‘Anni, do you understand? From tomorrow, he’ll be out. He’ll be free, littering the streets again.’

Her room looked just the same as when she had moved in. He had picked out which pieces of furniture she should have from home and positioned them; he was the only one who knew why it was important for her to sleep with her head to the window.

Already on the first night she had looked at peace.

He had carried her in, put her in the bed and tucked the covers round her slender body. Her sleep had been deep and he had left her in the morning when she woke up. Leaving the car there he had walked all the way to police headquarters in Kungsholmen. It was afternoon by the time he had arrived.

‘I’ll get him this time.’

Her eyes rested on him, as if she were listening. He knew this was an illusion, but because it looked right, he sometimes pretended they were having a talk the way they used to.

Her eyes, were they expectant or just empty?

If only I had managed to stop.

If only that bastard hadn’t pulled you out. And if only your head hadn’t been softer than the wheel.

Ewert Grens bent over her, his forehead touching hers. He kissed her cheek.

‘I miss you.’

The man in the dark suit with the gold tiepin, who usually spat on the floor in front of her feet, had just left. It hadn’t helped this time to think of Klaipeda and have no body, only a head. She had felt him inside her; it happened sometimes that she couldn’t shut out the pain when someone thrust themselves into her and ordered her to move at the same time.

Lydia wondered if it was his smell.

The smell she recognised reminded her of the men who sat with her dad in that dirty room full of weapons. She wondered if it was a good thing that she recognised it, if that meant that she was still somehow connected to what had been back then and which she longed for so much, or if it was just breaking down even more, that everything she could have had, and that was now so far away, was being forced deeper into her.