'Does it make you sad?'

'Not jealous, but ... I don't know, you should see the women ... They're young and beautiful and they do things I'd never dare to try,' she said, reaching out and touching his lips.

'Talk to him.'

'Is youth the only thing that counts?' she drawled.

'Not to me.'

'What does matter, then? What do you want? What does any man really want?' she said, swaying slightly.

He helped her to her bedroom, but left before she took off her mocha-coloured dress.

When Nelly called him to discuss two Iranian patients from the unit for survivors of torture out in Danderyd, he took the opportunity to thank her for dinner. She just laughed and said he should be grateful she didn't get too drunk and embarra.s.sing.

Now Erik leans back in his armchair and thinks about the bottle of champagne in the fridge that he opened earlier, all alone. He sealed it with some argon, a n.o.ble gas that will have kept it tasting like new if he were to have a gla.s.s now.

That would get rid of my headache, Erik thinks, as he sees the car headlights sweep in through the large gla.s.s window.

With a short sigh he gets up and puts the journal on the smoking table, leaves his slippers on the floor and goes to open the door. He watches Margot struggle out of her car and wave to him, then another car pulls into the drive.

A younger man with short dark hair hurries over to Margot and exchanges a few words with her. Behind the pair of them comes a beautiful young woman with clear eyes and a serious face.

Erik shakes hands with Margot and the young man, whom she introduces as a colleague working on the murder investigation with her.

The young woman hesitates in the doorway. Her black coat is shiny with rain, and she looks frozen.

'I didn't have time to take my wife home,' Adam explains, looking unexpectedly awkward. 'This is Katryna.'

'Adam didn't want me to wait in the car,' she says softly.

'You're more than welcome to come in,' Erik says, shaking her hand.

'Thank you.'

'What wonderful fingernails,' he says, holding on to her hand to look at them for a few seconds.

She smiles in surprise and her dark eyes warm up instantly.

Erik invites them to take their coats off, then steps into the porch to close the front door properly. The gentle rain is dripping rhythmically through the leaves of the lilac. The road is shimmering under the streetlights, and suddenly he imagines he can see the silhouette of a tall figure in his own garden. He switches the outside light on, thinking that it must have been the scrawny juniper next to the wheelbarrow.

Erik shuts the door and shows them into the library, where Katryna stops, looking a little embarra.s.sed.

'I'm probably not supposed to overhear your conversation,' she says.

'You can sit here if you like,' Erik says, pulling a folio off the shelf. 'I don't know about you, but I'm a bit addicted to Caravaggio.'

He puts the art book down on the table, then shows the detectives into his study. Adam closes the door behind them.

'We found a third victim today,' Margot says at once.

'A third victim,' Erik says.

'We were expecting it, but it's still a blow.'

She looks down towards her stomach, and the corners of her mouth twitch slightly, possibly from exhaustion. She has a deep frown on her forehead that stretches down between her eyebrows.

'What can I help you with?' Erik asks neutrally.

'Do you know a man called Rocky Kyrklund?' Margot asks, looking up at him.

'Should I?'

'You ought to know that he was sentenced to psychiatric care after a forensic psychiatric evaluation nine years ago.'

'Of course, I'm sure that's right,' Erik says gently.

As soon as she mentioned Rocky's name, it occurred to him that she might know everything, that he's been found out.

'You were part of the team,' Margot explains.

'OK,' Erik says.

He's spent hours conjuring up different scenarios in which he's confronted with what happened, and then imagining possible reactions and answers that couldn't be regarded as lies even though they keep him out of it.

'And we have reason to believe that he confided in you ...'

'I don't remember that, but-'

'He had murdered a woman in Salem in a way that's reminiscent of the murders that I'm currently investigating,' Margot says, without further elaboration.

'If he's been released and is killing again, then something has gone very wrong with the parole process,' Erik replies, just as he had planned.

'He hasn't been released. He's still in Karsudden and he hasn't left the facility at all,' she says. 'I've just been out there and spoken to the head of security.'

56.

Margot opens her leather bag and hands Erik a copy of the verdict, and the forensic psychiatric evaluation.

The standard lamp shines warmly off the polished oak floor and leather binding of the volumes in the built-in bookcases. It's so dark outside the leaded windows that the fruit trees' dense network of branches is completely invisible.

Erik sits down opposite Adam at the little octagonal table, leafs through the material, nods and looks up.

'Yes, I remember him.'

'We think he has an apprentice, a disciple ... maybe a copycat.'

'That's possible ... if the similarities are that strong ... well, I can't actually give an opinion.'

Margot shakes her wrist to get her watch in the right place.

'I spoke to Rocky Kyrklund today,' she says. 'I asked him a lot of questions, but he just sat there in silence on his bed, staring at the television.'

'He suffered serious brain damage,' Erik says, gesturing towards the old evaluation.

'He could hear and understand everything I said, he just didn't want to answer.' Margot smiles.

'It's often rather difficult to start with when you're dealing with this sort of patient.'

She leans forward, so that her stomach ends up resting on her thighs.

'Can you help us?'

'How?'

'Talk to him. He trusted you before, you know him.'

Erik's heart starts to beat faster. He mustn't show any feelings, so slowly clasps his hands together to stop them shaking.

They're probably going to find the tape recordings of the forensic psychiatric evaluation in which Rocky talks about his alibi.

But because Rocky is guilty, Erik can always say that he didn't take the idea of an alibi seriously if it comes up.

'What do you want to know?'

'We want to know who he was working with.'

Erik nods, and thinks that he'll be free at last after this, he'll no longer have to carry the burden of knowledge that he can't offload. He can tell them about the person Rocky blamed, whether or not Rocky just sits there in silence. He could even hypnotise Bjrn Kern again and then tell them about the hand clasped to Susanna's ear.

'Naturally, this is rather outside my usual remit,' he begins.

'Of course we'd pay ...'

'That's not what I meant ... I need to know the outline of the task, so I know what to say to my employers.'

Margot nods, with her lips half-open, as though she were about to say something, but decides against it.

'And I need to know what to say to the patient,' Erik goes on. 'I mean, am I allowed to let him know that you think his former a.s.sociate has started killing again?'

Margot waves her hand. Erik notes that her colleague seems to have stiffened slightly as he sits there with his arms folded.

'We'll have to see if we can give any room for negotiation,' Margot says. 'We don't know yet, of course, but you might be able to offer him supervised excursions outside the hospital.'

She falls silent, as if she's run out of breath. Her hand goes to her stomach. Her thin wedding ring sits tightly around her swollen finger.

'What did you say to him today?' Erik asks.

'I asked which people he had most contact with.'

'Does he know why you were asking?'

'No ... he didn't react at all to anything I said.'

'He has epileptic activity in his brain which affects his memory, and, according to his diagnosis, he suffers from a narcissistic, paranoid disorder ... But all the evidence suggests that he's intelligent ...'

Erik falls silent.

'What are you thinking?' Margot asks.

'I'd like the authority to be able to tell him why I'm asking him these questions.'

'Tell him about the serial killer?'

'He'll probably work out that I'm lying otherwise.'

'Margot,' Adam says. 'I have to-'

'What?'

He looks troubled as he lowers his voice.

'This is police work,' he says.

'We haven't got a choice,' she says curtly.

'I just think you're going too far now,' Adam says.

'Am I?'

'First you get Joona Linna mixed up in this, and now you're going to let a hypnotist do police work.'

'Joona Linna?' Erik asks.

'I'm not talking to you,' Adam says.

'He's back,' Margot says.

'Where?'

'Back probably isn't the right word,' Adam says. 'He's living with the Romanian Roma out in Huddinge, he's an alcoholic, and-'