Then he thought about the fact that he often thought things that he shouldn’t be thinking.

Which just made him think about them all the more.

It was only a month since Ernstsson had climbed unharmed out of a demolished police cruiser on Tegelängsvägen after an absurd high-speed chase down in the Fittja industrial area. Now Ernstsson laughed faintly as the car flew across the busy freeway at Fittjamotet, careened to the left through the long curve toward Slagsta, and passed the intersection. Tegelängsvägen stretched off to the right; Ernstsson kept his slightly rigid gaze fixed on the left. After that he relaxed just a bit.

Hjelm thought he was seeing exactly what his partner saw and feeling exactly what he felt. After almost seven years of working closely together in one of the country’s toughest police districts, they knew each other inside and out. And yet he realized that what they actually knew about each other was minuscule. Was that really all he had learned?

Hjelm felt completely empty. That was why he had stepped into his colleague’s fleeting terror-to escape from himself for a moment.

The day had started in the worst imaginable way. The bedroom was utterly suffocating; the early spring sun had played over the blinds for a while, trapping the stuffiness. With a stiff, persistent morning erection, he had crept closer to Cilla, who as unobtrusively as possible had wriggled in the opposite direction. He didn’t notice, refused to notice, crept closer with his stubborn, stifled urgency. And she slipped away, inch by inch, until she suddenly got too close to the edge of the bed and fell to the floor.

He bolted upright, sitting up in bed wide awake, his erection abruptly lost. She quietly got up off the floor, shaking her head, wordless with fury. She stuck her hand into her panties and fished out a pad soaked with blood, holding it out toward him. He gave a slight grimace that was both apologetic and filled with disgust. Then they noticed that Danne was standing in the doorway, a look of obvious horror on his pimply fourteen-year-old face. He ran off. They heard a key turn, and Public Enemy started rapping full blast.