'Johan Stekanger here.'

The solicitor. Jerry Petersson's executor. The man who found Fredrik Fgelsjo.

'I wanted to tell you that the castle was sold yesterday. For twice as much as Petersson paid for it. Petersson's father accepted the offer.'

'Who bought it?'

'I'm afraid . . .'

'There's nothing to stop you telling us.'

'I . . .'

'Now!' Malin says. 'Otherwise I'll be on your backside like a tick from hell for the rest of your life. So, who bought it?'

'Axel Fgelsjo himself, who else? We signed the contracts yesterday, and he got the keys to the front door as a symbolic gesture. We've put all of Petersson's possessions in storage, and the art's gone to Bukowski's auction house. He laughed at that business with the keys, said he'd kept several sets. And I don't think Petersson ever changed the locks.'

'He's bought back the castle,' Malin says.

Zeke keeps his hands on the wheel, staring ahead at the road as they drive out of the city, out into the dark countryside.

'That was quick work.'

'An old fighter,' Malin says, as they head towards the castle way above every speed limit.

They must be there.

Fields.

Forest.

What's on the move out there? What is it that clouds people's minds? What drives them to do things that there are hardly any words for? Like the honour killing they'd investigated before this case.

What makes a person not answer a call from her daughter? Malin shuts her eyes, sees Tove on the floor of that room with the mad woman bent over her. Sees a rape victim on a chair in a dark corner of a godforsaken room in a godforsaken hospital.

Tove Fors.

Fredrik Fgelsjo.

Anders Dalstrom.

Jerry Petersson.

I know what unites you.

I can do something for you, Tove. For me. For us.

If I can't manage to love you, who on earth could I manage to love?

They're the first car on the scene, and the castle rises up from the black earth, an ark for all the feelings human beings have ever felt.

The green lanterns are glowing, spreading green light over the water in the moat. Unless the glow comes from the water itself?

No car in front of the castle.

And Malin runs up to the door, yanks at it, but it's locked.

Shit.

They aren't here.

Zeke comes up behind her.

'Doesn't look like they're here,' he whispers, and Malin wonders why he's whispering.

'Damn. I was so sure.'

Silence around them, except for the rustling of the forest.

'He could have locked the door behind them with Fgelsjo's key,' Malin says.

'Let's go round,' Zeke says.

And they circle the castle, over to the chapel, deserted and shut up. The rain patters on their jackets and Zeke is moving stiffly in front of her.

They're walking in silence.

Where's the car? Malin thinks. They must be here.

They turn a corner, and they can hear a car, maybe one of the patrol cars, coming up the drive, and now they can see light, a thin strip of light seeping out from the shutters on one of the cellar windows.

They look at each other.

Nod, wipe the rain from their faces, run to the front of the castle, the gravel and stones crunching under their feet.

They see three uniformed officers getting out of a patrol car.

'The door,' Malin shouts. 'They could be in there. In the cellar.'

And a moment later the uniforms are throwing themselves at the door, but their efforts are wasted.

'This is impossible,' one of them shouts, and Malin orders them back, draws her pistol from its holster, and ignoring the risk of ricochets she kneels down at the side of the steps leading up to the doorway and shoots off the black-painted iron lock, probably several hundred years old, emptying her magazine, and the lock falls from its chiselled hole onto the stone steps.

Malin is first inside.

Rushing through the rooms.

The kitchen like a shiny white slaughterhouse even in the darkness.

She rushes down the steps into the cellar, expecting to see Axel Fgelsjo down there together with Anders Dalstrom. But what will the scene look like?

The cellar is dark and cold and she's having trouble breathing, she can feel the others behind her, their fear, their footsteps drumming rhythmically on the stone floors. She crouches as she goes through the passageways, kicking open the door to what must once have been a prison cell. Was this where the Russian prisoners-of-war were locked up before they were walled up in the moat?

They go through one, two, three rooms. All empty.

Then a fourth door.

Light coming from behind it.

Malin presses the handle.

What am I going to see?

She opens the door.

72.

Is he still here?

Bettina, is that you?

No, but is he still here?

What was it he said?

I didn't understand.

Someone's coming now, is he coming back?

He took his stinking fingers out of my nostrils, but the rag is still in my mouth. He didn't cut me again.

Ropes around my ankles and wrists. I try pulling this way and that, and I know he's going to come back, I want to see you, Bettina.

Or do I?

I want to stay. I know what I've got to do, I can feel the light returning to my eyes now, I heard a door open, is that death or life coming in?

Spare me.

I'm a good person.

The room is bathed in light from a spotlight in the ceiling.

Malin sees him.

He's sitting still on a chair in the middle of the room, blood running from his head and nostrils.

Axel Fgelsjo.

Alone. No Anders Dalstrom.

Fgelsjo. Not so imposing now, and Malin thinks that it makes little difference if he's alive or dead, yet she still hesitates in front of him, approaching him slowly, is he dead, alive?

Fgelsjo seems to be melting into the stone beneath him, his blood seems to be sucked up by the castle walls, and she can feel the heartbeat of history, pumping a strange music through her veins.

Standing right in front of Fgelsjo now.

She puts an arm on his shoulder.

He squints. His eyes seem to clear.

Malin waves the others into the room. No one else there, where's Dalstrom?

And Fgelsjo jerks.

Coughs, wants the rag out of his mouth, and Malin looks around again, nothing, and she puts her pistol down on the stone floor, Zeke breathing heavily behind her.

Then she takes the rag from Fgelsjo's mouth as a uniformed officer cuts the ropes tying his wrists and ankles.

He throws up his arms, as if with some peculiar, new-found power.

Kicks his legs.

His bloody sweater shudders, and Malin can see the fat moving beneath it.

Then he moves, and stands up.

Looks down at Malin.

'The bastard didn't have the nerve,' Fgelsjo says. 'He didn't have the nerve.'

He probably did have the nerve, Father.

But he couldn't, didn't want to.

I see you sit down again, defenceless, and not long ago you were experiencing the most profound of all fears, the feeling that is the only thing that exists on the boundary where life and death meet.

You were there just now, and now you've been called back, but have you learned anything, Father?

I don't think so.