    Peder thought Fredrika would have loved this flat, though he had not the least idea how her own home was decorated.
    Why was that? Why didn’t people go round to each other’s places nowadays? The fact that he had never been to Fredrika’s was not very surprising, but with other colleagues it was harder to understand. He hated the lonely evenings in the flat