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Ann thought she had been able to come up with an idea of Petrus Blomgren. His landscape was known to her; she could articulate the connections that had directed Blomgren’s life. With two exceptions: the intended suicide and the prescribed sleeping pills. These constituted a tear in the fabric that drew the gaze, that nagged at her.

She had encountered this before. It could be a person’s dream, an old injustice, a humiliation that needled, itching like a stubborn mosquito bite.

Sometimes it was love, or the absence of love. Ann knew what that meant. Petrus Blomgren had lived a quiet life in an environment that he knew through all his senses. Everything was familiar and reassuring. Blomgren had had work, food, firewood and therefore warmth, and he could live, function as a citizen in Vilsne village, Jumkil county, Sweden, but something was missing: love, closeness to another person. Hadn’t he written something about the fact that he had to make all of his decisions alone? There was the tear in Blomgren’s life.

Ann wrote a few lines on her pad, got up from her desk, walked over to the window, and tried to link her line of reasoning with the second victim, Jan-Elis Andersson. He appeared just as alone but in this case the loneliness was of a different order.

“A load of shit,” she said out loud and returned to her desk.

The primness of the Andersson household gave a different impression. Suddenly she thought of what it was: there was something calculatingly parsimonious about the house.

At Petrus Blomgren’s the impression had been of something else, a kind of warmth that suffused the house in Jumkil. You could sense it in the small details like the occasional decorative items, the pictures on the walls, the little TV room, predictable in its simple, worn appearance, but nonetheless radiating a personableness that was absent in the house in Alsike.

At Jan-Elis Andersson’s the bookshelves were the dominating feature, filled to bursting with light brown folders in hard-pressed cardboard, carefully arranged in chronological order. Why did one keep accounts, receipts and vouchers, ancient sale agreements and contracts with such meticulous care?

Money, Ann decided and doodled a little on the page. It was the concern about his own finances, need for order and a nervous cataloging of debit and credit that controlled Jan-Elis Andersson’s life.

Perhaps he was happy with his folders, but there was probably also a source of concern and perhaps even anxiety. Was that the tear in Jan-Elis Andersson’s life?

“BLOMGREN—LOVE” she wrote in capitals on her pad, followed by a heart. On the next line there was “ANDERSSON—MONEY” and a dollar sign.

The investigation into Andersson’s life was in full swing. Sammy Nilsson and Ola Haver were the ones who were doing the digging and Ann believed they were going to verify her theory that money was the driving force in the murdered Andersson’s life.

Lindell was speculating, she knew this, but from the swaying tower of loose theories that she was now constructing she would perhaps be able to provide herself with an overview.

She saw the process in an inner graphic, how she scrutinized the landscape, binding together Vilsne village, Jumkil and Norr-Ededy village, Alsike, and in the intersection between the imagined lines she would find the answer.

“It’s that simple,” she muttered, drew a few lines, and threw down her pen, suddenly aware of the fact that it was the first time she could see Uppsala and the surrounding area in her mind, exactly as she could with her childhood Ödeshög. She had become an Upplander.

With this conviction she left the office but returned immediately. It’s not quite so simple, Upplander or not, she thought and opened the telephone directory. There she quickly found Birger Rundgren’s name and number, and pulled the phone over.

The voice that answered betrayed the fact that Ann Lindell was speaking with an old man. He could not remember Petrus Blomgren, which did not surprise Lindell. Blomgren was