Too late, Lindell thought. We were still sitting in the car. She was going to ask if the house had been under surveillance, but Moya antic.i.p.ated her.

"It seems he managed to escape despite our precautions," he said. "He may have used a back exit. There is a door that opens into a narrow pa.s.sage between the buildings. There one could force oneself between the wall and an old chicken coop and reach an alley."

The son of the house gurgled and stammered in the corridor, the man in the first room continued to cough, and the noise from the street grew louder. She heard laughter and the sound of an accelerating Vespa.

The surreal nature of the entire situation meant that Lindell was less upset than she would normally have been. She had been looking forward to putting her hands on this Urbano. He would-if he chose to cooperate-shed light on the Cederen investigation. So close, she thought, so d.a.m.ned close, and now the anger struck her with full force.

They left the building. Two policemen stayed behind in case Urbano returned. Lindell and Haver speculated about the possibility that he had been tipped off and decided to flee. They did not want to trouble Moya with questions. His body language indicated that he was ashamed and upset, and they did not want to add to his burden. He spoke quietly and tersely to his staff and colleagues from Ronda, but when he got into the car, his rage broke out. The officer from Ronda who had swaggered down the street was given an earful. Moya barked incessantly for a couple of minutes and then slammed the car door shut.

Lindell and Haver flew home the following day. Wanning and the data expert were staying on for another day or so. The good-byes between them and Moya were warm. Lindell again invited Moya to visit Sweden and Uppsala. Moya smiled and a.s.sured them that he would very much like to travel to Scandinavia, not the least so that he would see them again. Haver thought that Moya was really talking to Lindell.

On the plane on the way home they conversed in low voices, summarizing their visit and wondering how best to make use of the information that they had acquired. They had already faxed home the facts about Urbano's and Olivares's trip to Sweden, and Lindell had called Ottosson on several occasions in order to keep him informed.

She knew that digging into the two Spaniards' trip was already under way. The most pertinent questions were where they had stayed and how they had gotten around. Had they rented a car or was there a Swedish contact with whom they had stayed? The hotels in and around Uppsala would be checked as well as all of the car rental companies.

Overall, Lindell was pleased with the visit, despite the fact that Urbano had slipped out of their grasp.

Twenty-six.

"So let's see where we stand," Ottosson said cheerfully.

He was standing in front of the flip pad that was hardly ever used in meetings but that now he seemed to feel was necessary in order to ill.u.s.trate the current situation.

It was Lindell who should have given the overview, but she had asked him to step in, claiming a headache.

"Two Spaniards with criminal records, Urbano and Olivares, travel to Sweden and stay here for two days. During this time the Cederen family dies. Two of them are the victims of a hit-and-run, and the third dies in a most perplexing fashion," Ottosson went on.

Sammy Nilsson gave Berglund an amused look. "Dies in a most perplexing fashion," he wrote in his notebook and pushed it over to Berglund so he could read it.

Both of the names were written across Ottosson's flip pad in big letters. After Olivares's name there was a black cross. Ottosson had been in full pedagogical gear as he set up the meeting.

"We believe that they contributed to Josefin and Emily's deaths. It may have happened thus: They picked up Sven-Erik Cederen somehow-we still don't know how-take his car, drive to Uppsala-Nas to kill the first two, return to the forest in Rasbo, get Cederen drunk, and gas him to death."

"But what about the note that says 'sorry'?" Riis objected.

"It's very possible to force someone to write a note like that," Ottosson answered calmly. "Keep in mind that he had fifty centiliters of gin in his veins."

He looked at Riis, who did not pursue this any further.

"But why did they do it?" Ottosson said.

"Cederen was the primary target in the trip to Sweden," Haver said. "I don't think we have to speculate too much about that."

"How did they know that Josefin was taking a walk that day?" Ottosson asked.

"They drove out to Uppsala-Nas in order to kill Josefin and Emily in some way, intending to frame the husband. Perhaps they saw the mother and child leave the house and followed them to wait for the right spot."

No one could understand why it had been so important to kill Sven-Erik Cederen to the point of murdering his wife and child and making it look like a family drama. What interests had Cederen posed a threat to?

A large part of the morning meeting was devoted to various lines of speculation. Everyone a.s.sumed that the actions had been directed from Spain, but nothing new had been heard from Mlaga and Urbano was still missing. The murder of his companion Olivares was still unsolved, but everything pointed to Urbano being behind it. Perhaps Olivares had become shaky and started to pose a risk to Urbano.

Haver tossed out the theory that perhaps someone had intended to silence both Urbano and Olivares, but that the former had gotten away. In this case, there was another force to be reckoned with. Perhaps UNA Medico was the party that had the most interest in keeping the whole thing quiet.

In other words, the investigators were frustrated. The scrutiny of hotel and car rental companies had not yielded any results. The group was slowly becoming convinced that someone in Sweden had a.s.sisted the Spaniards.

Lindell was having trouble maintaining her concentration. She partic.i.p.ated only sporadically in the discussion. The experience outside Gabriella Mark's cottage had left an impression. Her thoughts kept circling back to the injured elk calf. What was going to happen to it? She had even thought about trying to get someone to catch the calf and take it to the animal hospital in Ultuna but realized that this was impractical. Who was concerned about an injured elk calf?

But it wasn't simply the sight of the animal that had shaken her. She had experienced some of Gabriella's terror in the brief time that she had spent at the cottage. Lindell had no trouble identifying with her. They were almost the same age and were both single, and there was an aspect of deliberate isolation to Gabriella's life that both attracted and repelled her.

The source of her uneasiness was probably the fear of loneliness, but it was also the thought of the life that Gabriella had created for herself: the process by which a woman with significant problems had slowly transformed herself into a strong and solitary figure. The vegetable garden seemed to Lindell to promise a way out. Did she herself want to flee to the country and carrots? Not really, but perhaps in another form. To choose a life other than the one she was currently living was becoming her goal.

She tried to pull herself together and listen more carefully to the comments her colleagues were making, but she soon realized that the discussion was faltering. Ottosson had also seen this, and his previously optimistic commentary had switched to the occasional words of encouragement to get the team to engage in creative thinking.

The meeting ended after three-quarters of an hour. Lindell, who did not want to hear any comforting words from Ottosson, hurried to her office.

On the desk there was a note from Fredriksson. He had been working for about a month on a stabbing case that was starting to unfold into an unpleasant chain of events with connections to the so-called Uppsala mafia. Lindell had hardly seen him for the past two weeks.

"Call Adrian Mrd," the note said, accompanied by a telephone number. "Animal lover," Fredriksson had added at the very bottom.

Lindell stared at the note and wondered when Allan had dropped it off and how he had come across this "animal lover," but she decided not to worry about any of this. She dialed the number.

Adrian Mrd picked up on the first signal as if he had been waiting for the call. Lindell introduced herself.

"I'm glad you called," Mrd said.

From his voice, Lindell judged that he was in his mid-twenties.

"I have some thoughts about MedForsk," he went on. "Isn't that what you're working on?"

"Who are you?" Lindell asked.

"I work at a publication called Alternative Animal. We cover information on animal factories, the food industry, and alternative lifestyles."

"I see, and why do you want to talk to me?"

Mrd eagerly started to describe the typical living conditions of the most common household animals. He spoke a great deal about chicken farming, which he had apparently given a lot of thought to.

"You mentioned MedForsk," Lindell interrupted. "Perhaps we could meet and talk about that?"

"Sure," Mrd said. "That was why I reached out."

They decided to meet up in town. Lindell suggested the Savoy, but Mrd had no idea where that was, so they agreed on Hugo's instead.

Adrian Mrd was close to forty and did not match any of Lindell's expectations. He was short and portly-if not outright fat-and had unruly red hair.

He was sitting at the very back of the cafe, chain-smoking. Alternative lifestyles indeed, Lindell thought.

"Cheers," he said, smiling widely and holding out a chubby hand.

"Hi," Lindell said, finding it hard not to like this unusual character.

She sat down after she had bought herself a cup of coffee with milk. While she was busy getting herself settled, Mrd took out a stack of papers.

"Here is a little information on what we do," he said and pushed it over. The magazine that he had mentioned lay on top.

Lindell shoved the stack into her bag and sipped her coffee.

"MedForsk," she said.

"I have a good friend in Save the Animals. It doesn't matter what his name is. I wouldn't reveal his name even if I was tortured."

"I don't think you need to worry about that," Lindell said.

"Well, he's worried. Ever since the business at TV4, your friends have been on him like hawks. They're pretty shook up even if they're trying to look cool. A lot of them are kids who aren't completely clear about what they're doing. It's fun to save foxes and hamsters, but now things are starting to feel uncomfortable."

He lit a new cigarette. Lindell was starting to get more interested. It's when things get uncomfortable that we come into the picture, she thought.

"My contact says that they have evidence that MedForsk is engaged in illegal animal experimentation."

"Where is the evidence coming from?"

Mrd looked at her appraisingly. "From inside the company," he said finally.

Lindell tried not to reveal her excitement. She took another sip of her coffee and adopted a neutral expression.

"Who was it?" she asked.

"I don't know," Mrd said, but Lindell could see that he was lying.

"Who was it?" she repeated.

Mrd looked disappointed, as if she hadn't lived up to his expectations.

"Please respect what I'm telling you," he said. "What is important is the information my contact received."

His voice took on a sharp note that Lindell did not a.s.sociate with his almost jovial appearance. She always found herself a.s.suming that heavyset people would also be friendly and communicative, but it was clear that Adrian Mrd knew how to stand up for himself.

"Okay," she said and smiled. "Keep going."

He returned her smile and resumed his narrative. The leak inside MedForsk had apparently come across a doc.u.ment proving that experiments had been carried out on primates. What tests these might have been, it did not specify. When Lindell asked if the tests could have been conducted abroad, Mrd said that the doc.u.ment neither proved nor disproved this.

The test results had been difficult to evaluate. A group of test animals had reacted in an unexpectedly positive way, while others had actually suffered damage. The effects in question pertained to altering internal systems, and some of the animals became extremely aggressive.

"And these were illegal tests, you said?"

Mrd nodded.

"How can you be sure?"

"We just know."

A group of teens came into the tiny cafe and sat down at the table next to them. They were talking loudly and immediately lit cigarettes.

"Maybe we should go somewhere else," Lindell said.

They left Hugo's, and when they came out onto the street, Lindell gratefully drew in the fresh air.

"Let's go to the Linnaeus Garden," she suggested.

They had to crowd through the narrow door with a group of j.a.panese tourists before managing to get inside. On either side of the gravel path leading up to the orangery there were beautiful flowers in blue and pink. A few vibrantly colored peonies were now wilting on their stems.

It turned out that Mrd knew something about plants.

"These used to be called Linne's daughters," he said and pointed to some pale pink blooms planted along the path. Between these there were patches of wolfsbane and daylilies.

They found a bench in the shade under a linden tree. Lindell's gaze swept across the garden. If it hadn't been in this context, she would have appreciated this pocket of fresh air in the middle of the city a bit more. She enjoyed the sight of the neat rows of plants marked with handwritten signs as well as the happy tourists who sat at the cafe tables in front of the orangery. They reminded her of another life. Even though she had lived in Uppsala for many years, this was only the second time that she had visited the world-renowned garden. The first time she had come here was with Lundkvist, a former colleague who had moved away.

He had also liked plants, and they had slipped out here during a lunch break. There had not been a lot of talk of flowers that time either. Lindell recalled that Lundkvist had talked about a murder-now subject to the statute of limitations-that had taken place in the city.

Lindell brushed these thoughts aside and asked Mrd to continue his narrative.

"Okay, illegal testing, I'll buy that," she said.

"In addition to this, there was a doc.u.ment that we couldn't understand. It was in English."

Lindell felt a physical sensation in her body. Now, she thought with a sense of relief. This is the pebble that triggers the avalanche.

"Have you had it translated?"

Mrd nodded.

"What makes it so difficult to understand?"