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cashier. That was what he was waiting for. The risk of being discovered was nonexistent, and his disguise would prevent anyone from pointing him out afterward. He summoned all his powers of concentration, pulled on the thin gloves, and made a quick round of the rooms on the upper floor. Not a soul.
    He could hear voices from the ground floor. The employees were on their way out for lunch. The front door slammed. Now he was alone with the cashier.
    The museum had no surveillance cameras, but a few years back it had been equipped with an alarm system. He had found out how it could be disconnected, so that detail had been solved.
    He took a small screwdriver out of his pocket and unscrewed the glass case from its pedestal. The whole time he kept his ears open for any sound on the stairs—he didn’t want to be caught in the act. Then it was just a matter of lifting off the top part, setting it carefully on the stone floor, and taking out the armlet. He replaced the case and calmly walked down the stairs. The cashier still had her nose in her book. It almost looked as if she were asleep. Unnoticed, he slipped out the door and disappeared down the street.

MONDAY, JULY 12
    THE THEFT FROM the Antiquities Room meant that Johan was forced to leave Emma and Elin on Fårö and hastily return to Visby. He had filed a report on the news story for the Sunday broadcast of
Regional News
.
    Now on Monday morning his editor had made it clear that he wanted a follow-up about the shock and dismay, from the angle: How could it have happened?
All ready-packed in his editor’s skull
, thought Johan sarcastically, even though he agreed that a follow-up on the story would be natural. He himself wondered most about the fact that the thief had been able to disconnect the alarm system. Did that mean it was an inside job? If so, how many similar thefts might have been committed previously? He had requested news clippings from the press archives pertaining to the theft of artifacts on Gotland, and they had arrived by fax. Most of them had to do with individuals from abroad who had brought in metal detectors and plundered the island’s silver treasures.
    In a copy of
Gotlands Tidningar
from six months earlier, he found an article that caught his interest : SUSPECTED THEFT AT REGIONAL MUSEUM WAREHOUSE .
    None of the people he had interviewed in connection with the current theft had mentioned that objects had disappeared at any previous time. This article dealt with thefts from a warehouse located in a different part of the city, so maybe it wasn’t so strange that they hadn’t said anything. Naturally they wouldn’t want to advertise the thefts any more than necessary.
    The article said that several coins were missing from the warehouse in which all artifacts not on display were stored; the Antiquities Room only had space to show a small portion of everything that had been dug up on the island. Interviewed in the article was the person in charge of the warehouse, Eskil Rondahl, who took the matter of the missing coins very seriously.
    Johan found the phone number for the warehouse and asked to speak with Rondahl.
    He heard a voice, dry as dust, on the other end of the line say, “Hello?”
    “Hi. My name is Johan Berg, and I’m calling from Regional News, Swedish TV.”
    Silence. Johan went on.
    “I’m calling about an article in
Gotlands Tidningar
from six months ago. It has to do with the theft of some Arabic coins from the warehouse.”
    “Yes?”
    “Do you know what I’m talking about? You were the one who was interviewed in the article.”
    “Yes, I know. The theft was solved.”
    “What happened?”
    “It turned out that no theft had actually taken place after all. The missing coins were found. They had just been misplaced. That’s all.”
    “How did that happen?”
    “It was a matter of negligence, and I can only blame myself. When coins are received here, they’re put in the special security section of the warehouse, where we keep everything that is particularly valuable and might be enticing to steal. In this instance, a box of coins was misplaced, but we found it later. It was quite embarrassing for me, so it’s something that I’d prefer to forget.”
    “I understand. Have you had any other thefts?”
    “Nothing that we can pinpoint with certainty, but of course things do disappear sometimes.”
    “But surely that’s a serious matter. People can’t very well just walk off with objects that are thousands of