'Two cases in Lulea, one in Uppsala.'

'It would make sense to talk to the National Murder Commission at once. If it hasn't already reached their desks, it'll soon be there after that call.'

'You're sure?' Annika said. 'All three are quotations from Mao?'

Berit stood up, drying her eyes, and walked towards the door.

'Now you're insulting an old revolutionary,' she said. 'Well, I'm finally going to get some food. Otherwise I'll be a dead revolutionary.'

She closed the door behind her.

Annika stayed where she was, listening to her own heartbeat.

Was there any other explanation? Could different people, unknown to each other, send quotations from Mao to people whose relatives had just met a violent death, on similar paper, with the same sort of stamp on the envelope?

She stood up and walked over to the gla.s.s wall that separated her world from the newsroom, looking over the heads of the people out there, and trying to glimpse the real world through the window beyond the sports desk. From the fourth floor she could only make out a faint grey horizon, and some single flakes of snow drifting gently down towards the top of a tall birch tree.

We live in a desperate country, she thought. Whatever made people want to settle here? And why are we still here? What makes us put up with it? Whatever made people want to settle here? And why are we still here? What makes us put up with it?

She closed her eyes hard, and she knew the answer. We live where those close to us live; we live for those we love, for our children. And then someone comes along and kills them, destroying the meaning of our lives We live where those close to us live; we live for those we love, for our children. And then someone comes along and kills them, destroying the meaning of our lives.

Unforgivable.

She hurried back to her desk and dialled Q's mobile phone.

The metallic voice of his voicemail explained that he was busy in meetings for the rest of the day, that messages couldn't be left; try again tomorrow.

She dialled his direct line at the national crime unit, a secretary answered after various clicks indicating that the call was being transferred.

'He's in a meeting,' she said. 'And he has another meeting straight after that.'

'Yes, I know,' Annika said, shaking her arm to look at her watch: 15.32. 'We agreed to see each other briefly between his meetings, and I'm supposed to show up just before four.'

The secretary was suspicious. 'He hasn't mentioned that.'

'He knows it won't take long.'

'But he has to be in the Ministry of Justice at four; the car's picking him up at quarter to.'

Annika jotted that down, writing 'Rosenbad 4' on her notepad. Justice occupied the fourth and fifth floors of the main government building, with the Cabinet Office directly above.

'Of course,' she said. 'It was that committee, wasn't it . . . ?'

The sound of the secretary leafing through some papers.

'JU 2002:13, the new correctional treatment act,' she said.

Annika scribbled out Rosenbad 4 and wrote 'Regeringsgatan' instead.

'I must have misunderstood,' she said. 'I'll try to catch him tomorrow.'

She stuffed her notes in her bag, grabbed her hat, gloves and scarf, searched for her mobile in the mess on her desk but failed to find it, and a.s.sumed it must be somewhere in her bag, then yanked open the door and headed for the newsdesk.

Jansson had only just arrived. He was sitting there bleary-eyed and unkempt, reading the local papers.

'There's something wrong with the machine,' he said to Annika, pointing at a plastic cup on his desk.

'Isn't it time for a smoke?' she said, and Jansson immediately took out his cigarette packet.

Annika stepped into the empty smoking area.

'I may have found a serial killer,' she said as Jansson lit his twentieth cigarette of the day.

He exhaled a plume of smoke and stared up at the extractor fan. 'May?'

'I don't know if, or what, the police know,' she said. 'I'm hoping to grab Q on his way to a departmental committee in quarter of an hour.'

'So what have you got?'

'Three deaths,' she said. 'A journalist killed in a hit-and-run, a murdered boy in Lulea, and a local councillor shot in osthammar. The relatives all received anonymous letters the day after the deaths, handwritten Mao quotations on lined A4, posted in 'Sverige' envelopes with ice-hockey players on the stamps.'

Jansson fixed his glazed eyes on her, exhausted by eighteen years on the nightshift, a fourth wife and a fifth baby.

'Sounds like you're sorted,' he said. 'The police just have to confirm it.'

'With a bit of luck they'll have more information.'

The editor looked at his watch.

'Get downstairs straight away,' he said, putting out the half-smoked cigarette in the chrome ashtray. 'I'll get a car.'

She spun to her right and raced, with tunnel-vision, towards the lift. She ran down the stairs because both lifts were busy.

A taxi was waiting outside the main entrance.

'Name?' the driver said.

'Torstensson,' Annika said as she sank into the back seat.

It was an old trick of the trade from the previous editor's time. Annika, Jansson and a few of the others got into the habit of booking taxis in the former editor-in-chief's name, because it was usually quicker to jump into another taxi than the one you yourself had booked. Occasionally the booked taxi-driver who had been left waiting angrily for 'Torstensson' would go in and shout his name in the newsroom, which never failed to raise a laugh. Even though Torstensson had been elbowed out by Schyman, the old tradition lived on.

Sleet was whipping at the windows of the car, making Annika blink and flinch. The traffic was solid; a traffic-light changed up ahead but the line of cars failed to move at all.

Annika could feel adrenalin making her fingers itch.

'I'm in one h.e.l.l of a hurry,' she said. 'Is there any other way of getting there?'

The driver looked at her over his shoulder with a look of scorn. 'You called for a taxi, not a tank.'

She checked the time, trying to tell herself that the traffic would be just as bad for Q.

'After these lights there's a bus lane,' the driver said encouragingly.

At three minutes to four he pulled up on Hamngatan, at the corner of Regeringsgatan. She scrawled her name on the receipt for the invoice and leaped out of the taxi with her bag hanging from one arm, her chest hammering with anxiety.

The traffic was roaring around her, splashing water and mud up her trousers. The banks and shops had all put in their Christmas windows already, the lights flashing in her eyes. She peered through the sleet.

Was she too late? Had he already gone in?

A dark-blue Volvo with tinted windows pulled up outside Regeringsgatan 3032. She noticed it because it was far too un.o.btrusive. Before her brain had even worked out why, she knew he was inside. She rushed over and positioned herself by the doorway, so he would have to pa.s.s her on his way in.

'My secretary said you called and were fishing,' he said as he slammed the back door of the Volvo. The car glided away quickly and noiselessly into the traffic, swallowed up by the snow, totally neutral.

'I want to know if you know about the serial killer,' she said, staring at him, icy water trickling down her temples.

'Which one?' he said.

'Very funny,' she said, feeling the sleet run down the back of her neck. 'The one sending Mao quotes to his victims.'

Q stared at her for several seconds. She saw the snow settle on his hair and slowly slide down towards his eyebrows. The shoulders of his flame-coloured raincoat were soon soaked. The bare hand clutching his briefcase imperceptibly gripped the handle tighter.

'I'm not with you,' he said, and she felt a chill come from inside out rather than the other way round.

'The journalist in Lulea,' she said. 'The boy who witnessed his death. A Centre Party councillor in osthammar. There must be something that connects them.'

He took a couple of paces towards her, his eyes darkly watchful, and tried to get past her.

'I can't talk now,' he said from the corner of his mouth.

She moved quickly to the right, blocking his path.

'It's Ragnwald,' she said in a low voice when he was right in front of her. 'He's back, isn't he?'

Commissioner Q looked at her for several long seconds, their white breath mingling as it was blown away by the wind.

'One fine day you're going to be too clever for your own good,' he said.

'Have been, all my life,' she said.

'I'll call you this evening,' he said, and she let him walk round her, hearing him speak into the entry phone, and the click as the lock opened.

Anne Snapphane was walking straight into the wind, no matter which direction she faced. Every time she changed direction, the sleet changed as well. As usual she cursed the fact that she had been so amenable when Mehmet had suggested that Miranda go to a nursery in his block rather than near her. He was firmly settled in his home, and she wasn't, so it had made sense at the time.

But not any more, four years and eighteen thousand hours of travelling back and forth later.

The nursery really was in an idyllic setting, in an inner courtyard off one of the quietest and smartest streets on ostermalm. Almost all Miranda's friends there had posh names with 'von' or 'af'.

Okay, so there was a pair of twins with the common name Andersson, but they were the daughters of Sweden's most popular film actress.

She turned the last corner and was met with a storm of icy shards, making her gasp, ready to admit defeat. She stopped to catch her breath, squinted and could just make out the entrance further down the street, as she leaned against the building at her side.

It wasn't the wind or sleet that was getting to her, she was well aware of that. And it wasn't some hideous disease that would end up being named after her either.

It was her job, or rather it was the boiling cauldron of power-struggles that the owners of the company had ignited when they set up TV Scandinavia. Today the family that owned the biggest film distribution company in Scandinavia, and which also happened to own Annika's b.l.o.o.d.y tabloid, had sabotaged all the negotiations they had conducted with both foreign and Swedish film companies. The agreements that formed the very foundation of TV Scandinavia had been broken, one by one, starting at half past eight that morning. The owners had been busy over the weekend, scaring the life, not to mention the profit, out of every single independent film company north of the Equator.

I wonder what's going to happen, Anne thought, closing her eyes against the darkness. Is this television company built on solid ground, or quicksand? Is this television company built on solid ground, or quicksand?

She was desperate to get home; and desperate for a drink, a b.l.o.o.d.y large gla.s.s of vodka with lemon and ice, cotton-wool for the brain, and a chance for her body to relax.

Not in front of Miranda, she thought. She could see Annika's face in front of her when she had told her about her father's drinking, how he had made such a fool of himself, falling over and shouting, until he was eventually found dead in a snowdrift a few hundred metres from the works in Halleforsnas.

Can't let that happen, she thought, bracing herself against the wind and setting off again towards the nursery.

A strong smell of small children and wet raincoats. .h.i.t her as she opened the door. The porch was a sea of brown mud, with the cheery command 'h.e.l.lo! All shoes off!' on a colourful sign above the shoe-rack.

Anne wiped her feet half-heartedly: the state of the doormat suggested that it wasn't going to make any difference. Then she tiptoed into the hall where all the little blue shelves, an alcove for every child, were full to overflowing with children's clothes, stuffed toys, drawings, photographs of holidays, birthdays, Christmases.

She took a deep breath, about to call to her daughter, when she caught sight of the woman in the door to the kitchen.

Tall, thin, with long, strawberry-blond hair in soft curls over one shoulder. A Palestinian shawl.

Anne blinked.

So ridiculously medieval, wearing a Palestinian shawl.

The woman stiffened when she saw Anne, her eyes taking on a look of slight panic.

'I . . .' she began, collecting herself. 'My name's Sylvia, I'm Sylvia.'

She took a few steps forward, and held out her hand.

Anne stared at the woman, nausea growing like a tornado in her stomach, unable to lift her hand or return the greeting.

'What are you doing here?' she said. The words sounded brittle and echoey to her own ears.

Mehmet's new woman, his fiancee, his future wife, the woman who was carrying his new child, she was standing in front of her looking confused and pretty terrified.

'I . . . was going to pick Miranda up, but she said that you . . .'

'It's my week,' Anne said, unable to understand why her voice was coming from so far away. 'Why are you here?'

Sylvia Pregnant Fiancee ran her tongue over her lips and Anne noticed they were sensual, she was beautiful. Sylvia was much more beautiful than she was. Jealousy and spite p.r.i.c.ked her eyes like knives, warping her sight. She was beside herself with spite and humiliation and realized at that very moment that she had lost, and if she allowed herself to look destroyed then she would be. She would have to construct some self-respect for herself.

'I must have got it wrong,' Sylvia said. 'I thought I was supposed to be collecting her today. I thought it was my day.'

'Do you start all your sentences with "I"?' Anne said, suddenly able to move again, her legs manoeuvring past Sylvia Beautiful Pregnant Fiancee and into the kitchen to a yell of 'Mummy!'

Miranda flew into her arms, holding an apple-core in one hand, and buried her sticky mouth in her hair.