They exchanged looks. Suddenly they were reunited by a bewildered sense of guilt. Cilla dashed out of the room, but knocking on Danne’s door was pointless.

Then they were sitting at the breakfast table.

Tova and Danne had left for school. Danne hadn’t eaten any breakfast, hadn’t uttered a word, hadn’t exchanged a glance with any of them. With her back to Paul, Cilla said, looking at the sparrows on the bird feeder outside the window of their row house in Norsborg, “You’ve witnessed two births. Why the hell are you still disgusted by a woman’s bodily functions?”

He felt completely empty. The car passed the Slagsta allotment gardens on the right and the Brunna School on the left. It made a sharp left turn down toward Hallunda Square; for a moment he had Ernstsson in his lap. They exchanged tired glances and watched as the truncated but crowded stretches of Linvägen, Kornvägen, Hampvägen, and Havrevägen flew past outside the window. The street names-flax, grain, hemp, oats-were like a textbook on agronomy. Everywhere loomed the antithesis of the agrarian society, the brutally unimaginative facades of the identical tall apartment buildings from the sixties and seventies. A breeding ground, thought Hjelm without understanding what he meant. The extinct voices of a peasant society echoed through him like ghosts.

Over by the square three police cars were parked with their doors wide open. Behind a couple of the doors crouched uniformed officers with their weapons drawn. They were pointed in all different directions. The rest of the cops were running around, shooing away curious bystanders, baby buggies, and dog owners.