Turning the pram around, she began walking towards the library. She had the whole day to kill and she might as well spend her time there while the twins were asleep. At least that felt more productive than sitting on the sofa and watching Oprah or Rachel Ray.

‘Hi, good to see you!’ May, the librarian, smiled as Erica parked the pram inside the front door and off to the side so it wouldn’t be in anyone’s way. Fortunately the library was totally deserted, and there didn’t seem to be much risk that she’d have to compete for space with anyone else.

‘And you brought those adorable twins,’ said May, leaning down to look inside the pram. ‘Are they as good as they are cute?’

‘Like little angels,’ Erica told her truthfully. Because she really couldn’t complain. The problems that she’d had when Maja was a baby had vanished, which was probably due to her own attitude this time around. When the boys woke in the night and started crying, she felt only gratitude instead of dread. Besides, they were seldom cranky, and they woke only once a night when they were hungry.

‘Well, you know your way around the library, so I’ll leave you to it. Give me a shout if you need any help. Are you working on a new book?’ said May, peering at her.

To Erica’s great joy, the whole town was proud of her achievements and followed her publications with great interest.

‘No, I haven’t started on another one yet. I was thinking of doing some research for my own amusement.’

‘Oh, really? What’s the topic?’

Erica laughed. The people who lived in Fjällbacka were not known for being shy. Their guiding principle seemed to be: if you don’t ask, you’ll never find out. She had no objections to that attitude. She herself was more inquisitive than most, as Patrik never failed to point out.

‘I was actually thinking of looking for books on the archipelago. I want to read up on the history of Gråskär.’

‘Ghost Isle?’ said May. She headed for the shelves on the far side of the room. ‘So you’re interested in ghost stories? In that case, you should have a talk with Stellan at Nolbotten. And Karl-Allen Nordblom knows a lot about the archipelago.’

‘Thanks. I’ll start by seeing what I can find here. Ghosts, the history of lighthouses, and anything of that nature would interest me. Do you think you’ve got any books on those topics?’

‘Hmm …’ May was studying the shelves. She pulled out a volume, quickly leafed through it, and then set it back. She took out another, studied the table of contents, and tucked it under her arm. After a few minutes she’d found four books, which she handed to Erica.

‘These might be useful. It won’t be easy to find any published volumes specifically about Gråskär, but you could talk to the staff at the Bohuslän Museum,’ she said as she took her place behind the library counter.

‘I’ll start with these,’ said Erica, nodding towards the four books she was holding. After making sure that the twins were still asleep, she sat down and began to read.

‘What is it?’ Their classmates had gathered around them in the schoolyard, and Jon felt the thrill of being the centre of attention.

‘I found it. I think it’s some kind of sweets,’ he said, proudly holding out the bag.

Melker pushed him aside.

‘What do you mean, you found it? We found it together.’

‘Did you take that out of a rubbish bin? Yuck, that’s disgusting! Throw it away, Jon.’ Lisa wrinkled her nose and then moved on.

‘But it’s inside a bag.’ Carefully he opened the seal. ‘And by the way, it was in a litter bin, not in a rubbish bin.’

Girls were so pathetic. When he was younger he’d played a lot with girls, but ever since starting school, things had changed, and the girls seemed totally different. As if aliens had taken them over. All they did was make a fuss and giggle.

‘God, girls are so ludicrous,’ he said out loud, and all the other boys crowding around him agreed. They knew exactly what he meant. The sweets were probably perfectly fine, since they’d been tossed into a litter bin.

‘And they’re inside a bag,’ exclaimed Melker, echoing what Jon had said. All the boys nodded.

They had waited until the lunch break to retrieve the bag. Sweets were forbidden at school, so what they’d found looked especially exciting – sort of like the powdered white liquorice that came in a tin shaped like a hockey puck. The fact that they’d discovered the discarded sweets all on their own made them feel like adventurers, like Indiana Jones. Jon – or rather Jon, Melker, and Jack – would be the heroes of the day. Now it was just a matter of working out how much they’d have to share with the others in order to maintain their hero status. The other boys would be cross if they didn’t get any. But if they gave away too much, there wouldn’t be enough left over for the three of them.

‘You can all have a taste. Three dips with the finger each,’ Jon finally decided. ‘But we get to go first, since we found it.’

Melker and Jack each solemnly licked an index finger and then reached for the bag. Their fingers came away covered with white powder, and with a delighted expression they stuck them in their mouths. Would it taste salty, like powdered liquorice? Or sour, like the sherbert sweets that came in those saucer shapes? They were greatly disappointed.

‘It doesn’t taste of anything. Do you think it’s flour?’ said Melker, and then he walked away.

Jon was crestfallen as he looked at the bag. He licked his finger as the others had done and stuck it deep inside the powder. Hoping that Melker was wrong, he stuck his finger in his mouth. It tasted of nothing. Absolutely nothing. Although he did feel a slight tingling on his tongue. Furious, he tossed the bag into a litter bin and headed for the school. He had a weird sensation in his mouth. He stuck out his tongue and wiped it on his shirt sleeve, but that didn’t help. Now his heart began pounding very fast. He was sweating, and his legs didn’t seem to want to obey him. Out of the corner of his eye he saw that Melker and Jack had fallen to the ground. They must have stumbled on something, or else they were just playing around. Then he felt the ground come rushing up towards him. Everything went black before he even hit the pavement.

Paula wished Patrik had taken her with him to Göteborg instead of Martin. On the other hand, it gave her the opportunity to examine the contents of Mats Sverin’s briefcase in peace and quiet. She had immediately sent the laptop over to the technical division; the personnel there were much more computer-savvy than she was and would know how to deal with it properly.

‘I hear the briefcase has been found,’ said Gösta, sticking his head in the door to her office.

‘Yup. I’ve got it here.’ She pointed to the brown leather briefcase lying on her desk.

‘Have you had a chance to examine it?’ Gösta came in, pulled up a chair, and sat down next to her.

‘Well, I haven’t done much yet, other than to remove the laptop and send it over to the tech guys.’

‘Good thinking. It’s best to let them handle it. I expect it’ll take a while before we hear back from them though,’ said Gösta with a sigh.

‘There’s not a lot we can do about that. I didn’t want to risk wrecking the data by doing it myself. But I’ve had a look at the mobile phone. It didn’t take long. He had hardly any numbers stored on it, and the only calls seem to have been to and from his office and his parents’ house. No pictures, no saved text messages.’

‘He was an odd fellow from the sounds of it,’ said Gösta. Then he pointed at the briefcase. ‘So, shall we take a look at the rest?’

Paula pulled over the briefcase and cautiously began emptying it. She spread out all the items on the desk in front of them. When she was sure that the briefcase was completely empty, she set it on the floor. They were looking at several pens, a pocket calculator, paper clips, a pack of Stimorol chewing gum, and a thick stack of documents.