stomach got in the way, but she managed it. Twice.
“I love you,” he assured her, still asleep. His hand fumbled under the sheet to draw her close, but by then she had already managed to sit upright on the edge of the bed. All of a sudden she was desperate for a pee. Her bladder was bursting all the time. She’d already been to the bathroom twice during the night.
Quarter of an hour later Anna-Maria climbed out of her Ford Escort in the car park below The Source of All Our Strength church. It was still bitterly cold. The air pinched and nipped at her cheeks. If she breathed through her mouth her throat and lungs hurt. If she breathed through her nose the fine hairs in her nostrils froze when she inhaled. She wound her scarf around to cover her mouth and looked at her watch. Half an hour max; any longer and the car wouldn’t start. It was a big parking lot with spaces for at least four hundred cars. Her light-red Escort looked small and insignificant beside Sven-Erik Stålnacke’s Volvo 740. A radio car was parked next to Sven-Erik’s Volvo. Apart from that there were only a dozen or so cars, completely covered in snow. The forensic team must have gone already. She started to walk up the narrow path to the church on Sandstensberget. The frost lay like icing on the birch trees, and right at the top of the hill the mighty Crystal Church soared up into the night sky, surrounded by stars and planets. It stood there like a gigantic illuminated ice cube, shimmering with the Aurora Borealis.
All bloody show, she thought as she struggled up the bank. This lot are rolling in money; they ought to be giving some of their cash to Save the Children instead. But I suppose it’s more fun to sing gospel songs in a huge church than to dig wells in Africa.
In the distance she could see her colleagues Sven-Erik Stålnacke, Sergeant Tommy Rantakyrö and Inspector Fred Olsson outside the church door. Sven-Erik, bareheaded as usual, was standing quite still, leaning slightly backwards with his hands deep in the warm pockets of his fleece. The two younger men were bounding about like excited puppies. She couldn’t hear them, but she could see Rantakyrö’s and Olsson’s eager chatter coming out of their mouths like white bubbles. The puppies barked happily in greeting as soon as they caught sight of her.
“Hi,” yapped Tommy Rantakyrö, “how’s it going?”
“Fine,” she called back cheerfully.
“Soon we’ll be saying hello to your stomach first, then you’ll turn up quarter of an hour later,” said Fred Olsson.
Anna-Maria laughed.
She met Sven-Erik’s serious gaze. Small icicles had formed in his walrus moustache.
“Thanks for coming,” he said. “I hope you’ve had breakfast, because what’s in there won’t exactly give you an appetite. Shall we go in?”
“Do you want us to wait for you?”
Fred Olsson was stamping his feet up and down in the snow. He was looking from Sven-Erik to Anna-Maria and back again. Sven-Erik was supposed to be taking over during Anna-Maria’s leave, so technically he was in charge now. But since Anna-Maria was here as well it was a bit difficult to know who was making the decisions.
Anna-Maria kept quiet and looked at Sven-Erik. She was only there to keep him company.
“It would be good if you could hang on,” said Sven-Erik, “so we don’t suddenly get somebody coming along who has no business here before the body has been collected. But by all means come and stand inside the door if you’re cold.”
“Hell no, we can stand outside, I just wondered, that’s all,” Fred Olsson assured them.
“No problem.” Tommy Rantakyrö grinned with blue lips. “We’re men after all. Men don’t feel the cold.”
Sven-Erik went into the church right behind Anna-Maria and pulled the heavy door shut behind them. They walked slowly through the cloakroom, slumbering in the twilight. Long ranks of empty coat hangers rattled like an out-of-tune glockenspiel, set in motion by the draught as the cold air outside met the warmth inside. Two swing doors led into the main body of the church. Sven-Erik instinctively lowered his voice as they went in.
“It was Viktor Strandgård’s sister who rang the main office around three. She’d found him dead and she used the phone in the pastor’s office.”
“Where is she? At the station?”
“Well, no. We don’t know where she is. I left instructions to get somebody out there looking for her. There was nobody in the