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down the neck of Eva’s dress.
    Louise Måårdh saw that Irene had examined the photo of her husband and the lovely cantor, but she didn’t say anything. She held out her hand to take the pictures Irene had gathered together. “Thank you,” she said.
    “Do you know if anyone in the Schyttelius family felt threatened?” Irene asked.
    Louise shook her reddish-brown hair. “No. I never heard anything like that.”
    “Did Sten Schyttelius ever talk about Satanists?”
    “Yes. After the summer chapel burned down; he was terribly upset.”
    “Did he speak about Satanists during the last couple of months?”
    “No, not that I remember. It was mostly in the months following the fire.”
    “Did you hear that he was trying to trace the Satanists via the Internet?”
    “Internet? No, that’s news to me,” Louise said with sincere surprise in her voice.
    “Then I don’t have any more questions at the moment. Would you be so kind as to ask your husband to come in?”

    BENGT MÅÅRDH’S face bore a troubled expression as he seated himself in the visitor’s chair. He folded his hands and rested his elbows on the armrests while his serious gaze focused on Irene. Again she felt that a priest was here to console her, as if she was the one who needed comforting. The feeling was absurd, yet it was there. Maybe it was evoked by his sympathetic brown eyes behind frameless glasses.
    Then it struck her that she was simply being exposed to a basic tool of his profession. This was the way Bengt Måårdh had learned to act in times of grief: He displayed compassion. It probably worked with a person who actually needed it, not least with women. And who doesn’t need compassion nowadays? Our need for comfort is immeasurable.
    She was pulled from her thoughts when the pastor said, in a low voice, “I am prepared to answer your questions. If there’s anything I can do to catch the person who murdered Sten and Elsa and Jacob, then I want to do everything within my power to help.” He leaned against the backrest of the chair with his hands still folded.
    “Have you ever heard any of the three murder victims say that he or she felt threatened?” Irene began.
    “No. Never. Who would want to threaten them? The world’s nicest people and—”
    “Did Sten Schyttelius ever speak with you about Satanists?” Irene interrupted.
    “He spoke about them a lot directly after the fire. Dear Sten was actually pretty hot-tempered, but he never held a grudge. He was very angry with the Satanists and their followers. You’ll have to forgive me, but he didn’t think that the police cared enough. Sometimes it sounded like he was thinking about going after them himself.” He smiled almost imperceptibly.
    “Did he speak about chasing Satanists in the last few months?” Irene asked.
    His surprise was obvious. “No. Not at all! I was referring to last summer and fall, right after the fire. During the last six months, I haven’t heard a word about Satanists. Sten had other projects that took up most of his time. He was very involved in Sweden’s Ecumenical Children’s Villages. That project was close to his heart, and he was thinking about working even more closely with it after retirement.”
    “I heard something about Jacob also being involved in this work.”
    “Yes. He became interested through Sten. They took a trip together last fall. Sten wasn’t as young as he used to be, so it was probably a good thing that he had Jacob with him.”
    “Could Jacob take off from work right in the middle of the semester?”
    For the first time, the pastor was uncertain. “He was apparently free during the fall. I don’t know if he was on sick leave. As you probably already know, he got divorced last summer.”
    This was news to Irene, but she satisfied herself with nodding as if he had confirmed her information.
    “While he was married, Jacob and his ex-wife lived in Norrland somewhere. She’s also a teacher.”
    “Did they have any