She felt quite dopey when she woke up. Must have been a bad dream. Her throat was swollen and it hurt to swallow. The heater had gone out and there was no more paraffin. She reached for her boots. They were freezing. A raw chill was spreading from the boots up through her legs. She was already wearing her anorak.

Lifting the hem of the curtain, she peered outside. The other allotments looked quiet and empty. She grabbed an apple on her way out and then opened the front door. It wasn’t raining any more but the sky was such a dark grey it seemed strange that light could penetrate it at all.

The small garden had been neatly prepared for the winter months. The Johanssons had been very careful to follow recommendations in their gardening books. All dead plants had been cut back and put on the compost heap just inside the wooden fence. They had put fir branches over the borders, presumably where their most tender specimens were hidden during the winter.

‘Are you looking for somebody?’

She started, turning quickly to see who had spoken. There was a man standing on the other side of the fence at a point outside the scanning range from her window. He was holding some cut branches.

‘Oops! You really made me jump!’

He looked at her suspiciously and she couldn’t blame him. It was well known that the Eriksdal Park area was frequented by junkies.

‘Kurt and Birgit asked me to look after their cottage for a couple of weeks. They’re off to the Canaries.’

She walked over to him and held out her hand across the fence. Maybe this chatty mention of the Canary Islands was a bit much? It was too late for second thoughts now.

‘My name is Monica. I’m Birgit’s niece.’

He shook her hand and introduced himself.

‘Uno Hjelm. Sorry to bother you, but we operate a kind of Neighbourhood Watch here. There’s quite a few weird characters about in this area.’

‘I know. That’s why they asked me to turn up once in a while to keep an eye on things.’

He nodded. She sensed that her lies had gone down quite well.

‘Off to the Canaries, eh? That’s something else, now. Didn’t say a word about that last week.’

No surprise there.

‘It was a sudden inspiration. Well, they came across a cheap offer.’

He looked towards the sky.

‘Well, we can only hope they get better weather down there. Not such a bad idea, getting away to the sun for a bit.’

‘I couldn’t agree more.’

He seemed to be dreaming about travelling, so she took the opportunity to move on.

‘I’ll go for a walk now and come back later.’

‘Right you are. Well, we might still be here, though I’m ready to give up pretty soon. I just thought I’d come and look the place over.’

She nodded and walked down the path towards the small gate. She only hoped that Kurt and Birgit wouldn’t turn up while she was off to the Statoil garage.

Now, that would confuse Mr Hjelm.

She walked as quickly as she could. The label in the sleeping bag stated that it would protect against temperatures as low as fifteen degrees below zero, but she’d woken up feeling frozen after her brief nap. If only she had a couple of aspirins for her throat. Maybe she could scrounge some at the Salvation Army hostel?

She had almost reached the Statoil garage when the rain started again. Drying wet clothes was an utterly miserable exercise and she almost ran the last bit to get under the roof. If only she had an umbrella for the way back!

The news posters for that afternoon were on display outside the garage doors. She looked quickly at them in passing. One was yellow and the words were printed on two lines.

VICTIM OF RITUAL MURDER
AT THE GRAND

MYSTERIOUS WOMAN WANTED BY POLICE 

She stopped to look.

There was a photo below the headline. No question whose face it showed.

It was Jörgen Grundberg’s.