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“I want to keep it,” she said.

“Of course,” Lindell said.

Dorotea left again and returned, sitting down and looking at Lindell.

“I think he met a woman.”

“It seems like it,” Lindell said. “He used the word ‘happy.’ He didn’t say anything when he came home?”

“No, and I didn’t want to pry.”

“Were you upset?”

Dorotea shook her head.

“Then he got a prescription for sleeping pills,” Lindell continued. “You didn’t notice anything, like him being down or anything?”

“Nothing. Petrus was not the kind to talk about himself.”

Ann Lindell trusted Dorotea’s judgment. Even if Petrus had not said anything about a woman Lindell was convinced that Dorotea had reasons for her suspicions.

“Do you have any idea who the woman might have been?”

“I don’t know anything else,” Dorotea said firmly and Lindell understood there was nothing more to say on the subject.

Lindell stayed for another half an hour before taking her leave. On her way to her car, which she had parked on Petrus Blomgren’s property, she wondered if he had met the woman in Mallorca or if she had been his travel companion from the start.

The possibilities of checking passenger lists from May 1981 were slim, but she would look into it.

Next stop was Arne Wiikman. With the help of Dorotea’s directions she found the small freestanding house close to the highway between Uppsala and Gysinge almost immediately.

Arne Wiikman was standing in his garden with a rake in his hand.

When Lindell parked the car he stopped working, leaning the rake up against a tree.

“What a pleasure,” he said as Lindell came walking up. “I hate leaves.” He looked as if he meant it. He glared at his garden. “It’s these damn poplars. Soon I’ll take down the damn lot of them.” Lindell smiled and started to explain the reason for her visit.

“Yes, yes,” Wiikman interrupted her, “I know why you’re here. Let’s go in. Why stay around this shit.”

He kicked at a pile of leaves and walked over to the front steps.

“You’ve talked to Dorotea, I understand,” he said and opened the door, letting Lindell enter first.

“No, don’t take your shoes off. Just walk right in.”

He more or less shoved Ann Lindell into the living room, a small room that was dominated by a sectional pine sofa, upholstered in brown cloth. The largest elk head she had ever seen was hanging on one wall.

“Not so cheeky anymore,” Arne Wiikman said with pride in his voice, when he saw her gaze. “Sit down. You want to talk about Blomgren, I assume. Do you want coffee?”

Lindell shook her head.

“Good! Well, have you gotten the murderer? No, of course not or you wouldn’t be here. That’s a pity, and a shame. It’s probably some foreigner or drug addict who . . .”

He stopped and looked at her.

“What did it feel like to shoot that addict? Yes, I recognize you from the paper.”

“It feels like hell,” Lindell said emphatically.

Arne Wiikman grinned.

“Would think so,” he said.

Lindell flipped open her notepad.

“Who would want to kill Petrus Blomgren?”

Wiikman’s expression shifted quickly. The grin was replaced for a moment by something that Lindell read as surprise.

“I don’t know,” he said and coughed.

“About twenty years ago Petrus traveled to Mallorca and had a love affair there. Do you know who the woman was?”

Wiikman looked up.

“Is that the kind of thing you dig up?”

“We dig into everything.”

The man leaned over the low coffee table.

“See that elk head? Blomgren was with me when I shot the bastard. We were positioned next to each other. I spotted the creature approaching but he was too far away for me. Petrus had the perfect shot. He had a clear field of vision, maybe fifty meters. He just had to raise his rifle. Hell, he could have shot from the hip, but he let it pass. Do you know why? He let it go to me. He wanted me to take it. That’s what a good friend does. He had bagged a giant a few years before and now he wanted to give me the same pleasure. See?”

Wiikman glanced at the trophy above his head. Lindell saw the emotion and anger in the man’s face.

“Who