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In vain she fished for signs of recognition in the muddy waters of her memory but the only thing she found was the feeling of a forceful power over her. And her own powerlessness.

She pushed the door open. Barefoot she fumbled her way over the cold wooden floor in the dim hall. She bumped against the telephone table, stopped, and listened. She thought she heard a car drive by on the street. I have nowhere to run to, she thought at once and the image of the little harbor restaurant from her daydream of the warm, foreign country appeared before her eyes. I have no valid passport to get me out of here. No ticket anywhere. Only a worn suitcase, with a sticker from Firenze, down in the basement.

A breeze swept up from the basement, a smell of raw clay and mold. She closed the protesting cellar door with care and turned the key.

With one hand clenching the blanket around her chest and the other trying to find a hold along the walls Laura felt her way around the large house. In the living room she saw herself for a moment in the large gold-framed mirror, like a shadow that flitted by in a landscape of giant bookcases, full of dust and tomes with texts that few knew or wanted to decipher, and thick draperies that closed around oak furniture, the chiffonier, the lead-heavy chairs with false decor and the pedestal table in the same grotesque style, cluttered with decades of withered knowledge.

In the kitchen she sat down on a chair. There was a knife on the table, a bag of grapes, and a chipped glass in the bottom of which some wine had dried into a dark spot.

She didn’t dare turn on the light. In the dirt-brown blanket that she had decided to throw away but that was her only protection right now, she had decided to await the sunrise.

She curled up, pulled the blanket more tightly around her, pulled her feet up on the chair and pressed her limbs against each other, let her hair become an extension of the blanket, closed her eyes, and stone by stone she reconstructed her inner being.

That which was true, the multitude of the Botanical Garden and the laughter that rose up from the uncountable grass blades, the raspy tongues of the cows and the butterfly in the panting flame of the hurricane lamp, she put aside in a safe place, out of reach of the world.

Laura Hindersten’s inner being was becoming petrified at the same pace as the day was dawning. Everything artificial pulverized and melted together into a massive piece of black shimmering diabase. For this, one needed a superhuman strength that was only possible under immense pressure and a minimal amount of oxygen.

To think a person can be this still, she thought. One doesn’t need to breathe in order to live.

Ten

The blows were delivered by a person in an uncontrollable rage.”

And what would you know about that, Ola Haver thought.

“At least that’s what I think,” the medical examiner added.

“Were there many blows?”

“Perhaps a half dozen or so. Clearly in excess of the situation. One, at most two would have been sufficient.”

Petrus Blomgren’s pale body lay on the examiner’s table like a shriveled radish. Göran Finn carefully peeled off his gloves. Haver stared at Petrus’s feet. It was obvious that they had been put to good use. They were crooked, with thick callouses and several deformed toenails on the right foot.

“Apart from that the old man was in perfect health,” Göran Finn said. “He could have lived twenty more years.”

Haver looked at the murdered man’s hands. They were of the same caliber as the feet.

“We believe he died almost at once, at about nine o’clock. He was bludgeoned in the back of the head, fell headlong, and as a bonus received several more blows. Traces of brain tissue were found on his neck, on his shirt, and even on his back. Fury, in other words.”

I wonder where he comes from, with that dialect, Haver thought.

“Was the killer . . .”

“. . . yes, he was probably right-handed, if that’s what you were wondering. That’s always the first question you ask,” the pathologist said with something