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contact: Mark Feathers, an American. They also had one of the teachers in the group assigned to them: Aron Bjarke.
    The long workday was drawing to a close, and Knutas was genuinely tired. He was in charge of questioning Bjarke; Jacobsson was present as a witness. When they sat down in the interview room, Knutas couldn’t hold back a yawn. He immediately apologized.
    Bjarke had taught landscape reconstruction and phosphate analysis during the introductory two weeks of theory. He was a tall, middle-aged man with dark blond hair and a nondescript face. His hairline was receding a bit; otherwise he looked younger than his forty-three years. His chin was adorned with a well-trimmed beard, and his eyes were green with thick, curling lashes.
    “What do you know about Martina Flochten?” Knutas began.
    “Not much, I have to admit. She was a sweet, lively girl who showed a great deal of interest in the Viking Age in particular. I had the impression that she was more knowledgeable than most of the others. In general, she seemed extremely engaged in the subject.”
    If the teacher hadn’t spoken with such a marked Gotland accent, Knutas would have sworn that he was from the mainland. There was something about his clothes and his style of wearing them, something slightly elegant and big city–like about his neatly pressed slacks and jacket. His voice and manner of speaking, strangely enough, didn’t match his appearance. At the same time, there was something disarming about him. He gave Knutas a friendly look as he waited for the next question.
    “Did you socialize with her outside of class?”
    “No, at least not alone. But the whole group got together several times. We had dinner at the home of one of the other teachers, we went out for a beer, and we played a game of
kubb
in Almedalen. But we were all together, as a group.”
    “Were you at Warfsholm on Saturday night?”
    “No, I’ve hardly seen the students since they moved out to Fröjel and started excavating.”
    “Where were you on Saturday night?”
    The soft-spoken teacher looked surprised at the question. “Am I a suspect?”
    “Not at all. This is purely a routine question that we’re asking everyone,” Knutas explained. “What were you doing on Saturday night?”
    “Nothing special. I was home watching TV.”
    “Alone?”
    “Yes.”
    “Do you live alone?”
    “Yes.”
    “Do you have any children?”
    “No, not yet, anyway.”
    “Were you home all night?”
    “Yes. I think I stayed up quite late. Then I went to bed around midnight. That’s what I usually do.”
    “Did you notice whether Martina was ever together with anyone in the group or with one of the teachers?”
    Aron Bjarke suddenly looked embarrassed. “Well, things like that are so hard to judge. Because you never know. It’s possible that you imagine one thing and then maybe it’s not true at all. I’d prefer not to say anything about it,” he explained, putting on a pompous expression.
    “What do you mean?” asked Jacobsson from the corner.
    “I think that Martina liked to flirt and show off for the men in the group. It was quite obvious. They all fell for it.”
    “Was there anyone who seemed especially interested in her?”
    “Hm … I don’t know,” he said hesitantly. “Maybe there was one person that I thought showed her a little too much attention, but I could be mistaken, of course.”
    “Who was it?”
    Bjarke squirmed. “This is embarrassing because it’s one of the teachers. I’m thinking actually of the excavation leader, Staffan Mellgren.”
    “Is that right?”
    “At the same time, you need to know that he often has romantic escapades with cute young female students. It sounds awful to say this, but he has a hard time keeping his hands off them. This isn’t the first time that he’s shown an interest, so to speak, in a female student.”
    The man sitting across from Knutas leaned forward and lowered his voice.
    “Staffan Mellgren is a lecher, a sex addict. Everyone knows that. He hasn’t been faithful to his wife for even a week since the day they got married. And since he prefers”—here Bjarke held up both hands in the air and made the sign for quote marks—“
lamb flesh
, he usually goes for young female students who look up to the teacher and are easy conquests for him.”
    Bjarke certainly didn’t mince words. The teacher’s candor surprised both detectives. Knutas perked up.
    “Do you mean to say in all seriousness that