She decided to ignore any such scruples, which were far outweighed by her curiosity. And it was in Christian’s own best interest, after all. If he refused to get to the bottom of who was sending those threatening letters, then she would just have to do it for him.

Suddenly she knew who she would talk to first.

Ludvig glanced at the clock again. It would soon be time for break. Maths was his absolute worst subject, and the hour was dragging along, as usual. Five more minutes. Today his class had break-time together with 7A, which meant the same time as Sussie. Her locker was in the next row over, and if he was lucky, they’d arrive there at the same time to put their books away after class. He’d had a crush on her for more than six months now. Nobody knew about it, except for his best friend Tom. And Tom knew that he would die a slow and painful death if he ever told anyone.

The bell rang, and Ludvig gratefully picked up his maths book and dashed out of the classroom. He kept looking around as he walked towards his locker, but Sussie was nowhere in sight. Maybe her class wasn’t over yet.

Soon he was going to get up the courage to talk to her. That’s what he’d decided. He just wasn’t sure how to begin or what he would say. He’d tried to get Tom to run into one of her friends, so that he could approach her that way. But Tom had refused, so Ludvig was forced to come up with some other plan.

The area around his locker was deserted. He opened the padlock, put his books inside, and carefully locked it again. Maybe she wasn’t in school today. He hadn’t seen her earlier either, so maybe she was sick or had the day off. The thought made him feel so depressed that he considered cutting his last class. He jumped when someone tapped him on the shoulder.

‘Sorry, Ludvig. I didn’t mean to scare you.’

The principal was standing behind him. She looked pale and tense, and in a fraction of a second, Ludvig knew why she wanted to talk to him. His thoughts of Sussie and everything else, which only a moment ago had seemed so important, instantly vanished, to be replaced by a pain so strong that he felt it would never let him go.

‘I’d like you to come with me to my office. Elin is waiting for us there.’

He nodded. There was no reason to ask what this was all about, since he already knew. The pain seemed to radiate from his fingertips, and he couldn’t feel his feet as he followed the principal. He was moving his feet forward, as he knew he had to, but they were completely numb.

In the corridor, halfway to the principal’s office, he saw Sussie. She looked at him, staring him right in the eye. But it felt like an eternity ago that such an encounter had meant anything to him, and he looked right through her. Nothing existed but the pain. Everything else was a reverberating void.

Elin burst into tears when she saw him. She had probably been sitting there, fighting back the sobs, and when he entered the room she rushed into his arms. He hugged her tight, stroking her back as she cried.

The police officers, whom he’d met a few times before, were standing nearby, giving the two siblings a moment to comfort each other. He still hadn’t uttered a word.

‘Where did you find him?’ Ludvig asked at last, even though he wasn’t aware of having formulated the question. He wasn’t even sure that he wanted to hear the answer.

‘Down by Sälvik,’ said the officer whose name was apparently Patrik. His colleague took a couple of steps back. She seemed at a loss for words. Ludvig understood how she felt. He didn’t know what to say either. Or what to do.

‘We thought we’d drive you home now.’ Patrik nodded at Paula to lead the way. Elin and Ludvig followed. In the doorway Elin stopped and turned towards Patrik.

‘Did Pappa drown?’

Ludvig stopped too, but he could see that the officer had no intention of saying anything more at the moment.

‘Let’s go home, Elin. We’ll find out all the details later,’ he said quietly, taking his sister’s hand. At first she resisted. She didn’t want to leave. She wanted to know what happened. But then she turned again to follow Paula.

‘All right. Let’s have a look…’ Mellberg paused for effect. He pointed at the corkboard where Patrik had carefully pinned up all the material they’d collected pertaining to Magnus Kjellner’s disappearance. ‘I’ve gathered here what we know so far, and there’s not much to write home about. Three months on the case, and this is all you’ve managed to dig up? It’s just as well you’re all out here in the sticks – back in Göteborg we knew what it was to work in a pressure-cooker environment. We would have solved a case like this in a week!’

Patrik and Annika exchanged glances. As the police chief in Tanumshede, Mellberg was constantly reminding his colleagues of the time he’d spent working in Göteborg. Although by now it seemed he’d given up any hopes of being transferred back to the city. He was the only one who had ever believed that might happen.

‘We’ve done everything we could,’ said Patrik wearily. He was aware how pointless it was to try to counter Mellberg’s accusations. ‘Besides, it wasn’t until today that it became a murder investigation. We’ve been treating it as a missing persons case.’

‘Okay, okay. Would you mind reviewing what exactly happened? Where was his body found, who found it, and what has Pedersen told you so far? I’ll give him a ring later, of course. I just haven’t had time yet. So we’ll have to make do with the information you have at the moment.’

Patrik reported on the events of the day.

‘Was he really stuck in the ice?’ Martin Molin shuddered as he looked at Patrik.

‘We’ll have photographs of the crime scene later, but yes, he was frozen solid. If the dog hadn’t gone out on the ice, it would have taken a long time before we found Magnus Kjellner. If ever. As soon as the ice thawed, his body would have come loose and then drifted away. He could have ended up anywhere.’ Patrik shook his head.

‘So I suppose that means we won’t be able to work out where or when he was tossed into the water, right?’ Gösta had a gloomy look on his face as he absentmindedly patted Ernst, who was pressed against his leg.

‘The ice didn’t set in until December. We’ll have to wait for Pedersen’s report to hear how long he thinks Magnus has been dead, but my guess is that he died right after he went missing.’ Patrik raised an admonitory finger. ‘But as I said, we have no facts to support that theory, so we can’t really use it as a basis for our investigation.’

‘But it does sound like a reasonable assumption,’ said Gösta.

‘You mentioned stab wounds. What do we know about that?’ Paula’s brown eyes narrowed as she impatiently tapped her pen on the notepad lying on the table in front of her.

‘I didn’t find out a lot about that either. You know how Pedersen is. He doesn’t really like to say anything until he’s done a thorough examination. The only thing he told me was that Kjellner had been assaulted and multiple stab wounds had been inflicted.’

‘Which seems to indicate that he’d been stabbed with a knife,’ Gösta added.

‘Most likely, yes.’

‘When are we going to get more information from Pedersen?’ Mellberg now sat at the head of the table and snapped his fingers to summon Ernst to his side. The dog instantly left Gösta and trotted over to place his head on his master’s knee.

‘He said he’d get to the post-mortem at the end of the week. So we might know more by the weekend, if we’re lucky. Otherwise early next week.’ Patrik sighed. Sometimes the constraints of the job taxed his patience. He wanted answers now, not in a week.

‘All right. What do you know about his disappearance?’ Mellberg made a show of holding up his empty coffee cup towards Annika, who pretended not to notice. Next he tried Martin, with better results. Martin hadn’t yet achieved the status required to ignore his boss. Mellberg leaned back with satisfaction as his youngest colleague got up and headed for the kitchen.