But he was smiling. The policeman in the picture was smiling, and Lydia cried with hate.

The Plain was packed with them, speed freaks who couldn’t get enough. Needed more.

Hilding made for the stairs to Drottning Street, where he usually hung out, and stood a few steps up. Easier to spot him there. He didn’t give a toss about the pigs with their telephoto lenses. Fuck them.

She was waiting by the metro entrance. Tiny chick, smallest brownie customer he knew. No more than one metre fifty tall. She wasn’t old, not even twenty and ugly with it. Big tangled hair, a greasy sweater. She must’ve been using for three or four days and now she was going off her head. Randy as hell too; all she wanted was to shoot up and fuck and shoot up and fuck. He knew her name was Mirja and she spoke with a foreign accent that made it hard to understand what she was on about and it was fucking impossible when she was really freaked out; it was like her mouth couldn’t cope any more.

‘You got it?’

His grin was mean. ‘Got what?’

‘You know. Some.’

‘What? Fucking what?’

‘A gram?’

Christ, what a slag. Speed and shagging. Hilding straightened his back, checked out the Plain. The cops were taking no notice.

‘Crystal or ordinary sulphate?’

‘Ordinary. Three hundred.’

She started rooting inside one of her shoes, near the laces, pulled out a wad of crumpled notes and handed him three.

‘Like, just ordinary.’

Mirja had been on a bender for almost a week. She hadn’t eaten, just had to have more, more, more, needed to get away from what seemed like high-voltage circuitry inside her head, thoughts that hummed and pulled her brain this way and that, making it hurt, like high-voltage shocks.

She walked away from Hilding as fast as she could, away from the Drottning Street steps, past the statue in front of the church and into the cemetery.