Unspoken

actually to be arraigned. The prosecutor had three days to do that. He based the arrest on the argument that there was a risk Johnsson might obstruct the investigation if he was released. He had no alibi for the night of the murder, and he also had a great deal of money in his possession, although he couldn’t explain where it had come from. Ten thousand kronor—money they assumed was part of Dahlström’s winnings at the track. The fingerprints on the bills were being examined by the Fingerprint Center in Stockholm, and they expected to have an answer by morning. If it turned out that Dahlström’s prints were on the bills, then things didn’t look good for Johnsson.
    Emma pedaled toward Roma, cursing herself for deciding to ride her bike to work. It was crazy how the cold and wind had picked up as she left the schoolyard and made her way out to the main road. The Kyrk School was located some distance from town. She started biking faster to get warm. On Tuesdays she finished teaching by twelve fifteen. She usually stayed at school to put in a couple more hours of work, but today she was planning to visit a friend. Then she was going to take the children into town to go shopping and stop at the pastry shop, as she had promised. They were in desperate need of new wardrobes.
    The main road was quiet and deserted, with very little traffic at this time of year. She passed the lane that led to the cloister ruins where plays by Shakespeare were performed every summer. Then past Roma School and the public baths. Farther along, on the other side of the road, were the ramshackle buildings from the Roma sugar mill, which had been shut down. The windows in the yellow brick buildings gaped darkly at her. The sugar mill had been founded more than a hundred years earlier, but it was closed when profits began to plummet. The now deserted mill stood there as a sad reminder of how times had changed.
    She lifted her face to the sky, closed her eyes, and inhaled the air deep into her lungs. Emma belonged to those who appreciated November. It was an in-between month without demands, unlike the summer, with its expectations of barbecue evenings, swimming excursions, and all the visits of friends and relatives. And God have mercy on anyone who wasn’t outdoors when the sun was shining.
    When the autumn darkness descended, she could retreat inside without a guilty conscience, and watch TV in the middle of the day if she felt like it, or read a good book. She could forget about putting on makeup and shuffle around wearing an old, nubby bathrobe.
    In December, new demands appeared as Advent was celebrated, and preparations had to be made for Saint Lucia and Christmas Eve, with all the cooking, baking, buying Christmas presents, and putting up decorations.
    For thirty-five years she had outwardly lived a good life. She was married and had two children; she had a teaching job and a great house in the middle of Roma. She had lots of friends and a good relationship with her parents and parents-in-law. Outwardly everything seemed fine, but her emotional life was in chaos. She would never have imagined how much her longing for Johan could hurt. It made her anxious, and it kept her awake at night. She had thought that her feelings for him would diminish with time. Oh, how she had deceived herself. They had seen each other only once in almost two months, and they had known each other for barely six months. By all rights their love ought to be dead. From a logical point of view, at least. But emotions and logic had nothing to do with each other.
    She had tried to forget and to move on. She could see an uneasiness in the eyes of her children. Sara was only eight, and Filip was a year younger. Yet sometimes she imagined that they knew what was going on. More than Olle did. He carried on as usual. He seemed to think that they could go on forever, side by side, without touching each other. They were now like a couple of old friends. He seemed to have come to terms with the situation. Once she asked him how he could seem so content, in spite of everything. He replied that he wanted to give her time. Time after the trauma of Helena’s death and everything else that followed. Olle was still under the illusion that all this had to do with the aftermath of the events of the past summer. And it was true that she thought often about Helena’s horrible death. And she missed her terribly.
    At first she had thought that the whole drama was the reason why