“How come you didn’t find it earlier?” asked Halders.

“We weren’t looking, of course,” said Ringmar. “We didn’t know we should be looking for newspapers.”

“Have we found any fingerprints?” asked Halders.

He rubbed at the back of his head, which was feeling stiff again. Stiffer than normal, if you could call this goddamn stiffness normal. He’d been cold out in the square the previous day.

“Beier’s team is looking into it now,” said Ringmar. “They’re also trying to see if they can make out the date on the newspapers. They should be able to.”

The forensic officers had looked doubtful when they were handed the rotting bundle.

“Pointless,” said Halders. “Just as pointless as trying to find specific bicycle tracks at the places where the boys were clubbed down.”

“Bicycle tracks?” said Bergenhem.

“It’s my own theory,” said Halders, sounding as if he were preparing for a DCI examination. “The attacker zoomed in on them on a bike. Silent. Fast. Unexpected.”

“Why not?” said Winter. He didn’t say that the same thought had occurred to him.

“It sounds like such an obvious possibility that all of us must have thought about it,” said Bergenhem.

“Go on, rob me of my idea,” said Halders.

“A newspaper boy on a bike,” said Aneta Djanali.

“It doesn’t have to match up exactly,” said Halders.

“Speaking of newspaper boys,” said Ringmar.

“Yes, go on,” said Djanali.

“It’s a bit odd, in fact. The newspaper delivery person for the buildings around Doktor Fries Square phoned in sick the morning Stillman was attacked,” said Ringmar. “Just like when Smedsberg was almost clubbed down on Mossen.”

“But Stillman didn’t say anything about seeing anybody carrying newspapers,” said Halders.

“Nevertheless.”

“Nevertheless what?” said Halders.

“Let’s leave that for the moment,” said Winter, starting to write on the white board. He turned to face the group. “We’ve been discussing another theory.”

The evening had moved on when Larissa Serimov sat down at the duty officer’s desk. Moving on was an expression her father liked to use about most things. He had moved on himself, moving from the Urals to Scandinavia after the war, and he’d managed to have a child at an age when others were having grandchildren.

We’ll go back there one of these days, Larissa, he always used to say, as if she had moved there with him. And so they did when it finally became possible, and when they got there she had realized, genuinely realized, that they had in fact moved together all those years ago. His return had been her return as well.

He had stayed there, Andrey Ilyanovich Serimov. There were people still living there who remembered him, and whom he remembered. I’ll stay on for a few months, he’d said when she left for Sweden, and she’d been at home for three and a half days when she received the message that he’d fallen off a chair outside cousin Olga’s house, and his heart had probably stopped beating even before he hit the rough decking that surrounded the big, lopsided house like a moat.

The telephone rang.

“Frölunda Police, Serimov.”

“Is this the police?”

“This is the police in Frölunda,” she repeated.

“My name is Kristina Bergort. I’d like to report that my daughter Maja was missing.”

Serimov had written “Kristina Bergort” on the sheet of paper in front of her, but hesitated.

“I beg your pardon? You said your daughter was missing?”

“I realize that this might sound odd, but I think my little daughter was, well, abducted by somebody, and then returned again.”

“You’d better start again, at the beginning,” said Serimov.

She listened to what the mother had to say.

“Are there any marks on Maja? Injuries? Bruises?”

“Not as far as I can see. We-my husband and I-have only just heard about this from her. I called right away. We’re going straight to Frölunda Hospital to have her examined.”

“I see.”

“Do you think that’s a bit, er, hasty?”

“No, no,” said Serimov.

“We’re going anyway. I believe what Maja told us.”

“Of course.”

“And, she also told us he took her ball.”

“He stole it? Her ball?”

“He took her favorite ball, a green one. He said he would throw it to her through the car window once she got out, but he didn’t. And she doesn’t have it now.”

“Does Maja have a good memory?”

“She is very observant,” said Kristina Bergort. “Here comes my husband. We’re off to the hospital now.”

“I’ll meet you there,” said Larissa Serimov.

10

THE HOSPITAL WAS SUFFUSED WITH A LIGHT THAT MADE PEOPLE in the emergency waiting room look even more ill. There seemed to be lots of waiting rooms. It looks like half of Gothenburg is here, Larissa Serimov thought. Despite the fact that this is a welfare state. We’re not in the Urals. She found it difficult not to laugh. Emergency treatment was not a term that existed in Russia anymore. Emergency, yes-but treatment, no.

At least there was a doctor here, even if the line to see him was long.

The Bergort family were on their own in one of the side rooms. The girl was rolling a ball backward and forward, but her eyes were heavy. She’ll sleep her way through the examination, Serimov thought, and shook hands first with the mother and then her husband. She could see that people were staring at her uniform, which was black with the word POLICE in grotesquely large print on her back. What’s the point of that, she had thought the first time she put it on. To avoid being shot in the back? Or to encourage it?

“Yes, here we are,” said Kristina Bergort.

“How much longer before your turn?” asked Serimov.

“I have no idea.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” said Serimov, and went over to the desk. Kristina Bergort saw her talking to the nurse, then vanishing through a door behind it. Then she saw her emerge again with a doctor, who gestured toward the little family.

The doctor examined the girl. He had considered sedating her, but didn’t.

Serimov waited outside. It struck her how calm the Bergort family was. The husband hadn’t actually said a word so far.

They emerged, and she stood up.

“The doctor would like a word with you,” said the mother, looking at her daughter sleeping in her father’s arms.

“What was the outcome? What did he find?”

“Nothing at all, thank God.” Kristina Bergort started walking toward the big glass doors. “I’ll have another word with Maja tomorrow morning.”

“You’re welcome to call me again,” said Serimov.

The mother nodded, and they left.

Larissa Serimov went back to the doctor’s office. He finished dictating his summary into the tape recorder, then looked up and rose to his feet. This wasn’t the first time she’d been in there. Police officers and doctors met frequently, especially in Frölunda, where the hospital and the police station were practically next door, separated only by the service road. Just a stone’s throw away, she had once thought; and stones had been thrown, but by citizens expressing their views on law and order in the city. Ah well. Perhaps it had helped to make her feel at home in a country she didn’t come from, or in the other one that she hadn’t asked to live in, but was grateful for having been born in.

She knew the doctor.

“What’s this all about, Larissa?”

“I don’t really know.”

“Does anybody know?”

“The mother was worried, and that’s hardly surprising,” said Serimov.

“The kid has an imagination, and a pretty lively one at times,” he said. “The mother told me what happened, and, well, I don’t really know what to think.”

“You don’t have to think anything at all. An examination is all we need.”