policewoman sympathetically patting her arm. They said later that Louise's screams had been heartrending; eventually somebody had forced a tablet down her throat, making her even more confused and sleepy. She recalled how all the people crammed into the little flat had started to move at snail's pace, as if in a slow-motion film.
As she fell into the abyss she had also had confused thoughts about God. She had never conducted a real conversation with God before, or at least not since her teens when she had gone through a phase of persistent religious brooding. One snowy morning in early December, shortly before the traditional processions to celebrate St Lucia, one of her classmates had been run over and killed by a snow-plough on her way to school. It was the first time death had affected her personally. It was a death smelling of wet wool, a death enveloped by wintry cold and heavy snow. Her teacher had wept – that in itself had been a ghastly attack on her childhood idyll, seeing her strict class teacher burst into tears like a terrified and abandoned child. A candle was burning on the desk where the dead child used to sit. It happened to be the desk next to her own, and now her friend had gone away: that is what death meant, going away, no more than that. What was so frightening, and eventually horrific, was the realisation that death struck at random. She started to wonder how that could be, and it suddenly dawned on her that the question may well have been addressed to what was known as God.
But He did not reply. She tried every trick she could think of to attract His attention, she made a little altar in a corner of the woodshed, but no inner voice answered her questions. God was an absent adult who only spoke to a child when it suited Him. She eventually discovered that she did not really believe in God: perhaps at most she had fallen in love with Him, a secret passion, rather like one for an inaccessible boy several years older than herself.
From then on there had never been a God in her life, not until now; but He did not speak to her on this occasion either. She was alone. There was only herself plus the policewoman patting her arm and all the other people speaking in low voices, moving slowly and apparently looking for something that had been lost.
There was a sudden stillness, like when a recorded tape snaps. The voices all around her were no longer there. Instead she could hear whispers inside her head, saying over and over again that it wasn't true. Henrik was merely asleep, he was not dead. He could not possibly be dead. After all, she had come to visit him.
A police officer, in plain clothes, with tired eyes, asked her gently to go to the kitchen with him. She realised afterwards it was so that she did not have to watch Henrik being taken away. They sat down at the kitchen table, and she could feel the breadcrumbs against the palm of her hand.
Henrik couldn't possibly be dead, the breadcrumbs were still there!
The policeman had to repeat his name before she caught on. Göran Wrath. I shall feel boundless anger if what I refuse to believe eventually turns out to be true, she thought.
She answered his questions with questions of her own, which he replied to in turn. It was as if they were circling round each other.
The only certainty was that Henrik had died. Göran Wrath said there was nothing to suggest foul play. Had he been ill? She said he had never been seriously ill, the usual childhood ailments had come and gone without leaving any trace, and he had never been prone to infections. Wrath wrote down her replies in a little notebook. She looked at his chubby fingers and wondered if they were sensitive enough to seek out the truth.
'Somebody must have killed him,' she said.
'There are no signs of his having been assaulted.'
She wanted to protest, but lacked the strength. They were still sitting in the kitchen. Wrath asked if there was anybody she would like to phone. He gave her a mobile, and she rang her father. If Aron no longer existed and was unable to accept his responsibilities, her father would have to step in. She could hear the phone ringing, but there was no reply. Perhaps he was out in