Missing

was doing. Already another machine on the table had started humming and spitting out paper. The print was on the side she couldn’t see but she grabbed the first lot of papers and settled down on the bed. Meanwhile, Patrik kept clicking and feeding more paper into the printer.
    The first sheet began with an eye-catching headline.

    GRAND HOTEL WOMAN BREAKS THE
WIDOW’S PEACE
    Lena Grundberg has curled up in the sofa in her comfy sitting room. She is meeting us at home in the house where she lived with her beloved husband Jörgen until less than a week ago. Last Thursday he was the first victim of a cold-blooded murder. The deranged killer from Grand Hotel appears to be a 32-year-old woman, who so far has managed to disappear without trace in spite of a nationwide police search. But only two days after the bestial murder at the Grand, the madwoman visited the grieving widow.
    Lena could hardly keep her tears back as she tells us her story.
    ‘I’m so terribly afraid all the time,’ she confessed. ‘This woman just rang the doorbell and then she told me a lot of lies about how she’d just lost her husband. I never understood what she wanted, but when I later saw the police reconstruction I recognised her face at once …
    Sibylla stopped reading. What a pack of lies! The grieving widow couldn’t hold back her tears. Is that so? Screw her.
    By now there was a new pile of printouts. She grabbed the lot.
    ANATOMICAL KNOWLEDGE IS A
COMMON SKILL FOR SLAUGHTER
KILLERS
    The police are baffled by the case of the 32-year-old woman, who has been charged in her absence for several murders in which the victims were butchered. A study of all ‘butchery’ murders carried out in Sweden since the 1960s shows that the murderer typically belongs to occupational groups such as doctors, veterinarians, hunters and butchers. According to Sten Bergman, professor of Forensic Psychiatry, this is a consequence partly of the fact that these professionals have overcome the fear of dissection felt by most people and partly because they have the technical skills.
    According to the police investigation of the 32-year-old woman’s past, nothing in her background fits with these occupational statistics. Of course, more than just the mental and physical skills are required to turn a person into a potential killer of this kind. Above all, they often have a mental defect associated with low empathy and strong contempt for other people.
    Severe mental illness with delusions is another likely precondition. For instance, it seems that in some cases the murderer cannot bear to separate from his or her victim, something that seems to be the case with the 32-year-old woman. In this frame of mind, the perpetrator feels that he or she must have a trophy as a memento of the dead person or of the act of killing. Such personalities believe that they are in control of life and death.
    The victims have been subjected to mutilations, which fit a pattern described as ‘aggressive’. This is different from so-called passive butchery, carried out in order to conceal the nature of the crime or complicate later investigations. There is no evidence of this kind of precautionary approach in any of her murders. The woman’s only intention has been to desecrate her victims. The police are still unwilling to disclose what she did or which body parts she had …
    She rose, throwing the papers on the floor.
    ‘It’s too much. I can’t read any more.’
    She had raised her voice and Patrik turned to look at her.
    ‘Hey, quiet!’
    She sat down again, listening to the machine spitting out many more sheets of print. People had written all that, thinking about her. Nobody had paid any attention to her before and now she was suddenly the most written-about person in Sweden.
    It was so fucking hateful.
    ‘Can’t stay here. I’m off.’
    He turned her way again.
    ‘Oh, yeah? Like, to where?’
    She sighed.
    The click of a door opening was heard from somewhere in the flat. They looked anxiously at each other, listening intently. They could hear the rushing water when a tap was turned on. Sibylla rose, looking for places to hide.
    ‘Relax, he’s probably just in the loo.’
    Patrik wasn’t reassuring enough. The moment the tap stopped running she dived down under the bed, just before there was a knock on the door.
    ‘You in there, Patrik?’
    No reply. Sibylla saw his feet disappear and heard him lie down on the bed. The door opened and a pair of naked hairy legs