ELLEN

9.00 P.M.

After many ifs and buts, Ellen managed to convince her mother to let her stay in Stockholm overnight by lying and saying that she would lose her job if she wasn’t present at the editorial meeting concerning the reorganisation early the next morning. As long as she met with Dr Hiralgo and showed progress, she might be able to keep her life and the Liv murder investigation separate without her parents reacting and complaining. She didn’t need to worry about her dad because he, as usual, was only putting in a guest performance and just pretending to care about her for a millisecond before returning his focus to his new, perfect family.

Ellen had promised Liv’s sister that she wouldn’t film the meeting — that was the condition on which she’d agreed to meet. The most important thing was for Ellen to gain the sister’s trust, so she could hopefully arrange an interview later to tell Liv’s story and fate.

She sat down at her desk, which was actually an old workbench from Örelo on which she had placed a sheet of glass. She would try to prepare for the meeting tomorrow and find out as much as possible about Liv. Who was she? What had she done the day she was murdered, and the days before? What routines did she have?

Ellen scratched down the questions on a loose piece of paper and realised that they resembled the questions Dr Hiralgo was trying to get answers to. She turned the paper over. Her stomach was growling. She’d eaten very little during the day and she looked at the clock. Soon, Philip would arrive — he had assured Margareta that he’d stay overnight to keep an eye on Ellen, like some kind of babysitter, and he had promised Ellen that they would plough through the entire ‘Shelf of Death’ together, so that she could hold herself in check. That’s a true friend, she thought, smiling to herself. Philip was the one who had christened the bookshelf in the living room, and he was scared to death of it in that overdramatic way that only Philip could be.

She stared at her collection. It was the only place in the apartment that was orderly. The books weren’t organised in alphabetical order, or by colour as some people did it. They were lined up according to crime, and all the titles were nonfiction. She’d had the bookshelf custom made. It covered the whole wall, all the way up to the ceiling. There was literature about various murders all around the world and far back in time. There were books about autopsy. Murders solved and unsolved. Conspiracies. Newspaper clippings. Everything about death that she’d collected during her life.

She had quite a bit on her computer, too, but she’d printed out most of it and filed it in binders. It was now mostly video material on her hard disk.

The high stepladder that took her up to the topmost shelves was leaning against the section for crimes against children.

Ellen went up and moved the ladder to the left before she went over to the refrigerator.

Which was empty.

But it didn’t matter. Philip was bringing take-out kebab.

There wasn’t any wine left, so it would have to be vodka and soda. It was the only thing left in the place. Philip had decided to stop drinking anyway. Ellen thought it would be interesting to see how long that would last. She remembered how close she herself had been to making the same decision earlier in the day, but that plan already felt distant.

She set out the bottles on the cocktail table and mixed a drink. It had been a long time, and she was probably pouring far too much vodka and topping it with too little soda. She plopped in a few chunks of ice and tasted it. It was good. Quite alright.

It felt strange to be home.

She put on Spotify’s hit list on the highest volume and opened the windows. Looked down at Skeppsbron and out over the bay towards Skeppsholmen and Grand Hotel. Stockholm was glowing with happiness. Boats, people, and a clear blue sky. She wished she’d been part of it, but she found herself in a completely different place and felt that yet another summer had passed, yet another year. The passing of time squeezed her lungs. She coughed. Knocked back the drink and went to mix a new one. This time it was better, or else her taste buds had already been blunted.

She glanced up at the wall above the couch. The photos of Lycke and Elsa were still hanging there beside each other. She hadn’t had it in her to take them down. She moved her eyes between the two small innocent girls. Two school photos, both with the same mottled grey background, even though they’d been taken twenty years apart. So cruelly unjust, it made her feel physical pain, in every little part of her body.

All around Lycke’s photo, Ellen had put up pictures and documents she had collected in her search for the girl.

She went up and took down the rubber eraser that was balanced on some pins. Smelt it. The scent of strawberry was still there.

They had collected erasers, she and Elsa. Competed on who had the nicest and the most. One evening when Elsa was asleep, Ellen had slipped into Elsa’s room and destroyed all her erasers. Cut them in the middle and crumbled them into tiny, tiny pieces.

Ellen took a pin and stuck it in her finger to make the memories disappear, and when they didn’t, she stuck herself again.

Her finger was bleeding, but she left it as it was, rooted out the pad she had been given by Dr Hiralgo, and reluctantly wrote down the word eraser. The blood from her finger dripped onto the paper. Ellen looked at the letters: eraser. She tore out the page, crumpled it up, and went and flushed it down the toilet. Searched in the junk drawer in the kitchen and found a bandage.

‘Death, death, death,’ she repeated out loud to herself.

Without thinking, she was back in front of the wall. Beside the photo of Elsa hung the necklace. A white water lily on a long silver chain. Grandmother had given them each a necklace.

Ellen took it down from the wall and hung it around her neck.

Elsa’s necklace had disappeared when she died. It was probably on the bottom somewhere, deep down in the mud.

She thought about all the strange questions Dr Hiralgo had asked. Like what she was wearing the day Elsa disappeared. What had they played? The White Stone. She remembered that. They’d been watching the TV series.

He had asked her if she had seen Elsa dead.

At first, she answered yes, but when she’d thought about it she couldn’t remember it. Why would she have seen her sister dead?

On the desk was the pile of old cases that she’d asked Agatha to find for her last spring. They all concerned children who had disappeared. At the top was the article about Elsa’s disappearance.

Ellen sat down on the floor and flicked quickly through the pile, trying not to be drawn into anything. But a spread in Aftonbladet made her stop. There were aerial photos from Örelo and photos of Ellen’s family. Once upon a time it had been a simple thing to obtain passport photos.

She got a pair of scissors and cut them out. Got some thumbtacks from the junk drawer and put the family photos up beside Elsa on the wall.

What the hell am I up to?