The note was waiting for her when she opened her locker and for a moment she was almost surprised. But then reality caught up with her. A little white post-it note with the police force logo in the top-right corner, just like the others, and fixed to the edge of the little shelf towards the top of the locker.

      She touched it, stroking her fingertips over it and silently repeated the words which had been written in red ink. Round, almost childish lettering, yet the message was anything but innocent. Really she ought to pull it off, crumple it up and get rid of it. But she knew that if she did, it would only be replaced with a new one. And why not, really? The note was basically right.

      A ‘murdering little whore’, that’s what Dag’s sister had called her at the funeral. Deathly-pale with her arm around her sobbing mother, Nilla had pointed and shouted those very words so loudly that no-one could have missed a single syllable.

      ‘It’s all your fault, you murdering little whore. You killed him, you and your damn brother! How the hell have you got the nerve to show yourself here?’

      The church had fallen utterly silent. Even the priest seemed to be staring at her as she stood there alone in the middle of the aisle, among all the seated black-clad figures.

      And she knew that Nilla was right.

      She didn’t belong there, she had nothing in common with the people who were mourning Dag’s death. With people who would like nothing more than for him to be alive still instead of in the coffin up at the front by the altar. Because she wasn’t one of them. She was happy, yes, actually happy, that Dag was dead, that he could no longer make her life a living hell. For a moment she was on the point of yelling that at them. That their beloved son, brother, grandchild, relative or great mate was nothing but a fully paid-up fucking psychopath. That he was violent towards women, a rapist, a bully – in short, a complete pig of a human being – and that she was relieved, no, positively overjoyed that it was his broken body in the wooden box up there rather than hers.

      But of course she said none of that. Instead she merely nodded curtly at Nilla, turned on her heel and, all eyes on her, walked out of the church and out of her old life.

      Two months later she applied to the Police Academy. Took the bull by the horns and confronted her fears, under a different surname as a thin cover for her new, fragile identity. And as time passed her new self grew stronger and stronger. So strong that she had started to think she no longer needed any protection.

      At least, she’d believed that up to now.

      But Nilla had been wrong about one thing.

      Rebecca was responsible, not her little brother. Henke was innocent, but he was still the one who had been punished.

      ‘It was me who did it,’ he had told the police when they came, and they had believed him. She had wanted to protest, yell at him to shut up, or just simply and calmly explain what had really happened. But it was as if her insides had frozen to ice around an impossibly cold heart. That paused image of Dag’s last seconds alive had taken root inside her head and was stopping her from thinking, speaking or even moving. And then it went on paralysing her through the interviews and later during the trial, while that useless lawyer messed everything up. And, having always been the person who protected him, she just watched as her little brother assumed responsibility for everything. How he protected her and how she let him do it without raising a finger.

      She let him throw away his life, his future, all his opportunities, all for her sake.

      That little white note was right. Someone like her shouldn’t be in the police. That’s why she left it where it was.

      Nilla had been a civilian employee with the Södertälje Police back then. At a guess she was still there, and she was bound to know someone who knew someone … And the story would have got round. That was always the way. The police force was large, but not that large, and police officers loved talking shit about other people, just like everyone else. Really she ought to phone Nilla and explain to her just what sort of person her wonderful big brother was. Put a stop to all the talk and people looking over their shoulders at her. Clear the air once and for all and say what really happened that night, and why.

      She had toyed with the idea before, but always came up with some reason not to do it. Maybe it was time now?

      She would think about it, think about it properly, she promised herself as she pulled on her bulletproof vest and buttoned her shirt.

      When she closed her locker a short while later, the note was still in place.

      Okay, he had to admit it. He was disappointed, seriously fucking disappointed, even! After his big moment and his elevation to first Runner-up, he had expected more challenges of the same level as the one he had just accomplished. More chances to end up in the spotlight, to garner points, love and cred on his way to the top.

      But instead he had been given a couple of shitty little tasks. Stupid stuff that any nobody with a couple of functioning brain-cells and a tiny pair of balls could have handled.

      First he’d had to set up an anonymous internet account and empty a few buckets of bile over a popular blogger on her homepage, which in retrospect turned out to be unnecessary seeing as more than fifty other trolls had already done the same thing. The woman in question had evidently stepped on someone’s toes, she did that pretty much on a daily basis, but why waste his talents on shit like that?

      Assignment number two was in the same class, a phone call to a television channel to threaten a famous presenter. Child’s play, and in total he’d only earned four hundred points and had as a result slipped two places on the list. The flow of love that had washed over him after the business in Kungsträdgården had quickly reduced to the Manneken fucking Pis. A pathetic little trickle that stung more than it did any good. And someone else appeared to have replaced him as clip of the week, a clown who had thrown a pie at some world-famous business leader that HP had never even heard of. Ridiculous, a piece of piss, and nowhere near his own achievement.

      To make matters even worse, he was running out of money.

      He’d soon have to take up Manga’s offer of doing some casual work in the computer-shop to pay the bills.

      He needed a new mission.

      A task that challenged him, something more in line with what he was capable of. And he needed it soon, because right now this shit was fucking useless!

      ‘Okay, attention, Alpha One!’

      Vahtola stepped into the room and the chatter among the six bodyguards died away instantly.

      ‘Welcome to today’s