An hour and a half later the taxi turned off Odengatan and drove up Birger Jarlsgatan before turning onto Karlav?gen.

There were two police cars parked in front of the door. A police officer was standing outside. She paid the driver, leaped out, and ran over to the policeman.

“I’m Faye,” she said breathlessly. He looked at her seriously. “I don’t understand, you said you’d found Jack. Why are you still here? And where’s my daughter?”

“Can we go inside and talk?” he said, his eyes darting about.

“What do you mean? If you’ve spoken to Jack, then you must know where Julienne is?”

He tapped in the code and held the door open.

“Like I said, it’s probably best if you come upstairs with me.”

Faye followed him.

“Please, can you just tell me what’s happened? Is Jack up there?”

The policeman held the elevator door open.

“Your ex-husband’s up there,” he said. “But your daughter’s missing.”

“But Jack must know where she is, surely? She’s seven years old, she can hardly have vanished on her own. He was responsible for her. She was with him. What does Jack say?”

“He says he can’t remember anything.”

“Can’t remember anything?”

Her words bounced around the elevator.

The elevator stopped and they got out. The apartment door was open. Faye ran her hand over her face.

“We’ve found something that . . . there’s blood in the hall.”

“Blood. Oh, dear God . . .”

Faye stumbled and the policeman caught her and led her through the door. A white-clad forensics officer was crouched in the hall running some sort of instrument over the floor, where there was a patch of dark, congealed blood.

“Julienne?” she called out shrilly. “Julienne!”

Jack was sitting on a chair in the kitchen. Two police officers were speaking to him calmly. When Jack caught sight of Faye he started to get up but the officers stopped him. He sank back onto the chair.

“What’s happened?” she cried. “Where is she, Jack? Where’s Julienne?”

“I don’t know,” he said, sounding bewildered. “I woke up when the doorbell rang.”

The policeman led her away.

“We’re going to need something that belonged to your daughter.”

Faye stared at him in confusion.

“What do you mean? What for?”

He led her gently but firmly away. She could hear footsteps and voices in the hall. More police officers had arrived.

“For identification purposes,” he said. “Just in case.”

She let out a gasp, then nodded.

“Such as?”

“Her toothbrush. Or a hairbrush?”

Faye nodded. Pointed toward the bathroom. The policeman took out a bag, pulled on a pair of thin disposable gloves and led the way.

“That’s hers.”

He picked up the pink toothbrush with Elsa from Frozen on it and carefully put it in the bag. They got Julienne’s hairbrush from her room. That too was pink, with Elsa on the back.

It had started to get dark outside the windows. Faye stood up when a policewoman came into the small room where she had been told to wait. She was tall and blonde. Her hair was pulled up in a ponytail, and she had a friendly but focused look on her face.

“Is there any news?”

The policewoman shook her head.

“Please, sit down,” she said, nodding toward the sofa. “My name is Yvonne Ingvarsson, I’m a police inspector.”

Faye sat down and crossed her legs.

“I’m going to have to ask you a few questions, and I’d like you to answer them as carefully as you can.”

“Of course.”

“We still haven’t found Julienne, but there are a number of things that we’re concerned about. Extremely concerned.”

Faye closed her eyes and swallowed.

“Is she . . . do you think something’s happened to her?”

“We honestly don’t know. But the blood in the hall is definitely human. Forensics are comparing it to the DNA on her toothbrush and hairbrush.”

“Oh, God . . . I . . .”

“Your former husband, Jack, is unable to explain anything. His story doesn’t make sense, to put it bluntly. He claims he can’t remember what he was doing yesterday.”

“But he couldn’t possibly have harmed Julienne. You’re wrong. Someone must have taken her, somehow. He loves her, there’s no reason why he’d . . .”

“Who else could it be?”

She fell silent. The policewoman leaned forward and put her hand on her knee.

“According to his mobile phone and the satnav in his car, he went for a drive. At night.”

“What do you mean?”

“He drove to J?nk?ping. And we’ve found traces of blood in the trunk of his car. We’ll be comparing that with the blood found in the hall.”

“Stop it . . . please, stop . . . I don’t want to know.” Faye shook her head.

“You need to be strong now, Faye. I know it’s hard, but you’re going to have to help us if we’re to find Julienne.”

She nodded slowly, and eventually looked up and met the policewoman’s gaze.

“Our colleagues in J?nk?ping are examining the places Jack went last night. We’ve looked through both your computers, and I was wondering if you could explain what this is?”

Yvonne leafed through the file she had been holding on her lap and pulled out a sheet of paper. It was the email Faye had sent to Ylva. Faye opened her mouth to speak but Yvonne got there first.

“Is that you in the picture?”

She put the sheet of paper in Faye’s hands. She cast a quick glance at it. Nodded.

“Yes, that’s me.”

“And you sent this to Jack’s partner, Ylva Lehndorf?”

Faye nodded again.

“Why did you do that?”

“Because she was the one who took Jack away from me. I just wanted to . . .”

“Are you and Jack currently in a relationship?”

“What do you mean?”

“Have you and Jack slept with each other since you split up?”

“Yes. But not since he discovered I sent this to Ylva. Since then . . . he hates me.”

“According to Jack, your relationship has continued.”

“That’s ridiculous. He stormed into my office, shouting and yelling at me a few weeks ago. The security guards had to throw him out. But our fight was about us, not Julienne, I know he’d never harm her.” She shook her head.

“Do you know what else we’re discovered? That you, via a foreign investment company, acquired a majority stake in Compare. The company Jack founded. And was fired from. Is Jack aware of that?”

Faye drummed her fingers nervously on the table. The expression on Yvonne Ingvarsson’s face was hard to read.

“You’re not under suspicion for anything,” Yvonne went on. “But we need to know, so we can understand what’s happened.”

Faye nodded slowly. “Jack left me for Ylva. I found them in our bedroom . . . All I wanted was for them to feel the same pain I felt. I was humiliated, I lost everything. Of course I wanted revenge. And I did everything I could to crush Jack. Not without good reason. And he hated me—again, not without good reason. But it had nothing to do with Julienne, so I don’t understand where she could be or why you think he’s done something to her.”

She twisted her hands in her lap.

Yvonne didn’t answer her question. Instead she said tentatively, “Those injuries on your face. How did you get them? Was it Jack?”

Faye raised her hand to her cheek and flinched with pain. Then she nodded reluctantly.

“Jack was supposed to look after Julienne while I went to V?ster?s for a business meeting. I wasn’t sure about it, I only did it for Julienne’s sake. Jack . . . he’s been so angry . . . He’s been sending me terrible text messages recently. Threatening me when he’s been drinking. That’s not like him. He was angry when he arrived, and that was when he hit me. But he calmed down after that. We talked and things seemed fine when I left. He’d never lay a finger on Julienne, he was just so angry with me, I must have said something that set him off. I’d never have left Julienne with him if I thought . . .” Faye’s voice broke.

There was a knock on the door. A policeman came in and introduced himself. He asked to speak to his colleague and Yvonne went out into the corridor with him. A few minutes later she came back in. She was carrying a cup of coffee which she put down on the table in front of Faye.

“Go on,” she said.

“Is there any news about Julienne? Have you found her?”

“No.”

“Can’t you tell me? She’s my daughter!”

The policewoman looked at Faye with a blank look in her eyes.

“We don’t think Julienne could have survived losing the amount of blood that was found in the hall.”

“Oh, God, so she’s hurt? She’s bleeding. My little girl’s bleeding, all alone somewhere?” Faye cried.

Yvonne Ingvarsson put one hand on Faye’s shoulder but said nothing. The unspoken thought echoed around the room.

Instead of sleeping in her own apartment Faye used her spare keys to Kerstin’s apartment and moved in there. The newspapers were running big articles on Julienne’s disappearance. The police had tracked Jack’s car to an area of forest north of J?nk?ping. There was a small marina nearby. The following day they found traces of blood on one of the boats. But no body.