'You think so? Your female intuition?' Waldemar says.

Malin gives him a weary look.

'I wouldn't mind eating my sandwich in peace,' and as she says this Karim Akbar comes over to her desk.

He puts a hand on her shoulder, nods to Zeke and Waldemar, before saying: 'Malin, what would you say to a trip to Tenerife? Have a chat with Jochen Goldman?'

Malin closes her eyes. Lets Karim's suggestion sink in.

Sun.

Heat.

Mum, Dad, far away from Tove, Janne, all that.

'What do you say? Put some pressure on him? He's bound to be there,' Karim says.

'I'll go,' Malin says quickly. 'Is this Sven's idea? Because he thinks I need to get away? That's it, isn't it?'

'You're paranoid, Malin. The investigation requires you to go. And a bit of sun would do you good,' Karim says. 'Anyway, you've never been down to visit your parents, have you?'

Malin looks at Karim suspiciously. Gives him a stare that warns him that that's none of his business.

'Is Janne home?' he goes on, and there's an odd note in his voice, as though he's dealing with a formality, and it annoys Malin.

She thinks she knows what he's getting at.

'Tove can stay . . .' and then she stops herself. Karim doesn't know that they've separated, and he doesn't need to know. Unless he does know already?

'Janne can look after Tove,' she says in the end.

'Good,' Karim says. 'I'll sort out a ticket for tomorrow. Make sure you're packed. And be careful. You know what people say about him.'

Malin on her own beside the coffee machine in the staffroom. Holding her mobile. Wants to call Tove but knows she's at school now, in a lesson, but she has to see her before she goes.

Wants to call Janne. But what would she say? She has to let them know she's going. Call Daniel Hogfeldt and ask for a serious afternoon fuck session? Creep off to the Hamlet and have a stiff drink? Either of the two last ideas sounds wonderful. But she has to work, then pack.

Should I call Mum and Dad? Let them know I'll be there tomorrow? Given their attitude to surprises, I'd cause chaos down there. But I ought to phone anyway. I'll have to see them, even if I don't want to, I haven't told them about the separation, that Tove's still living out at Janne's, that she hasn't moved back in yet, unless Janne's said something, they might have called the house, Dad does that sometimes, but Janne wouldn't have said anything, would he?

It'll be nice to get away from this dump for a few days.

In one way, she thinks, you can see Jerry Petersson as the ultimate product of Linkoping, where the inhabitants lose their roots in their desire for money and ridiculous material status. Look at Mum, she's never managed to have a home where she feels she belongs, I don't think she has, Malin thinks, and then she thinks about Janne's house, the flat, and it hurts and she brushes the thought aside, refuses to admit to herself that she's like her mother in so many ways. Instead she thinks about the fact that you can see Jerry Petersson as the archetypal class traitor, someone who doesn't know his place, who wants to become something he can never be. A handsome dog that will never win any competitions because he doesn't have the right pedigree.

I hate the Fgelsjo family, she thinks. Everything they stand for. But I can't bring myself to hate them as individuals. And she sees Katarina Fgelsjo on her sofa, her eyes, and she wonders where the sorrow in them comes from? Childlessness. Something else?

Malin picks up her coffee and sniffs the black liquid before heading back to her desk.

'You didn't get me one?' Zeke says, looking at Malin's cup.

'Sorry,' Malin says, sitting down as Zeke lumbers off towards the staffroom.

Malin enjoys the hot coffee, feeling the liquid sting her mouth, before she is brought back by Johan Jakobsson's voice.

He's holding a bundle of papers towards her.

'Just got this from the ladies in the archive,' he says. 'It turns out that Jerry Petersson was involved in a car accident when he was nineteen. One New Year's Eve. After a party. He was a passenger, in the front seat. The two in the back seat didn't get off so lightly. One boy was killed and a girl suffered serious head injuries.'

Malin can't remember ever hearing any reports of the accident, presumably she was too young to notice when it happened.

'And do you know what makes it all the more interesting?' Johan asks.

Malin throws out her hands.

'The accident happened on Fgelsjo's estate.'

PART 2.

Rain from a cloud that will never return.

ostergotland, October.

Eggs hatch.

Blind baby snakes peer out. More and more and more. They make my blood boil.

But let me start here: let's pretend there's a film.

A film about a person's life, where every moment is captured from an illuminating angle.

My film isn't black, white, or a thousand colours. It's matt red and sepia-tinted, a slow journey through numbing loneliness.

I see thousands of people in the images.

They flicker past, but never return. Nothing and no one stays, it's the loneliest of lonely films.

There's no disgust in the people's faces, merely, at best, a lack of interest. Most of them don't see me. I am a person in the form of air, like a fading outline in a shifting landscape. I once had something to cling to, but I've taught myself to be free. But did I ever actually manage it? Maybe I just tell myself I did so that I can bear to go on.

And now? After what's happened? Him, I don't want to say his name, floating in the cold dark water. I have no illusions about forgiveness or understanding.

But the rage was wonderful. It was as if the snakes left me, ran out of my body and left me calm and powerful. It really didn't matter what direction it was aimed in, but to say that he didn't deserve it is wrong. I can do it again if need be, if only to experience once more that feeling of something evil disappearing out of me, the snakes calming down, and me, the person I could have been, should have been, there instead.

It was within me, the violence. And it comes from you, Father, you're the man in the pictures, you're hunting me, beating me, you don't care about the others hunting me, beating me, making me the least significant person in the world, and no one, no one cares, no one comes to my rescue.

Except him. He comes.

The pictures shift.

I have a friend. A proper friend. He saves me.

Sometimes I work this autumn, in spite of what's hunting me.

I can feel the warm breath of destruction against my neck. No matter what I do, I must protect myself, it's the only way for us to survive.

They're hunting me now, trying to find out who I am. But I shall evade them, it must be my turn now. I don't regret anything, after all, I've simply restored a form of order. I possess both the fear of the hunter and of the hunted. In some ways I long for the violence to give me the feeling of calm again, even if I know that's wrong.

I am all the nuances of loneliness that exist in the world, all the quiet, soundless fear.

Father.

You're rushing around with your camera, a cigarette glued to your free hand. You raise your bitter, scared hand with nicotine-yellow nails. Strike nimbly at the body lying on the ground. I don't want to be that body.

But you don't exist, Father. In a way, I can put even that injustice right. I have been waiting beneath the trees, outside the doors of the heart of evil. Maybe this is my time, after all.

You boys who hate me without me knowing why, without you knowing why. You do not exist.

And then you are gone, you, my rescuer, my friend.

Just like everyone else, you have disappeared.

32.

Tuesday, 28 October 'Viva Las Palmas. Viva Las Palmas.'

The ZZ Top song pops into Malin's head as she comes down the steps from the plane and heads towards the bus waiting to take her and the other passengers to the arrivals hall.

The sun is sharp and the early afternoon light cuts into her eyes, her throat feels dry and the air is hot on her far too thick sweater. It smells of heat here, sweet and cooked, as if the world were being slowly steamed.

She starts sweating at once.

It must be thirty degrees.

Palms sway alongside gigantic hangars, scorched grass stretches out between the runways, and through the sun-haze Malin can make out a jagged volcanic mountain.

Viva Las Palmas. Vegas. It's all just a great big game, throw the dice and see where you end up.

But she isn't even in Las Palmas, she's at Tenerife Airport, and it strikes her that all these damn islands are the same.

Soon a gaggle of squawking holidaymakers is jostling her in the bus, an exhausted mother holding a sleeping two-year-old in her arms, a gang of teenage boys, already seriously drunk, yelling an IFK Norrkoping football chant.

The bus starts and the cargo of sweaty humanity inside jerks, trying to stay upright even though there isn't enough space to fall over.

Tiredness and sated longing seeping from people's pores.

She called Mum and Dad yesterday and could hear the panic in Dad's voice, no doubt exacerbated by Mum's presence. 'What? Coming tomorrow? For work? What sort of work would bring you down here? So you'll be staying in a hotel? Good, no, I don't mean that, but we haven't had time to get anything ready, come over for dinner once you've checked in. Pick you up? Tomorrow at two o'clock? Ah, we've got a teeing-off time booked at the Abama. You should see the course, Malin, the best on the island, it's practically impossible to get a round there.'

The bus stops.

Malin gets out, pulls her single heavy case towards the exit.

Outside.

The warmth is suddenly nice, pleasant again now. Not too hot, not too cold, and it's nice to escape the blasted rain and hail, fired by an angry wind at defenceless faces.

'Taxi, madam?'

'Limousine?'

A long line of taxi-drivers is waiting under a white concrete roof.

They're leaning against their cars, cigarettes dangling from the corners of their mouths, and don't seem terribly interested in driving her to Playa de las Americas, wherever the hell that is.

She manages to pull the piece of paper out of the front pocket of her skirt, getting even hotter with the effort, and reads the name of the hotel.

She says the name to the taxi-driver she assumes is first in line for a customer, but he gestures towards his colleagues.

A short, fat, bald man further back in the queue of cars raises his arms and waves her over.

'Taxi?'

Malin nods, and the man takes her case and dumps it unceremoniously in the boot of his white Seat.

She gets in the back.

No air conditioning.

Her top and skirt stick to the black vinyl seat and she realises that the taxi-driver is looking at her expectantly in the rear-view mirror.

'Where to?' he says.

'Hotel Pelicano,' Malin says, and the taxi-driver frowns anxiously, as though he were suddenly worried that she might not be able to pay.

Twenty minutes later Malin is sitting on an unsteady bed in a small room with small windows in one corner, where a medieval air-conditioning unit is groaning worse than ten decrepit fridges. The grey paint is peeling from the walls, and the yellow plastic floor is covered with cigarette burns.

Rebecka, the new girl in reception at the police station, had booked the hotel, and Karim must have given her an extremely low budget.