The Shadow Woman

SHE SAT WITH MOMMY A LONG TIME. SHE SLEPT FOR A WHILE in the backseat and then crawled up front. It was cold there and Mommy started the car and let it run for a while and then turned it off again. Mommy hadn’t answered when she’d asked, so she asked again and Mommy’s voice was hard. So she went quiet. “Why isn’t he coming?” Mommy said, but straight out and not to her. “Where in God’s name is he?”

Someone was supposed to come there and pick her up and then drive her home, but nobody came. She wanted to be with Mommy, but she also wanted to sleep in her own bed. It was darker now and it was raining. She couldn’t see out because the windows were fogged up. She crawled closer and wiped the window with her sleeve. Cars drove past and the headlights twirled around inside the car where they were sitting. “Why can’t we go?” she had asked. Mommy hadn’t answered, so she asked again. “Quiet now,” Mommy said this time. Then she didn’t say anything after that, didn’t dare when the voice from the front seat was so stern. Mommy said a few bad words. She had heard them so many times that it didn’t matter. She had said words like that herself and nothing had happened to her. But she knew it was wrong somehow anyway. The rain pattered against the roof. Pitter-patter, pitter-patter. She thought about the rain like that for a long while, drummed her fingers on the seat next to her: pitter-patter, pitter-patter.

“Oh God,” Mommy said, and said it a few times more. “Stay here.” Mommy opened the door up front. “You have to stay here while I go over there and make a phone call.”

It wasn’t quite evening yet, but it was dark out anyway.

“I can barely see you,” Mommy said. “You have to answer me.”

“Where are you going?”

“I’m just going over to the telephone booth on the corner to make a call. It won’t take long.”

“Where is it? Can’t I go with you?”

“I told you to stay here!” Mommy said in her stern voice, and she said yes and Mommy slammed the door and she got rain spattered on her in the backseat. She gave a start from the drops of rain hitting her.

Then she sat quietly and listened for footsteps outside and thought she heard Mommy’s shoes against the pavement, like a clickety clickety clack. It might have been somebody else, but she couldn’t see. It was foggy outside.

She gave a start when Mommy came back. “Nobody there!” Mommy said, or more like shouted it. “Jesus Christ. They’ve left.”

Mommy started the car and they drove off. “Are we going home now?”

“Soon,” Mommy said. “There’s just something we have to do first.”

“But you said I was gonna go home.”

“We are going home.” Mommy stopped the car again, and then she got out and came and sat in the backseat with her.

“Are you sad, Mommy?”

“No. It’s just the rain. Now listen to me. First we’re going to go to this other place to pick up some men. You hear what I’m saying?”

“We’re going to pick up some men.”

“Yes. Now, these men are going to run to us when we drive up-it’s this game we’re going to play with them. And when they come, they’re going to jump into the car before it’s stopped. Do you understand?”

“They’re going to jump into the car?”

“We’re gonna slow down, and then they’re going to jump into the car, and then we’re gonna drive off again.”

“Then are we gonna go home?”

“After a little while we will.”

“I wanna go home now.”

“We’re going to go home. But first we’re just going to play this little game.”

“It’s a stupid game.”

“It’s very important that you lie down on the floor when we play the game. You have to lie down on the floor when I tell you to. Do you understand?”

“But why?”

Mommy looked at her, and she looked at her watch many times too. It was sort of all blurry in here now, but Mommy could see her watch.

“Because they’re going to run really fast and there may be other people who aren’t in the game who might try to jump into the car too. And they might bump into you or something. That’s why you have to lie down on the floor behind my chair.”

She nodded.

“I want you to try doing it now.”

“But you said that they-”

“Lie down!”

Mommy grabbed hold of her and it felt hard, smarting around her neck. She lay down on the floor and it smelled bad and wet and it was difficult to breathe. She coughed and lay against the coldness. Her arm hurt.

Mommy went back up front and started the car, and she sat up again. Mommy told her to get back down on the floor.

“Is it starting now?”

“Yes. Are you lying down?”

“I’ve crawled on the floor now.”

“You mustn’t get up,” Mommy said. “It can be very dangerous.”

And Mommy said more stuff about how dangerous it was. “And you have to be quiet too.”

She thought it was stupid for a game to be dangerous, but she didn’t dare say that now.

“Be quiet!” Mommy said in a stern voice even though she hadn’t said anything.

She lay still and listened to the sounds from underneath-it was almost like lying on the road, shakety shakety shake, bumpety bumpety bump- and suddenly she heard a scream and then another, and then Mommy shouted something. The door above her was yanked open. She felt something hard on top of her, and heavy, and she wanted to cry out but she couldn’t. Or maybe she didn’t want to. The doors opened and slammed shut, and opened again and slammed once more, and she heard a bang when one of the doors up front slammed against the car; it sounded like fireworks and as if the rain was hitting the car much harder. Diagonally above her she saw that the window had cracked but held together anyway, so no pieces of glass fell down on her or onto the backseat.

Everyone was shouting and screaming, and she couldn’t hear what they were saying. She listened for Mommy but couldn’t hear her. The car swerved back and forth, and now they were driving again. There was something like a scream from underneath the car; she heard it because she was lying so close to it. And now she heard one of the men sitting in the backseat and it sounded as if he was crying. It was strange to hear a man making that kind of sound. This was a game she didn’t like.

1

ERIK WINTER WOKE UP LATE. HE’D GOTTEN WRAPPED UP IN HIS sheets and had to wriggle around to disentangle his body from the bedclothes. The sun was hanging in place off the balcony. The apartment was already hot.

He sat on the edge of the bed and ran his hand over the stubble on his face, his head heavy from something between sleeping and waking. Then he walked across the wooden floor to the shower and stood there, waiting for the water to warm. Wuss, he thought to himself.

He lathered up, feeling his testicles tighten. Two nights before, Angela had come home from a double shift at the hospital. In the morning hours they’d played the beast with two backs, and he’d felt young again and strong; the orgasm had surged through him for so long that he’d cried out.

But when he moved afterward, it was with the relaxed motion of an old man. She lay on her side and looked at him. Yet again he gazed in awe at the contours of her hips, at her hair, which partially concealed her face. The ends were wet, of a darker hue.

“You think you’re using me, but it’s the other way around,” she said, and twirled her finger slowly in the thick hair on his chest.

“Surely nobody here’s using anyone.”

“But I’ve come to the conclusion that we need something more than just sex.”

“What kind of nonsense is that?”

“The fact that we need more than just sex?”

“The suggestion that all we do is have sex.”

“Well, what else do we do, then?” She took her finger away from his chest.

“Well, right now, for example, we’re having a conversation. A conversation about our relationship.”

“It might be the first time ever.” She sat up in bed. “One conversation for ten couplings.”

“You’re kidding me now.”

“Maybe, but just a little. I want something…”

“Like what?”

“Erik.”

“Maturity?”

“Yes.”

“That I should take responsibility for the family I haven’t got yet?”

“This just isn’t enough for me anymore.”

“Not even when you get to use me?”

“Not even then.”

He was thirty-seven and an inspector at the district CID, in homicide. He’d made inspector at the age of thirty-five, a record in Gothenburg and the whole of Sweden, but it meant nothing to him other than that he didn’t have to take orders as often as he used to.

Now he sat alone at the kitchen table, with two slices of toast and a cup of tea, the sweat returning to his hairline as the heat seeped in through the blinds. The thermometer on the shady side of the balcony read eighty-five degrees and it was just eleven o’clock. He had four days left of his second round of vacation. He was going to continue relaxing.

The telephone rang on the hall table, so he left the kitchen and said his name into the receiver.

“This is Steve, if you remember.” The voice was Scottish.

“How could anyone forget the knight from Croydon?”

Steve Macdonald was a detective chief inspector in South London, and they had worked together on a difficult case earlier in the year. They had become friends-at least Winter saw it that way.

“If anyone’s a knight here, it’s you,” Macdonald said. “Shining armor and all that.”

“I think that’s history now.”

“What?”

“I’m unshaven. And I haven’t had a haircut for months.”

“Did I make such a powerful impression on you? As for me, I’ve been over on Jermyn Street, looking for a Baldessarini suit. Thought it might command more respect. If you’d stayed at the station much longer, they would have started taking orders from you.”

“How’d it work out?”

“What?”

“Did you find a suit?”

“No. Mere mortals can’t afford the stuff you wear. I have to ask you again, by the way-is it true that you don’t pine for your monthly paycheck like the rest of us?”

“Where did you get that idea?”

“Something you said last spring.”

“Clearly, I didn’t listen carefully enough to what I was saying.”

“So you do depend on your paycheck?”

“What do you think? I’ve got a little money in the bank, but no great sum.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“What difference does it make?”

“I don’t know. I just wondered.”

“So that’s why you called?”

“Actually, I called to hear how you’re doing. It was tough going last spring.”

“Yes.”

“Well?”

“What?”

“How’s it going?”

“It’s hot. Summer’s supposed to be over. I’m still on vacation.”

Winter heard the static breaking up the signal as it crossed the heated waters, then Macdonald clearing his throat softly.

“Give us a call sometime.”

“I might come over before Christmas to do a bit of shopping,” Winter said.

“Cigarettes? Shirts?”

“Jeans, I was thinking.”

“Careful that you don’t end up like me.”

“I could say the same.”

They said good-bye, and Winter hung up. Suddenly he felt dizzy and grabbed hold of the tabletop. After a few seconds everything around him settled down, and he went back to the kitchen and took a sip of his tea, which had gone cold. He considered brewing a fresh pot but instead took the cup and saucer to the sink.

He put on a pair of shorts and a cotton shirt and slipped his feet into a pair of sandals. Just when he grabbed the door handle, he heard the postman’s trudge outside and the mail crashed down onto his feet.

Included in the pile, along with the latest issue of Police and a couple of envelopes from the bank, was a notice for a heavy envelope, weighing over a kilo, which could be picked up at the post office on the Avenyn.

The heat was so thick that the square at Vasaplatsen rippled before him like the dazzle of glass filament. A handful of people were standing in the shade of the streetcar shelter, their bodies black silhouettes from across the park.

He fetched his bicycle from the basement and rode along Vasagatan, up past Skanstorget. His shirt was wet before he reached Linnéplatsen, and that was a nice feeling. He decided to keep heading south instead of biking to Långedrag and pedaled in the stark light all the way out to the beach at Askimsbadet. There he took a break and drank a can of soda water and after that continued past the golf course at Hovås and down past Järkholmen, parking among the other bicycles along the path. Then he climbed down to the little beach and plunged into the water as quickly as he could.

He lay in the sun and read, and when it got to be too hot, he went back into the water. It was his vacation.

2

ANETA DJANALI HAD HER JAW SMASHED IN THE MINUTES JUST after midnight. She’d been walking southward on Östra Hamngatan, and there were people all around her. She wasn’t on duty, but even if she had been it wouldn’t have made any difference, since homicide detectives didn’t wear a uniform on the job.

She’d been accompanied by a girlfriend, and the two women had caught sight of an assault in progress a ways down on the darker Kyrkogatan: three men punching and kicking someone lying on the ground. The men looked up when Djanali called out and took a few steps into the side street. Seconds later one of them hit her in the face as he passed, a single blow; she felt no pain at first and then suddenly it filled her entire head and spread down toward her chest. The men persisted as she lay on the ground, the one who first hit her shouting something about the color of her skin. This was the first time she’d been subjected to violence because of it.

She never lost consciousness. She tried to say something to her friend but nothing came out. Lis looks paler than I’ve ever seen her before, she thought to herself. Maybe it’s a bigger shock for her than for me.

The Gothenburg Party continued around them, people wandering back and forth between the various beer tents and stages. The hot evening was thick with the smell of charcoal grills and people-the streets stinking of booze, and bodies of sweat. The voices were loud, all mixed together, and somewhere in the cacophony of cries Lis had disappeared. This was the third time they’d strolled past that spot this evening. Third time lucky, Djanali thought, aware of the rough asphalt against her cheek. Her head didn’t hurt so much anymore. She saw many bare legs and sandals and boating shoes, and then she was lifted up and carried into a vehicle, which she understood to be an ambulance. She felt someone touch her gently, and then she passed out.

Fredrik Halders received the news when he arrived at the police station at seven thirty the following morning. He was a buzz-cut police detective who busted chops whenever he got the chance, preferably with Aneta Djanali and preferably about her skin color and background. He sometimes came across as unintelligent and was called a racist and a sexist, but he let it run off his scalp.

Alone following a divorce three years before, he was forty-four and always pissed off-a violent man with a hell of a lot of festering, unresolved issues, though he’d rather jerk off in public than see a shrink. The nervous energy surging through his body could lead him into a very dark place-he knew that already-and this only intensified when he heard what had happened to Djanali.

“No witnesses?” he shouted.

“Yeah, they-,” Lars Bergenhem said.

“Where are they?”

“The girlfr-”

“Let me at ’em! Nah, fuck it.” He made for the door.

“Where are you going?”

“Where the hell do you think?”

“She’s sedated. Or at least she was when they were setting her jaw.”

“How do you know that?”

“I just got off the phone with Sahlgrenska Hospital.”

“Why didn’t they call me? When have you ever been on assignment with her?”

“They don’t know that,” Bergenhem said quietly.

“What about the witnesses?”

“I’ve been trying to tell you that Aneta’s girlfriend should be coming up here in,” he checked his watch, “about fifteen minutes.”

“Was she there?”

“Yes.”

“Nobody else?”

“You know there’s a party going on there. There were masses of people, which, of course, means nobody saw a thing.”

“Christ al-fucking-mighty.”

Bergenhem didn’t answer.

“You like this city?” Halders asked. He’d sat down, stood up, and sat down again.

“It’s a modern city. Entering a new, more nuanced age.”

“More nuan-What the hell does that mean?”

“There are good things and bad things,” Bergenhem said, instantly aware that he’d let a worn-out phrase slip from his tongue. “You can’t tell a whole city to go to hell.”

“Two people go for a walk along Hamngatan. Some bastard comes up and smashes one of their heads in. There’s your nuanced city for you.”

Bergenhem said nothing. How many violent provocations had they had over the past month? Fifteen? It was like gearing up for war. A guerrilla war between all the tribes of Gothenburg. And yesterday there was a melee.

“Who’s gonna talk to the girl?” Halders’s voice sounded far away. “The girlfriend?”

“I am and you can too, if you want.”

“You do it,” Halders said. “I’ll get over to the hospital. How’d it go for that other poor bastard, by the way?”

“He’s alive.”

Halders drove impatiently, didn’t even notice that the air coming through the AC vent was hotter than the air in the car.

Aneta Djanali was sitting up in bed when he came in, or rather she was propped up with pillows. Her face was covered in bandages.

She’s just woken up and I shouldn’t be here, he thought, pulling a chair to the bed and sitting. “We’re gonna get them,” he said.

She didn’t move. Then she closed her eyes, and Halders wasn’t sure if she had fallen asleep.

“By the time you wake up we’ll have cuffed those bastards,” he said. “Even the black citizens of this city deserve to be able to walk the streets safely after dark.”

She didn’t respond to that either. The mountain of pillows behind her looked uncomfortable.

“In a situation like this you gotta think it would have been better if you’d stayed back in Ouagadougou.” It was an old joke between them. Djanali was born at Östra Hospital in Gothenburg. “Ouagadougou.”

As if the word would calm her nerves.

“This is actually a unique opportunity,” he said after a few minutes of silence. “For once, I can say important things without you butting in and getting all superior. I can voice my opinions. I can explain to you what it’s all about.”

Djanali opened her eyes and peered at Halders with a look he recognized. She’s injured all right, but that injury is limited to the lower part of her skull, he thought. This is the only chance I’ll ever have to get a word in.

“It’s all about keeping your cool,” he said. “When we catch those bastards, we’re going to keep our cool for as long as we can, and then we’re going to make one or two mistakes that prove we’re human too. I mean, cops are also human beings.” Halders paused for a moment before continuing. “They say Winter went a little loopy after last spring. He’s been walking around all summer in a pair of cutoff jeans and a T-shirt that says ‘London Calling’ on it. Rumor has it he’s been up to the department to pick up some papers and has a beard and long hair.”

Aneta Djanali closed her eyes again.

“I miss you,” he said.

Winter broke off his vacation almost the moment Bertil Ringmar called with the quick rundown. It wasn’t out of duty, more the opposite. It was a selfish act, maybe therapeutic.

“You’re not needed here yet,” Ringmar said.

“I’ve gotten enough dirt between my toes,” Winter answered.

In the afternoon he stepped into his office and angled the blinds upward. It smelled of dust and work, though the surface of the desk was clear. An ideal state, he thought. Maybe I can be like the chief-keep investigations off my desk by shoving them in drawers.

Sture Birgersson was the head of the homicide department, and he had the good sense to hand over all real responsibility to his deputy. That meant Winter was in command of thirty homicide detectives who worked to control the violence in society.

“Close the door,” Winter said to Ringmar, who had just stepped across the threshold. “What’s going on?”

“We’re going through all the known troublemakers, but they could have come from out of town,” Ringmar said.

“You think so?”

“That’s what we’re hearing,” Ringmar said. “But the situation out there is pretty confused right now. I don’t know how much you know, but I guess you watched the news.”

“The demonstrations?”

“Yeah, but it doesn’t stop there. The city is in a state of unrest, or whatever you wanna call it. Over the last few weeks we’ve had about a dozen gang showdowns, or close to that. Yeah, and a lot of brawls too. Who knows how many ethnicities have been involved, Scandinavians included. It’s really nasty, Erik. Maybe there are some bastards trying to fan the flames from on high. Steering it, in certain areas anyway. There’s something… I don’t know what it is. Hate? Something that’s causing people to get violent or, so far, mostly to threaten violence. But still. We’re trying to do what we can.”

Ringmar was the homicide department’s third inspector and head of the department’s surveillance unit: ten officers, with tentacles reaching down into the criminal underworld, assigned the task of keeping tabs on the city’s worst troublemakers and professional criminals.

“Aneta isn’t exactly unknown in this town,” Ringmar said. “I think they’d think twice about hurting one of ours unless it’s a case of extreme self-defense.”

“Maybe that’s just what it was,” Winter said.

“What?”

“Since we think they know that we know that they know that we think they would never do anything like that, maybe that’s just what happened,” Winter said.

Ringmar didn’t answer.

“What do you say?”

“Well, that’s a classic dilemma, isn’t it? If I’ve understood you correctly.”

“It takes you back to square one in that case, doesn’t it?”

“Appreciate the insight.”

Winter stared down at his desktop. It had been polished till it shone, as if the office cleaner had made an emergency visit when it was clear he was coming back early. His hair looked, in the veneer, like a thick circle of thorns around his face. He grasped at the packet of cigarillos in his breast pocket and lit up a Corps; then he dropped the match and it singed him on the thigh. Ringmar had noticed his shorts but not said anything.

“If they’re from around here, we’ll find them,” Ringmar continued.

“You believe in the good guys? Our informants?”

“I believe that the good guys among the bad guys are going to lead us to the bad guys.”

“The worse guys,” Winter said, “to the worst guys.”

“Aneta’s friend thinks she would recognize one of those three scumbags,” Ringmar said.

“Did they brandish any Nazi symbols or other fascist crap?”

“Nope. Just good ol’ regular guys.”

Winter tapped his cigarillo into the palm of his hand. The ashtray had apparently been stolen while he was away.

“Other witnesses?”

“A thousand or more, but only a few of them have gotten in touch since we issued our request for information. And they’re not sure what the guys looked like.”

“Somebody will call, just when you least expect it,” Winter said, and then the telephone rang. He lifted the receiver from its usual spot on the right side of the desk and mumbled his name to the desk sergeant.

Ringmar saw how he listened, brow furrowed and shoulders hunched forward, as he said a few short words and hung up.

“A guy who followed them is on his way over,” Winter said.

“No shit. Why hasn’t he been in touch before?”

“Something about having to take his kid to the ER in the middle of the night.”

“Where is he?”

“Like I said, on his way. Speaking of which, I was up at Sahlgrenska Hospital to look in on Aneta. I met Fredrik on his way out of her room. His eyes were all red.”

“Good,” Ringmar said.

3

THE BACK OF THE CHAIR HAD LEFT A DAMP IMPRESSION ON Winter’s back, and he gave a shiver as he stood beneath the air conditioner at the window. The patches of cold inside made the summer look cold and gray through the windows that couldn’t be opened. Since the sky seemed undecided, the grass at Old Ullevi Stadium was under fire from water cannons.

He thought about Aneta Djanali and clenched his right hand. Whenever he considered what had happened to her, he felt… violent. The violence became part of him, a sudden sensation. A primitive urge for revenge, perhaps, and a little beyond that. He had returned to his violent world abruptly.

Ringmar was still seated, looking at him without speaking. He’s fifteen years older than I am, and he’s started waiting for a better world, Winter thought. When his last day here is finished, he may take the boat out to his cabin on Vrångö, never to return.

“What’s that supposed to mean, the thing on your shirt?” Ringmar asked. “ ‘London Calling.’ ”

“It’s the name of a record by a rock band. Macdonald sent it to me.”

“Rock? You don’t know anything about rock, do you?”

“I’ve listened to one rock band. The Clash. Macdonald sent me the album together with the T-shirt.”

“The Clash? What is that?”

“It’s an English word meaning violent confrontation.”

“I mean the band. Can you tell the difference between hard rock and pop?”

“No. But I like this.”

“I don’t think so. Coltrane is your man.”

“I like it,” Winter repeated. “It was recorded back when I was nineteen or something, and yet it’s timeless.”

“Hard rock, you mean,” Ringmar said.

The witness arrived.

The man gave his account. The skin of his face was taut and looked brittle after a night without sleep. His little girl had suffered a severe allergic reaction that had nearly ended tragically.

Winter said something.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you. My mind blanked out there for a second.”

“You said that you were walking behind the men.”

“Yes.”

“How many were there?”

“Three, like I said.”

“Are you sure they were together?”

“Two of them waited while the third-the guy who hit her-they waited for him before moving on together.” The witness ran his hand across his eyes. “I remember that the guy doing the hitting was smaller.”

“He was shorter?”

“It looked that way.”

“And you followed them?”

“As far as I could. Everything happened so damn fast-afterward. I sort of went into shock, couldn’t move. Then I thought, ‘This is heinous. ’ And I followed after them to see where they went, but there were so many people on the square, and then my cell phone rang and my wife started screaming that Astrid couldn’t breathe. That’s our little girl.”

“Yes,” Winter said, and looked at Ringmar, who had children. Winter didn’t have children, but he had a woman who said she didn’t want to wait any longer for him to become mature enough to take responsibility for a child. Angela said that yesterday, before going home to her mother’s to fine-tune her biological clock. When she gets back, Winter had mused as she was leaving, I guess she’ll tell me what time it is.

“It all turned out all right,” the man said, mostly to himself. “Astrid’s going to be okay.”

Winter and Ringmar waited. The air in the room flowed back and forth, past a man dressed in the same shorts and tennis shirt he’d worn the night before. His chin had a thin shading of stubble and his eyes were craters sunken into his skull.

“We appreciate you coming by right after the accident,” Winter said. “From the hospital.”

The witness shrugged his shoulders. “There are so many people who do nothing,” he said. “Going around beating people up. It really makes me angry.”

Winter and Ringmar waited for him to continue.

“It’s like at work, with all that damn talk about immigrants, as if it’s become politically correct to talk about how there are too many immigrants and refugees and blacks in the country.”

“Where exactly did you lose sight of these three men?” Ringmar asked.

“What?”

“The ones who assaulted our colleague. Where exactly did they disappear?”

“When we reached the indoor market, the one sort of facing Kungsportsplatsen. Before you enter the square.”

“Did you hear them say anything?”

“Not a word.”

“You didn’t get any sense of where they were from?”

“Somewhere south of hell as far as I’m concerned.”

“Nothing more precise.”

“No. But they were Swedes, real Swedes you might say.”

They asked him to describe the men’s appearance, which he did.

Once the witness left the office, Winter lit up another cigarillo and dropped ash onto his naked thighs. “Did you notice that Aneta was a refugee in this guy’s eyes?” he said.

“How do you mean?” asked Ringmar.

“People are always going to be looked upon differently for one reason or another, generation after generation. Regardless of where they were born.”

“Yeah.”

“Space refugees.”

“What?”

“There’s an expression for those who journey from country to country without ever being allowed into any of the paradises. They’re known as space refugees.”

“That’s a nice expression,” Ringmar said. “Sort of romantic. But that’s not true of Aneta.”

“No, but once you’ve made it into paradise? What happens then?” He killed his cigarillo in the ashtray he’d suddenly spied behind the curtain.

The sun was high, the blaze heavy out on the square in front of the district police headquarters. Winter had misread the shade from the trees, and the heat in the front seat was nearly unbearable. He adjusted the air-conditioning.

He drove eastward past New Ullevi Stadium and pulled over next to a big house in Lunden. A dog barked like crazy from next door, rattling its running chain.

The entrance to the house was in the shade. Winter rang the doorbell and waited, then pressed it again. But no one opened the door. He headed back down the front steps and turned left and started walking along the stucco wall.

Round the back of the house, the sun glittered in a swimming pool. Winter took in the smell of chlorine and tanning oil. At the pool’s edge was a deck chair with a naked man sitting in it. His body was heavy and evenly tanned, a vivid color that shimmered mutedly against the Turkish towel protecting the chair from sweat and oil. Winter coughed gently, and the naked man opened his eyes.

“I thought I heard something,” he said.

“Then why didn’t you come to the door?” Winter asked.

“You came in anyway.”

“I could have been somebody else.”

“That would’ve been nice.” The man remained lying there in the same position.

His penis lay shriveled up against a muscular thigh.

“Get dressed and offer me something to drink, Benny.”

“In that order? Have you become homophobic, Erik?”

“It’s a question of aesthetics.” Winter looked around for a chair.

The man, whose name was Benny Vennerhag, got up and grabbed a white robe from the footstool and gestured at the water.

“Why don’t you take a dip while you’re waiting?” He sauntered off toward the house and turned around on the veranda. “I’ll bring out a couple of beers. You’ll find swimming trunks in the drawer of the footstool. Nice T-shirt. But who wants to go to London?”

Winter took off his shirt and shorts and dove into the water. It felt cool against his skin, and he swam along the bottom of the pool until he reached the other end. He got out, dove in again, and turned over on the bottom and looked up at the sky, the surface of the water like a ceiling of floating glass. There was a crackling down there from the tiled walls, unless the sound was coming from his eardrums. He stayed under the water for a long time before gliding back up to the surface. He saw a face flicker into view above him.

“Trying to break some kind of record?” Vennerhag asked, and held a beer out over the water.

Winter stroked his hair back over the top of his head and took the bottle. It was cool in his hand. “You live a comfortable life,” he said, and drank.

“I deserve to.”

“Like hell you do.”

“No need to be bitter, Inspector.”

Winter heaved himself up and sat down on the edge of the pool.

“Swimming in your underwear. What happened to your sense of style and taste?”

Winter didn’t answer. He drank down the last of his beer and set the bottle on the paving stones, then took off his wet boxers and pulled on his shorts.

“Who was it that beat up my Aneta?” Winterasked, and turned toward Vennerhag.

“What are you talking about?” Vennerhag sat up again.

“A woman on my tea-from my department was assaulted and badly beaten last night, and if you find out who did it, I want to know,” Winter said. “Now or in due course.”

“That’s not your style either.”

“I’m a different man now.”

“Well, you can sa-”

“This is serious, Benny.” Winter had stood up. He walked over to the deck chair and crouched down, bringing his face close to his host’s. He smelled alcohol and coconut oil. “I tolerate you as long as you’re honest with me. As soon as you stop being honest with me, I won’t tolerate you anymore.”

“Oh yeah? And what’s that supposed to mean?”

“Then all this is over,” Winter said, stone faced.

Vennerhag gazed around at his property.

“What kind of a threat is that? And how am I supposed to know what happened to your fellow officer, Erik?”

“You know more lowlifes than I do. You’re a criminal. You’re a racist. If you’ve heard anything, I want to know.”

“I’m also your ex-brother-in-law,” Vennerhag said, and smiled. “Don’t come here and start acting all cocky.”

Winter suddenly grabbed hold of the man’s jaw and squeezed hard.

“They smashed off this part of her face,” he said, and leaned in closer and pressed harder. “You feel that, Benny? You feel that, when I squeeze here?”

Vennerhag jerked his head to the side, and Winter let go.

“You’re out of your mind, you fucking bastard,” Vennerhag said, and massaged his chin and cheeks. “You should get help.”

Winter felt dizzy. He closed his eyes and heard the rasping sound as the other guy ran his hand over his chin again.

“Jesus Christ,” Vennerhag said. “You shouldn’t be free to roam the streets, you fucking maniac.”

Winter opened his eyes again and looked at his hands. Were they his? It had felt good clenching his fingers around Vennerhag’s jaw.

“That’s how I oughta talk to Lotta,” Vennerhag said.

“You don’t go anywhere near her,” Winter said.

“She’s damn near as crazy as her brother anyway.”

Winter stood. “I’ll call you in a few days,” he said. “Meanwhile ask around.”

“Thanks for the visit,” Vennerhag said. “Jesus Christ.”

Winter stuffed his wet boxers into his pocket and pulled on his T-shirt. He left the same way he came in, climbed into his car, and drove toward town. He drove past the police station and continued to Korsvägen and drove across Guldheden to Sahlgrenska Hospital. The city looked cold again through the windows.

The street services had planted three palm trees at the entrance to the hospital, but through the tinted windows of Winter’s Mercedes the trees looked frozen in their pots.

Aneta Djanali seemed to stiffen as she reached for something on the wheeled table by her bed. He saw the surprise in her eyes as he entered her room and went quickly to her bedside, smiling and handing her the newspaper.

“I’ll just sit here for a spell,” he said. “Until the worst of the heat has settled.”

4

MOMMY WASN’T THERE ANYMORE. SHE HAD CALLED OUT FOR her, but the man said that Mommy would be coming soon, and so she waited and stayed quiet. It was dark and no one turned on the light. She had to go wee-wee, but she was too scared to say anything, so she held it in, and that made it feel even colder as she sat on the chair by the window.

She could see through the gap at the bottom of the shade that the forest was just outside the window. The wind blew through the trees. It smelled bad in here. Mommy’s gotta be coming soon.

The man said something to another man who had entered the house. She crept closer to the wall. She was hungry but more scared than hungry. Why hadn’t they gone home after that awful thing happened? When they drove away from there? There had been a man driving the car, and they had driven back and forth between the houses, and then another man had carried her with him when he jumped out of the car. Then they had jumped into another car, and that one had taken them away. She had looked around when she finally felt brave enough, but then Mommy wasn’t there.

“Mommy!” she had cried out, and the man had said that Mommy would be coming soon. She had cried out again and the man had become really angry and squeezed her shoulder hard. He was mean.

They were all mean, and they shouted and smelled bad.

“What do we do with the kid?” one of them said, but she couldn’t hear what the other man answered. He mumbled as though he didn’t want her to hear.

“We have to decide tonight.”

“Don’t talk so damn loud.”

“Let’s go into the kitchen.”

“What about the kid?”

“What do you mean? Where’s she gonna go?”

She stayed sitting in the chair by the window after they left. She heard an owl hoot out in the forest and pulled back the shade a little so she could see better. There was a bush growing just outside. She saw a car. It was lighter above the trees now. She looked in at the room and kept her hand on the shade. A faint beam of light came in from the window. It was like a band reaching across the floor, and there was something lying in the middle of that band. When she let go of the shade, the light disappeared and she couldn’t see the thing anymore. When she pulled back the shade again, the band came back and she saw that the thing on the floor looked like a piece of paper.

The men were talking somewhere. It sounded like they were far away. She kneeled down and felt along the floor with her hand and picked up the thing that was lying there. It was a piece of paper, and she stuffed it into the secret pocket on the inside of her pants. She had wanted to wear just those pants today, and they had a secret pocket inside the regular one.

She went back to the chair by the wall and climbed up onto it again.

She had a secret in her pocket. Stuff like that was usually fun and exciting, only not this time. What if the man who dropped the piece of paper starts looking for it and finds out that I’m the one who took it? I’ll put it back, she thought, but then the men came into the room again and both looked at her. Then they came closer, and one of them lifted her up while the other looked out through the window.

They drove away from the house, and she tried to stay awake but her eyelids closed. When she woke up, it had become light all around. She thought about it and then asked about her mommy.

“We’ll find your mommy,” said the driver up front.

Why did he say that? Don’t they know where Mommy is?

She started crying, but the man next to her didn’t look at her. She had nothing to hold on to because she’d lost her dolly back when they’d jumped out of the car.

5

THE WITNESS’S NAME WAS JÖRAN QVIST, AND HE WAS ACCOMPANIED through Kungstorget by Halders and Bergenhem. It was eleven o’clock at night and difficult to make headway because of all the people. A dance band was playing on the stage, and Halders thought the music was crap. He said so to Bergenhem, but his younger colleague pretended not to hear.

The homicide detectives and their witness slowly made their way down toward the water. Rock music was throbbing from one of the restaurant stands. A sightseeing boat passed by on the canal. The clamor of voices sounded louder down here than up on the square. A hundred skewers sizzled on big grills next to the wall. People thronged together, holding beer in plastic cups and balancing paper plates of lángos spread with black fish roe and sour cream. Most looked happy.

“Some fucking party,” Halders said. “Junk food and overpriced beer in plastic cups. And so crowded.”

“Some people enjoy this kind of thing,” Bergenhem said. “Nothing wrong with that.”

“It’s garbage.”

“Not everyone has your sophistication.”

“What did you say?”

“Not every-”

“There they are,” Jöran Qvist said.

Bergenhem fell silent. He looked at Qvist, who gave a slight nod at a table near the edge of the canal. One of the spotlights above the bar was directed right at the benches where the three men were sitting, with beer glasses in front of them and an umbrella above. The harsh lighting illuminated them as if on a stage. What arrogant bastards, Bergenhem thought.

Halders was strangely silent. He turned toward Qvist.

“Are you sure?”

“Definitely.”

“Specifically those three? You don’t just recognize one or two of them?”

“No. They’re even wearing the same clothes. And the little one’s got the same baseball cap.”

“Let’s call in the uniforms,” Bergenhem said.

“Fuck that.”

“Fredrik.”

But Halders didn’t hear. He was already on his way through the teeming crowd, sort of languidly, as if out on an aimless stroll.

Like an assassin, Bergenhem thought. “Wait here,” he told Qvist, and started to walk toward the table where the men were sitting. They were maybe ten yards away, and Halders was already halfway there. One of the three suspects stood up to get more beer. He pitched suddenly and sat back down; the others laughed.

Bergenhem was sweating. He was hot before, but now the sweat was streaming down his forehead and stinging his eyes. He rubbed his eyes, and when his focus returned, he saw Halders sit down on the bench next to one of the three.

Halders sat there motionless. He seemed sealed within himself even when Bergenhem reached the table and sat down next to him.

There was no more room on the bench, so Qvist took a seat two tables away. Bergenhem saw how Halders was hovering as if primed for battle.

When Bergenhem touched his colleague’s left arm, Halders peered at him with eyes that seemed to have no focus.

They sat there silently. Bergenhem didn’t know if Halders was listening, but he heard the men speaking to one another.

“Do you get drunker when it’s hot?”

“Nah.”

“Sure you do, and you get uglier too.”

“There’s no more beer.”

“Where’s the vodka?”

“It’s all gone.”

“No it isn’t.”

“I’m telling you, it’s all gone.”

“I gotta have a beer.”

The man who said this got up, and Halders rose at the same time, took his wallet from his breast pocket, and held up his ID.

“Police,” he said.

“What?”

Bergenhem had also stood up.

“Police,” Halders repeated. “We’d like you guys to come with us so we can talk to you about something that happened last night.”

“What?”

“We’re looking for information-”

The man standing in front of Halders kicked him in the shin and went dashing off to the left while Halders cried out and bent forward. The two others tried to run off but got tangled up among the guests sitting next to them. One of them turned to Bergenhem and threw a punch, but Bergenhem ducked and stood his ground. He cast a quick glance to the side and saw Qvist bend down over something that lay on the ground. Damn it, Bergenhem thought.

The man who’d botched the punch remained standing there, as if paralyzed or mesmerized by Bergenhem’s gaze. I won’t blink, thought Bergenhem.

The commotion had caught the attention of others, and a circle formed around the two police officers and the two suspects at the table. The rock music had cut out. The dance band had stopped playing right in the middle of a barre chord. The Gothenburg Party was holding its collective breath.

One of the suspects broke the stillness, throwing himself backward through the thin line of onlookers and plunging into the water. The splashing down below sounded like swimming strokes. The man in front of Bergenhem sat down again and started to throw up with his head propped between his legs. Halders rushed to the edge of the canal and saw the fugitive paddling awkwardly toward the brightly lit Storan Theatre on the other side. The spotlight from the bar had caught him. He stopped swimming and splashed around in confusion, with his arms above the surface, before he started to sink.

“He’s drowning,” Bergenhem shouted, but Halders had already dived in.

Halders-once those fucking scumbags were apprehended-changed into dry underwear. He didn’t bother to pull anything over his torso but sat on a park bench outside the police station with Bergenhem, who was more tired than he could ever remember being.

“When the temperature stays above seventy over a twenty-four-hour period, the climate is tropical,” Halders said, after a drawn-out silence.

“How do you know that?”

“Aneta told me. She oughta know,” Halders said.

Bergenhem turned toward him, but he couldn’t see if Halders was smiling.

Bergenhem looked up at the sky. It was getting lighter now, and the sun slid very slowly down the facade of the Social Insurance Agency on the other side of Smålandsgatan. A taxi drove past. A patrol car pulled up in front of the main entrance and sat there with its headlights pointed toward the front doors and the engine switched off.

“Why the hell don’t they turn their lights off?” Halders said, and audibly drew in air through his nostrils.

The patrol car started up again and sat with the engine idling. After two minutes Halders rose and walked over to the forecourt in front of the darkened police station. Bergenhem could hear him speaking, loud and clear in the stillness of morning: “What the hell are you doing, fucking cops?”

Bergenhem heard a mumbled reply and then Halders’s voice again: “Say that again!”

Bergenhem ran over and grabbed Halders from behind just as he was about to bury his fist in the head of the police officer who’d stepped out of his car.

“For Christ’s sake, Fredrik.”

“Want us to take him in?” the officer asked. “Is he drunk?” The officer was close to fifty, a self-assured man. He did a salute of sorts when Bergenhem declined, and then climbed back into the car. All along his colleague remained quiet in the passenger seat, as if he were asleep.

“There’s a one-minute idling limit in Gothenburg,” Halders shouted when the patrol car turned around and started back toward the street. The driver waved.

Three minutes later the call came in to dispatch and was immediately passed on to homicide, twenty-five yards from where Halders and Bergenhem were still standing.

The murdered woman lay on the edge of the Delsjö Forest. The summer was over. The season was beginning. The phone on Winter’s bedside table rang. It was exactly four o’clock in the morning on Thursday, August 18. He picked up the receiver and said his name.

6

WINTER COULD SEE THE BLUE LIGHTS EVEN BEFORE HE DROVE up the hill toward the Delsjö junction. They rotated above the eastern wilderness. The only thing missing is a helicopter, he thought.

He drove under the viaduct and passed the café and the parking lot at the Kallebäck recreation area and continued on J A Fagerbergs Väg until he saw the tunnel beneath the Boråsleden highway. He pulled over in front of the parking lot, to the side of the entrance, as far away as possible from where the body had been found. Far too many of his fellow police officers were gathered. There were two technicians and the deputy head of forensics, which was good, and the medical examiner, which maybe was a good thing too. But it was enough to have the crime scene unit and at most one curious uniformed officer. God knows how many of them had trampled around the victim.

A uniformed officer was waiting at the police cordon. He was young and pale.

Winter flashed his ID. “Were you the first one on the scene?”

“Yes. We got the call and came straight over.”

“The guy who called. Is he here?”

“He’s sitting over there.” The uniformed officer nodded toward the darkness.

Winter could see the silhouette of a head in the dawn light.

“Is everything cordoned off?” Winter asked.

“Yes.”

“Good. What about the cars?”

There were five cars in the parking lot, in addition to the two radio cars and the two cars that the forensic team and its boss had arrived in. Next to the entrance was a road sign prohibiting the parking of mobile homes.

“What?”

“Did you take down the plates?”

“Take dow-”

“Have you written down the license plate numbers and started running a check on the owners and put a cordon around the cars?” Winter asked, as gently as he could.

“Not yet.”

“Well, get to it,” Winter said. “Our fellow officers over there seem to need something to do.” He looked over toward the witness’s silhouette. “Were there any other people here when you arrived?”

“Just that guy over there.”

“Nobody driving off when you got here?”

“No.”

Winter felt a sudden chill in his body, as if it had only just occurred to him what he was here for and what lay ahead of him. He needed a cup of coffee.

“Where can I walk?”

“What?”

“Where’s the path in?”

The young officer didn’t understand. Winter looked around. All the activity was taking place about fifty yards away, maybe seventy. He raised a hand and someone broke away from the group and walked toward the spot where Winter was standing.

“I just arrived,” Detective Inspector Göran Beier said. “She’s lying over here.”

They walked between two cars and across the parking lot, carefully picking their way along the wide path, up to a ditch that was partially hidden by a pine tree and a few birches.

Winter heard the sound of a vehicle and looked around. He saw headlights whose usefulness was fast diminishing as daylight returned to the sky. Ringmar’s car.

Winter turned back toward the ditch. A woman was lying there, on her back, behind the pine tree. She might have been twenty-five or thirty or thirty-five years old. Her hair seemed fair, but it was hard to tell since it was damp from the morning dew. She was wearing a short skirt and blouse and a cardigan or a sweater, and her clothes didn’t seem to be in disarray. She was staring up at the pale sky. Winter leaned in even closer and thought he could see the red pinpoints on her ears and the hemorrhaging in her open eyes. He guessed that she’d been strangled, but he was no expert. It was light enough now that he could see that her face was discolored and probably swollen. Her teeth were exposed, as if she were about to say something.

The forensic technicians had immediately called for the medical examiner. Winter thought that was good, but he knew Ringmar wouldn’t like it. Ringmar felt that visiting the body dump site created preconceived notions, and that the medical examiner ought to meet a body for the first time on a steel table at the pathologist’s.

He nodded to Pia Erikson Fröberg, down in the ditch. She was studying a thermometer. It looked as if the corpse were waiting to be notified of the result, shifting its gaze from the sky to Pia’s accomplished movements. She’s in good hands, thought Winter. Her body is in good hands.

It was the most important moment of the investigation. The woman’s body lay close to a sign that warned of high voltage. Immediately to the right of the ditch was the four-and-a-half-mile circuit around Big Delsjö Lake, part of the Bohusleden hiking trail. On the other side of the jogging path lay the water’s edge. The lake glowed between the birch branches.

Winter heard a voice.

“What?”

“Eight or ten hours,” Fröberg said. “Wasn’t that your first question?”

“I haven’t asked it yet.”

“Well, there’s your answer anyway. It’s still a little uncertain, of course, since the heat causes rigor mortis to set in more quickly.”

“Right.”

“But I’m trying to factor that in.”

Winter looked at the dead woman’s face once again. It had an oval shape, rounded off. The eyes were set wide apart; the mouth was large. Her long hair looked unkempt, but Winter wasn’t sure. That sort of thing could have to do with the victim’s age, maybe with her style.

“She’s got nothing on her,” Beier said, standing next to Winter. “There’s nothing there. No papers or ID, nothing.”

Winter blinked at the technicians’ flashbulbs. They were almost finished with the crime scene photographs. Photography of the naked body would begin at the autopsy. Then the professionals in the lab would take over, meticulously photographing each piece of clothing, each finger.

Another flash went off down in the ditch, and Winter was surprised that the flashbulbs were so intense in the daylight.

“I think she was moved here,” Fröberg said. “The body hasn’t been lying here for very long.”

Winter nodded. It was pointless to ask any more questions right now. For the moment, they would assume that the woman died somewhere else and was brought to this place. Someone had been moving around here.

She was unidentified. It was no accident that she didn’t have any ID. Winter knew that, felt it. There was a reason why she had no name-that, by itself, was a ghastly message. They would have to spend a long time searching for a name. He felt cold again, a chill through his head.

“What’s that marking over there on the pine tree?” he asked Beier.

“I don’t know.”

“Is it from the forestry service?”

“I don’t know, but somebody’s painted something on the bark there.”

“Is it red paint?”

“It looks like it. But the light-”

“There’s something written there. What does it say?” Winter asked, but the question was really directed to himself.

“We’ll take a sample,” Beier said.

“I’ll check with the timber company or the municipality or whoever it is that manages the forests around here,” Winter said. “Can I continue along the path?”

Beier looked at one of his technicians. “Walk in the middle of it,” he said.

Winter continued along the water’s edge. The ditch on the left came to an end a few yards farther on. He passed several pine trees, but none of them had any markings, so far as he could tell. There’s a meaning behind it, he thought.

I don’t like murderers that paint on walls, or trees.

Winter looked out over the water. He saw no movement and couldn’t hear seabirds anymore. Weren’t there sports fishermen operating around here at all hours of the day and night? Someone who rowed past? Had the murderer come here by boat, disposed of his victim, and slipped away again?

“Check the entire length of the shoreline,” he said when he got back to the dump site. “She might have come by boat.”

Beier nodded. “You could be right.”

Winter continued back to the parking lot. Attached to the far fence was a sign from the Sportfishing Association of Gothenburg and Bohuslän, stating that fishing in Big Delsjö Lake required a yellow fishing license. They would have to check everyone with that license.

After two hours the officers from the crime scene unit were finished with the preliminary processing. It was still early in the morning. The technicians covered all the surfaces of the body with clear tape and waited for the undertakers, who laid the body in a plastic bag on a gurney and drove it to the pathologist at Östra Hospital.

The woman’s body now lay on a stainless steel slab. The lights in the autopsy room replaced the morning light that had shone in Winter’s eyes as he drove behind the hearse.

In here, under the spotlight, death was definitive; the woman died a second time. She still belonged to the world while she was lying out there in that damn ditch, thought Winter, but now it’s over. Her face was glowing with an obscene light and her skin looked taut and translucent.

Pia Erikson Fröberg and the two technicians, Jonas Wall and Bengt Sundlöf, began undressing the body. The tape was in place, securing any trace evidence of a possible murderer: hair, fibers from close contact, skin, dust, rocks.

When the body was naked, Fröberg began the autopsy, the external examination. The technicians took photographs while Fröberg spoke into a tape recorder, detailing all the visible injuries. Winter heard her describe the defensive wounds he could see on the body’s forearms. He could see the petechial hemorrhaging that occurred when the woman’s blood pressure shot up and the airways from her head were constricted and the hyoid bone fractured as she was strangled to death. If that was the cause of death. Fröberg spoke about the injuries sustained around the neck. The woman had worn a turtleneck sweater. Underneath it, around her throat, there were clear signs of bruising.

She had white spots on her stomach and chest and on the front of her thighs. She had been lying on her back when she was found. That confirmed that she had been moved after she was killed. Winter didn’t believe this to be a case of suicide, with someone else moving the body afterward. But why not? It was a possibility.

What was certain was that she had died and then lain facedown for at least an hour, and as her circulation ceased, her blood gravitated to the lowest point in her body, and the blood vessels collapsed, and the body surfaces in contact with the ground turned white and still remained so, there beneath the lights.

The technicians took the victim’s fingerprints.

Fröberg continued with the extended medical examination-the expensive one-ordered by Göran Beier. Winter had hoped for some clear distinguishing marks that might help them with the identification: tattoos, burn scars or marks from operations, piercings. But there was nothing other than smooth bluish purple skin, with patches of white. He hadn’t noticed any smells.

“She’s never colored her hair,” Fröberg said.

“How old is she?” he asked.

“Around thirty is all I can say right now. For closer than that, you’ll have to wait. She could be older or younger, a few years either side. She’s got pretty nice skin. Smooth around the mouth and eyes.”

“No smile lines.”

“Maybe she didn’t have much to be happy about.”

Winter wondered briefly why Fröberg would make a comment like that.

“But now the sadness is over. Are you still going to be here when I start the medical assessment?”

“I’ll stay a little longer,” Winter said.

“I’m leaving now,” Beier said, glancing at Winter. “I’ll call you.”

Winter nodded. He turned his gaze back to the woman’s face. She looked older now with her eyes closed.

Pia Erikson Fröberg had examined the internal organs, saved the contents of the stomach, and taken a urine sample and a blood sample from the thigh vein when Winter stepped out of the autopsy room for a moment to call Ringmar.

“What are you still hanging around there for?” Ringmar asked.

“I thought we might get some help with the identification.”

“Yeah, maybe. People tattoo themselves in the most bizarre places. So, you find anything?”

“No. Just a naked face. She wasn’t wearing any makeup.”

“What?”

“She didn’t use makeup.”

“Is that unusual these days?”

“It depends on your social scene. In more refined circles it may well be, but I don’t think she belonged to any like that.”

“What do you mean?”

“She seems poor. Cheap no-name clothes. Stuff like that. Or else that’s not the case at all.”

“What does Beier say?”

“He hasn’t said anything yet.”

“I have someone who’s got a bit more to say.”

Winter thought about the silhouette in the parking lot. He had spoken briefly to the man before handing over the rest of the questioning to Ringmar and joining the funeral procession to the hospital. “Yeah. So, what’s he say?”

“He owns one of the cars in the parking lot.”

“What was he doing there at four in the morning? Could he explain that?”

“He claims that he’d been to a party down in Helenevik and might have had one beer too many, and that he didn’t dare drive farther into town, so he decided to pull into the parking lot at Delsjö Lake and sleep it off in the car.”

“That’s one hell of a tall tale. He tried to pull that one on me too, or parts of it anyway.”

“He claims it’s true.”

“Did you give him a Breathalyzer?”

“As soon as we could. But he wasn’t unfit to drive. He had been drinking but not enough.”

“Okay, okay. So, what’s he saying? What did he see?”

“After being in the car for a while, he had to go take a pee and wandered off a ways from the parking lot, and that’s when he saw her.”

“What did he say?”

“Before he had a chance to pee, he saw something lying a bit farther on, in the ditch, so he went over and found the body. He had his cell phone in his breast pocket and called us straightaway.”

“We’d better check up on that call.”

“Of course.”

“What time was it?”

“When he called? Quarter to four, give or take. Dispatch has the exact time.”

“So, what did he see? Anything else?”

“Nothing, he says. Nobody coming or going.”

“Find anything on the other cars?”

“We’re working on it.”

“Morning prayer has been pushed back half an hour.”

“You want everyone there?”

“Without exception.”

Back in the autopsy room, the woman on the steel slab remained a dead body with no name. Usually when somebody was murdered, there was at least a name that could be laid to rest and, the terrible ordeal over, be handed back to the family.

“Decent teeth,” Fröberg said. “Some discoloration but in good condition.”

“That’ll only help us if she’s been reported missing,” Winter said. “I want the autopsy report just as soon as you can get it to me. Thanks.”

“As always.”

“You’re doing a good job, Pia.”

“That kind of talk makes me suspicious.”

Winter said nothing more. He walked toward the door. The dry air had made him feel thirsty and tired.

“What are you doing tonight, Erik?” Fröberg asked when he was halfway out the swinging door.

He stopped and looked at her. She was clearing off the autopsy table.

“I thought you were remarried or whatever you call it.”

“It didn’t work out. Again.”

“I don’t think it’s a-”

“No. You’re absolutely right. And the main reason I asked was to tell you not to push yourself too hard right at the start of the case.”

“Tonight I’m going to sleep with Angela and maybe talk about the future.” He was answering a question that was no longer being asked. “And think about this one lying over here.”

“One last thing, just to give you something more to think about. This woman has given birth.”

“She’s got a child?” Winter repeated.

“I don’t know if she does now, but she has had at least one child, maybe more.”

“How long ago?”

“I can’t say, at least not yet. But she shows signs of-”

“You don’t have to give me all the details,” Winter said, “not right now anyway.” He felt a shiver spread across his head.

There could be some family out there. It could help in the investigation, or be a source of frustration, or maybe something worse.

7

THE WATCH COMMANDER WAS FANNING HIMSELF WITH A double-folded form, possibly “Lines of Inquiry in Felony Cases.”

The corridor smelled of sweat and sun, and the waiting room off to the right smelled of stale booze. Some joker had hung a poster of a beach with a palm tree next to a recruitment ad for the homicide department. Winter stepped into the elevator and rode up to his office on the third floor.

He had perked up again on the drive down from Östra Hospital. Adrenaline was pumping through his body while sweat ran down his back. This was no ordinary murder investigation. He knew that much without knowing it. He felt the tension in his body. A tension that might not leave him for months.

He poured himself a mug in the coffee room and lingered there for a few seconds, gazing at the morning outside. The thermometer in the window showed eighty degrees, and it was only twenty past eight in the morning, but Winter knew that for him the swimming season was over.

The situation room filled up with people. The ones who’d been at it since the start looked tired; the others waited impatiently, their bottoms literally on the edges of their seats. On the whiteboard Ringmar had written, “Visualization relating to the murder.”

Well, here we are again, after the summer’s rest, Winter thought to himself.

He drew an X on the board.

“We’ve got an unidentified woman, approximately thirty years of age, probably strangled, discovered between three thirty and quarter to four this morning by a man whom we’re going to question further over the course of the day. For the moment, this man is not a suspect, but as you’re all aware, you never know.”

Winter fell silent and stared at his X, then began sketching out a rough map as he spoke. “She was found here.” He drew a circle at the spot where the body was dumped. “We’ll take a closer look at the map later, but I just want to mark out the relative positions. If you continue underneath the highway on Old Boråsvägen, you come to a junction that leads toward Helenevik and Gunnebo, but we’ll wait on that. So here’s where she was found,” he repeated, and pointed at his circle.

“That’s where the lodge is,” Halders said.

“That’s right. As most of you know, the police department’s recreation lodge is located a bit farther down the road.”

“That’s where I had my fortieth birthday party,” Halders said. “Wasn’t there something going on there yesterday?”

“Our colleagues over at the investigations department had a little do there in the early evening,” Ringmar said.

“How early?” Janne Möllerström asked.

“The last man walked out of there at around four,” Ringmar said. “Or rather hopped a cab.”

“What the fu-,” Halders began, but was interrupted by Ringmar.

“Naturally we’re going to question our esteemed colleagues on the subject.”

“That lodge can’t be more than a few hundred yards away from the ditch where the body was found,” Bergenhem said.

“Isn’t there a dog kennel just before it?” Halders asked.

“Yes. Right after the intersection. We’re going to question them too.”

“What, you mean the dogs?” Halders asked, putting on an innocent expression.

“If necessary,” Winter said. “There are a lot of houses along that road. The Örgryte shooting range is a few hundred yards farther up and then the Delsjö Golf Club and the GAIS football club’s training facility. There are a number of houses at the intersection of Old Boråsvägen and Frans Perssonsväg. Here.” He drew a few small squares on the board.

“And then we’ve got a bunch of drunken cops,” Halders said.

Winter didn’t answer. He finished sketching on the board and turned back toward his team sitting in the room.

“The site where the body was discovered is not where the murder was committed. She was moved postmortem to the ditch where she was found at least one hour after she was killed. She had been dead for eight to ten hours when we arrived on the scene. That’s where we are now. I’m waiting for the autopsy report.”

“Sexual violence?” Halders asked. He felt rested despite the late night.

“We don’t know yet. But her clothes seemed undisturbed and Pia Erikson Fröberg saw no immediate indication of sexual violence.”

“Any other witnesses?” asked Möllerström. He was Winter’s database expert, a meticulous detective who saw to it that all materials were entered into the preliminary investigation database.

“So far no one’s gotten in touch voluntarily, except for the guy sitting downstairs.”

“We’re looking at four cars,” Ringmar said. “Two of them were reported stolen.”

“That’s good,” Bergenhem said.

Everyone knew a stolen car could lead straight from a murder scene to a dump site.

“We’re scouring the vehicles today,” Ringmar said.

“What do the owners say about it?” Sara Helander asked.

Winter studied her. She had become part of his core group during the last investigation-an agonizing one-and he wanted to hold on to her permanently and not just have her on loan from surveillance. “Two of the owners were very happy that we’d found their cars-at least that’s what they’re saying-and the other two will just have to make the best of it.”

“Why had they parked there in the first place?” Halders asked.

“Yeah,” Veine Carlberg filled in, “why leave your car in that godforsaken parking lot overnight?”

“That’s what we have to find out.”

“Did she have any defensive wounds?” Helander asked, eyeing the two photos in her hands. “It’s hard to tell from these.”

“She appears to have fought for her life,” Winter said. “There were injuries to her forearms, but we’ll have to wait for the report to know when they were inflicted. Here are the photos from the autopsy,” he said, and handed her a thin pile. “You can see there.”

“So she’s unidentified, huh,” Halders mumbled.

“She’s also had at least one child,” Winter said. “That could be of help to us.”

No one commented on this last statement. Winter studied the faces in front of him and started to hand out the day’s assignments. The work they did that day could prove to be the most important of the entire investigation.

He already had people sifting through the lists of persons reported missing.

DNA samples were being analyzed, of course.

They would go through the criminal-records database in hope that the woman had previously been arrested and charged, maybe even sentenced, and that her fingerprints would help them find the murderer. But the chances of that were slim.

The photograph on the desk in front of Winter didn’t reveal much of death. The woman looked like she was still part of the world, like she was resting.

They would hope that some fellow human being missed her, but they weren’t going to sit around waiting for that fellow human being to get in touch.

Winter thought about the woman as a mother.

They would knock on the door of everyone who lived in the vicinity of the dump site. They would track down newspaper deliverymen and others who might have been moving around there during the night.

They would check the taxi companies. Halders was assigned that job, and he grimaced despite his interest in cars. It’s pointless, he thought, but he didn’t say it.

“I know you think it’s pointless, but it’s gotta be done,” Winter said.

“This time it could be different,” Halders said. “There must have been a few fares from the recreation lodge. But fuck, man, cabbies never get in touch and they never see anything. It was better back in the old days.”

It was better back in the old days, thought Winter. Back in the day when he could have picked up the phone and dialed 17 30 00, and the central dispatcher would have made an announcement to all cars, “Anyone working last night call Winter,” and the job of an investigator would sometimes be made a little bit easier.

The Migration Board needed to be notified. The woman could be a foreign national. Interpol. Easy does it, Winter.

He looked at the arrows and numbers on the whiteboard-almost nothing there. Just a point of departure.

“Well, welcome back for real now,” Ringmar said. It was eleven o’clock, and they were sitting in Winter’s office.

“I was starting to get bored anyway. Summer vacation.”

“It’s better to have a hobby,” Ringmar said. “Then you make better use of your free time.”

“I went biking and swimming,” Winter said. “And listened to rock. You know, rock could become a hobby for me. Jazz is work but rock is like a hobby. It takes time to learn how to listen to it.”

“Yeah, you said it,” Ringmar said.

Winter heard the sound of engines outside and the jeering shrieks of the seagulls that followed the comings and goings of the radio cars.

“No one reported missing,” Winter said. “That could be good or bad.”

“What’s good about it?”

“She was somewhere less than twenty-four hours ago, was moving around somewhere. Somebody saw her, maybe even spoke to her. And I don’t mean the person who killed her. Just maybe.”

“One might come in over the course of the day. Or tomorrow.”

“Until then, her teeth are of no use to us.”

“We need a dentist,” Ringmar said.

“We need a name and a home address and leads,” Winter said. “It feels like-as if it’s indecent to speak about her. Do you feel that way?”

“No.”

“I always feel that way when we have a murder victim with no identity. Well, you know. No peace.”

Ringmar nodded.

“I’d like to hold off on the newspapers and posters for twenty-four hours,” Winter said.

“Posters? We’re gonna start putting up posters?”

“Yes. Our counterparts in London have started working with them, and I want to test it out here.”

“Is it producing any results in London?”

“I don’t really know.”

“I see.”

“I’ll write up a draft tonight.”

“What are you going to use?”

“I don’t really know that either. Can’t we use this?” Winter held up the image of the dead woman’s face.

“Let me see,” Ringmar said, and reached for the photo. He studied the portrait and handed it back.

“Doesn’t really sit well. But I guess we’ll have to if nothing happens soon. Freshly deceased and a reasonably good picture. It’ll probably be the first time it’s been done in Gothenburg.”

Ringmar stood up and stretched his back, then raised his arms above his head and groaned. “It’s evening for me,” he said.

“Pull yourself together,” Winter said.

“And then there’s the press conference,” Ringmar said, and sat back down again with one leg crossed over the other. His khaki pants and short-sleeved gabardine shirt were infinitely more elegant than Winter’s shorts and washed-out hockey shirt.

“Press conference? Who ordered that? Birgersson?”

“No. They tried to get hold of you when you were on your way in from Östra. Wellman.”

Henrik Wellman was district chief of CID. He was the one homicide inspectors had to turn to for money for any trips they had to make. Or new cars.

Above Wellman there was District Police Commissioner Judith Söderberg. After that, God.

“Is Henrik going to be there himself?” Winter asked with a smile.

“You have to understand him,” Ringmar said. “Young woman murdered, unidentified. Parliament isn’t back in session yet. The hockey season hasn’t gotten started. The press is all over this. A summer murder.”

“A summer murder,” Winter repeated. “We’re taking part in a classic summer murder. A tabloid’s wet dream.”

“It’s the fault of this goddamn weather,” Ringmar said. “If it hadn’t been for this unrelenting heat, it would have been a different thing. For the press, that is.”

“A fall murder,” Winter said. “If it is murder. It is murder, of course, but it’s not official yet. Well. Maybe it’s a good idea to have a conference with our friends from the press. I assume I’ll be the only one representing us.”

“At two o’clock. See you later.”

Ringmar stood up and walked out.

They needed a room now, a house or an apartment. If they couldn’t get a name, they needed a space to start in. The possibilities would fade quickly if they didn’t get an address to work from.

He took an envelope from the top left-hand drawer and opened it. Inside were more photographs from the dump site. He tried to imagine what had happened in the minutes leading up to the woman being deposited there. She could have been carried through the forest, across the bog. That was possible for a strong man. She didn’t weigh more than 120 pounds.

She had been carried. So far they hadn’t found any drag marks in the parking lot or on the path or in the grass. The parking lot. Had she been driven to the parking lot and hauled out of the car and carried over to the ditch? That was a possibility. The two stolen cars? Why not one of them? He would soon know. Somebody kills someone and walks down the street and steals a car and carries out the body and drives off? Would you do that if you had murdered somebody, Winter? Would you drive to Delsjö Lake?

He thought about the lake. Perhaps she’d come in a boat. He had people combing the entire lakefront. Almost seven miles of shoreline. How did one go about concealing a boat?

Could there have been some jogger out running around the lake at that hour? You never know with joggers.

There’s always a meaning behind the choice of disposal site, even if the murderer himself isn’t always aware of it. There’s a clue hidden somewhere in his choice. Something made him drive there of all places. Something in his past.

The dump site. We’ll start from there. I’ll start from there again. I’ll drive back there.

He put the envelope back in the desk drawer, closed it, and stood up so quickly that he felt dizzy for a split second.

Winter felt hungry earlier but the feeling was gone now. Still, he needed to eat something. He drove his car the short distance to the Chinese restaurant on Folkungagatan and ate a quick lunch and drank a quart of water.

8

WINTER LISTENED TO THE LOCAL NEWS AS HE PASSED LISEBERG Amusement Park. “The police have no leads yet in the…” It was true, no matter who it was that told Radio Gothenburg. This afternoon he would clarify what they didn’t know.

Various wheels were spinning around in the amusement park. It struck him that he hadn’t been in there in many years.

The asphalt was soft beneath his tires. Car and road melted into each other, as if both were disintegrating. He passed a sign that measured the temperature of the air and road surface: 93°F in the air, 120°F on the road. Jesus Christ.

After the Kallebäck junction he saw a police sobriety checkpoint on the other side of the road up the hill. A uniformed officer cordially waved drivers over to the curb. Another officer, with a video camera, stood at the roadside a little farther on.

Winter saw him in his rearview mirror. The camera was recording the oncoming traffic. But then he saw the guy train the camera on him. That meant he had been caught on the tape; he and the other drivers headed in the opposite direction were registered, even if they weren’t the ones the police were primarily interested in.

He turned right at the Delsjö junction and continued underneath the highway and past the recreation area. The sweltering heat kept people away-nobody in the parking lot or on the grass.

He was about to turn off to the spot where they’d found the woman when he decided to continue along the old road, underneath the highway that roared right alongside. After barely half a mile he reached an intersection and turned right into a combined parking lot and bus stop. He stopped the car and turned off the engine, got out and lit a Corps, and leaned against the side of the car.

The policeman with the video camera could be an opening. Hadn’t the traffic department been sending out night patrols for a while? Early mornings? Cameras that could see in the dark? Testing out heat-sensitive cameras?

And wasn’t this test supposed to be concentrating specifically on the eastern districts and arteries?

Winter grabbed the phone from its cradle on the dashboard and called traffic. He introduced himself to the watch commander and asked to be connected to the department chief.

“Walter’s busy.”

“For how long?”

Winter could see the shoulder shrug, could almost hear the sigh from the other end: why can’t this guy call somebody else?

“I asked for how long.”

“Who are you, did you say?”

“Inspector Erik Winter. I’m the deputy chief of homicide.”

“You can’t speak to somebody else?”

“We’re involved in a murder investigation, and it’s very important that I speak to Walter Kronvall.”

“Okay, okay, hang on,” the manly voice said, and Winter waited.

“Yeah, this is Kronvall.”

“Erik Winter here.”

“I was busy.”

“You still are.”

“What?”

“You’re busy with this conversation with me now, Walter. And I’ll get straight to the point. I need to know if you had any cameras out around Boråsleden last night, by the Delsjö junction, or anywhere in the vicinity. Early in the morning. While it was still dark.”

“Speed check?”

“You’d know that better than I would.”

“What’s this about?”

“Haven’t you heard about the murder yet? We got a strangled woman this morn-”

“Oh sure, I know about it. Despite the communications in this place, I might add.”

Winter waited for him to continue. He could feel the sweat around his eyes and where the telephone pressed against his cheek. He sat on the car seat in the shade and wiped his forehead with the back of his right hand.

“You want to know if we were filming in the vicinity, when it was dark. Well, it’s possible. Normally we don’t have that kind of equipment, but we got some in on loan from the boys in the copter unit to test it out a bit. Heat-sensitive cameras. I’ll have to check with the local precinct in Härlanda.”

“Can you do that now?”

“Well, I guess I’d better if you’re going to have any chance of seeing the footage. If they’ve been there, that is.”

“How do you mean?”

“Don’t you know how it works, Chief Inspector? The officers in the video cars peruse the tapes and then rewind them, and then somebody else takes over.”

“The tapes are usually recorded over?”

“Sure. We don’t exactly have infinite resources over here in the traffic department.”

“Then call them, please.”

“Where can I reach you?”

Winter told him and hung up, then rose from his seat and walked across the asphalt to the bus timetable. The first departure of the day was at 0500 hours. The final one left at 2343. Yet another lead to add to all the others in the investigation. An investigation is a great big vacuum cleaner that sucks in everything: witness statements and forensic evidence, sound ideas and crazy hunches, most of it completely irrelevant to the case. Eventually you find things that fit together. Then you can formulate a hypothesis.

The phone in his breast pocket rang. He answered with his name.

“It’s Walter here again. That was good thinking, Winter. It turns out that they were out last night and this morning in the video cars in the eastern part of town.”

“Okay,” Winter said. “Were they set up along the Boråsleden?”

“You bet. And a couple of the cameras that were used last night haven’t been reused since.”

“Is that all the cameras?” asked Winter.

“I’m not following you.”

“You said that there were a couple of cameras. Were there more than that being used in the area we’re talking about?”

“No, not as I understood it.”

“I need to see those tapes.”

“Where?”

“Can you get them over to homicide by this afternoon?”

“Absolutely. We have special courier cars set aside just for that kind of thing,” Kronvall said, and Winter gave a short laugh.

“Thanks for your help.”

“If this solves the case, then we want credit.”

“Of course.”

“Chief Walter Kronvall of the traffic department provided the crucial assist. Something like that.”

“Here at homicide we don’t forget our friends,” Winter said, then hung up and lingered next to the timetable.

He thought once again about the woman who just a short time ago lay so close by and had been carried there like a slaughtered animal. A victim-and perhaps quarry. Her nameless body was itself a message about what happened. Why? He thought of her half-open mouth and exposed teeth. Like a silent plea. A distant cry.

Winter drove back to the area where the woman was discovered. The grass in the ditch still looked flattened from the weight of her body. He turned around and followed his own tracks with his gaze. It was a long way to carry someone, dead or alive. A dead body was heavy but offered no resistance.

Whoever carried her need not have been a giant. Fear of discovery could make a murderer strong, assuming that he even cared, that is. Or had several people walked there in the sparse light of dawn? More people filled with madness, rage, adrenaline.

She could have been carried over the rough fields, through the fog. Why not?

The police tried to work their way through the terrain within a reasonable radius, but they couldn’t go stomping around haphazardly. If there were too many of them, everything became haphazard.

A shot made Winter start. Another shot shattered the early afternoon silence of the forest and disturbed the low drone of the cars driving alongside. The hard sounds sent echoes above the birch trees and across the water beyond. The shooting ranges were back in use.

“And the sun also rises,” Ringmar said, knocking on the open door before Winter had had a chance to wring his shirt dry.

“I like the sun.”

“When you’re ready, the gentlemen of the press are waiting.”

“It’ll have to be quick. I want to look at these tapes as soon as I’m done.”

Winter explained the videocassettes to Ringmar as they walked down the corridors. The representatives of the media looked like they were on their way to the beach: shorts, thin shirts, someone in sunglasses. Cool guy, Winter thought, and took his place in front of a lectern at the far end of the room.

“We don’t know who she is yet,” he answered to the first question. “And we may need your help to find that out.”

“Do you have a photo?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Hans Bülow from the Göteborgs-Tidningen was one of the few journalists Winter knew by name.

“We’ve taken photos of the victim’s body. We don’t usually release pictures like that to the public, as I’m sure you’re aware.”

“But if you have to?”

“We’ll get back to you on that.”

“But she was murdered?”

“I can’t answer that yet. It could be suicide.”

“So she took her own life and then drove out to Delsjö Lake and lay down in a ditch?” said a woman from the local radio news.

“Who said anything about her dying anywhere else?” he said.

The woman looked at Hans Bülow out of the corner of her eye. The latest issue of GT had an article that speculated about what might have happened.

“We have not yet been able to determine the exact sequence of events leading up to the… death,” Winter said.

“When will we know whether she’s been murdered?”

“Later this afternoon I will be getting a report from the medical examiner.”

“Are there any witnesses?”

“I can’t comment on that.”

“How was the body found?”

“We received a call.”

“From a witness, you mean?”

Winter made a gesture with his arms that was open to interpretation.

“Is she Swedish?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, you know what she looks like, right? Does she appear to be of Swedish or Nordic origin? Or does she look like she comes from somewhere else?”

“I can’t speculate on that yet.”

“If she doesn’t look Nordic, then it’s gotta make it easier to speculate where in Gothenburg she may have lived,” said a young journalist that Winter hadn’t seen before, as far as he could remember.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Don’t you know where all the immigrants live?”

Winter didn’t answer. He thought of the northern suburbs and thought that that was an oversimplification.

“Any more questions?”

“How old would you say she is?”

“Obviously, we’re not sure about that either. But maybe around thirty.”

The journalists wrote, held microphones. A summer murder in Gothenburg.

“What are you doing now?”

“An extensive investigation was launched early this morning. We are securing evidence at the site where the body was found and focusing our efforts on identifying the victim,” Winter said.

“When did it take place?”

“What?”

“The murder. Or the death. When did it happen?”

“It’s hard to say right now. But sometime late last night. I can’t be any more precise than that.”

“When was she found?”

“Early this morning.”

“When?”

“At around four.”

“Have you spoken to people who were in the vicinity at that time?”

“We are seeking to question anyone who may have seen anything. Anyone who thinks they may have seen something is invited to contact the police.”

“How about motive?”

“Impossible to answer that right now.”

“Was she raped?”

“I can’t answer that.”

“Are there any similarities here?” asked Hans Bülow.

“How do you mean?”

“Are you looking into any other cases, either here or elsewhere, that bear a resemblance to this one?”

“I’m afraid I can’t answer that, due to the ongoing investigation.”

“So the victim was not already known to the police?”

“I think I just said that we don’t know her identity.”

“Is that usual?”

“Excuse me?”

“Is it usual for the identity to be unknown? I mean, after this long.”

“It’s been,” Winter looked at his watch, “less than twelve hours since we found her. That’s not a long time.”

“Sure it’s a long time,” the journalist in the sunglasses said.

“Any more questions?” Winter asked, knowing that the cool guy was right.

9

IT RAINED ALL DAY AND SHE SAT AT ANOTHER WINDOW. THE MEN weren’t there. She was scared but she was more scared when the men were there. She had cried out once in the car, and one of them had looked like he was about to hit her. He hadn’t done anything, but he looked like somebody who hits.

This house was somewhere else; she could see that the trees outside were different. There were no other houses and nobody walking along the road. She couldn’t hear the sound of any cars or trains. Once she heard a rumbling overhead that could have been an airplane.

If there were a phone, she could lift the receiver, press the buttons, and speak to Mommy. She knew how.

Maybe the men were out looking for Mommy. They had driven off and come back and driven off and come back again. Now one of them was gone, and the other was also gone, only he hadn’t left in the car. She thought that he was in another room, but then she saw him outside the house. It was just a short distance between the house and the forest, and he came out of the forest and looked right at her through the window, and she crawled down from the chair and went in toward the room because she thought it was scary.

She was lying on the floor the next time she thought about anything. She felt sort of sleepy in her head, and there was a strange smell in the room. She looked around, and there was steam rising from a dish on the floor.

“Eat this now.”

She rubbed her eyes and looked, but everything was blurry. She rubbed her eyes again. Now she saw that there was a lot of steam coming from the plate.

“It’s soup. You have to eat it while it’s hot.”

She saw shoes and legs and asked for her mommy.

“Your mommy will be here soon.”

She asked where her mommy was, but he didn’t answer and she asked again.

“Eat your soup now. Here’s a spoon.”

She said she was thirsty.

“I’ll bring you some water if you start eating.”

She took the spoon and dipped it into the soup and tasted it, but it was too hot. She couldn’t taste anything.

She waited for the soup to cool off. She felt something crinkly in her clothes when she sat on the floor. She thought about the slip of paper she had in the secret pocket of her pants.

“You have to eat now.”

She looked down into the dish, but it still looked too hot. She closed her eyes.

Suddenly she felt a pain at her ear and she opened her eyes and saw the hand right next to her. It hurt again.

“I’ll pull your ear again if you don’t eat.”

Then the hand was gone, and she dipped the spoon into the steaming dish again. She started to cry. He would hit her again, pull her ear. Mommy used to smack her, but that was Mommy.

10

WINTER READ THE AUTOPSY REPORT PAGE BY PAGE. PIA ERIKSON Fröberg described each organ in detail.

Strangulation. The woman had been murdered. She had defensive wounds on her arms, her chest, and her face from a sharp instrument. A knife, a screwdriver, anything. There was no evidence of needle marks on her body, but in some of the photographs he could see lacerations in the skin.

Winter thought about what he’d just read. She had had a child, but it was impossible to say when. Nursery school? Day care? School? Babysitter? Playmates who talked about why a friend didn’t come out to play anymore? Was there even a child anymore? Or was the child a teenager?

Her body had no scars from operations, but there were small scars on her face, around the ears, and she had at some point in her childhood gotten second-degree burns on the inside of her left thigh. Winter hadn’t noticed that in the blue light of the autopsy room.

She was a smoker. Her liver was normal. He had to wait for the results from toxicology. The lab would find any traces of alcohol or drug use there might be.

He was also waiting to hear from the missing persons department of the National Criminal Investigation Department in Stockholm. If she had been reported missing anywhere in the country, Stockholm would identify her.

They hadn’t managed to find her among the local missing person reports or criminal-records databases.

The clothes she had been wearing didn’t have brand labels. Winter thought of the H &M posters he saw every time he walked down the street and of the poster he might have to put up himself.

She hadn’t been wearing any shoes. The police at the body disposal site had found shoes and a whole bunch of other odds and ends from times gone by, but not her shoes.

Her short white tube socks had been wet, or at least very damp. From the grass? It had been relatively dry. From the water? He saw a boat gently gliding through the water, oarlocks wrapped in cloths to muffle the sound.

He rose and stretched his tall body. Fatigue had taken hold of him while sitting.

He walked across the floor to a cabinet and took down a can of shaving cream and a razor from the top shelf and went to the bathroom, where he wet his face and spread the cream on. The light was dim and his eyes glowed in his face, which was like a mask. He leaned in closer and saw that the whites of his eyes had cracked into small red threads.

But the shave perked him up and back in his room he switched on the VCR and TV with the remote. The light of the first film sequence was dim and grainy, and he tried to use the contrast button on the remote to compensate.

The film looked like a photo negative, with the darkness cast in a false silvery hue by the camera’s night vision. You could see everything, but the subject took on a surreal quality.

Two cars drove past in the foreground. They came along the road and had not pulled out from the Kallebäck recreation area. The time was displayed in the lower corner of the screen: 2:03 a.m. Another car passed in the foreground, moving toward town. No motion on the other side. The officer who was holding the camera was standing near the top of the hill, hidden from the sparse traffic, with the lens pointing east. Winter could see the side road that led down toward the Delsjö Lake area, but the visibility was poor. The tape kept rolling but no vehicles appeared heading east. Then suddenly a car emerged at the extreme right of the screen, but as soon as he registered the movement, the screen went blank.

He backed up the tape and watched the sequence again. There a car appeared, driving along. There he saw the outline of it. There it went blank.

Winter watched the clip four more times without really seeing anything more than he had to begin with. He removed the tape and inserted the other one into the VCR. Four seconds in, two cars came driving along at high speed from Mölnlycke. He wondered if the drivers were about to be pulled over.

Now he saw a car drive by on the other side and continue beyond the turnoff. Ten minutes had passed since the first time code on the previous cassette.

The camera moved and then stabilized again. The road was empty in both directions. There was a flicker in the right-hand corner of the screen, and a car passed by driving east. Winter saw a turn signal come on, and the car turned off toward Delsjö Lake. He couldn’t make out what the make was. He waited and another car appeared on the highway and also turned off to the right. It looked like one of the smaller Ford models, but he was far from certain.

The time ticked away at the bottom of the screen. Several cars passed by from the left, heading toward the city. The camera was steady. Maybe he had a tripod, thought Winter.

Another flash of movement at the bottom of the screen and a car came out from the recreation area. Winter waited until the road was clear again and then rewound the tape.

The car had driven past at three minutes to three, in the direction of town. He studied the sequence again. It could be the same car he had seen coming in toward Delsjö Lake earlier. That was fourteen minutes before. It didn’t take more than a minute to drive from the turnoff to the parking lot, one and a half, tops. Just as long to drive back, maybe a little less. That would give someone at least eleven minutes down by the lake: to open the car door, walk to the back of the car, haul out the body, carry it fifty yards, lay it in the ditch, look around, and go back the way he came.

He watched the whole tape through to the end but saw nothing more of interest, so he returned to the sequences where the same car seemed to drive off the highway and back on within the space of fourteen minutes.

“You’re still here?” Ringmar had opened the door.

“Come here for a minute, Bertil.”

Ringmar walked up to Winter, who pointed at the TV.

“Look at this. Wait a minute. See the car across the road?”

“Is this the tape from Kallebäck?”

“Yes. See the car driving up the hill?”

“I’m not blind. Despite this light.”

“Now. See how it turns off toward Delsjö Lake? I’ll back it up.”

Neither of them said anything while Winter fiddled with the remote. The car came back into view.

“Can you make out what kind of car it is?”

“Well… Can you freeze-frame it?”

Winter pressed pause, and the car stopped and jiggled on the highway.

“It could be a Ford. Maybe,” Ringmar said.

“That’s what I was thinking. Are you sure? You know more about cars than I do.”

“No, I’m not sure. But it looks like an Escort. Fredrik knows more about cars than anyone.”

“It comes back later on,” Winter said, and fast-forwarded the fourteen minutes.

“It’s closer, but it’s no easier to tell what make it is from this angle,” Ringmar said.

“There’s someone in the front seat.”

“If there weren’t, that would be pretty sensational.”

“You can just about make out the face.”

“You’re gonna have a harder time with the tags.”

“It’s hard but not impossible,” Winter said. He turned toward Ringmar.

Ringmar saw a strange light in his eyes. Could be the reflection of the screen.

“Someone was in the vicinity of the disposal site after the body was put there. Or shortly before-or at the same time.”

“We’ll have to track down that car,” Ringmar said. But that went without saying, so he continued, “How sophisticated is our equipment for making this footage visible?”

“You mean crystal clear?”

“I mean clear enough to see a few numbers or letters or facial features. And we’ll have to speak to the uniform behind the camera. The cameraman.”

“We’ll have to speak to Beier,” Winter said, and just at that moment the phone rang and it was Beier.

“We’ve got something on the sign,” he said.

“The sign?”

“The marking on the pine tree. The red mark, the sign above the body.”

“Okay, I’m with you now.”

“Did you check with the forestry service?”

“Just a second.” Winter put down the receiver and looked through the thin pile of papers on his desk. “Has anyone checked with forestry and everyone else about that marking on the tree yet?”

Ringmar didn’t know.

“Not everything has come in yet,” Winter said into the phone. “So the answer to your question is still no.”

“Anyway, it was fresh.”

“How fresh?”

“Could be from last night.”

“Don’t tell me it’s blood.”

“No. Paint, acrylic, one of the hundred or so shades of red.”

“And it’s only on that one tree?”

“Seems that way.”

“What’s it supposed to be?”

“We’re looking into that now, but, to be honest, I have no idea. It could be a cross, but that’s pure speculation.”

“How many photos do you have of it?”

“Quite a few copies, if that’s what you mean.”

“Distribute it to all the departments. Could be some gang, youth gang or something.”

“Or satanists. Delsjö Lake is not unknown to satanists.”

“Delsjö Lake is a big place.”

“Let me know when you’ve checked with the forestry service,” Beier said. “If service is the proper term under the circumstances.”

“Send over a few photos,” Winter said. “I was just about to call you, by the way. I have a couple of videotapes that I want you to take a look at.”

“Send them up,” Beier said, and hung up.

The phone rang again, and Ringmar watched Winter as he listened intently and jotted something down. After he said good-bye he looked up again.

“The guy who owns the kennel over by the bog was woken up last night by a couple of his dogs barking. He went outside and saw a car turn around in front of his spread and drive back out toward the road and the highway on-ramp, or at least toward that recreation area.”

“Could he see the car?”

“He had a light on down at the gate, and he’s sure it was a Ford Escort.”

“That’s our car. What time was this?”

“Just before we saw it on the videotape,” Winter said, and nodded at the mute TV screen. “He even mentioned what year it was.”

“Is that possible?”

“He saw the car in real life,” Winter said.

“Now he can see the replay.”

“Sometimes I feel like it’s the replay you want to be part of,” Winter said. “Not the first live recording but the replay.”

11

THE NATIONAL CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION DEPARTMENT HAD contacted Winter. He sat with the photo of the dead face in front of him. There were missing women who bore some resemblance to the dead woman, but the similarities weren’t enough.

A courier arrived with the photographs from Beier’s forensics department. Winter studied the marking painted on the bark. He tried to associate movements with the images. Closing his eyes, he thought about messages: a whole collection of them on file. Sometimes somebody wants to tell us something. Or just mislead us.

Someone knocked, and Winter said come in, and a young detective stepped through the door with a report in hand.

“What is it?” Winter asked.

“I’ve spoken to the municipal authority and that mark-”

“Thanks.” Winter stood up. He recognized the boy but couldn’t remember his name, only that he’d joined the unit a month or two ago. This must be his first murder investigation, Winter thought.

The detective held out the report.

“Tell me yourself instead. Have a seat.”

The boy sat down in front of the desk and tried to look unperturbed. His forehead was all sweaty and he knew it. The blazer he sported was thin and looked cool but was insane to wear in this weather.

Winter wondered what the boy thought about his vacation-wear cutoffs and T-shirt, his customary dress code having so obviously rubbed off on even the youngest member of the unit. “Can you think in that blazer?” he asked.

“What?”

“Take off your jacket and untuck your shirt. You look hot.”

The detective smiled as you might to a joke you didn’t understand. He crossed his legs.

“I mean it,” Winter said. “One of the perks of working as a detective is that you can dress however you want.”

The boy looked like he had decided to be a little tough after all. “That all depends on the assignment, doesn’t it? On the investigation?”

“Sometimes.”

“Sometimes you’ve got to blend in.”

“Then you’re doing a good job of that now.”

The boy smiled and took off his jacket. “It’s damn hot out there.”

“So, what do the authorities and agencies say?”

“They haven’t been there-at the dump site. Nobody’s marked any trees lately. The land belongs to the municipality.”

“What do they mean by that?”

“By what?”

“Lately. When were they last there?” Winter bent down and lifted the two sheets of paper his rookie detective had laid on the desk. “What’s your name again?”

“Uh, Börjesson. Erik Börjesson.”

“Yes, that’s right,” Winter said, as he scanned the report for the answer he’d just sought. “A month ago. They haven’t carried out any forest maintenance around Delsjö for a month.”

“No,” Börjesson said. “No work like that.”

“Have you thought about what it might be, then?”

Winter noticed the boy was surprised by the question.

“Who might have put it there?”

“Yes.”

“Fishermen? The fishing club?”

“Have you had a chance to check it out?”

“No, not yet.”

“Any other ideas?”

“You mean something that could provide a natural explanation?”

“Something that isn’t associated with the murder.”

“Kids?”

“Is there anything to suggest that?”

“I, I don’t know, actually.”

“It could be worth checking out.”

“Could have been a couple of lovebirds.”

“Uh-huh.”

“People who carve their names in the bark and all that,” Börjesson said.

“The area is popular among people in search of intimate seclusion,” Winter said.

“It could be that kind of sign,” Börjesson said.

“Then what would it mean?” He slid a photo over to Börjesson. He looks proud to be here, Winter thought. He’s most actively involved in the investigation when brainstorming with the boss. I should do this more often. “What does this inscription or marking, or whatever it is, mean?”

“Aren’t they working on that in forensics?”

“I want to know what you think,” Winter said. He heard a helicopter whirring outside, caught its shadow as it lifted from the helipad to the west of them and flew past his window. The afternoon would wear on toward evening. The lines for tonight’s party would grow longer.

Mounted police would herd people into the pens at Lilla Bommen and Kungstorget. There the people would scream in each others’ faces until they fell down dead drunk. The police would dismount and bring in the dog buses to haul piles of unconscious bodies to soiled, empty rooms that lay four double flights of stairs below the room where Winter was now sitting and thinking about his first few years as a law-enforcement officer.

He had sat on a horse and seen the rabble below him, a sea of panic-stricken movement. That was the young cynicism that was so dangerous to pass along in the years that followed. To see people as a rabble.

Everyone’s just scared as hell, Winter thought, and opened his eyes. Börjesson was looking at him. Winter stood and walked over to the window, but he couldn’t see through the bright light from the sinking sun to the west.

He squinted and saw banners that cast reflections and shadows. The banners down there were being carried off to yet another confrontation between opposing groups of protesters.

There would be trouble again tonight. The party continued and so did the conflict.

“I think they’re connected,” he heard Börjesson say.

Winter turned around with blinded eyes. He blinked to get rid of the sunlight in his head.

“I can’t say what this is supposed to represent,” Börjesson continued, “but it seems like too much of a coincidence for this marking to appear there at the same time as the body.”

“Good,” Winter said. He could now see Börjesson’s face again. The boy looked like a man, or an adult anyway. He’d taken an idea and was running with it, wasn’t standing still. “I’m trying to find out if any satanic rituals have been held in that area.”

“Satanists?”

“They like the forest. Life in the outdoors.”

“It could be something like that.”

“Look at this marking again,” Winter said, and walked around the desk and stood next to Börjesson. “What do you think it looks like?”

The young homicide detective picked up the photo and held it at arm’s length.

“It could be an H.”

“Yes.”

“Or some Chinese character.”

“That’s a good idea.”

“Chinese characters mean something,” Börjesson said. “I mean, beyond just a word. It’s like a thing. An object.”

“You studied Chinese?”

“In high school, for a couple of years. I did humanities at Schillerska High School.”

“And became a policeman?”

“Is there anything wrong with that?”

“On the contrary,” Winter said. “The force needs all the humanists it can get.”

Börjesson gave a short laugh and looked back at the photograph.

“I can compare it to the characters in my books.”

“How many are there?”

“Tens of thousands, but only a few thousand are in more common use.”

Winter stared intently at the symbol. He had to go back there again and study the contours of the tree. It looked as if the person who painted it on the trunk had followed them. The marking looked like it was part of the tree.

He would have to look at the thing itself, but even now he felt a raw power emanating from the photo, a maniacal force from another world of evil. A message.

Winter shook his head gently. They started again, the connotations swirling in his mind.

To him the marking looked like an H. That was also a coincidence. In his mind he had named the woman after the cluster of houses close by: Helenevik.

For him she had been Helene hours before he had made any serious attempt to study the symbol on the tree. Helene. It felt as if the fabricated name would help him find out who she really was.

She was dead and the dead have no friends, but he wanted to be her friend right up until she got her name back.

12

EVERYTHING IN WINTER’S OFFICE WAS BLACK AND WHITE, WITH no shades of gray. The Post-its on the wall opposite his desk were empty rectangles.

Lingering there alone in the silence, he was suddenly very tired-a sensation that seemed to spring from the stillness in the room. He closed his eyes, and his thoughts became vague. He saw a child’s face before him and opened his eyes again. He closed his eyes and looked at the face. The hair had no color, and the girl’s eyes were looking straight at him. It was a girl.

A reflexive jolt roused him just as he was about to tip over in his chair. Must have fallen asleep, he thought.

He no longer saw the girl’s face, but he didn’t forget her.

The phone rang.

“So you’re back at work.” It was his sister.

“Since this morning. Pretty early,” Winter said. “I was actually back a bit before that but not for real until now.”

“What’s happened?”

“ ‘Sounds like murder!’”

“What?”

“Somebo-There’s been a murder. It’s true. But I was quoting a song by a band I’ve been listening to, to try to find myself again.”

“Coltrane, of course?”

“The Clash. A British rock band. Macdonald-you know, the British inspector I worked with last spring-he sent me a few CDs.”

“But you’ve never listened to rock in your whole life.”

“That’s why.”

“What?”

“It’s like-I don’t know. I need something else.”

“And now you’ve got a fresh murder on your hands.”

“Yes.”

“So the assault case, or whatever the expression is, you guys have solved that? Or put it aside?”

“The assault case?”

“Your colleague, Agneta, with the foreign last name.”

“Aneta.”

“That’s the one. Well, apparently she was beaten up, and you know who called me just now?”

Winter saw a swimming pool, a naked man, sun glittering in the water, and he could almost smell the stench of tanning oil again.

“I think so.”

“How could you be so stupid as to drive over to that scumbag’s house and threaten to beat the crap out of him?”

“Is that what he said?”

“He said that you came over to his house and tried to strangle him.”

“I needed information.”

“Not the right way to get it, Erik.”

Winter didn’t answer.

“I haven’t heard from Benny in years,” Lotta said. “And I could almost say the same about you.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Sometimes I wonder when it was you stopped being my brother. No, that sounds pathetic. And crabby. I just mean that I need to speak to you sometimes.”

“I’m trying.” Winter knew that his sister was right. When her life hit the skids, he didn’t have a thought for anything other that his own career. Or whatever it is I consider my work to be, he thought. He had been immature. She’s right, he thought again.

“But we were speaking about Benny Vennerhag,” she said. “He called and complained and asked me to keep you away from him.”

“I’ll talk to him.”

“Why?”

“You know why.”

“Can’t the police manage without their peculiar contacts on the other side? Or haven’t you caught the ones who hurt your colleague?”

“We’ve caught them. But that bastard shouldn’t be calling you.”

“Well, at least somebody’s calling me.”

“Now you’re exaggerating, Lotta.”

“Am I?”

“I promise to do better. Åke isn’t causing any more trouble, is he?”

His sister had gotten divorced from Åke Deventer, and it had been an ordeal filled with bitterness. Now she lived alone with her two kids in the house where they had grown up.

“He stays away, and that means he isn’t causing any trouble,” she said. “But I had pretty much forgotten the great mistake of my youth, Benny Vennerhag, until I heard his voice yesterday.”

“You hadn’t even turned twenty-five, I think.”

“My God. You’re supposed to be considered an adult at that age.”

“He must have been rattled.”

“What?”

“Benny. I must have scared him.”

“You did try to kill him, after all.”

Winter said nothing.

“Did it feel good?” she asked.

“What?”

“Trying to murder somebody? Was it a good feeling?”

The room had grown darker. Winter thought about his hands around Benny Vennerhag’s jaw. He no longer remembered what it had felt like. They hadn’t been his hands.

“Are you there?” she asked.

“I’m here.”

“How are you doing, really?”

“I’m not sure. A woman who’s no more than thirty years old is dead, and we don’t know who she is. That makes me more depressed than I ought to be, at least this early on.”

“Why don’t you come over here for a bit? It’s been months.”

Yeah, why not. Everything would still be there when he came back. His anonymous gloomy office at the police station was in that sense bigger than life itself. It was here before he showed up and it would remain after he was gone. “Should I bring something along?”

“No. But you are coming, then?”

“Are you alone?”

“Bim and Kristina are out but only for the moment. They really want to see you, Erik.”

Winter thought about his nieces. He was an awful uncle. Awful.

“It’s true,” his sister said. “They haven’t forgotten you.”

He walked down the empty corridors of the homicide department. Someone had forgotten to switch off the lights in the situation room. He stood in front of the board and considered his own vague lines and arrows, circles and Xs. He wrote “Helene” next to the circle that marked the spot where the body was found. He wrote “transport” in the empty field to the right of the map and noted the arrival and departure times for the car he had seen on the video. Beier’s men were studying the footage now. “We’re short on time,” Winter had told them.

He thought once again of the lake, the water. How many people owned boats on Delsjö? Had anyone’s boat been stolen, even for a few hours? Maybe the fishing club knew.

The possibilities were infinite, the disappointments even more numerous. He thought about the child again. She was like something out of a dream or some kind of a message from a distant and frightening land that he had no choice but to visit. We have to find out your name, Helene.

The parking lot was deserted, and he felt dizzy when he emerged from the police station, like a split-second gap in the middle of his thoughts. As if he wasn’t there.

A radio car pulled in, and the man behind the wheel gave him a quick nod. Winter raised his hand and continued over to his Mercedes. The Shell station beyond was an amusement park, a loud glare of neon that gave the surroundings a cheerful tinge. Winter caught a whiff of fried sausages and overheated late summer.

On the other side of the gas station, the traffic was backed up by the cars outside Ullevi Stadium-the whole city was probably gridlocked. Staring stupidly at the keys in his hand, Winter turned back to the front entrance and continued on to the bicycle stand, where he always had a bike parked, in reserve, for situations just like this.

He pedaled past the central train station and on down to the river. Heading west, he had to weave his way through throngs of people milling about the beer tents at Lilla Bommen.

He leaned his bike against the iron fence and walked the short path up to the front steps. It had been months since he was last here, and he’d wondered why that was as he biked through the quiet streets of Hagen, taking in the smell of fresh-cut grass. There were no lights on at the house next door, on the left. Six months earlier he’d investigated the murder of a nineteen-year-old boy who’d grown up there.

The front door of his sister’s house stood ajar. He rang the doorbell.

“Go round the back,” he heard from inside. He guessed that she was sitting out on the terrace.

He made his way back down the steps and through the grass to the rear of the house. She stood and gave him a hug. He could smell twilight and wine. Her hair was shorter than he remembered and maybe a little darker, and she felt thin around her arms and chest. He knew that she was going to be turning forty in two months, on October 18. He wasn’t sure whether she’d be having a party when the big day came around.

“Would you like a glass of wine? Cold. White.”

“I’d love one. And some water.”

“I didn’t hear the car.”

“That’s because I biked.”

“Uh-huh.”

“The city is completely clogged.”

“The party?”

“Yes. Have you been down?”

“Have you?”

“Not for the purposes of pleasure,” Winter said, and smiled.

His sister poured him a glass of wine and left him to fetch some water and two tumblers.

“I bumped into Angela last week,” she said once she had returned and sat down next to him. “In a corridor, after the rounds. She was up from radiology.”

“Oh yeah?”

“I hadn’t seen her in ages. It’s as if she’s taking after you. Some kind of silence or something. Her not saying anything, I mean.”

“About what?”

“About you and her, for example.”

Winter waited for her to continue. His sister worked as a staff doctor at Sahlgrenska, and Angela had recently transferred there from a position at Mölndal Hospital.

“The two most important women in my life are doctors,” Winter said. “I wonder what that means.”

“It means that you’re a basket case,” his sister said. “But then you’re forgetting our mother.”

“Oh right.”

“When did you last speak to her?”

“The last time she called. Two and a half weeks ago maybe. How about you?”

“Yesterday.”

“How is she?”

“I think she’s cut back to two martinis before lunch,” she said, and they laughed together. “No, seriously. I think Dad’s been on her case about it.”

“Dad? You gotta be kidding.”

“When did you last speak to him, Erik?”

Winter emptied his glass. He saw his hand tremble slightly, and he saw that she caught it.

“When they moved-escaped to Spain.”

“I know.”

“Now you’ve had it confirmed a second time.”

“Two years. That’s a long time.”

“He had a choice. He could have done something with his money, for others. And by that I don’t mean me or us. It’s his money. I have my own.”

“Isn’t it a heavy burden to always sit in judgment?”

“I’m not a judge. I’m a policeman.”

“You know what I mean.”

“It was his choice.”

“Mom went with him.”

“She’s not responsible for her actions.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” his sister said, straightening up in her chair.

He reached for the bottle of wine as if he couldn’t hear. “Would you like another glass?”

She held hers out, almost reluctantly.

“They have a choice. They could actually return home and face the music.”

“And what would that change?”

“It’s not about-look, do we have to talk about this now?” Winter said. “Can’t we just sit here for a while and drink some wine?”

13

THE NIGHT SANK SLOWLY INTO STILLNESS, UNTIL WINTER couldn’t read what was written on the wine label. He drank and the wine tasted of metal and earth. He drank again and when he moved his arm he felt as if he was about to lose his balance.

“How long have you been on your feet today anyway?” his sister asked.

“Well, since four this morning.”

“My God.”

“Those crucial first hours.”

“And now they’re over,” she said. “Those crucial first hours.”

“Just about.”

“But the hunt continues.”

“If you can call it a hunt.”

“Want to talk about it?”

He reached for the glass again but then pulled his arm back, sensing that he wouldn’t be able to get another word out if he took another sip of wine. Instead he stood and walked the few steps to the terrace railing and leaned against it. Over by the hedge a playhouse was peeking out from behind a maple tree. Winter had spent endless nights of adventure in there when he was nine and ten, maybe eleven.

Despite a sudden urge to go over there, he stayed where he was. The fatigue was causing him to think of his childhood and its loss. You can have an awareness of a previous life but no more than that, he thought. Soon everything will be plowed into the present.

He turned to his sister. She had pulled a shawl over her shoulders, and it gave her a foreign appearance. A wind from the garden swept through the coarse hairs of his bare legs, but he didn’t feel cold.

“There’s a child,” he said. “This woman who’s been murdered, whose name we don’t know yet-she’s had a child, and that child must be out there somewhere.”

“Does that worry you?”

“Wouldn’t it you?”

“Sure.”

“It bothers me. I’ve had trouble concentrating because I’ve been thinking about the fact that Helene has had a child.”

“I thought you just said you didn’t know her name?”

“What?”

“The murdered woman hasn’t been identified. But you just called her Helene.”

“I did? I better be careful. I’ve given her that name in order to-to get closer to her. When I’m thinking.”

“Why that particular name?”

“She was found at Delsjö Lake, near Helenevik.”

“Helenevik? I’ve never heard of it.”

“A handful of nice-looking houses across the highway, looking out over Lake Rådasjön.”

“Helene?”

“Yes. I think of her as Helene. And I think about her child.”

He saw Lotta give a shiver, as if more from his words than from the approaching night. “Then you have to find out who she is quickly,” she said.

“Of course, but I feel despondent. It’s like another descent into hell. Maybe it’s just tonight. Maybe we’ll have to wait till her landlord calls in and says she’s late with the rent.”

“That could take a long time.”

“Four months,” he said and sat down again.

“Have you had a chance to speak to a colleague about your despondency?” his sister asked.

“Of course not.”

“Isn’t that a problem for you? I mean, not just now, but always?”

“How do you mean?”

“There was a reason why you came here tonight, beyond just coming to see your dear sister. You wanted to express that doubt to somebody else, get it out of your system so you can keep on working.”

“Like a confession, you mean?”

“To you it probably is a confession. Whenever you feel doubt it’s as if you’ve committed a sin.”

“Bah!”

“That’s how it’s always been with you.”

“I don’t know how I should respond to that.”

“You should respond by saying that you want to have a normal life too, and that, in turn, will lead to you having someone to talk to about your abnormal life.”

“Abnormal?”

“You can’t just live one kind of life, twenty-four hours a day.”

“I don’t. And when I do, it’s because I have to.” He got up and reeled for a moment. He looked at his watch. He had been on his feet for eighteen hours straight. The crucial first hours. He started to walk.

“Where are you going, Erik?”

“I’m going down to the playhouse. Is the air mattress still in there?”

The owner of the dog kennel over on Old Boråsvägen was dead certain that a Ford Escort CLX hatchback had backed up and turned off in the intersection. It was a ’92 or a ’93-maybe a ’94-probably pearl white. Was he certain? Oh yeah, it had looked white in the glow of the lamp all right, you couldn’t know for sure, but one thing was certain, they produced at least a million of that model in pearl white, the man said. “The question is whether it even came in any other color.”

“But it couldn’t have been an older model anyway?” Fredrik Halders asked.

“Maybe a ’91 but no earlier than that. They redesigned the Escort in ’91, but maybe you already know that. They made them rounder and more bulbous. And higher. It was one of those.”

“But it was a CLX?”

“What?”

“You said it was a CLX. Why not an RS?”

The man looked at Halders as if he’d finally said something intelligent. “So you know something about cars?”

Halders nodded.

“Then you also know that the RS has a spoiler on the trunk. This car didn’t have no spoiler on the trunk.”

“Could you make out the plate number at all?”

“I didn’t have a notepad with me, but it began with the letters HE.”

“HE? No numbers?”

“It was hard to see, and letters reflect the light better than numbers.”

“Really?” A complete nutcase, but good eyes and good at cars, Halders thought to himself. He nodded again and noted it down on his pad. “Anything else?”

“You mean, did I see anything else?”

“Yeah. See or hear anything.”

“Which do you want me to say first?”

“Did you see anything other than just the car?”

“No driver anyway. The light was angled so that it was all blacked out on the driver’s side.”

“No passengers?”

“Not that I could see.”

“Where did the car come from?”

“I don’t know. But it hightailed it off toward town after it had been in there and turned around.”

Halders scribbled in his pad again.

“So it must have come from the other direction,” the man said. “From the direction of the lake or Helenevik, right?” Halders looked up from his notepad.

“Well, it’s possible the driver just drove the wrong way, or changed his mind, or just decided to go for a drive out to that intersection and then turn around and drive home again,” he said.

Fucking moron, Halders thought.

“Aha,” the man said. “Now I understand how you police work.” He gestured at his forehead with his index finger. “I would never have thought of that myself, know what I mean?”

“Did you hear anything?”

“Other than the sound of the car?”

“Yes. Before, during, or after.”

“Which do you want me to say first?”

Halders sighed audibly. “It’s getting late, and we’re both tired,” he said.

“I’m not tired.”

“So you saw nothing else unusual yesterday evening or last night?”

“That would’ve been difficult anyway, know what I mean?”

“I don’t understand.”

They were on the front steps of the man’s house and Halders could see the wire fence of the dog pen glinting beyond the corner of the cabin, illuminated by a lantern that hung on the wall. The kennel owner himself was short and sort of lumpy, and he’d immediately assumed a defensive posture toward the tall Halders, as if preparing to repel an attack.

“I didn’t understand that last bit,” Halders repeated.

“It would’ve been difficult to notice anything seeing as there was so much coming and going from your guys’ cabin the whole night, know what I mean?”

The man’s habit of ending all his statements in that way was starting to piss the hell out of Halders.

“You mean the function that took place yesterday at the police department’s recreation lodge.”

“Or the beer lodge, know what I mean?”

“Were you disturbed by it in some way?”

“Can’t say I was. But there was a lot of traffic.”

“Cars, you mean?”

“Well, that’s traffic, know what I mean?”

“No pedestrian traffic?”

“Not that I saw. But there have been festivities up at your beer lodge during which the guests have ended up scattered all over my land in the small hours of the morning. Once there was this plainclothes officer and a woman with barely a stitch on who decided to bed down for the night in the moss behind the foxhounds over yonder.” He jerked his head toward the corner of the cabin.

That might well have been my fortieth birthday bash, Halders thought to himself. “But nobody was running around in the night last night?”

“Not that I heard. But you ought to speak to your buddies.”

“We’re in the process of doing that.”

“That’s a good idea, know what I mean?”

“But you’re sure about the car?” Halders was amazed at his own patience.

“I already told you, know what I mean? We’ve gone into all sorts of detail here, know what I mean?”

“Well, thanks for all the information. If anything else comes to mind, anything at all, then do get in touch, know what I mean? Even if it’s something that happened earlier, someone who passed by more than once. Anything. You know what I mean?”

He parked the car outside the police station and walked along the stream. Outside the city hall a couple was drinking something out of transparent plastic cups. That’s not raspberry juice, Halders thought to himself, seized by an urge to grab the cups out of their hands and arrest them-kick up a real stink over some petty shit. Society ought to send a clear message: zero tolerance. Every little goddamn crime should be treated as a crime. Anyone riding a bike without a light should lose their license. Anyone caught drinking in public should be sent to jail. That’s what they did in New York. The city would calm down. The country would calm down.

Everything and everyone would calm down, except me, thought Halders. The more I think about calm, the angrier I get. How far would I go if society gave me the go-ahead for my brand of zero tolerance?

He waited together with a thousand others to cross over Götaleden and suddenly found himself crowded together with ten thousand others on the Packhuskajen quay. The fireworks began. Halders’s head was popping. He bought a mug of beer and sat at the very end of a long table and scowled at a man opposite him. The man moved after a few minutes.

Halders raised his gaze to the sky and saw the fireworks explode. The light reflected in people’s faces. Their foreheads looked like they were tattooed and their cheeks and chins were stamped with symbols that he couldn’t decipher. He emptied his mug. He thought of Aneta in her white bed at the hospital. The bad thoughts brewed.

Winter had crawled into the playhouse and lain down on the air mattress. It was only partially inflated, and he felt the grain of the floorboards in the small of his back. Maybe there was old air inside the mattress, some that had remained in the hard corners. Maybe he was lying on air from his childhood.

He reached out his arms and felt the walls on both sides of him. He fell asleep.

14

WINTER BIKED HOME AT DAWN. HE HAD MADE AN ATTEMPT AT around midnight, against his better judgment.

“Go lie down in the guest room,” his sister said, and that’s what he’d done.

Now the streets were being swept clean after the night, water flowed over the asphalt, and he nearly fell off his bike while illegally cutting across Linnéplatsen.

In the apartment he kicked off his sandals and bent down for the newspaper. The Göteborgs-Posten had covered the murder with restraint, without a lot of speculation.

Helene was without a name, a cold body in cold storage in a white zippered bag. It was Friday morning, twenty-four hours after he had seen her face for the first time. He tried to remember her features, but they melded together with other lifeless faces he’d seen.

The sun climbed onto the roofs of the buildings on the other side of Vasaplatsen. Winter adjusted the blinds and took out beans and a mill and ground the African coffee, its aroma wafting in his face, invigorating him even before it was brewed.

He put butter and cheese on two French rolls that he had bought at the local bakery on the ground floor of the building. The butter was cold in his mouth. He ate the cheese by itself, two thick slices. Streetcars rattled past below, and a seagull took off from the balcony with a shriek and darted awkwardly past the kitchen window. Winter drank his coffee and heard the flap of its wings in the early morning stillness.

The meeting was a short one. Winter took off his jacket and hung it on the back of the chair, rolled up his sleeves, and brushed away something from his pant leg.

Cerruti, Sara Helander thought. Cool. Quality.

“So we still don’t know who she is,” Winter said.

“We’re going through that community today-what’s the name?” Fredrik Halders said.

“Helenevik,” Bertil Ringmar answered.

“There’ll be seven of you,” Winter said.

“Wow.”

“That’s as many as we could scrape together.”

“I meant that’s a lot,” Halders said. “I’m impressed.”

Winter looked at him but said nothing. Fredrik was starting to have increasingly obvious problems with his attitude. Is that how it is to grow old? To step across the magical crest at forty and slowly slide downhill?

“How many of us are going to be working with our fellow officers?” Bergenhem asked.

“What do you mean?” Carlberg said.

“The little party the guys over at investigations had,” Helander said.

“Can’t they investigate that themselves?” Halders asked.

“What the hell do you mean by that?” Janne Möllerström asked.

“Investigation… investigations department.”

“Cool it, Fredrik,” Winter said.

“You and Börjesson handle the party animals,” Ringmar said to Bergenhem.

“Some of them are doubtless a little tired,” Bergenhem said.

“They’re not the only ones,” Helander added.

Everyone in the room-all twenty-four of them-suddenly thought of the upcoming weekend. Many of them would have planned the season’s big crayfish party for later that evening or Saturday night. Would they have the energy to have a good time? Would they even make it home? How much overtime was the brass ready to give them?

“Tired? Who’s tired?” Winter said, and yawned and waved auf Wiedersehen to the group. There was a tie-up at the door as everyone tried to get out at the same time.

Winter took the stairs up to forensics and went in through the double doors that protected the department from unwanted visitors.

He was let through. Immediately to the right was the laboratory section-the evidence lab with two employees, a firearms examiner, and a chemist to analyze narcotics and clothing and do the chemical processing of fingerprints.

A few men were sitting in the new coffee room. The National Center for Forensic Science had come through with a substantial sum of money for the department just minutes before the premises were to be deemed inadequate. Beier was able to refurbish and expand the single lab into a rough lab, where materials were brought in; a room for clothing and fiber analysis; a chemistry and toxicology lab; the trace evidence lab that Winter had just walked past; a fingerprint lab; and an isolation room, since they didn’t want to put the clothes from the victim and suspect in the same room.

Impressive, Winter thought. He hadn’t been here for a while. Beier came striding down the corridor. “Want some coffee?”

“You bet.”

They walked back down the corridor, and Beier shut the door behind them.

“What should we start with?” he asked.

“The car.”

“That’s some blurry footage.”

“But it is a Ford?”

“We think so.”

“Escort CLX?”

“Maybe. Probably.”

“Could you see anything more of the driver?”

“Jensen is sitting with it now, trying to peer through the blur, but he’s not very optimistic, nor am I.”

“Can you tell whether it’s a man?”

Beier threw out his arms. “You can’t always tell even when the pictures are sharp.”

Winter drummed his fingers on the desktop. “And one more big question: the plate number.”

“We may have found something there,” Beier said. “Three letters. HEL or HEI.”

“How sure is that?”

Beier threw out his arms again. “We’ll keep at it,” he said. “But in the meantime you can get to work on these, if you’ve got the manpower.” He poured out the coffee, and Winter drank without registering its taste.

“We know that this car may have been in the vicinity of the dump site when the body was left there,” Winter said.

“That’s right,” Beier said.

“That’s something to go on.”

“All you have to do is track down all the Ford Escorts in the city. Or the country.”

“All the CLXs.”

“You don’t know that.”

“No, but that’s where I’m gonna start. That case I worked on last spring, in London-my colleague there told me they were looking for a car and all they had to go on was the color and maybe the make. This is better.”

“Maybe.”

“Of course it’s better, Göran. I can really feel my optimism growing just sitting next to you.”

“Then maybe I’d better rein it in.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t have anything new on that strange marking on the tree. Or whatever you wanna call it.”

“This kid in my department suggested that it might be a Chinese character.”

“Well, that would make things easier.”

“Exactly.”

“Then there are just a billion Chinese to bring in for questioning.”

“You’ve forgotten all the Westerners who know Chinese,” Winter said.

“I suggest you start there,” Beier said.

They sat in silence for a short while, sipped their coffee, listened to the noisy ventilation system. Winter almost felt cold in the chilled air. We’re probably the only two police officers in the whole building wearing ties today, Winter thought, noting that Beier’s leaned toward burgundy. He loosened his own. Beier didn’t comment on it.

“I’m sure it’s connected to the murder,” Winter said.

“Why?”

“It’s just a hunch, but it’s a strong one.”

“Positive thinking, you mean.”

“It’s too much of a coincidence that someone would paint on the tree at virtually the exact same time.”

“Maybe she took part in a ritual.”

“No.”

“You’re sure?”

“That little inlet may have been a haunt for satanists and other fanatics, or maybe even still is, but she didn’t take part in that kind of thing.”

“Maybe she didn’t have a choice.”

“It would have been noticed. Someone would have heard something.”

“Like our colleagues from the investigations department.”

“That department has some of the most keen-eyed officers on the force.”

“Regardless of the state they’re in?”

“A police officer is always prepared.”

“For what?”

“For the worst,” Winter said, and they both became serious. “It’s often been shown that the choice of location is not random. A murderer selects his spot.”

“I agree with you. I think.”

“We have to ask ourselves why she was put there. Why she was lying at Delsjö Lake. Then, why at that particular end of the lake-”

“Proximity to the road,” Beier interjected.

“Maybe. Then we have to ask ourselves why she was lying exactly in that spot. Not five yards this way or that.”

“You really go in for the mise-en-scène.”

“The mise-en-scène involves movement; it’s the opposite of standing still.”

“That was beautifully put,” Beier said.

Halders preferred to wander the path along the shoreline on his own. The houses slept soundly and impassively atop the hillside.

The area reminded him that he was a poor homicide detective who would never be anything else. He would never make inspector, but he didn’t know whether or not he was bitter about it.

If he was in the right place at the right time, his fortune would be waiting for him there. They would shake hands and return to headquarters, and the police chief would invite him up to his office and at the same time call out to Winter to say, “Now you can just hand everything over to inspector Halders here…”

He began the door-to-door inquiries at one of the houses close to a school he didn’t know the name of. He rang the doorbell and heard the chime echo through the cavernous interior. There was an awning above the door that shaded him and caused the sweat on his forehead to roll more slowly down his face and linger on his eyelids. When the door was opened by a woman in a robe, he blinked and bowed his head. She was dark haired, or it may have been just the intense sunlight that was streaming in from the open doors behind her.

“I’m sorry to bother you. I’m from the police,” Halders said, and held out his police ID. “Homicide department.”

He fumbled with his wallet.

“Yes?”

“We’re conducting an in-”

“Is it the murder on the other side of Boråsleden? I just read about it. We were talking about it a moment ago,” the woman said, and a barechested man in swimming trunks suddenly appeared behind her.

“It’s just routine. We have to ask everyone in the vicinity if they’ve seen or heard anything within the last twenty-four hours.”

“When should we be counting from?” the man asked. “My name is Petersén, by the way.” He held out his hand. Halders shook it.

“Same here,” the woman said. “Denise.” She smiled and held out her hand, and Halders squeezed it gently.

“Halders,” Halders said.

“Come in, by the way,” the man said. He followed the couple to an outdoor patio that was paved with what might have been mosaic tiles.

“Would you like a refreshment?” the man asked, and Halders answered with a yes.

“A drink? Gin and tonic?”

“I’m afraid-”

“A beer?”

“That would do nicely.”

The man walked back inside the house, and the woman sank into a folding chair that looked complicated. She nudged a pair of sunglasses to the tip of her nose and seemed to look at Halders. He looked back. She dangled one sandal on her foot. The sandal was red, like the fire in the sun.

“I’m happy to be of service in the meantime,” she said.

Don’t let your imagination run away with you now, Halders thought. Try to keep a little blood up in your head.

The man returned with a tray and three bottles of beer.

15

WINTER HAD FORGOTTEN ABOUT BENNY VENNERHAG, FOR THE moment, when he called.

“I heard you solved it-the attack on your colleague.”

“Where’d you hear that?”

“You haven’t become naive, now, have you, Inspector?”

Winter thought of his hands around Vennerhag’s jaw.

“I’m still in pain,” Vennerhag said.

“What?”

“The brutality of the police force. What you did to me the other day? I could-”

“I may need your help again soon,” Winter said mellifluously.

“I don’t like that tone in your voice,” Vennerhag said. “And in that case it’ll have to be over the phone.” He waited but Winter said nothing more. “What do you need help with?”

“I don’t know yet, but I might be in touch soon.”

“What if I leave town?”

“Don’t.”

“I’m not allowed to leave town?”

“When did you last leave town, Benny?”

“That’s beside the point, Inspector.”

“You haven’t been outside the city limits in four years, Benny.”

“How do you know that?”

“You haven’t become naive, now, have you, Master Thief?”

Vennerhag snickered. “Okay, okay. I know what it is anyway. I read the papers. But I don’t see how I can be of any help to you when I don’t know anything about it. Who is she, by the way?”

“Who?”

“The dead woman, for Christ’s sake. The body. Who is she?”

“We don’t know.”

“Come on, Winter. There’s no such thing as an unknown body anymore.”

“Maybe not in your world.”

“What do you mean by that?”

Winter was tired of Vennerhag’s voice. He wanted to end the conversation.

“I honestly don’t know who she is,” he said. “I may end up needing your help. And you will help me then, won’t you, Benny?”

“Only if you’re nice.”

“The police are always nice.”

Vennerhag’s laugh cut through the phone line again. “And everybody else is mean. How’s Lotta doing, by the way?”

“She told me that you called and complained.”

“I didn’t complain. And it was for your own good. What you did was out of order. It may be hot as hell, but you keep your emotions in check.”

“Don’t call her anymore. Stay away from her.”

“How far away? You said I wasn’t supposed to leave town, remember?”

“I’ll be in touch, Benny,” Winter said, and hung up the receiver. His hand was sticky.

He stood and pulled off his blazer and hung it over the back of the chair, then rolled up the sleeves of his white shirt, missing his summer outfit of T-shirt and cutoffs. Donning an expensive suit of armor for work sent out signals. What signals were those?

“They’re signals of weakness,” his sister had said the night before. “Anyone who has to take cover behind an Armani or Boss suit isn’t really comfortable in his own skin.”

“Baldessarini,” he had said. “Cerutti. Not Armani or Boss-that’s what you wear when you’re working on your car. Could just be that I like to be well dressed,” he had said. “That there’s nothing more to it.”

“There is more to it,” she had said.

And he had told her: About the fear that took hold of him when he came close to evil’s darkest core, about how that fear had intensified his own fragility like a bubble expanding with air. The knowledge that he couldn’t do anything else with his life, didn’t want to do anything else, became a burden when he knew what that involved. When nighttime came around he couldn’t set aside the day, just take it off and hang it up like one of his jackets and pull on a comfy tracksuit and think about something else. That goddamn Cerutti suit stayed with him all the way into bed.

But there was also something else there. His beautiful clothes were at the same time a form of protection against the apprehension that constantly threatened to force its way into his body.

“That could be one interpretation,” she had said. The problem was that his exterior seldom helped with his interior. “Think about that when you’re ironing your armored shirts,” she had said in the waning night that was moving toward morning.

The surface of the water was a sparkling layer of silver, with glints that looked as if they had been strewn by hand across the lake. It stung Winter’s eyes when he looked to the north.

He walked along the wooded path to the edge of the bog. Crickets were chirping all around him: the sound of intense prolonged heat. A faint breeze brought with it a damp smell from the nearly dried-out bog holes within the dark terrain. Winter saw no one moving around in there, but he knew there were police officers combing the lakeside for clues and people who lived along the water’s edge.

It was nearly twelve o’clock. Few cars could be heard from the highway above and beyond him. From where he stood, beneath the trees, he could count up to twenty different shades of green. Even the rays of sunlight shone green. The very sky to the east was green through the leaves and between the branches. Only the symbol painted onto the bark, eight inches from his nose, was red. Winter took it for just that, a symbol. A symbol for what?

Winter heard a noise behind him and turned around. The outline of a man was moving in his direction. When the silhouette stepped out of the sunlight, Winter saw that it was Halders.

“So you’ve got the time to stand around here, huh, boss?” Halders was wearing short sleeves, his shirt hanging outside his trousers, and his face was partly in the shade, but Winter could see the sweat glinting on the high forehead that continued upward into Halders’s close-cropped skull. “This is a pleasant spot, sort of still.”

“Did you come from Helenevik? I didn’t hear a car.”

“It’s standing right there,” Halders said, and turned around and pointed behind him as if he wanted to prove that he hadn’t trekked three miles in the intense heat. “I guess I had the same feeling you did. That I wanted a look at the place, seeing as I was in the area anyway.”

Winter didn’t answer. He turned his gaze to the tree. Halders came closer.

“So this is that damn marking. Couldn’t some kids have daubed it up there?”

“Sure. We just need to get that confirmed.”

“And it’s definitely paint?”

“Yes.”

“There’s no way it could be blood?”

“No.”

“But it may have been intended to be blood,” Halders said. “I mean, to look like it was blood and that we should think of it as blood.”

“That’s possible,” Winter said. “How were the folks in Helenevik?”

“Nice and friendly.”

“Oh yeah?”

“A couple in this huge house over there tried to invite me in for drinks.”

“That was nice, but they didn’t succeed?”

“I told them I was on duty.”

“You might have missed an opportunity to find out something really important.”

“About what? You want me to go back?”

Winter shrugged his shoulders and smiled.

“There was something else. But it’s probably my imagination. Might have gotten hold of the wrong end of the stick, so to speak,” Halders said.

“Yeah?”

“Nothing. Otherwise, going door-to-door around here has produced about as little as you might expect. No one’s seen or heard anything.”

“The kennel guy heard and saw something,” Winter said.

“He’s a nutcase.”

“They’re sometimes the ones that prove the most helpful.”

They both heard the sound of an outboard from the lake. A plastic boat with a ten-horsepower motor came from the north and steered in toward the inlet fifty yards from where they were standing. The motor cut out and the boat glided into shore, outside the cordon.

They could see two boys climb out, and Halders headed over to them along the path. He returned five minutes later with the two of them, who looked to be in their lower teens. They were carrying at least two fishing poles each, as if they refused to leave anything behind in the boat. Winter had heard Halders ask them why they’d left their boat there. They had said that it was their spot. Their usual spot.

“There wasn’t a boat there early yesterday morning,” Winter said.

“No, it was gone,” one of the boys said and both looked down at the ground.

“What did you just say?” Halders said, and the boys seemed to tremble inside their life vests.

“When was the boat missing?” asked Winter and discreetly gestured to Halders to back off.

“This morning,” said the one that was doing the talking.

“You came here this morning and noticed that the boat was missing?”

“Yes.”

“When was that?”

“Eigh-quarter past eight, around there.”

Winter eyed his watch. That was exactly four hours ago.

“What did you do then?” Halders asked.

The boys looked at each other.

“We went looking for the boat, of course.”

“With all your gear?”

“What?”

“All your goddamn fishing gear,” Halders said. “Did you lug all that stuff around with you when you went out looking for your boat?”

“We left it here,” the talkative one said softly.

“Where did you find the boat?” Winter asked.

“On the other side,” the boy said, and gestured toward the water through the branches.

“So it was just lying there?” Halders said. “With the motor and everything.”

“No. We always take the motor with us.”

“How about the oars? Do you take those with you too?”

One of the boys, the one who hadn’t yet spoken, started to giggle nervously and fell silent after two seconds.

“So someone could have rowed the boat?”

“Yes.”

“Didn’t you have a lock on it?”

“It’s busted,” said the boy who had giggled. He had regained his ability to speak.

“Busted,” Halders repeated. “Does that happen often?”

“It hasn’t happened to us before. But others,” the boy said, and made a gesture that included all the other boat owners around the Big and Little Delsjö lakes.

“What did you do when you found the boat?” Winter asked.

“We rowed back here and put the motor on, and then we went out fishing.”

“You didn’t notice anything strange or out of place in the boat when you found it?” Halders asked.

“No. Like what?” the boy said, but Winter could see what he was thinking.

“Anything that didn’t belong there,” Halders said.

“Not that we could see.”

“Nothing lying around, no leaves or anything?”

“We probably didn’t check that carefully. But the boat’s right over there,” the boy said, and nodded toward the path and the boat beyond.

“I’m sure you understand that we have to borrow your boat for a while and examine it,” Winter said, and thought of all the time that had passed.

“No problem,” the boy said enthusiastically, as if he were on the verge a great adventure.

They walked back to the boat. The bottom of the plastic skiff was covered in four inches of water.

“Have you bailed out any water since you found it?” Halders asked.

“No.”

“Good. Where are the fish, by the way?”

The boys looked at each other again and then at Halders.

“We threw them back ’cause we felt sorry for them this time.”

“Good.” Sports fishermen lie in a thousand different ways, Halders thought. Even the young ones are damn inventive. He bent forward and peered along the inside of the gunwale.

“What’s that under the oarlock?” he said, and pointed. “Come closer so you can see. There. The left one, four inches above the water.”

The boys looked, but neither of them said anything.

“It’s not something you recognize?” Halders asked.

“It looks like some kind of sign,” one of the boys said, acknowledging the little red spot of paint on the boat’s dirty yellow interior. “Or something. But it wasn’t there before.”

16

THERE WERE NO WINDOWS DOWN THERE, AND SHE DIDN’T KNOW if it was morning or evening. The light from the lamp sort of stopped halfway up in the air and then a little bit fell on her. She could barely see her hand when she held it in front of her.

She wasn’t cold anymore because she had been given two blankets and warm water that they had made sweet. After she drank the sugar water she must have fallen asleep, and when she woke up it was as if she didn’t know if she had been asleep. It was so strange, but it was also good because she wasn’t scared when she was sleeping. You couldn’t be scared because you weren’t there.

Now she was there again and she heard a noise from up on the roof. She would have liked to scream out “I want my mommy!” But she didn’t dare. Maybe the man would come with more sugar water, and then she’d sleep again.

Nobody had hit her again. She didn’t think about that at all. Now she thought about the summer and that it was warm under your feet when you walked on the street or in the sand. They had walked in the sand when they came over on the boat. When they had driven onto the boat it made such a terrible clanging sound, and some men waved to them to drive deeper into the boat’s belly. Then she had walked in the sand-it wasn’t long after-and Mommy had sat with her awhile, and then she had gone swimming, and Mommy had stood there at the edge of the water, and then Mommy had gone and bought something to drink from a man who was standing on the beach. It was a funny small bottle and the drink tasted like lemon.

It was ugly down here, she could tell. There were no tables or chairs, and she sat on a mattress that smelled bad. She had first tried to hold her nose up and turn away, but that had been hard, and now it didn’t smell anymore, or only when she thought about it.

Now she crinkled the slip of paper a little inside her pant pocket. She didn’t dare take it out and look at it but she had it, like a secret, and that was scary but it was good too.

Then she thought that her mommy was dead. She’s dead and I’ll never get to see her again. Mommy would never be away for this long without saying anything, or calling, or writing a note that the men could show her and read to her.

Her whole body gave a start when the door up above creaked open.

Now she saw the legs of the man as he came down the stairs. She kept her head down and only saw his legs even when he came up to her and the mattress.

“We’re leaving.”

She looked up but she couldn’t see the man’s face because the light was shining right on him. She tried to say something, but it came out like a squawk from a crow.

“Get up.”

She pushed off the blankets and first rose to her knees and then stood, and one of her legs hurt because it had been underneath the other one and had fallen asleep.

Now she tried to say something again. “Are we going to Mommy?”

“You don’t need to bring that with you,” the man said, and took away the blanket that she had under her arm. “Let’s go.”

He pointed toward the stairs, and she started walking, and he followed behind her. She had forgotten how high the steps were, and she almost had to use her hands and feet to ascend them, like a mountain climber. Her eyes hurt from the sunlight that poured through the open door. She closed them and then looked again, and it became darker and easier to see because someone was standing in front of the light in the doorway.

17

STURE BIRGERSSON HAD BEEN DISCREET. HE’D STAYED IN THE background, as usual, and directed his gaze upward, for vertical contact with the powers above. But now the department commander was calling on his deputy.

Winter knew Sture had delayed his trip into the unknown: when he took off on vacation he always disappeared somewhere, but nobody knew where. Many wondered, but Birgersson himself never said a word. Winter had a telephone number, but he would never even consider using it.

With the window open, the boss’s smoke drifted outside and polluted the area all the way to the Heden recreation grounds. His face was carved out of stiff cardboard, spotted by the sun where the light came in from the left. His desk was empty except for the ashtray. It’s just as fascinating every time I come here, Winter thought. Not a single shred of paper. The computer is never on. The cabinet looks like it can’t even be opened anymore. Sture sits there smoking and thinking. It’s gotten him far.

“I’ve finished reading it now,” Birgersson said. “There are a lot of leads.”

“You know how it is, Sture.”

“I can only remember one previous case where we didn’t know the victim’s identity within the first twenty-four hours.”

Winter waited, pulled out his cigarillos, lit one, and took a first drag while Birgersson looked like he was searching through memory files in his brain. You can’t fool me, Old Man, Winter thought. You know damn well if there’s been one case or more than that.

“Maybe you know better than I do?” Birgersson said, looking his immediate subordinate in the eyes.

Winter smiled and leaned forward over the desk and tapped off the ash from his Corps. “There’s only one case, as far as we can tell.”

“In living memory, I mean,” Birgersson said.

“If we’re both thinking about that guy at Stenpiren, I hope that was a one-of-a-kind event,” Winter said.

A man had fallen into the water and drowned, and when they tried to find out who he was, they discovered he hadn’t been reported missing anywhere in the country. He’d been wearing a tracksuit, had no money in his pockets, no keys, no ID card, no ring with an inscription-nothing. They barely managed to get his fingerprints after all the time he’d spent in the water, but that didn’t do them any good either. He was, though buried now, still unknown to the world.

“That one also took place during the Gothenburg Party,” Birgersson said. “Reason enough alone to pull the plug on the damn thing, stop the madness.”

“Some quite enjoy the party.”

“Don’t give me that, Erik. You detest the sight of big groups of people drinking beer out of plastic cups and trying to convince themselves they’re having a good time. Or letting themselves be convinced they’re giving a good time. And look what happened to our Aneta. The Gothenburg Party! How’s she doing, by the way?”

“She’s having a little difficulty chewing, I guess.” Winter had tried to block out any thoughts of Aneta. But that was the wrong way to go about it. “I’m planning to pay her another visit soon as I can.”

“Humph. I hope she comes back soon, for the sake of morale. Her own, that is. And I like her. She’s not easily spooked, especially not by me, and that shows moxie.”

“Yeah, you’re pretty scary, Sture.”

“What’s all this about a mysterious symbol?” Birgersson was a boor about changing the subject.

“I don’t know.” Winter perched his cigarillo on the edge of the ashtray. “I really don’t know. Earlier I guess I had pretty much set it aside, but then Fredrik and I were down by the lake, and, well, you read the report.”

“That must have strengthened your belief in the importance of intuition when working on an investigation,” Birgersson said. “That you were on the scene when the boys appeared.”

“I literally was on the scene. I had a sudden impulse to head out there and it led me to the right spot.”

“How do you explain, then, that Halders went there too? I don’t think our good friend Fredrik can even spell intuition.”

“It’s not an easy word to spell. Have you ever tried it yourself?”

Birgersson smiled and waved it off. “So you were on the scene. But what good did it do you?”

“What do you mean?”

“The daub of paint in the boat doesn’t prove anything.”

“Of course not. But it’s the same paint as on the tree.”

“Maybe the boys did it themselves.”

“Then they’re good liars.”

“More and more people are getting better at lying. That’s what makes police work so variable, so fascinating. It keeps you on your toes at all times, don’t you find? Everyone lies.”

“The boys may have done it,” Winter said. “Or more likely other boys, or anyone at all who wanted to leave a sign behind. Or someone who’s just pulling our leg.”

“Or else it’s something a hell of a lot more sinister.”

“Yes.”

“Then it’ll be either a lot more difficult or a lot easier,” Birgersson said. “Know what I mean?”

“A maniac.”

“Either a maniac with a purpose, who’s satisfied and lost interest and is waiting for us, or a maniac who has only just gotten started.”

Winter said nothing. He heard no sounds from the courtyard or from within the building. Birgersson’s face was hidden in a patchwork of shadows and blinding light.

“I cannot stress enough how important it is that we identify this woman,” Birgersson said.

Helene, Winter thought to himself. Mother and murder victim.

“And where the hell are her children?” A mind reader, Birgersson. “If there are any.”

Winter cleared his throat cautiously, suddenly disgusted at the taste of smoke in his mouth, as if the stuff had shown its character as toxic gas.

“I could release photos of her dead face. I’m considering doing that, by the way.”

“What? How do you mean?”

“A public appeal, like a poster.”

“With her dead face?”

“That’s all we have.”

“Out of the question. How the hell would that look? Imagine what people would say.”

“They might say something that would help us.”

“We’re going to find her anyway,” Birgersson said. “Find out who she is.”

“We’re doing everything we can.”

“I know, I know. But it’s-I don’t quite know how to put it, Erik. It’s as if you have too many lines of investigation from the get-go. Too many directions.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, maybe sometimes you’re too conscientious, Erik. Maybe you see too many alternative solutions during the initial phase. Your brain springs into action, and the manpower gets spread thin.”

“So what you’re saying is that it would be better to have a more plodding, dull-witted cop in charge of this?” Winter crossed his legs.

“No no.”

“Well what do you mean, then? We’re following up the lead on the car and the marking on the tree, and we’re questioning people who either live or have been in the vicinity. We’re checking up on the cars that were parked there during the night, and we’re devoting all our resources to finding the woman’s name.”

“Okay, okay.”

“I could issue a public appeal, but you think that would be inappropriate.”

“Not me, primarily.”

“No. It’s primarily those biggest and most insurmountable of obstacles that we come up against in this line of work-namely, timorous superiors who don’t know and don’t understand. And I’m not talking about you.”

“You’re a superior yourself. Next in line to the throne, some say.”

“Not for much longer. I’m not dull witted enough.”

“Just forget I said that, Erik. All I meant is that we simply have to move forward. But you said something about the cars. That’s good-it’s concrete.”

“A hundred thousand identical models of Ford. Yeah, that’s concrete.”

Birgersson didn’t hear. Maybe the meeting was over. Then, “You had a good idea there. The night camera, the car.”

“Don’t start buttering me up now.”

“But it could lead somewhere.”

“We’re doing the best we can. And one way or the other we’ll solve this. I can feel it. Intuitively.”

Birgersson looked up from fiddling with his pack of cigarettes. “I don’t suppose any of our fellow officers partying up at the lodge heard or saw anything? The guys from investigations?”

“Bergenhem hasn’t reported back yet. But if so, someone ought to have been in touch by now-on their own, I mean.”

“Don’t try to fool me into thinking you’ve suddenly gone naive, Erik. How long does it usually take to get your memory back after a night at the lodge?”

“Don’t ask me. I’ve never had one.”

18

THERE’D BEEN FOUR CARS IN THE PARKING LOT DOWN BY THE lake. The thefts of the two reported stolen-both out of gas-seemed to have been carried out in accordance with standard rules of the industry, except that the spot where they’d been dumped was an anomaly. The owners claimed not to have any connections to eastern Gothenburg. They also had alibis.

Then there was the problem of the other vehicles. One of the owners had contacted the police just yesterday. The other they had to go find.

Bergenhem drove through the Högsbo industrial zone and parked outside the Högsbo Hotel.

It smelled of bread and burnt flour from the Pååls baking factory a bit farther on. Feeling sick to his stomach at the enveloping aroma, he set his foot down on the asphalt and silently tapped a rhythm.

When a man emerged from the building and walked down the half flight of steps to the parking lot, Bergenhem climbed out of the car. The man walked the twenty paces up to him. Bergenhem took off his sunglasses, and the man’s face brightened up along with everything else around him. The smell of bread returned. It got stuck between his fingers. Bergenhem reached out, and they shook hands. The man’s name was Peter von Holten. He was a few years older than Bergenhem-maybe a bit over thirty, with sharp features, but it may have been the light.

“I’m the one who called,” Bergenhem said.

“Shall we take a little drive?”

Von Holten had insisted that he not be visited at his job. Bergenhem had assured him that was okay. Sometimes they could be accommodating.

“There’s a little park over by the Pripps brewery,” von Holten said.

They drove south and pulled over next to a big bush at the side of the road. They sat on a bench. Now it smelled of beer from the brewery, and Bergenhem wasn’t sure which was worse.

He suddenly longed for the scent of his four-month-old daughter.

“So you haven’t reported your car missing,” Bergenhem said.

“Who could have imagined this? That my car would end up in the middle of a murder investigation?”

“What was it doing there? Why did you put it there, I mean.”

“It was a mistake,” von Holten said, “and I can explain. But it’s a-humph-it’s a little delicate.”

Bergenhem waited for him to continue. A dozen seagulls passed close above their heads, staggering in loose formation as if they’d been intoxicated by the beer-filled gusts of wind.

“I’m just surprised as hell that the car is still there,” von Holten said. “That wasn’t the idea.”

Bergenhem nodded and waited.

“Here’s the thing. There’s this girl that I meet up with sometimes, and the night before last we went out to the lake because it’s a nice place to be on a warm summer evening. And then afterward… we decided that she would take the car.” Von Holten rubbed his mouth and then removed his hand. “I’m married,” he said, as if that explained everything.

“So your girl was supposed to take the car? Do I have that right?”

“Yes.”

“What’s her name?”

“Is that necessary?”

“Her name? Of course.”

Von Holten said a name, and Bergenhem wrote it down in the notepad he’d brought with him from the car.

“Where does she live?”

Von Holten stated an address. “She lives alone.”

“How did you get back from there yourself?”

“I walked.”

“Along the highway?”

“There are walking paths back into town. And I don’t live far from Delsjö Lake. Takes about an hour and a half by foot.”

“I know. But why was she supposed to take the car?”

“We do that sometimes. She doesn’t have a car and, well, I have another one, and this one’s a company car that my wife doesn’t keep track of.”

“But she didn’t take the car?” Bergenhem said.

“This is fucking insane.”

“Why? Surely you’ve spoken to her.”

“That’s just it,” von Holten said. “I haven’t managed to get hold of her these past few days. Nobody picks up, and I went over there and left a message in her mail slot, but she hasn’t-”

“What does she look like?” Bergenhem felt his blood beginning to pound between his temples. “What does”-he looked in his notebook-“Andrea look like?”

“Brown hair, pretty dark, normal features, I guess. Attractive, of course, I think, but it’s difficult to describe someone. Maybe five and a half feet tall.” Von Holten looked at Bergenhem. “You don’t mean to say you think that…”

“What?” Bergenhem asked.

“That Andrea is the one who… who died out there?”

“Why didn’t you come forward with this information before?”

Von Holten started to cry. He rubbed his mouth again and squeezed his eyes shut. “It can’t have anything to do with her,” he said with his eyes still closed.

“You must have read the news or seen it on TV.”

Von Holten opened his eyes and directed his gaze at the trees or the seagulls whose mocking laughter Bergenhem could hear above and behind them.

“I guess I didn’t really want to take it in, or think about it. I have a family and they mean a lot to me.”

Bergenhem said nothing.

“I know what you’re thinking. But you’ve got to think about what you’re doing at a time like this.”

You’ve got to think about what you’re doing before you drop your pants with a stranger, thought Bergenhem. “That’s right,” he said. “Think about what you’re doing.”

“It was wrong,” von Holten said with a weary voice. “Of course I… I would have come forward, but I thought that sh-that Andrea would be getting in touch. There’s another explanation, or something else that caused me to wait. I wasn’t expecting to hear from her for a while, and I had no way of knowing that the car was still down by the lake.”

“Was she going to borrow it for an extended period?”

“She was going to make a trip down south and be away for a few days. Maybe that’s just what she’s done, come to think of it,” von Holten said, with a face that brightened.

“Only not in your car,” Bergenhem said. “Your car’s still there.”

“Sweet Jesus.”

In Winter’s office they showed the photographs to von Holten, and he threw up over Winter’s desk. Winter grabbed the photos before they were hit by the witness’s stomach contents.

“Go get a bucket and a cleaning rag,” he said to Bergenhem.

The lover threw up again behind Winter’s back as he poured a glass of water from a pitcher on the cabinet. His blazer was hung up safe and sound. He returned to the desk and held out the glass to von Holten. Then Bergenhem returned and the two of them calmly wiped up some of the spew that had run over the desk. Meanwhile, the witness pulled himself together. The stench remained, but nobody thought about it after a while.

“What awful images,” von Holten said.

“Do you recognize this face,” Winter said.

“No,” von Holten said, and averted his eyes from the photograph that Winter was holding in front of him. “That was the most awf-How can anyone recognize a face like that? It’s not… it’s not human.”

“It’s a dead human being,” Winter said. “It’s the face of a dead woman.”

“I don’t think it’s Andrea,” von Holten said.

“Are you absolutely sure about that?”

“Sure about what?” Von Holten looked like he was about to be sick again.

They waited.

Von Holten closed his eyes. Suddenly he threw up again, into the bucket that Bergenhem had set on the floor. Most of it ended up in the bucket. “I’m not sure of anything,” he said with heavy tears in his eyes. “Do you have a towel?”

Bergenhem had fetched a towel and handed it to him.

Von Holten wiped himself across the mouth. “I don’t think that’s her, but who can tell for sure? I don’t know what to say.”

“Did Andrea Maltzer have any distinguishing marks?” Winter asked. “Birthmarks, scars-like from an accident.”

“Not that I know of. Is that something I ought to know?”

“We would like you to come with us and take a look at her,” Winter said as gently as he could. “It’s important, as I’m sure you can understand.”

“Do I have to?”

“I’m afraid so,” Winter said.

“Can I wash myself off?”

Winter nodded toward Bergenhem, who accompanied von Holten to the toilet.

The light was blue. Even the white was blue. The skin of Winter’s body drew taut from the cold in there, and his sweat froze into a crust on his skin. He ought to have been cold on the inside too, but he wasn’t.

There was a clattering as gurneys with dead people were pushed to and fro in the corridors outside. There were more dead people here than living. This antechamber to the burial grounds was a place where the dead lay but had no peace. They waited.

Helene’s face glowed mutedly beneath the fluorescent tubes in a hue that had no equivalent in the world of the living. Von Holten had shook when they rolled out the gurney, teeth chattering as if he had turned to ice.

Winter looked at him now, not at the murder victim. Von Holten looked down and his face changed. He suddenly appeared happy, a movement in his face that was impossible to hide. Winter could see that he tried, but there was no way.

“It’s not her,” he said.

“No?”

Bergenhem gazed at Winter, who gazed back.

“I’m absolutely sure that’s not her,” von Holten said.

Winter eyed the woman’s face. The stark white light from the ceiling kept shadows away from her. This was exactly what a person looked like who had neither a name nor a past. Maybe a future, he thought. It all depends on me-whether we track down her future within a reasonable period of time. She could lie here for a year or she could get a decent burial. God, how I hate this room.

Outside, the frozen film melted away in the sun, and Winter’s skin became supple and moist again. The effect caused the whites of von Holten’s eyes to become bloodshot, like he’d just been punched hard in the face.

“We need to know everything there is to know about your mistress,” Winter said. “Andrea Maltzer.”

“Does my wife have to know about this? About Andrea?”

Winter didn’t answer. He drove in toward town and stopped at a red light.

“I’ll give you my full cooperation,” von Holten said. “I’ll do anything you ask.”

“Tell us what you know, then,” Winter said.

“What a fucking piece of work,” Ringmar said.

“One among thousands.”

“Man is a weak vessel.”

“So now we have a disappearance connected to the murder,” Winter said. They were sitting in Ringmar’s office, drinking black coffee that scalded the mouth.

“Could she have seen something?”

“Could she have seen it?”

“Could she have surprised someone?”

“Could she have sat there in the car, thinking about her future?”

“Would someone have turned into the parking lot if there was someone sitting there in a car?”

“Would they have been able to tell?”

“Could she have tried to drive off but been too afraid?”

“Could she have gotten curious?”

“Could she have been assaulted?”

“Could she have been abducted?”

“Could she be involved?”

“Could she be guilty?”

“Could she have taken the first bus in the morning?”

“Could she have had other reasons for not taking the car?”

“Could she really be who she is?”

“Could she just be a fabrication by that von Holten character, you mean?”

“Can we find that out within half an hour?”

“Yes,” Winter said. “And it’s already done. There is an Andrea Maltzer at the address that von Holten gave us, and there is a telephone number and nobody answers when you call. Or opens the door when you knock. Börjesson went by there and knocked.”

“We’re going in then, right?”

“I’d like to wait until tomorrow, if she hasn’t gotten in touch, that is.”

“What for?”

“There’s something that doesn’t add up here.”

“You can say that again.”

“She doesn’t fit in,” Winter said. “We have to concentrate.”

“What do we call what you’re talking about? Nonwishful thinking?”

“I’ll read through everything again,” Winter said. “She’ll get in touch tomorrow at the latest.”

“What makes you so sure about that?”

Winter didn’t answer. His gaze moved from the paper in front of him to Ringmar. “Have we finished running the fingerprints from von Holten’s car yet?”

“No. Quite a few people used it. It was his company car, and he lent it to others as well.”

“Other women?”

“That’s not what he says,” Ringmar said. “Other people. Work related.”

19

FROM WHERE SHE WAS LYING, THE WORLD SEEMED FAR AWAY through the tinted windows. The day looked the same from early morning till nightfall, but the evening came more quickly now, and for half an hour the grayness lifted, and before it turned black outside, the sinking light sliced into her room and blazed on the wall. For just a short moment it flared up and then disappeared into the wallpaper without a trace. In that sense they were beautiful evenings. Aneta Djanali started to feel whole again. The long periods of languor became fewer, the hours when she’d sort of drift in and out of dreams. She began to long for voices. She listened to the orderly who spoke an exciting mixed language.

She sat in bed and Winter sat next to her. She pointed at the wall and mumbled.

“Yeah, very nice,” Winter said.

She nodded and pointed at the portable CD player that lay next to her on the bed.

Winter took out a little bag from his inside pocket. “It was the last one they had at the record store. They didn’t have that Dylan album you wrote down, so I took the liberty of buying a record by a new band that’s really got something special.”

Aneta Djanali pulled out London Calling from the bag and looked at Winter quizzically. “U Wrascch?”

“Yes, the Clash.”

“Ew and?”

“New band? No, I guess it’s not a new band.” Winter smiled.

Aneta Djanali wrote “1979!” on a pad of paper and handed it to Winter.

“Time flies,” he said. “But they’re new to me. Macdonald told me about them. In fact, he even sent me the album. Guess he didn’t think we had stuff like this over here among the glaciers.”

While he spoke, Aneta Djanali slipped the disc into the CD player, pressed play, and pulled on the earphones: “London calling to the underworld…” She moved her body back and forth to the music and beat the rhythm with her fist against the covers to show Winter that she understood how good it was and how happy she was to be able to sit here and relish something she had left behind centuries ago.

“Have you listened to any of the other songs on the album?” she wrote on her pad.

“Not yet,” Winter said. “That first one requires a lengthy evaluation.”

“Here’s one called ‘Jimmy Jazz,’” she wrote.

“Really? Let me see.”

She handed him the disc and wrote, “That ought to suit you.” Then she handed him the earphones and Winter listened.

“That’s not jazz,” he said.

Aneta Djanali gripped the head of the bed firmly so as not to laugh her reconstructed jaw out of joint.

“But you haven’t seen the other album in the bag,” he said. “That’s real jazz, and a good album for someone who hasn’t listened to much music from the underworld.”

She pulled out a CD with a close-up of a black face on it and then held up the album cover and wrote, “Wow, a compact mirror!” on her pad.

Winter burst out laughing while Djanali pretended to study herself in the face on the album cover.

“Lee Morgan,” Winter said. “Search for the New Land.”

She put down her mirror and wrote, “How’s Fredrik doing?”

“Not too good without you. Apparently, the two of you have some kind of chemistry that feeds on mutual animosity.”

“Hit the nail on the head,” wrote Djanali. “Between a darky and a skinhead.”

“He’s a good skin.”

“Keep an eye on him.”

“What?”

“He could go off the rails. Not doing too well.”

“He’s not the only one.”

“Shouldn’t be writing this. But he’s,” she hesitated with her pen, “nervous, desperate.”

“You know Fredrik best of all,” Winter said.

I’m not so damn sure about that, she thought. And now my hand hurts. I’ve been talking too much.

She leaned back against the mountain of pillows and closed her eyes.

“You’re tired.” He rose and patted her blanket. “Don’t forget Lee Morgan, now.”

Outside, he breathed in the night air. It smelled of salt and sand that had been baked at high heat for months. That’s no Scandinavian smell, he thought to himself. At least not this late in the year. What will all the Mediterranean tourists think?

An ambulance drove slowly by and pulled in front of the entrance to the ER. Two orderlies wheeled up a gurney, hauled a body onto it from the ambulance, and pushed the gurney in through the double doors that were suddenly radiant portals in the darkness.

Winter drove home and parked in the basement garage and then sat at an outside table at the Wasa Källare restaurant. He drank a beer and listened to, without deciphering them, the conversations at the handful of tables.

Right in front of him the empty streetcars rumbled past and on across Vasaplatsen. Once he saw a face in one of the cars that he thought he recognized, like some vague memory. The waiter took his glass and asked if he wanted another, but he said no and lit up a Corps. He could see the smoke halfway across the park.

He took out his cell phone and turned it on. He had three missed calls and saw on the display that one of them was from Angela. Here I go, he thought, and punched in her number.

20

HE BIKED TO HER STREET, UP ON THE HEIGHTS OF KUNGSHÖJD. Angela pressed up close to him for a second and then pointed toward the balcony. Standing on the table were water and wine, and something that smelled of herbs and salt.

They sat there and saw the sea silhouetted black against a lighter sky. The roofs appeared sprinkled with ash in the moonlight.

“So you got back yesterday?” Winter asked.

“Like I said.”

She was wearing a soft shirt and shorts, hair in a ponytail, no makeup, and Winter thought about women’s finely chiseled features when he saw her profile against the pale stucco.

“What have you been doing?”

“Sitting out here mostly, as it happens. Yesterday you could see all the way down to the sandbars and those charter boats that take out sports fishermen. I could see them rolling and pitching.”

“It makes me seasick just thinking about it.”

“It didn’t me.” She took a sip of her water. “It was soothing.”

“Sounds wonderful,” Winter said.

“I thought of us.”

Here it comes, thought Winter. We only managed a few minutes of idle chitchat. “How was your mother?” he asked.

“Wonderful,” she said, “until we started talking about us.”

“It’s not as bad as all that, is it? And was that really necessary?”

“What?”

“To have a long discussion with your mother about us. We can reason it out ourselves, can’t we?”

“Reason it out? Since when did you ever want to reason anything out?”

“I’m considered to be quite reasonable.” He dipped a stalk of blanched celery into the cold dip made of sardines and black olives. It tasted salty and bitter, delicious. “This is really good.”

She looked at him without saying anything.

He wanted to be there in the moment with her, but when he bent forward over the bowls again, he saw Helene’s face as it had looked in the dead blue glow of the morgue. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“Well, it’s not like this is the first time. And I’m not saying that to sound like a cop’s wife sitting up at night waiting.”

“I’m the one who’s waiting in this case,” he said.

She took his hand as he reached for the glass of water.

“What are you waiting for, Erik?”

What was he waiting for? That was a big question. Everything, from the name of a murder victim and a murderer to eternal peace of mind. For the triumph of good over evil. And for her.

“I waited for you today,” he said.

“Maybe mostly for my body,” she said.

“I resent that. I want all of you,” he said, and squeezed her hand.

She let go of his and drank again. A wind came in from the north and snatched a napkin from the table and took it down into the shaft below the balcony. Winter could see the napkin disappear like a butterfly into the shadow of the moon.

“Your mind is so often somewhere else.”

“I know. You’re right, but not all the time.”

“But right now.”

“It’s this case-”

“You know I’m not asking you to change jobs. But it’s everywhere, covering everything like a layer of dust-on us and over everything around us.”

“Not dust,” he said. “There won’t be any dust on us, since I keep stirring it up all the time. Any comparison you like, only not that.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I can’t help it, Angela. It’s a part of me. And of the job or whatever you want to call it.”

He told her how he’d seen Helene’s face just now, in the middle of a meal. He wasn’t looking for it. It had sought him out.

She didn’t ask anything about Helene, and he knew that was a good thing. Maybe later, but not now.

“You sometimes carry around images of your patients in your mind,” he said.

“It’s different with you.”

“I can’t help it,” he repeated. “And it helps me.”

“Does it? The great magical inspector? Eventually it’ll drive you-It could take over. More and more.”

“Eventually it’ll drive me crazy? Maybe I’m already crazy. Crazy enough to do police work.”

“The fight against evil,” she said. “Your favorite topic.”

“I know-it’s pathetic.”

“No, Erik, and you know that’s not what I think. But it can get to be too much sometimes, so big, you know?”

What was he supposed to say? Crime is an army. He was a policeman but he wasn’t cynical. He believed in the power of good, and that was why he spoke about evil. It was impenetrable, like observing the enemy through bulletproof glass. Anyone who tried to comprehend it with reason went under. He was starting to realize this, but he still had the urge to get in close in order to defeat that monster. If you couldn’t use your goodness and intellect to confront evil close up, what were you supposed to use? The thought had flashed through his mind before-a thought that was like a black hole right in the middle of reality, terrifying: that evil could be fought only in kind.

“There’s nothing to wait for,” Angela said when their breathing had calmed.

His head had exploded into a white light as he once again experienced the sensation where the boundaries between body and soul and body and body disappear, and they were united into a single whole for a few seconds while the white light lasted.

After that came the languorous exhaustion. Then the voice returned.

“What are we waiting for?” she repeated. “I want to throw out those damn pills.”

He couldn’t answer. Anything he might say could end up wrong, so he unfolded himself from the bed. “I’m going to get something to drink.”

“Get back here!”

“I’ve got to have something.” He pulled on his shorts by hopping on one leg at a time, then stepped out onto the balcony to fetch glasses and bottles. The wind from the early evening was gone. It felt as if it had grown warmer, warmer, almost, than inside the room.

He raised his gaze and the sky was empty. It might have been one o’clock or two. He could blame work and cycle home, but that would be cowardly. To say that he wanted to spend an hour hunched over the PowerBook, basking in its pleasant electronic glow, would be true in a way, but it sounded insane.

He carried two glasses filled with equal parts white wine and water into the kitchen, but there was no ice left in her freezer, so he walked back to the bedroom and handed one to Angela.

“So tell me what we’re waiting for,” she repeated. “I’m tired of this arrangement.”

“What arrangement?”

“Everything.” She drank thirstily. “I don’t want to live apart anymore.”

“It was your idea from the beginning.”

“I don’t care whose idea it was. And that feels like years ago, back when we were both young urban professionals.”

“We still are.”

“You’re thirty-seven, Erik. You’re nearly forty. I’m thirty.”

He drank and heard a car driving at high speed down on Kungsgatan, going toward Rosenlund. Could be a taxi or a private car on its way down to the hooker strip along Feskekörka. Sometimes the johns produced a heavy flow of traffic below her window, but tonight had been quiet. He wondered why. The conditions were perfect.

“It may sound silly, but playtime is over,” she went on. “You know I didn’t make any demands before, but I am now.”

“Yeah.”

“Is there something wrong? We’ve been together for almost two years and at our age that’s a long time for an LAT relationship.”

“You want us to move in together?”

“You know what I want, but that would be a start.”

“You and me, in an apartment?”

“That is what moving in together usually involves.”

He had to let out a giggle, like a little kid. The situation was untenable, awful. He was being held to account for his desire to live on his own and have her within comfortable reach, within biking distance on a warm evening. She was right; it was as she said. Playtime was over.

“You have to choose sometime,” she said softly, as if to a child that can’t make up its mind. “This is no surprise to you, Erik.”

“We could always see more of each other.”

“So you’re not ready?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“This is the only chance you’ll get.”

21

WINTER LEFT KUNGSHÖJD UNDER PRESSURE FROM THE SUN. HIS black glasses dampened the pain in the crown of his head.

Angela waved from the balcony as he turned down the hill. He had been given time to think it over, but that was really the wrong way to describe it. He couldn’t think of the right way, so he didn’t.

“She hasn’t gotten in touch,” Ringmar said after morning prayer. “Should we go over there?”

Winter thought for a moment. As the head of the investigation, he had the discretionary authority to “bring in a person of potential interest for questioning.” They couldn’t just barge into somebody’s house, but they could bring someone in for questioning who was important to the preliminary investigation and hadn’t come in voluntarily. He looked in his papers. Andrea Maltzer lived on Viktor Rydbergsgatan. Nice address.

“Okay. Let’s go over there.”

They drove across Korsvägen. Someone merging into the traffic circle in a hurry had not paid proper attention. Two damaged cars stood at a nasty angle, and a uniformed officer was sorting out who was at fault together with two men whom Winter guessed were the drivers. The police sergeant was a man in his fifties, and he looked up as they edged past, then nodded in greeting. Ringmar raised his hand through the window.

“Sverker,” Winter said.

“We did a lot of shifts together,” Ringmar said. “Sweet youth in uniform.”

“I haven’t seen him for a while.”

“He was sick. Cancer in one of his legs, I think.”

“I may have heard something about that,” Winter said, and drove up the hill at Eklandabacken.

Winter scanned the facades along the street, once they’d passed the church, and pulled up in an empty parking spot opposite Andrea Maltzer’s address. The building was tall and the street was in shade. The entryway was broad and austere, the air inside cool from stone and marble. A statue at the foot of the steps depicted a naked woman pointing upward with one finger.

“Looks even nicer than your lobby,” Ringmar said.

The locksmith was waiting for them in a rattan armchair by the front door and stood to say hello.

“Second floor,” Winter said. “Let’s take the stairs.”

The polished tropical hardwood and the lush plants on pedestals made him feel like he was wandering through a managed jungle.

The locksmith got everything ready.

“I’ll ring the doorbell first,” Winter said.

He rang again and heard footsteps and thought they were coming from somewhere else. The doors were massive-impossible to hack your way through with an axe. You’d need a chainsaw and battering ram, with Fredrik at the front.

There was a rattling inside, and the door was opened by a woman who could be the same age as Angela.

She’s calm, Winter thought. This is a surprise for her. She’s simply exercised her right to have a private life and disappeared for a few days.

“Yes?” the woman asked.

“Andrea Maltzer?”

“What’s this about? Who are you?”

“The police,” Winter said, and produced his ID card. She studied it. The locksmith eyed Winter, who gave him a nod, then disappeared down the stairs.

“What do you want?” Andrea Maltzer repeated.

“Could we come in for a moment?”

“Are you also a police officer?” she asked Ringmar.

“Sorry,” Ringmar said, and showed her his ID.

She gave his badge a quick glance and looked at Winter again. She had a face sprinkled with freckles that had grown in number this summer, he guessed. She looks young and fresh, more or less like Peter von Holten when he’s not throwing up all over my desk. Can’t she find someone who isn’t already married? She looks tired, but not worn out.

“Would it be all right?” Winter nodded toward the apartment.

“It’s all right,” she said, and they stepped into the foyer. She lead the way into a living room that resembled one Winter lived in for a period in his life, white stucco and windows that opened out onto a balcony, which already looked searing hot in the morning sun. The balcony door stood open, and Winter saw an empty cast-iron table beneath an umbrella.

She was wearing a tank top and a pair of shorts that were wide and long and looked comfortable. Summer wear, even though it was almost September.

Tomorrow I’ll wear shorts again, Winter noted. There’s no way to cloak yourself anyway. He thought about his sister, who’d called yesterday and invited him over again. He didn’t know why. He’d call her back when he had the time.

“I suppose I ought to offer you coffee or something, but I’d like to know what this is about first,” Andrea Maltzer said.

They asked her what she had been doing at Delsjö Lake. When do you mean? They were as specific as they dared be. Then? She had wandered off awhile after Peter left. Why? She needed to think, and Winter heard Angela’s voice.

Andrea Maltzer had needed to think over why she was seeing a married man “on the sly,” as she put it. Taking his car would have been “compromising.” That was the word she used. She sat in it for a while and then went over to the café and waited for the cab she’d called on her cell phone. They took down all the details, and she shook her head when they asked if she had a receipt-which would have been off the books anyway, if she’d had it. They could check up on that phone call. Winter believed her. People did strange things and perfectly natural things all at the same time. Scratch von Holten, maybe. Fine by me. Winter asked if she’d noticed anything whatsoever while she was sitting there.

“When I was alone? After Peter was gone?”

“Yes.” He could then ask about what they had done together, if they had paid much attention to their surroundings. “It’s important that you think about it. Anything at all could be of help.”

“I can put on some coffee while I think about it.”

“Before you do that,” Ringmar cut in, “could you tell us where you’ve been for the last few days?”

“Here,” she said. “And one other place, but mostly here, I think.”

“We’ve been trying to reach you,” Ringmar said.

“I didn’t want anyone to reach me,” she said. “I unplugged the answering machine and switched that off.” She nodded at the cell phone on the living room table. “And I haven’t read the paper or listened to the radio. Or watched TV.”

“What for?”

“I thought I explained that.”

“Didn’t you hear the doorbell?”

“No. I must have been out then.”

“You didn’t get any messages from anyone?”

“Peter came by and slid an envelope under the door, but I threw it away.”

“What did he write?”

“I don’t know. I threw it away unopened.”

“When?”

“Yesterday. It went out with the trash, in case you’re wondering.”

Winter nodded. It wasn’t hard for someone to stay out of sight if they wanted to. It was even their right.

“I had a few vacation days left.”

Winter nodded again. He wanted to leave, but they weren’t done yet.

“Anything else you’d like to know?” she asked when neither Winter nor Ringmar spoke.

“What you saw, if you saw anything,” Winter said.

“I was going to think about that in the kitchen,” she said.

“That’s right,” Winter said.

He looked around after she left the room. Two framed photographs stood on a paint-stripped cabinet. No picture of Peter von Holten. One of them was of a wedding couple, possibly her parents-the picture looked like it had been taken thirty years ago. Classic matrimonial attire though. No sign of flirting with that era’s flower power.

The other photo was a black-and-white outdoor scene with no people in it-a house somewhere in the archipelago. The house might have been red and it was situated a short distance above a rocky shoreline. He could make out portions of an out-of-focus jetty in the foreground. There were no clouds behind the house. To the left was a sign warning of an underwater cable. There was a stonework stairway, as if carved from the rock, leading from the jetty up to the house.

He recognized it. He had seen this cabin himself, from the sea. You could sail around the promontory to the left and into an inlet three hundred yards farther on and hike up a hill lined with wind-battered juniper trees. Just behind the hill, on the lee side, was another house, which had belonged to his parents when he was a kid. He was twelve when they sold it, and he had sailed past it a few times since then but rarely gone ashore. He missed it now.

Andrea Maltzer had returned to the room and saw him in front of the photo. She said the name of the island.

“I thought it looked familiar,” Winter said. “My parents had a house there, but that was a long time ago.”

“My parents bought the place a few years back.”

“I guess that explains why I didn’t recognize you,” Winter said, and turned around. A tray stood on the table, and she had sat down and was eyeing him strangely. “I mean, there were no little kids there back then.”

She smiled but said nothing. Winter sat opposite her. She gestured toward the tray and Ringmar did the honors. Winter suddenly felt impatient, even more restless than usual. The photograph from the island had affected him. There was no room in his head for personal memories right now. Something had led him here too. He didn’t believe in coincidences, never had. Many crimes were solved by chance, or what might be referred to as coincidences, but Winter didn’t believe in them. There was a purpose. Chance had a purpose.

“That’s my refuge,” she said. “That’s where I am when I’m not here. Like yesterday.”

“Do you remember anything from the night we’re talking about?” Ringmar asked.

“I remember that I saw a boat,” she said. “Out on the lake.”

“A boat,” Ringmar repeated.

“A white boat or beige. Plastic, I assume.”

“Was it far out?”

“It was a ways out on the lake. I saw it when I climbed out of the car-when I decided that I’d borrowed Peter’s car for the last time.”

“Describe exactly what you saw,” Winter said. “As best you can.”

“Like I said. A boat out on the water that appeared to be lying pretty still. I didn’t hear anything. No motor.”

“Did you see an outboard motor on it?”

“No. But if there had been an outboard, I wouldn’t have seen it in the dark anyway.” She put down her cup.

“No sound of rowing? You heard nothing?”

“No. But I could see that there was someone sitting in the boat.”

“Someone? One person, on their own?”

“It looked that way.”

“You’re not sure?”

“It was too dark to be sure.”

“Would you recognize the boat if you saw it again?”

“Well, I don’t know. But I remember the shape of it, the size more or less.”

“What did you do then?”

“What do you mean?”

“How long did you stand there?”

“Five minutes maybe. I guess I didn’t think much about it; people go out fishing at night too, don’t they?”

“I don’t know,” Ringmar said. “I don’t fish.”

“And the boat stayed out there while you were standing by the car?” Winter asked.

“It seemed to be lying there completely still.”

“Can we just go over the times again, as precisely as possible?” Winter said.

22

THE PUBLIC APPEAL BORE FRUIT. PEOPLE CALLED IN AND JANNE Möllerström was one of the ones who took the calls. Many had seen something, but no one had been in the vicinity. That’s just how it was. “There’s somebody out there somewhere,” as Möllerström expressed it. Winter liked that kind of optimism. It was in line with his spirit.

Winter had drawn up the text, and they’d printed posters that would hang in the residential neighborhoods until they were ripped down. No photograph. The caption read, “Police seeking information!” The copy explained that a murdered woman had been found on Thursday, August 18, at 4:00 a.m., in the vicinity of Big Delsjö Lake and Black Marshes. It gave a description of her and the standard, “The police are interested in speaking to anyone who…,” et cetera; and a little farther down, “If you have any further information, please call the telephone number listed below.” And farther down still: “Let the police determine what may be of interest.” A strange sentence, if taken out of context, but Winter left it there. He signed it, “District CID, homicide department,” in order to avoid any misunderstanding, and at the bottom added, “Grateful for any tips!” The prose had an exuberant quality to it, which he disliked. But maybe that meant the poster would have an effect.

“Find anything in the boat?” Halders asked.

“Beier says it’s the same kind of paint,” Erik Börjesson said. “And it could have been daubed there at approximately the same time.”

“Anything else?” Winter asked.

“No footprints in the bilge water, but a hell of a lot of fingerprints, which it’s going to take time to go through. And that’s putting it mildly, as Beier expressed it.”

“Prints from many hands?”

“Seems the boys were only too happy to lend out their boat. Or rent it out, but they’re not telling.”

“I’ll talk to them again,” Winter said.

“There were a lot of fish scales too,” Halders said. “Seems there are fish in that lake.”

“They haven’t found any footprints up along the gunwale of the boat?”

“What’s that?” Börjesson looked at Winter.

“When you jump ashore, you step off the edge or gunwale. Sometimes anyway.”

“I’m sure Beier has checked that.”

“Speaking of checking,” Halders said. “Stockholm hasn’t been in touch? From missing persons?”

“Nothing from Stockholm,” Ringmar said. “No report that fits the description.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Halders said. “There ought to be loads of them right now. Thirty-year-old housewives who’ve had enough.”

“Had enough?” Sara Helander said.

“Who’ve left the stove,” Halders said. “Who’ve gone off to find the meaning of life.”

Winter and Ringmar had been sitting in Winter’s office, talking cars, and they returned to this when their colleagues left. Ford Escort 1.8i CLX three-door hatchback, a ’92 or ’93. Or possibly a ’94. Or a ’91, a 1.6i. The Road Administration had done a plate search via the National Police Board’s central office, beginning with the letters HEL or HEI. It took twenty-four hours. They’d received lists of all Ford Escorts with those letter combinations, as well as the earlier models, the primitive, flatter ones that were revamped and made more bulbous after ’91. They’d also requested a search of all Escort models that didn’t have those letter combinations. Beier wasn’t certain about the letters-he’d spoken of a possible “optical illusion.” No one was certain, not even the kennel guy as it turned out.

If they limited the Gothenburg area to Greater Gothenburg plus Kungsbacka to the south, Kungälv to the north, and Hindås to the east, there were 214 Escorts from between ’91 and ’94; that is to say, cars that closely resembled each other. That was a lot of cars.

“As always, it’s an issue of priorities,” Ringmar said.

“You mean this isn’t the top priority? Thanks, I know.”

“But you feel strongly about this?”

“It is a good idea, admit it.” Winter looked up from the lists that lay in shallow piles on his desk.

“It could be worse,” Ringmar said. “We could be looking for one of the most common models of Volvo.”

“It could be a lot better too,” Winter said. “A Cadillac Eldorado.”

“Why not a Trabant?”

“Fine by me.”

“We can put two guys on it,” Ringmar said after a pause. Two police officers could go into the vehicle registration database and pull up every single owner. “And we’ll start with all the ones currently on the road.”

“Who steals a Ford Escort nowadays?”

“We could always ask Fredrik. His specialty is stolen cars.”

“We can take the rentals first.”

“And the company cars.”

“A Ford Escort? You gotta be kidding me.”

“Small businesses,” Ringmar said, and Winter smiled. “Sole proprietor.”

“And after that, the private individuals,” Winter said.

“Of course, there are some you can discount right from the start.”

“We’ll assign two investigators,” Winter said. “Okay. Let them get started.”

Winter was thinking of nothing when he knocked gently and stepped inside the office of the district chief.

The asphalt in front of Ullevi Stadium was empty, a sea of black glittering from all the bits of trash that had been chucked from the cars along Skånegatan.

“I just thought I’d find out how things are going,” Wellman said. “Or how things are, rather.”

“We’re doing everything in our power,” Winter said, and considered whether he should mention the search through the vehicle registration database.

“Have you read this?” Wellman reached for the newspaper before him. “ ‘Police have no leads,’ it says.”

“You know how it is, Henrik.”

“You-We do have some leads, don’t we?”

Winter saw a big bus drive across the sea of asphalt and come to a stop. No one got out. He couldn’t tell whether the engine was turned off. “Absolutely,” he said. “Surely I don’t have to submit a report on that, do I? To you.”

“No no. But there’s a press conference this afternoon.”

“As if I didn’t know.”

“And of course it’s really all bullshit,” Wellman said. “All this damn commotion.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t like it when we don’t have a name. When we have a name, it’s a hell of a lot easier to manage everything. Like a straightforward drug deal or an aggravated assault or a hit-and-run driver.”

“You much prefer that kind of thing?”

“You know what I mean.”

“If we have more answers from the start, it’s easier to come up with leads.”

“W-What?”

“You mean that it’s easier if everything is easier from the start.”

“Now you’re parsing words, Erik.”

“Was there anything else, Henrik?”

“No. You know your business.”

“As long as I don’t get disturbed all the time,” Winter said.

Still no one had emerged from the bus. Winter saw a woman walk up to it and stop next to the driver’s window. It looked as if she was speaking to the driver. He saw how she suddenly took a few steps backward and then turned around and started running away, out toward Skånegatan and across the parking lot toward the police station-straight for the building in which he was standing-and he saw how her features became more distinct. She disappeared beneath him. She had looked horrified.

“Excuse me,” Winter said, and left the room and took the elevator down to the lobby.

23

THE WOMAN WINTER HAD SEEN RUN ACROSS SKÅNEGATAN WAS hanging halfway through the glass window in reception. Winter could see the precinct commander, with a contingent of five or six men around him, on his way forward. A couple of homicide detectives were loafing next to them. Otherwise the hall and waiting room were filled with the usual mix of bicycle messengers, uniformed patrol officers, reception staff, lawyers, and their clients-a mixture of high and low: junkies on their way up or down, whores, car thieves, shoplifters from all social classes, half-drunken petty criminals, deputy directors who’d been tossed out of bars and returned later with a crowbar, hungover female executives who in frustration had violently resisted the police. Then there were the ones who’d just come by to fill out a form, who were applying for a passport and had lost their way, who’d been missing someone long enough, or who’d just wandered in there, God knows why.

The woman pointed at the bus outside Ullevi. Winter moved closer. He wasn’t doing anything just then anyway.

She explained that there was a man sitting in the bus with a little boy and that he was threatening to shoot the child and himself and at the same time blow up the bus. He had shown her the weapon and a string or something that he said he could pull and then the bus would explode.

“Cordon off the area,” the PC said to a uniformed woman standing next to him.

Winter could see the order getting passed on, the movement intensifying in the cramped space next to the reception desk, and the police officers preparing to go outside and join up with their colleagues who had been called back from elsewhere in the city. He saw the bus, now from a different perspective. It looked smaller, as if the sun had shrunk it as it stood unprotected out there in the empty square.

“Contact Bertelsen at immigration,” Winter heard the PC shout to someone who was already heading off into the bustle. He had now heard enough to know that sitting in the bus was a desperate man who’d finally made a choice, when he no longer had any choice. He guessed it was yet another man who wasn’t welcome in Sweden, about to be sent out into orbit around the world, if he survived that long. Yet another space refugee, a stateless human being circling the planet in rusting hulks that never put into port-or in cattle cars that clattered through all the marshlands and deserts of the earth without ever stopping at any its oases. He might shoot himself and the boy, Winter thought. It wouldn’t be the first time.

Skånegatan was quickly cordoned off and the traffic redirected. The curious were congregating, as if the tragedy had already been beamed out by the fastest media. And maybe it had. The police station’s tasteful lobby was teeming with reporters.

Winter walked out. Onlookers came from all directions and had to be forcibly removed since the police officers hadn’t yet managed to get all the cordon tape put up. The Gothenburg Party has been replaced by a new spectacle, and I’m no better than all the other bystanders, he thought, and walked back inside and rode the elevator up to his office, which faced the canal.

He glanced out the window and saw people coming across the grass, a sudden accretion of matter where there had previously been nothing but wind and heat. It was like someone crumbling a loaf of bread in the middle of the empty sea and thousands of seagulls suddenly shrieking down from the sky.

The phone on Winter’s desk rang.

“Yes?”

“Bertil here. There are some people shooting at each other over at Vårväderstorget.”

“What?”

“The witness who called three minutes ago said that it’s like an all-out gang war, and now we have a car out there confirming that shots have been fired.”

“Busy day today.”

“Did I miss something else?”

“There’s a hostage situation out front, or whatever you want to call it.”

“I’ve been on the phone the whol-Are you serious? A hostage situation?”

“A bus. But never mind that now. Have you had a chance to send someone to-Where did you say it was again?”

“Vårväderstorget square. In His-”

“I know where it is.”

“Like I said, there’s a radio car on the scene, but no one from the department. I don’t have a single fucking officer-”

“Let’s go,” Winter said. “Do you have a car ready?”

“Yes.”

They drove out via Smålandsgatan. Winter heard the megaphones and thought about the boy sitting with the man on the bus. Maybe they were father and son. He felt a sudden rage, a nausea that punched at his chest.

“What’s going on?” Ringmar was looking in the rearview mirror.

“I don’t know much more than you do. Except that there’s a man sitting in a bus intent on killing himself and the boy he has with him. There may be other people there too.”

Ringmar sounded like he let out a sigh.

“He may also have an explosive device,” Winter said.

“And here we are on our way to another corner of the event center,” Ringmar said.

Winter looked at him askance just as the radio crackled to life with an update about Vårväderstorget. Four shots had been fired from the roofs of the buildings surrounding the square. And it seemed that two men had been shooting at each other but had disappeared. The police were now searching along the rooftops and on the ground.

“What the fu-Now somebody’s shooting again!” the voice was heard to say, and then the radio cut out.

“What the hell.” Ringmar pounded on the radio. It crackled but there was nothing intelligible. “That sounded like Jonne Stålnacke.”

They drove across the bridge and continued down Hjalmar Brantingsgatan. As they neared Vårväderstorget, Winter made out two patrol cars and people lying on the ground. When they got closer, he realized they were people who had taken cover, but he saw no blood around the cars or the people.

They stopped the car and ran, hunched over, to the two police officers who’d crawled down behind their car. One was holding a walkie-talkie and nodded when he recognized Ringmar and Winter. It was Sverker. A few days ago they’d seen him investigating an accident on Korsvägen. Winter thought about Sverker’s cancer and his return to the job.

“Fucking gangsters,” Sverker said.

“What happened?” Winter asked.

“Somebody started shooting-that’s what happened,” the police sergeant said, and suddenly a shot rang out close by.

“It’s a fucking war,” Sverker said.

Someone started screaming somewhere up ahead. The voice went silent and soon started up again, more softly and drawn out.

“What is that?” Ringmar asked.

Winter stood with his knees bent and slowly lifted his face and peered through the windows of the car. Thirty yards ahead, on the asphalt, lay a uniformed police officer, and he was the one who was screaming-more like shouting now. He’s probably been shot, Winter thought, since he seems unable to move. Unless he has chosen to lie still. But he was shouting. Winter saw no blood, but the man was lying at a strange angle with his leg pointing straight out. Now he moved an arm, in a kind of wave. He fell silent.

“Good God, it’s Jonne,” Sverker said, also looking through the windows. “He moved forward when it seemed like they’d stopped shooting. It’s Jonne Stålnacke.”

“Do you have a megaphone?” Winter asked.

“In the car. I’ll get it.” Sverker cautiously opened the door. “We’ve still got this one from a traffic accident the other day. It ought to be standard equipment.”

Winter took the megaphone and called out, “THIS IS THE POLICE. WE HAVE A WOUNDED OFFICER WHO NEEDS IMMEDIATE MEDICAL ATTENTION. THERE MAY BE OTHER INJURED PEOPLE HERE. PUT DOWN YOUR WEAP-”

And then there was another explosion, and Winter dived headlong onto the street and scraped the hand that was holding the device. Someone fired again, from above. The shot seemed farther away, like the one he’d heard before. Maybe they’re pulling back, Winter thought. The enemy is retreating. Or was that just one of them? They had been shooting at each other, after all.

He raised the megaphone again and saw that he was bleeding from the knuckles and fingers of his right hand.

“THIS IS THE POLICE. PUT DOWN YOUR WEAPONS IMMEDIATELY. THERE ARE PEOPLE INJURED HERE. THIS IS THE POLICE. PUT DOWN YOUR WEAPONS AT ONCE. WE HAVE INJURED PEOPLE IN DESPERATE NEED OF EMERGENCY MEDICAL ATTENTION. PUT DOWN YOUR WEAPONS IMMEDIATELY.”

On the road behind him, an ambulance whined its way closer. Two ambulances. He turned around. The cars had stopped twenty yards away. People were standing along the other side of the road, by the thousands it looked like. Around him lay police officers and civilians who’d happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or the right place but the wrong ti-

Another shot, but now in the distance like a New Year’s firecracker in another neighborhood. The injured police officer mumbled something. He’s in shock, Winter thought. He could die.

“We have to go get Jonne,” Sverker said. “There could be more people lying out there.”

“THIS IS THE POLICE. PUT AWAY YOUR WEAPONS. WE ARE GOING TO STAND UP NOW AND MOVE OUT ONTO THE SQUARE. WE’RE GETTING UP NOW. THIS IS THE POLICE. PUT DOWN YOUR WEAPONS. THERE ARE A LOT OF PEOPLE HERE. WE HAVE TO BRING UP AN AMBULANCE. THERE ARE INJURED PEOPLE HERE.”

The ambulances behind Winter honked their horns, backing up his words. People all around gazed at him and at the long and narrow square, the roofs, the shop signs. Sverker held his service weapon in his hand.

“Put that away,” Winter said.

Jonne cried out again. No one was shooting anymore. Winter tried to see if there was anyone on the rooftops, but the sun stung his eyes and made the buildings look like they were being corroded by a chalk white light.

“THIS IS THE POLICE. WE’RE GOING TO MOVE OUT ONTO THE SQUARE AND THEN AN AMBULANCE IS GOING TO FOLLOW. WE’RE MOVING FORWARD NOW.”

He stood up and, holding the megaphone, slowly walked around the car. Clever idiot. He took a few steps forward, as if walking on thin ice, and continued over toward the injured police officer. Jonne Stålnacke lay still, but Winter could hear a low murmur, as if he were talking to himself.

Winter bent down over Jonne, dropped to his knees. Jonne’s face was white like the sky around the sun. His lips were invisible. His groin area was soaked in blood-they hadn’t been able to see this when they were crouching behind the car. Winter thought about how clean Jonne’s socks and shoes were. The leather shone like a mirror. Sverker jolted up and waved vigorously to the ambulance, which popped the clutch and screeched toward them. It was like a signal to everyone else who was lying down. People stood, but many of them were shaking so badly they had to sit right back down again. Winter heard crying. An entire square in shock. He caught a whiff of excrement from a man who tried to walk toward the street. More ambulances arrived on the scene. A streetcar passed by, as if it had emerged from another world. Uniformed police officers took care of people and looked to see if there were any more injured along with the paramedics and doctors. Stålnacke was carried into the ambulance and driven off. Winter suddenly felt terribly thirsty.

It was so hot, so it was strange that the little girl didn’t come outside for a dip in the wading pool. Many days had passed. It had been hot for such a long time now, but she didn’t know when she had last seen the girl. Nor the mother, but she wasn’t so far gone as not to realize that she couldn’t quite keep track of time the way she used to. Elmer wasn’t around anymore. He used to wind up the clock or say when it was getting on toward evening. It was hard to know what time it was when it took so long for it to get dark. But now it went quicker because the skies were turning toward fall.

Ester Bergman heard the children’s voices through the window she’d cracked open. She didn’t believe in keeping the windows wide open when it was hot. It just made it hotter inside. She had a good temperature in there.

The children jumped into the water, but there wasn’t much water to speak of. So close to the sea and still they couldn’t go there. Perhaps they didn’t want to, but nor could they; she understood that much. Perhaps there wasn’t any sea where they came from. Desert maybe, mountains and such.

The girl didn’t have black hair, and not all the children in the courtyard did either.

She thought the girl lived in one of the units to the left, on the short end of the yard, but she hadn’t seen her go in or out of it, because the gable blocked the entrance from view. Maybe it was because the girl had red hair that she remembered her and wondered where she was. A few of the other children had light hair, but none of them had red hair.

The girl had walked past her window on the way to the playground. She never ran.

The girl’s mother had light hair and always sat by herself. Perhaps that was another reason why she remembered the girl, because the mother never spoke to anyone. They were never in the courtyard for very long. After a while the mother would take the girl, and they would go back inside again or leave the building altogether. She had wondered several times where it was they went. But what business is it of mine? she had thought.

The mother had smoked, and she hadn’t liked seeing that. There weren’t many other mothers in the courtyard who smoked, as far as she could tell.

A couple of times over the past week she had thought she’d seen the girl, but it wasn’t her. She didn’t know what her voice sounded like. And she’d never heard the mother speak to the girl either.

I guess I miss that little moppet, she thought. They must have moved out, but I didn’t see any moving van.

24

SHE WAS GIVEN OTHER CLOTHES BUT SHE DIDN’T WANT TO PUT them on. The man said that she had to change clothes when he went out, and so she took off the old ones she’d had on for a long time.

She coughed. She felt hot in her face and on her body.

Where did the dress come from? It wasn’t hers, but it didn’t look new. It didn’t smell of anything.

The man wasn’t there. She had the slip of paper in her hand. Was it because they were looking for the slip of paper that she had to take off her pants? They hadn’t said anything. She looked around, but there was no place where she could put the slip of paper. She felt inside the dress for a pocket and found one. She’d had a dress before, so she knew to look for it.

She pulled the dress over her head. If she crumpled up the paper a little, it fit right into the pocket and she could sort of put a flap of the fabric over it. She patted it on the outside and couldn’t feel the paper.

It seemed like they were back where they had been before, except it didn’t look exactly the same. Had the windows been moved? Can you move a window like a table or a chair?

Mommy was out there. She thought about Mommy, but it was hard without getting sad.

“Have you slept?”

She tried to say she had slept, because she thought that’s what he wanted her to say. But no sound came out and she had to try again, and then it worked. After that she coughed. She was sweating.

“Sit still,” he said, and took hold of her shoulder with one hand and held the other to her forehead. He mumbled something she couldn’t hear. Then he said a bad word. “You’re hot,” he said again, and she coughed again. He shouted something to someone else, and she heard an answer.

“The kid’s got a fever.”

Someone said something from somewhere else.

“I said the kid’s sick!”

She heard something that sounded like another bad word.

He left and she thought about how her dress was a little damp under her arms and along her back because she was so hot. She lay down on the mattress and that felt good, so she closed her eyes. It sounded like the man was back, but she didn’t want to look up. Then he took hold of her again.

“You have to sit up and drink this,” he said.

She didn’t want to, but he lifted her.

“You have to drink this while it’s hot,” he said, and she opened her eyes and saw the cup. “Then you can lie down again.”

She took a sip but her throat hurt when she swallowed. Then it felt a little better, but when she tried to drink again it hurt.

“Does it hurt?”

She nodded.

“Do you have a sore throat?”

She nodded again.

“It’ll feel better afterward,” he said.

She said that she wanted to lie down. He laid her down and took the cup with him. She closed her eyes. She started to dream.

25

HALDERS ENTERED THE COFFEE ROOM AND POURED HIMSELF A fresh cup. He sat down at Ringmar’s table and lifted his gaze toward the window. “What a circus.”

It was the second day of what the city’s tabloids had been calling, among other things, “Terror!” Two hundred thousand issues had been sold, and there was nothing strange about that. Gothenburg had exploded-at least parts of it. The smart-asses said it had come as no surprise. “To think we’re the ones who are supposed to stay one step ahead of these guys,” Ringmar said to Halders.

“What did you say?”

“Surveillance department. We’re supposed to have our ear to the ground. To be monitoring developments. Be a step ahead.”

“Who could have seen this coming?” Halders raised his hand toward Ullevi and the drama that was still unfolding out there.

“I was mainly thinking about Vårväderstorget.”

“How’s Stålnacke doing?”

“He lost a lot of blood,” Ringmar said, “but he’ll pull through. He’ll be able to walk.”

“The question is whether he’ll be able to take a piss again, let alone be able to-”

“We can’t exactly have people everywhere, can we?” Ringmar interrupted.

“And now we’re going to spread our resources even more thinly.”

“We’re going to bring in the ones who shot Stålnacke.”

“That seems like a concrete assignment,” Halders said. “Something you can really sink your teeth into.”

“How do you mean?”

“The murder at Delsjö is going cold. You know it is. It’s going cold, no matter what Winter says.”

“The cars,” Ringmar said. “That’s something.”

“A shot in the dark,” Halders said, “but okay. A Ford Escort. That’s concrete all right. But more to the point, it’s a hell of a lot of work.”

Ringmar seemed to prick up his ears when the megaphone bawled again outside. “It’s awful,” he said.

“What is?”

Ringmar gestured at the window but didn’t answer.

The friendly match between Sweden and Denmark, scheduled for that evening at Ullevi Stadium, had to be postponed. The management of the Swedish Football Association had made discreet inquiries with the police about whether the “incident” might be over in time but had been given no guarantees.

The man on the bus was a Kurd, and the boy at his side was his son. After seven years in Sweden, they were going to be deported. The boy had lived in Sweden for six years. The Migration Board was certain the man and his family were from northern Iran, and that’s where he was going to be deported to. Turkey was an alternative. The man claimed that he risked being imprisoned or even put to death in both countries, in different ways, for different reasons. Different forms of execution. The state authority, which an increasing number of people dubbed the Emigration Board, displayed pride and emotional zeal for doing what is right and proper. When the man arrived, he was given another name and another nationality because he feared being sent back to the terror. But he had lied, and now he was going to be deported.

Winter stood at the edge of the mass of onlookers. Maybe someone ought to put up some bleachers, he thought. Charge admission.

He knew that the man sitting in that bus, a hundred yards away, had committed an emergency lie to make it into Sweden. Maybe he’d left a job as a consultant and a seven-room house in Diyarbakir or Tabriz just because he felt like trekking through Syria with his family before hopping a cruise to Scandinavia. Perhaps the family was just having a hard time explaining why they didn’t want to return to the fertile land they had left behind. There is no room here in any case. Sweden is too built up, Winter thought. The forests are full of towns and densely populated villages.

He closed his eyes and saw a forest in front of him. Water glittered between the trees. Everything was green to his unseeing eyes. He saw a path and someone walking along that path. He recognized himself. He was holding a child by the hand.

He opened his eyes again and everything was black and white. The asphalt was black beneath his feet, and it turned increasingly white as he raised his gaze toward the bus, which stood right in the sun. It must be 120 degrees in there, he thought. Not even a man who’s grown up in the hottest country in the world could hold out for much longer. It must be a question of hours, perhaps minutes. Let there be an end to it.

A small negotiating team moved toward the bus. The people all around were very quiet. A helicopter hovered overhead. Winter heard radio and TV reporters speaking nearby. He heard the events taking place in front of him described to him.

Ringmar said something. He’d come outside and seen Winter and was standing next to him.

“What?”

“I think this will be over soon,” Ringmar said.

“Yes.”

“We might also have a lead on the shooters at the square.”

“Was it an internal settling of scores?” Winter asked.

“Depends on how you look at it. Essentially, it’s the same desperation we’re experiencing here,” Ringmar said. “We’re headed toward the end of the century and the end of the world as we know it.”

His cell phone vibrated in his inner pocket as he stepped out of the elevator.

“Yes?”

“Hello, Erik. I thought it was about ti-”

“Hello, Mother.”

“What’s going on over there? We just had the newspapers delivered, and it looks just terrible.”

“Yes.”

“First that murder. And then those people shooting at each other. And now a kidnapping too!”

“There’s no kidnapping.”

“There isn’t? Someone’s kidnapped a boy and is hold-”

“They’re father and son,” Winter said.

“Father and son? I don’t understand.”

“No.”

“Father and son? How awful.”

He had reached his office. The phone on his desk rang.

“Hang on, Mother,” he said, and lifted the receiver and put the cell phone down. “Winter,” he said.

“Janne here. We’ve received a few more phone calls and letters in response to the poster. You want the copies and transcripts now or are you coming over here?”

Winter considered his office chair. He felt that he needed to sit down for a moment and think about his murder investigation. Möllerström would put together a nice package of all the witnesses’ statements. “Send it up,” he said. He hung up the receiver and retrieved his cell phone.

“Here I am again,” he said to his mother, who was sitting in a house in Marbella. He couldn’t hear his father in the background, but he guessed that he was close by, with a glass in his hand and a weary gaze directed out at the dusty palm trees and the foreign wind. Winter didn’t really know how the place looked, apart from the photographs that his mother had sent and he’d only glanced at. The house was white and stood next to several other houses in the same style. In one picture his mother sat on a veranda built out of white stone. It looked lonely. The sun behind her was on its way down, the sky so blue that it looked black against the whiteness. His father may have taken the photo, since he wasn’t there on the veranda. His mother looked as though she were searching for something in the eye of the camera. She was smiling, but he had looked at the photograph long enough to see that it wasn’t a happy smile. She looked like someone who had reached a goal and become confused or disappointed.

“I heard from Lotta that you’d been to see her,” she said. “It made me so happy. And her too, I can tell you.”

“Yes.”

“It means so much to her. She’s more alone than you know.”

Then why don’t you come home? he thought.

“She’s coming down to see us in October with the girls.”

“That’ll do her good.”

“It’s her fortieth birthday. Imagine.”

“A big day.”

“Your big sister.”

“Mother, I-”

“I don’t dare ask you to come down here anymore. It’s a crying shame, Erik. We’d so like for you to come down. Your father especially.”

He didn’t answer. He thought he heard something close to her, a voice, but it might have been a Spanish wind or a Spanish seabird.

“I don’t know what to do about it,” his mother said.

“You don’t have to do anything.”

“I can’t do more.”

“We don’t have to talk about it.”

“Can’t you call next time? On the weekend?”

“I’ll try.”

“You never call. It’s pointless my even asking. It’ll be just the same as it always is. How’s Angela?”

The question came suddenly. He didn’t know what to say.

“You’re still seeing each other?”

“Yes.”

“It would be nice to actually get to meet her one day.”

Ester Bergman stood outside the store and studied the big notice board. They had put it up quite recently. It was the only one she had seen in the area.

Her bag was heavy since she had done the shopping for several days. It had become more difficult for her to find what she was looking for since the store started to stock so many new products that people from other countries bought. Strange vegetables and cans.

She tried to read. The local parish was going to have a sing-along. She’d go and listen, if she had time. The property management company was organizing a party for one of the other courtyards, but it didn’t seem to be open to everyone. She wondered why. The police had put up a poster about someone who’d gone missing. It occurred to her that people seem to go missing a lot, and then she thought about the red-haired girl and her fair-haired mother, who were so quiet and still whenever they walked past. Where are they now? she thought again. I miss that little girl. I enjoyed watching her when she played in the sand.

Where had they moved to? She regretted that she hadn’t at least spoken to the girl. That’s the sort of thing you regret, she thought. There are a lot of things you can regret when you get old. I regret never having had children. It’s strange to think about. We couldn’t have children, and it might not have been my fault. It may have been Elmer’s fault, but he didn’t want to get himself examined and I let him decide. I regret that now. What if I’d known that I’d grow old and sit here regretting all the things I hadn’t done? All the sins I hadn’t committed.

She read the notice posted on the bulletin board again. She had to strain because the print could have been bigger. If they wanted people to read it, they ought to think about not making the letters so small.

When she walked back, she thought once again about the girl who had been so quiet. Why am I thinking about that so much? I’ve been doing that for a few days now.

On the way back to her unit, she walked past the property management office. A sign outside said “Residential Services.” Was that something new? There was also something about a “district superintendent” who manned the office during opening hours. What was a district superintendent? She didn’t know, but it must be someone who knew something about the area or the buildings. She could pay a visit to that district super and ask. It’s not good to go around thinking all the time. She could ask when that mother and her little girl moved away and where they went.

26

THE TEMPERATURE DROPPED LATE IN THE NIGHT. WHEN WINTER awoke, the air in the apartment smelled different-of green instead of white. It was colder and darker, like a lingering sadness at the long summer’s passing, finally expired at a record old age.

He put his feet on the sanded fir floor, its coolness soft beneath the arches of his feet. Then he yawned, a leftover from burning the midnight oil with his head bowed over the PowerBook he could now see through the bedroom doorway, screen still open. Today it was a different apartment. He’d grown used to four months of almost constant sunshine and a home that offered no protection from the light.

In the kitchen he raised the blinds without getting dazzled. The sky had no opening. An invisible rain made the awnings across the park glisten. The streetcars passed beneath him with a sound reminiscent of a ship.

Winter walked back into the living room in his robe and opened the door to the balcony. The wet became more audible, as if he’d stepped out of a wheelhouse and found himself at sea.

He drew air into his lungs, as much as he could manage. It felt good. He felt good. The fatigue from the night before was gone, and he realized that the heavy heat had had an adverse effect on him, on his work.

It was like a depression, he thought. Everything started to crumble to bits. We saw the proof. Things exploded. People went crazy and shot each other. A man and his son were at the end of their tether.

A week earlier, the dramatic standoff outside Ullevi had had an undramatic resolution. The man left his gun on the bus and stepped off, holding his son by the hand. Winter heard that the son seemed happy and perky, waving to his mother, who was standing there-she who had pleaded with her husband.

The family’s lawyer had submitted a new application for a residence permit. But the government was following a hard line. Desperation was to be regarded as threat and coercion. Despair, though it may move the hearts of the weak, had no effect on the authorities’ judgment.

It was nine o’clock in the morning and it was Saturday. The dizziness had returned for two split seconds on Friday afternoon, so Winter had decided to stay home in the shadows today.

Now the shadows were gone, as was that nagging sensation of losing his footing. He knew he would not feel dizzy again, not for a very long time. I’m more of a northerner than I realized, he thought. Surround me with crispness and cold and I function better.

Winter stepped back inside and lingered by his desk. He looked at the computer screen but didn’t turn it on. Last night he’d tried to sort through all the various sidetracks, as if he were working in a rail yard. He’d followed different leads until they ended, then reversed course to see if he could spot anything that had fallen off along the way, in a ditch or in the grass.

A lot of time had been spent following up on every public sighting of thirty-year-old fair-haired women at “mysterious” locations or who’d appeared generally confused or suspicious. Winter had sent all the documentation to Interpol. It was a new tack, and he hadn’t received any usable information from there as yet. He didn’t think she came from another country. The fillings in her teeth were done in Sweden, even the ones that were done when she was a little girl. She could have been living abroad, but that was another matter.

He’d called up other police precincts throughout the country.

His staff had continued to question the boys about the boat, and they were telling the truth. But their boat had been used for something. Maybe it was the boat that Andrea Maltzer saw out on the lake. If she really had seen a boat. Winter had thought about her, and her lover, von Holten. There was something-he didn’t know what it was-something that made him not quite swallow her whole story. Why hadn’t she called a cab right away? Had she planned on borrowing the car? Was she there alone? All these questions ran through Winter’s mind, and he’d typed them on his screen before the temperature outside had dropped.

Two officers had spent almost a week trawling through the vehicle registration database in search of the owners of the Ford Escorts located within the geographical area he had decided they should limit themselves to. They would start with all the license plates beginning with the letter H. Not even then could they be sure. I don’t know, he’d thought to himself the night before, with the blue glow from the screen on his face. Is this therapy? He’d thought about the woman again. Helene with no name. Inside he knew they wouldn’t make any progress without her identity. He knew that the others knew.

He raised his gaze from the PowerBook and returned to the kitchen to put on the electric kettle for tea. He poured the leaves into the pot and toasted two slices of French bread from the day-old loaf he’d bought at a convenience store on the way home. He could have pulled on his trousers and shirt and taken the elevator down to the bakery across the park. Why don’t I do that, he thought, and left the bread where it was and went back into the bedroom and threw off his robe and put on a pair of shorts and a shirt.

He bought fresh poppy-seed buns and a brioche, returning across the grass and feeling his sandaled toes get wet. Back upstairs he made himself a café au lait instead of tea and squeezed three oranges and poured the juice into a glass. He ate the still-warm bread with butter and cherry jam, and with a boiled egg that he peeled and sliced up and ground black pepper over. He drank two cups of coffee and read the paper. He felt ready for anything.

Ester Bergman cautiously stuck her hand out the window and felt the dampness. It was good for the skin. She kept her hand there long enough that tiny droplets of water formed in the folds of her palm. She thought the world looked dark when the sun wasn’t there to wash everything out.

She’d stayed indoors for several days because she hadn’t been feeling well. She hadn’t had the energy to go to residential services, or whatever it’s called. Then the woman from the home-help service had come-the new one whose name she didn’t know-and had futzed around the apartment as if she were cleaning. But Ester knew she wasn’t actually cleaning, that everything looked almost the same when she left as it had when she arrived. Sometimes she does the dishes even though I’ve already done them, Ester thought. When she thinks I’m not looking, she takes out the glasses and washes them again, as if I couldn’t look after myself.

She may be nice, but she’s not family. Ester Bergman had thought about that sometimes, but there was no point in thinking like that. No family was going to drop in for a visit, no matter how much she wished for it. That’s just the way it was. An old woman couldn’t have a family if she’d had an old man who didn’t want more people in the house.

“Seems like you’ve got a little fever, Ester,” the home-help woman had said, and put her hand on her forehead.

“I’m lying here thinking about something.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Do you notice the people who live around this courtyard?”

“How do you mean, Ester?”

“Do you recognize them, you people who work around here, visiting with old people and such?”

“You mean, do we recognize our clie-the ones we go to visit? Of course we do.”

“No no. I mean the other people around here. The others who live here.”

“The others?”

“The children and the others on the street! The children and their mothers!”

“Are you thinking of anyone in particular, Ester?”

“No, never mind.”

“Tell me if you’re thinking of anyone special, Ester.”

It’s always Ester this and Ester that with this woman, she’d thought to herself. She was getting a headache from hearing her name all the time. “There used to be a little girl with bright red hair. She would sit out there with her mother sometimes or play while her mother sat nearby. They’re not here anymore.”

“You haven’t seen them, Ester?”

“I haven’t seen them for quite a while. I was just wondering if you’d seen them.”

“A girl with red hair? How old?”

“I don’t know. A little one, five or something maybe.”

The woman from the home-help service looked like she was thinking. I wonder if she really is thinking, Ester Bergman thought. She smells of smoke. She wants to get out of here and have a smoke out on the steps.

“The mother smoked too.”

“What did you say, Ester?”

“I said that the girl’s mother smoked too. If she was her mother.”

“What did her mother look like?”

“She was fair and looked like all young people do these days, I guess.”

“She was young, you say, Ester?”

“Everyone’s young to me, I suppose.”

The home-help woman smiled. She looked like she was thinking again.

“I can’t picture them,” she said. “But I don’t get to see much of the courtyard. We just come in here, after all, and into the entranceways.” She appeared to be thinking again. “No, I can’t picture them.”

“Ester would like some coffee now,” said Ester Bergman.

The service woman again placed her hand on Ester’s forehead. “Now, you just lie still here while I go fetch the cup.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

Then she’d been left on her own again. She thought about this now, as her hand grew increasingly wet. The rain felt good. Old people have a hard time in the heat, she thought. Even old people from other countries stay indoors when it’s hot outside.

She pulled in her hand but left the window open. There were streaks running down the pane. It smelled like when she was a child. Through the rain-washed window she could see the children outside.

Suddenly it was as if something struck her hard in the chest. She thought she saw a head of red hair through the window. She leaned forward, then pushed open the window to get a better view. But she didn’t see anyone with red hair or anyone else for that matter-there was nothing outside her window right now. Look how I’m behaving, she thought. I’m seeing ghosts.

Aneta Djanali returned home with the fall. It smelled stagnant in her apartment. She opened a window, and despite the total absence of wind she saw a little fluff of dust whirl in the center of the room. The first thing she did was put on some music, and it wasn’t jazz.

It was early afternoon, but it felt like evening, when the light is gone and doesn’t pierce through everything anymore. This light lingered around things. It was discreet, relaxing for the mind, she thought, pouring herself a glass of whiskey from the bottle on the kitchen counter. The last time she’d poured from it was the evening she was beaten up. It was a strange feeling. She’d sat here with Lis, sipped at a whiskey, and then gone out. Now she was back and sipping another as if it had just been a little parenthesis in time. She drank a little more and grimaced as much as she dared with her patched-up mandible. The alcohol flared up at once and became a little flame that flickered around inside her body, swept down her nerve endings, and flushed out into her bloodstream. Better than painkillers, she thought, and took a little whiskey in her mouth and let it slowly trickle down into her throat. I feel pretty good, she said silently to herself.

27

ESTER BERGMAN TOOK A SIP OF HER COFFEE, BUT SHE WAS thinking about something else. The young man on the radio had just said that it was eight o’clock. She was all dressed and ready to go. The woman from the home-help service wasn’t coming today, and that was a relief.

She lingered outside the office and read the sign, just to be sure. She was a little nervous once she was standing there. Speaking to a stranger about that girl and her mother-it felt silly now. What business was it of hers? It was better to go back and che-

“Mrs. Bergman, you shouldn’t be standing out here in the rain,” the girl who had come out from the office said. “Can I help you with something? Do you need help with anything from the store, Mrs. Bergman?”

“No. No, thank you,” she said, recognizing the girl from her courtyard. They had said hello a few times. “You know my name?”

“Well, you’ve lived here for such a long time, Mrs. Bergman,” the girl said. “We’ve spoken to each other. My name is Karin Sohlberg.”

“Lived here for a long time? Since it was built.” That was true. They’d moved here in 1958, when everything was new and filled with light. Elmer had never explained how they had been able to afford it, and she hadn’t asked. She hadn’t asked about anything at all, and that had been foolish.

“You’re getting wet, Mrs. Bergman.”

“Could I come in for a moment? There was something I wanted to ask you about.”

“Sure. We shouldn’t stand out here any longer. I’ll take your arm, and we’ll walk up the steps.”

Inside the desk lamp was on, illuminating a surface covered with papers. She was offered a comfortable chair to sit in.

The telephone rang, but by the time the girl picked up the phone there was nobody there. She put down the receiver and turned to her visitor. This could take a while, and that didn’t matter.

“The weather really turned around.”

Ester Bergman didn’t answer. She was thinking about what to say.

“It really feels nice,” the girl said.

“I wanted to ask about those two who were living in one of the units farther up from me. A mother and her daughter.”

The girl looked at her as if she hadn’t heard, as if she wanted to keep talking about the weather. It used to be old people that talked about the weather-now it’s apparently young people, thought Ester Bergman. “A little girl with red hair,” she said.

“I’m not sure I understand, Mrs. Bergman.”

“There’s a little girl with red hair I haven’t seen for a long time. And her mother. I haven’t seen them and that’s why I’m asking about them.”

“Are they friends of yours, Mrs. Bergman?”

“No. Do they have to be?”

“No no. But you want to know something about them, Mrs. Bergman?”

“I haven’t seen them for some time. Do you know who I mean?”

The girl stood and walked over to a filing cabinet, returning with a thin pile of papers, which she laid on the table in front of her. Then she looked at Ester Bergman again. “This is the list of all the apartments on your courtyard, from number 326 to 486.”

“I see.”

“You said a little girl with red hair? And her mother? What did she look like?”

“I don’t know that she actually was her mother. She had fair hair, but I don’t know any more than that. I never spoke to her. Not once.”

“I think I remember,” the girl said. “There aren’t that many girls with red hair, after all.”

“Not in my courtyard anyway.”

“A single mother with one child,” the girl said, and flipped through her records.

“I saw the notice from the police,” Ester Bergman said suddenly.

The girl looked up. “What did you say, Mrs. Bergman?”

“There’s a notice from the police out here on the bulletin board. They’re looking for a young person.” She hadn’t thought about that before. “They’re looking for a woman with light hair.”

“They are?”

“Haven’t they handed them out to this office? The police? They should have, surely.”

“I’ve been on vacation. The office was closed for a while for renovation. You might still be able to smell the paint, Mrs. Bergman.”

“No.”

The girl looked in her files again.

“We have a number of single mothers with small children. You only saw the mother with the one child, Mrs. Bergman?”

“The mother had fair hair and the girl had red-”

“I mean, did she have any more children. Or a husband.”

“Not that I saw.”

“And you don’t know which entrance was theirs?”

“No. But it was down a bit from mine.”

The girl looked in her files again, flipped through them a ways. “Judging from the apartment numb-” The girl looked up. “I’m looking for possible apartment and personal identity numbers from the list here,” she said.

It wasn’t the first time somebody had asked about someone who hadn’t been seen for a while. Last spring a neighbor had started to wonder why he never saw the gentleman who lived in the apartment just below him, even though the light was on. After a week, the neighbor had come to see the unit super. Karin Sohlberg went over and rang the doorbell, and when no one opened the door, she peered through the letter slot at a pile of mail. Since the man had no family she could contact, and she didn’t have the authority to enter the apartment herself, she called the police. The old man was sitting there dead in his chair. Afterward she thought about how she hadn’t detected any smell.

She continued to run down the columns on the list.

“Find anything?” Ester Bergman asked.

“It could be Helene Andersén you’re wondering about. She lives two doorways up from you.” She muttered an apartment number that Ester Bergman couldn’t catch.

“Does she have a red-haired girl?”

“It doesn’t say, Mrs. Bergman.” The girl looked up. “But I wonder if she doesn’t-wait a minute.” She eyed the list again. “She has a little daughter named Jennie. It actually says so here.”

“Jennie?”

“Yes. That might be them. I can’t really say what they look like until I’ve seen them.”

“But they’re not here anymore. They’re gone.”

“How long has it been since you last saw the girl? Or the mother?”

“I can’t say for sure, but it was a month or so ago. When it was hot. And it was hot for a long time after. And now it’s been bad weather for a while too.”

“They may have gone away on vacation. Or to visit someone.”

“For so long?”

The woman made a gesture signaling that stuff like that could happen.

“I thought perhaps they had moved,” Ester Bergman said.

“No. They haven’t moved.”

“I see. But they’re not here anymore.”

“I know what we can do. I can go over there and ring the doorbell and see if anyone’s home.”

“What are you going to say if somebody answers?”

“I’ll have to think of something,” the girl said, and smiled.

Ester Bergman didn’t want to go along, so Karin Sohlberg entered the stairwell alone and walked up to the second floor. She rang the doorbell and waited. She rang the doorbell again and listened to the echo inside the apartment. It was still echoing when she opened the letter slot and saw the little pile of junk mail and other correspondence she couldn’t identify. You couldn’t see how much was lying there.

She headed back down the stairs and a minute later rang on Ester Bergman’s door. The old woman opened up at once, as if she’d been standing just inside the door.

“Nobody’s home.”

“That’s what I’ve been saying the whole time.”

“There was some mail lying just inside the door, but that could have a number of explanations.”

“I just want one,” Ester Bergman said.

“There’s one more thing I can do for you, Mrs. Bergman.” And for myself, she thought. I want to know too. “I can go to the district office and see if the rent has been paid.”

“You can see that?”

“We’re far enough into September now that we can see whether the rent has been paid or if a reminder has been sent out to Helene Andersén.”

“I’m mostly concerned about the little girl.”

“Do you understand what I mean, Mrs. Bergman?”

“I’m not stupid and I’m not deaf,” Ester Bergman said. “You go to that office. That’s fine.”

Karin Sohlberg walked to the district office in the old central heating facility on Dimvädersgatan and checked on the computer whether Helene Andersén’s last rent had been paid. It had, on the second of the month. Technically one day late, but it had been a weekend. In any case, the rent had been paid at the post office less than two weeks ago. Just like usual. Helene Andersén apparently always took her preprinted payment slip to the post office and paid first thing. Many people did this, and most of the tenants in the area used the post office at Länsmanstorget, thought Karin Sohlberg.

Ester Bergman had said the mother and the girl had been gone a long time. That sort of measure was relative. Old people could say one thing and mean something else. In that sense perhaps they’re not much different from anybody else-but to them a week can feel like a month. Time could pass slowly and yet all too quickly. Karin Sohlberg had sometimes thought about the elderly who sat there all alone with their thoughts, with so much inside of them that has to come out or else get bottled up.

She stood outside her office again. It was past opening hours. She tried to remember the face that belonged to the apartment, but she couldn’t recall seeing anyone with fair hair. Maybe a little girl with red hair, but she couldn’t be sure. She’d just had a long vacation with a lot of different faces around her.

Ester Bergman wasn’t confused. Her eyesight may not have been what it once was, but it was still sharp in its way. She wasn’t the type to go around jabbering about things for no reason. It must have taken her a long time to decide to come to the service office. What she’d said-that the little family hadn’t been there for a long time-might well be true. The question was what this meant. The rent was paid. But that didn’t mean they had to live there every single day.

She may have met a man, thought Karin Sohlberg. She met a man and they moved in with him, but she’s not ready yet to let go of her apartment because she’s unsure. She doesn’t trust men because she’s been burned before. Maybe. Probably. It’s probable because it’s common, Karin Sohlberg thought, glancing down at her left ring finger, where a thin band of white skin still shone against her tanned hand.

She walked over and looked at the notice. It was laminated, which suggested the police wanted it to be able to hang there through all kinds of weather. At first she didn’t understand what the connection was to this area, but then she thought about Ester Bergman: If she can see a possible connection, then I suppose I can too. But still, the rent was paid. She read about the missing woman again then unlocked the door to her office. She didn’t have time. If she remained sitting there, someone was bound to come in and then she’d have even less time.

She walked back to the courtyard and entered Helene Andersén’s stairwell and stood once again at her door and rang. The echo of the doorbell chime never faded out completely. Through the letter slot she could only see the brightly colored junk mail and a few brown and white envelopes. They look like bills, but I can’t be sure, she thought. But I can be sure that nobody in there has opened the mail for quite some time.

She didn’t see any newspapers, but that didn’t mean anything. Many people couldn’t afford a morning paper anymore, or had given it up for something else instead.

Eventually it felt strange standing there, sort of spooky-as if she expected to see a pair of feet come toward her. She recoiled with that thought and returned to the courtyard and looked up toward Helene Andersén’s kitchen window. The blinds were drawn, and that distinguished her window from those adjacent, above, and below. During the heat wave, the blinds in all the windows had been down, but now the window she was looking at was virtually the only one.

She exited through the building’s main entrance and tried to locate Helene Andersén’s window from the outside. It wasn’t difficult, since the blinds were down on that side too. It was a natural thing to do when you went away. After half a minute she had that same unsettling feeling and closed her eyes in order not to see a shadow suddenly appear in the window. My God, here I am getting myself all worked up, she thought, and looked away in order not to see that movement, the shadow. It was a powerful sensation, this dread, as if she’d lost her skin in a split second. Then it was over and she was herself again.

Sohlberg felt foolish as she rang the doorbell of the Athanassiou family in the apartment immediately below. Mr. Athanassiou opened the door, and it was a familiar face. She asked as simply as she could about the woman and the girl upstairs. The man responded by shaking his head. They hadn’t seen them for a while, but who could know when the last time had been? No, they hadn’t heard anything. They had always been quiet up there, the whole time they had been living there. The girl may have run around a little sometimes, but nothing they had reason to complain about. My ceiling is someone else’s floor, after all, the man said, and when he pointed upward, Karin Sohlberg thought about the Greek philosophers.

She was drawn to the notice board again but stopped at Ester Bergman’s window when she saw the old lady through the glass. Mrs. Bergman opened the window, but Sohlberg said nothing to her about the rent having been paid. Perhaps she wanted to keep the mystery alive a little longer for the old lady. Maybe I want to keep it alive for myself too, she thought.

Now she stood in front of the notice board and wrote down the phone numbers for the district CID’s homicide department.

At the window, Mrs. Bergman had said she wanted to write a letter to the police. Could the young lady help her?

“If you would like to contact the police, Mrs. Bergman, then maybe you can call them,” Sohlberg had answered. “I could help you.”

“I don’t like the telephone. Nothing gets said.”

28

SITTING WITH ESTER BERGMAN WHILE THE RAIN BEAT AGAINST the kitchen window, Karin Sohlberg imagined that this, more or less, must be the old lady’s world. Or was that a preconceived notion? She was often here in the kitchen, at her window. She must notice quite a lot in her world of faces and voices that she saw and heard but didn’t know.

The shouts from the children sounded far away. Sohlberg could see them moving in the playground like blurred little splotches of color. When the rain came, the colors came too, she thought, and turned away from the window toward Mrs. Bergman. “What should I write, then?”

“Write that we’re wondering where the mother is, and her little girl.”

“Perhaps we should mention the notice about the dead woman.”

“You can write that we read it on the bulletin board. And that the mother is fair haired.”

“Yes.”

“Don’t forget to put down which courtyard it is.”

“No.”

“You don’t need to put down my age.”

Karin Sohlberg smiled and looked up from the sheet of letter paper Mrs. Bergman had taken out of a beautiful writing desk in her living room. “No, we don’t need to write your age.”

“You can write down the age of the mother and daughter.”

“I’ll start now.”

“Don’t forget to say they’ve been gone since well before the rains came.”

“Maybe we don’t really-”

“I know what you’re trying to say. But I know that to be the case.”

“Yes.”

Karin Sohlberg thought to herself, What right did she actually have to write her way into Helene Andersén’s private life? Maybe she wanted to be left in peace. That was normal. And the girl wasn’t old enough that she had to be in school.

It occurred to her that she could ask around to find out if the girl had been attending day care or nursery school in the area. But was that her job? Or was she just curious?

“You can sign it with your own name if you want,” Ester Bergman said.

“Why would I do that, Mrs. Bergman?”

“You’ll do a better job of talking to the police when they come here in their cars.”

“But you’re the one who’s most convinced that they’ve been gone a long time.”

“I still say you’ll do a better job of talking. And I don’t like it when too many people come here in their cars and with their dogs. Or horses, for that matter.”

“I don’t think there’ll be that many. Maybe just one or two, asking a few questions. And it might take a while before they come. If they come at all.”

“Why wouldn’t they?”

Sohlberg didn’t know what to say. She looked outside, as if hoping the mother and her red-haired girl would walk past holding hands. “How about we say that I’ll be with you when you speak to the police? I can sit next to you, Mrs. Bergman.”

“I guess we could say that.”

“Then I’ll seal this and send it.”

“Read it to me again.”

As she read she thought about how it would end up at the bottom of some pile. The police must receive hundreds or thousands of tips like this about missing people.

Winter pulled a report from the increasingly voluminous preliminary investigation, a pile of papers that grew on his desk. He sat wearing his blazer and worked with the window open.

There was a grand total of 124 white Ford Escort 1.8 CLX three-door hatchbacks dating from ’91 to ’94 with license plates beginning with the letter H in the districts of Gothenburg, Kungälv, Kungsbacka, and Härryda. Peculiarly, none began with HE.

He’d sat again for a long time in front of the blurred video footage and was sure the first letter on the plate was an H. There was no doubt in his mind.

One of the cars on the new list was the car on the screen. What had it been doing there?

It really wasn’t a manageable number, 124, even if he had, along with the plate numbers, the name, address, and personal identity number of all the owners.

Of the 124 cars, 2 had been reported stolen at the time of Helene’s murder. One had been found, badly parked with a bone-dry gas tank, in the parking lot in front of Swedish Match. There was no sign of the other.

Questioning people about their whereabouts at certain times in their lives was always a process of elimination-of listening and, on the basis of what was said, deciding who was lying and how much and, possibly, why.

The most problematic were those who lied, not because they had done anything illegal-their actions may well have been immoral, unethical, or deceitful toward someone close to them, yet nothing that was against the law-but because under no circumstances did they want to reveal what they had done in secret. They’d rather let murderers go free.

He felt restless. He wanted to wander out into the field again but instead played Coltrane on his portable Panasonic perched on a bench by the window. Still, “Trane’s Slo Blues” brought him no peace. He tapped the rhythm against the edge of the desk with the middle finger of his left hand and looked through the files while Earl May busted out his bass solo from a studio in Hackensack, New Jersey, on August 16, 1957. Winter had never been there. You have to save some things for later.

His thoughts drifted to “Lush Life,” and for a few seconds he became absorbed by the powerful melody. Janne Möllerström stepped into the room just as Red Garland began his piano solo.

“Well, isn’t this cozy,” Möllerström said.

“Yes.”

“What is it?” Möllerström nodded toward the CD player.

“The Clash.”

“What?”

“The Clash. A British rock-”

“That’s not the Clash, for Christ’s sake. I’ve got the Clash.”

“Just yanking your chain. Can’t you hear who it is?”

“All I hear is some nice piano. And here comes a trumpet. Must be Herb Alpert.”

Winter laughed.

“Tijuana Brass,” Möllerström said. “My dad liked it too.”

“Really.”

“Just yanking your chain,” Möllerström said. “Since you’re the one listening to it, I’ll hazard a wild guess that it’s John Coltrane.”

“Naturally. But I don’t suppose that’s why you stopped by.”

“I have a letter here that I think you should look at,” Möllerström said.

“Okay.” Winter took the Xerox and read it, then turned his gaze back to his registry clerk. “What makes you think this might be something?”

“I don’t know. Maybe because they’re two of them-that older lady and the girl writing on her behalf, so to speak.”

“There’s something hesitant about it.”

“Exactly. Or restrained, as if they’re doing their duty or something. Not trying to get attention.”

“Not wackos, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“The one who wrote the letter-Karin Sohlberg-she’s added that we can call her if it’s worth investigating. That’s what she writes, ‘worth investigating.’ ”

“I saw that.”

“What do you think, Janne?”

“About what?”

“Is this letter worth investigating? Should we call her?”

“That’s why I came by.”

“Good.” Winter reached for the telephone.

It wouldn’t be the first time in the past week they’d gone out to speak with the family of someone who’d been reported missing, only to discover a natural explanation for the “disappearance.” The most natural one being that no one had disappeared. In the most drastic instance, a young woman had been in the hospital without her neighbors knowing about it.

“Hello? Karin Sohlberg? This is Inspector Erik Winter at district CID, homicide division.” He waved at Möllerström to turn down the volume. “Yes, we received the letter. That’s why I’m calling. Leave that for us to decide. It’s never wrong to be vigilant. But Ester’s the one who’s particularly concerned? That could be a good thing. Yes. One should always care about others.” Winter nodded to Möllerström to turn off the music completely.

“Helene Andersén actually hasn’t been seen for a while,” Karin Sohlberg said on the telephone from Hisingen.

Winter thought at first that he had misheard. That it was his own thoughts he had perceived, that the old dreams were suddenly back again. He saw his Helene, her face in the obscene light over the gurney. “Excuse me?” he said. “What did you say her name was?”

“Helene Andersén. She’s the one we’re concerned about, but I didn’t want to wri-”

“So this woman that you haven’t seen for a while, her name is Helene?” Winter felt that the incredulity in his voice was far too obvious. He had spoken gruffly, his throat constricted.

“Is there something wrong? Was it a mista-”

“No no,” Winter said. “It’s just fine. We’ll be happy to come out and talk with you about this. Could we meet,” he looked at his watch, “in half an hour? In the courtyard you referred to in your letter?”

“Do you always proceed this way?”

“Excuse me?”

“Do you always investigate things this promptly?”

“The important thing is to meet up and talk about it.”

“In that case we can do it at my office,” she said. “It’s just next door. You’ll see it when you come up from the parking lot.” She gave them an address. “Should I ask Mrs.-Ester Bergman to come here?”

“No. We’ll come by and talk with you, and then we can go to her house together.” Winter thought for a moment. “Could you let her know that we would like to ask her a few questions today? It won’t take long.”

“She’s probably a little anxious about that. That a lot of people might come, for example.”

“I understand. But it’ll just be me.”

“She has this image of uniforms and dog leashes. And dogs too, for that matter.”

“It’ll just be me,” Winter repeated. “A nice young man who’d love to come in for a cup of coffee.”

Halders tried not to think about whether the man sitting in front of him was lying because he was just nervous in general or because he had something to hide. It was nothing big, just little lies that flickered in the corner of his eye every time he shifted his gaze. It was easy to see. Each time he told a little lie, he looked away. Halders wondered if they should be clearer in their questioning. Have a clearer intention.

“I haven’t been part of that gang for ten years.”

The man had come straight here from his auto repair shop, and Halders noticed thin strips of oil and other crud underneath the man’s nails, and that was a likable quality. Overall, he was a likable guy, apart from his furtive gaze.

“What gang?” Halders asked.

“You know. You’ve spoken about it before.”

“I didn’t say anything about a gang.”

“Then it was somebody else. But I’m clean. I keep my head down.”

“Can you ever really steer clear?”

“Of course you can. There’s so much fear propaganda.”

“You’re saying it’s propaganda?”

“I’m saying it’s exaggerated.”

“But you still keep your head down.”

“It sounds like I’m under suspicion for something.”

Halders didn’t answer the man, whose name was Jonas Svensk.

“Am I?”

“I just want you to tell me about Peter Bolander,” Halders said.

“He works in my repair shop, and that’s all I can tell you about him. You’ll have to ask him.”

“He, on the other hand, is under suspicion,” Halders said.

“I know that he’s been arrested in connection with that shoot-out on Vårväderstorget, but I also know that he says that he wasn’t there,” Svensk said.

“He was seen there. Holding a rifle. And when we came to see him at his house, his Remington was gone.”

Svensk shrugged his shoulders. “Rifles can get stolen. That’s what he says too. And he looks like a hundred other guys. But I don’t know either way. I’m not here to defend him for something I don’t know if he’s done or not. He was off work that day, I already told you. And I certainly wasn’t there. I’ve got an alibi.”

Halders didn’t answer.

“It’s not a crime to hire people,” Svensk said.

“No.”

“I used to be a member of Hells Angels. Peter might also have been. But you can’t accuse me of anything. I’m not a member anymore. It was a sin of my youth.”

“Okay.”

“And if you think this is a gang showdown, then you’re mistaken.”

“Why would we think that?”

“Isn’t that what you think?”

“That it was a showdown between gangs?”

“Yes.”

“Or an internal showdown?”

“Well, I don’t know.”

“It’s hardly a secret, even for someone who keeps his head low, that there have been showdowns within the Hells Angels in Gothenburg.”

“I may have seen something about it. But wasn’t that the Bandidos?”

Halders wondered once again why Svensk was playing dumber than he was.

“You might want to check out the Arabs.”

“The Arabs?” Halders said.

“Check out the Islamists,” Svensk said. “I think they’re the ones who were shooting at each other. They’ve been a bit restless this summer. You know that too. And just look at what’s happening in Algeria now.”

29

RINGMAR DROVE ACROSS THE GÖTAÄLV BRIDGE. THE RAILROAD cars stood enveloped in fog along the Frihamnen docks.

“I have a feeling we’ve driven this way before,” he said.

“It wasn’t that long ago,” Winter said. He was tense with thought about what might be awaiting them in a little while. He needed a cigarillo and stuck a Corps in his mouth without lighting it.

They approached Vårväderstorget. The fields alongside Rambergsvallen Stadium appeared to be floating above the ground like an extension of the Lundbybadet swimming complex. Everything Winter saw was enclosed and fenced off, as if enormous walls of water had been lowered from the sky and surrounded his field of vision, held in place by clouds.

Vårväderstorget was barely visible.

“It feels like years ago,” Ringmar said, and nodded to the left. “Like another age. Or another country.”

“It very nearly is,” Winter said. “Or was.”

“It’s a weak lead.”

“They’ve behaved themselves for a long time. Maybe the pressure has to get released somehow.”

“Maybe it was because of the heat.”

“Leather jackets are hot when it’s ninety degrees out.”

“Hells Angels show up in suits these days.” Ringmar glanced out of the corner of his eye at Winter’s graphite-colored Corneliani suit and the Oscar Jacobson coat that lay in his lap.

“If they show up at all,” Winter said. “They’re like British football hooligans.”

“How so?”

“You never see them anymore. But they’re still there.”

“We’ve got a close eye on our Angels,” Ringmar said. “At least we thought we did.”

They turned up onto Flygvädersgatan and found their bearings from a sign that said “North Biskopsgården.” Off to the right, Winter could see the enormous tenement blocks, the top floors of which disappeared into the low sky. The buildings were so tall they seemed to move away from him.

The satellite dishes on the building sides were like uncovered eyes looking toward outer space, or ears that had been turned into steel to home in on voices and movements in countries that the people here dreamed their dreams about, or open mouths that called out for answers, thought Winter.

Karin Sohlberg was waiting outside the office in a raincoat. Winter was surprised by her Asian features, since on the phone she sounded like she’d grown up in Gråberget or Lindholmen. And maybe she had. He thought briefly about Aneta and why he’d been surprised just now.

Inside, she invited them to sit, but Ringmar remained standing. She did too, with her raincoat unbuttoned. Winter had sat down in a chair in front of the desk but stood up again when no one else sat down.

“So the September rent for this woman’s apartment has been paid,” he said. One might well ask what we’re doing here, then, he thought. “That was on the first, you said?”

“Yes. Right after the weekend.”

“So no reminder was sent out?”

“No, but that’s not my depart-No, it takes longer than that. First they check the account. The reminder gets sent out after five or six days.”

“And you haven’t seen Helene Andersén and her daughter for a while?”

“No. But I’m honestly not sure if I remember them. I haven’t been here for very long.”

“What was the daughter’s name?” Ringmar asked.

“Jennie.”

“How do you know that?”

Sohlberg mentioned the tenant lists she had, and indicated with her hand that they were lying on her desk.

“And this old lady lives there too?” Winter asked.

“Yes. Ester Bergman.”

“Then let’s go,” Winter said. “Is there a locksmith nearby?”

Sohlberg nodded.

The entrance was longer than Winter had expected, which must mean the apartments were long and narrow.

It was a large courtyard-impossible to see across to the other side in the fog. Maybe this is how it always is for Ester, Karin Sohlberg thought. Right now I’m seeing what she sees.

A few children were playing on a tangle of monkey bars in the middle of the courtyard. A child shouted something, but Winter couldn’t hear what. The shout didn’t reach very far, perhaps because of all the buildings.

They turned left into a second doorway. Winter read the names on the board just inside: Sabror, Ali, Khajavi, Gülmer, Sanchez, and Bergman. Two apartments per floor. They walked up the first half flight, and Karin Sohlberg pressed the bell. Winter noticed Ringmar’s grave expression. We feel the same way, he thought. Damn it! I said I’d come alone. But then the old lady opened the door as if she’d been standing just inside waiting for the ringer to sound.

They drank a cup of boiled coffee that clutched at the gut. Winter accepted the offer of a refill and caught a look from Karin Sohlberg. It smelled dusty and sweet in the apartment, as it did in old people’s homes.

“So you haven’t seen Helene and her daughter for some time, Mrs. Bergman?” He was trying to sound gentle.

“I didn’t know what her name was.”

“The girl’s name is Jennie,” Winter said.

“She had red hair,” Ester Bergman said.

“Yes.”

“What’s happened to them?”

“We don’t know,” Winter said, leaning forward. “That’s why we’re here.”

“Well, surely something must have happened-otherwise you wouldn’t be here.”

“We received your letter, Mrs. Bergman, and that’s why we’re here.”

“Are you really a police officer?” Ester Bergman squinted her eyes at Winter.

Winter set down his cup. “Yes.”

“You’re so young,” Ester Bergman said. Still wet behind the ears, not that you can see them. He could do with a haircut. Aren’t policemen supposed to have short hair? The other one has short hair and he’s older. But he’s not saying anything. “You can’t be much older than her.”

“Than whom?” Winter asked.

“Than her. The mother with the fair hair.”

“So they haven’t been here since it turned… Since the weather changed? Since the hot weather ended?”

“They weren’t here then either,” Ester Bergman said. “It was hot and I sat here at this window and didn’t see them.”

The stairwell smelled of liquid cleanser. Like in the other entrances, the walls at the bottom were of rough-hewn brick that gave way to yellow plaster. Winter read the list of names: Perez, Al Abtah, Wong, Andersén, Shafai, Gustavsson.

The second floor. Andersén. His temples were throbbing and he saw that Bertil noticed this. What Bertil didn’t know was that he had christened the dead woman Helene a long time ago. But he understood. And hadn’t asked why. Bertil was also clutching at straws in this investigation, as if he could feel them in his hands.

He nodded to the locksmith. They climbed the stairs and stopped in front of a door where a child’s drawing hung a few inches above the nameplate inscribed “H. Andersén.” Winter bent down a little. The drawing was of a ship on water. The sky was divided in two. It was raining to the right of the ship and to the left the sun was shining. The ship had round windows and in one of them you could see two eyes, a nose, and a mouth. The mouth was a straight line. A bit farther down, in the water, the girl had written “jeni.”

Winter straightened and rang the doorbell, the noise so piercing he gave a start. Or else it only sounded that loud inside his head.

He pressed it again and heard the chime disappear, as if into the fog at the other end of the apartment. Ringmar stooped and lifted the hatch to the letter slot with a gloved hand and tried to peer inside. He saw colors from all the junk mail and the corners of envelopes.

Winter rang the doorbell a third time. It was the same sound, and he suddenly wished himself away from there. He closed his eyes and swallowed, and the pounding in his head subsided again. He nodded to the locksmith, and the man turned the key he had ready in the cylinder. There was no deadbolt above.

The door opened outward. They saw the little pile of papers on the carpet inside and the darkness of the hallway. A window was visible in the far room like a dim rectangle of light. Winter asked the others to wait and then stepped into the apartment after putting on the plastic shoe covers he’d removed from his coat pocket. In the silence he heard a humming from the refrigerator that he could now see to his left through the kitchen doorway. It smelled of silence in there and of dust that had collected in the stagnant air. He continued on. To the right was a door that was closed, while straight ahead lay what had to be the living room. Winter’s concentration was like an iron hand clenched tightly around his brain. His gun was chaffing in his armpit more palpably than ever, and he felt a powerful urge to draw his weapon. He looked at the closed door, then moved cautiously through the open doorway and into the living room. He saw a couch and table and armchairs. A small glass cabinet and a TV. A chest of drawers. Dead plants on two narrow shelves beneath the windows. A carpet on the floor. A painting of an Indian woman on the wall above the couch. Winter backed up and drew his weapon. He stood in front of the shut door and pressed down the handle and opened it with a jerk, in the same moment pressing back up against the wall in the hallway. He leaned in toward the room. It was long and narrow, with two beds at either end, the smaller one against the far wall. Along the short wall next to him were wardrobes, one with the doors open. The wall above the little bed was stapled with drawings. The window was closed and the room was hot-summer had remained trapped inside here. The sun still shone in several spots above the girl’s bed. It was raining in a few of the drawings. In others there was both rain and sunshine. I wonder what that means, Winter thought. He turned his gaze toward the larger bed. Next to it stood a little bedside table that held a telephone and an empty glass. There was a newspaper lying there too and a framed color photograph of a fair-haired mother with her red-haired little girl. Winter moved closer. The woman in the photo was smiling a little smile that barely showed any teeth, and that was Helene. He thought, as he stood there in front of the little frame, that death hadn’t done all that much to her face. Helene was Helene. They’d finally made progress in the hunt for her killer, but he felt as yet no satisfaction as a hunter. It was only now that it really began-this investigation that had been in the process of closing. Helene had been given back her name. The little girl was smiling in the photo, wider and more openly than her mother. The girl’s name was Jennie, and she wasn’t here. At first Winter had felt relieved that he hadn’t fou-But before he could finish thinking that thought, it gave way to another almost just as unspeakable, unthinkable. In the hunt for the killer they would also be searching for the child. They had had a body without a name, and now they had that name. But they now also had a name without a body. The thought struck him hard and wouldn’t leave him.

30

OFFICERS FROM THE FORENSICS DEPARTMENT’S CRIME SCENE unit swabbed ninhydrin on the newspaper that lay on Helene Andersén’s bedside table and applied the chemical to other loose objects. The ninhydrin method allowed them to lift fingerprints that were left long ago. Salts and proteins from people’s sweat penetrate paper and stay there, like a handshake through time.

Prints on steel could not be polished away. They were like etchings. There were even methods for finding fingerprints on wet paper.

The officers dusted the apartment’s surfaces with the black charcoal powder Winter knew Beier didn’t like. The iron in the powder rusted when it became damp and left ugly marks.

The three technicians searched for prints by the light switches, around doors, tables, and other surfaces that hands may have touched. They dusted with powder and then waited for it to fully adhere to the print residue, which they would then lift using tape.

The danger was not actually getting the print onto the tape, which sometimes happened when it was too firmly attached. In the few instances where this seemed likely, the fingerprint was photographed before an attempt was made to lift it. The photographer always used black-and-white film.

Karin Sohlberg was crying. Winter sat opposite her in the residential services office.

“Ester was right,” she said.

“Yes.”

“What’s she saying now?”

“I’m going to speak to her shortly.”

“How awful.” Sohlberg blew her nose. “That little girl and everything.”

“You don’t remember her?”

“I feel like I’m completely confused now. But I can’t really remember. Maybe later.”

“Well, I’m afraid we’ll have to ask you to help us with the identification later.”

“What does that mean? Do I have to accompany you to-to the morgue?”

“Yes, I’m afraid so. We’re going to have to ask the old lady to come too. I’m sorry.”

She thought quietly for a moment. “I know it sounds strange, but I haven’t been here very long, after all, like I said. And maybe they were the kind of people who kept to themselves. Or the mother anyway.”

“Kept to themselves?”

“Some people are a little quiet or don’t attract much attention.”

Winter knew what she meant. Loneliness could cause a person to withdraw. Loneliness and poverty. Winter was born into a poor family, but suddenly, while he was still a child, there was money. He’d spent his first years in one of the innumerable high-rises in the outskirts of Gothenburg. It was a world he still remembered.

Karin Sohlberg blew her nose again. A small group of onlookers had gathered outside the entrance to Helene Andersén’s courtyard, fifty yards away, on the other side, and followed a football game between two girls’ teams.

“So her rent is paid,” he said. “Do you know anything more about that?”

“No, nothing other than that’s what I got from the computer at the district office.”

“So you could only see that the rent for that specific apartment was paid?”

“Yes. On the computer.”

“Paid using a preprinted rent slip?”

“Yes, or with a regular deposit slip. Manually, in other words.”

“And Helene’s rent could have been paid either with the rent slip sent out from your office or a regular blank deposit slip?”

“Yes.”

“But you don’t know which it was?”

“It’s not specified. The computer only indicates that it’s been paid.”

“But if someone paid without the preprinted rent slip-that is, with a blank deposit slip, manually or whatever-then you would have a copy?”

“I think so.”

“And someone would have had to write her name in order for you to see that it’s specifically for that apartment.”

“It’s enough to just write the apartment number.”

“Is there someone at this district office now?”

Sohlberg checked her watch. “Yes, I think so. Lena is the one who handles that and she should be there. I can call and check.”

Winter nodded, and she punched in a number on her desk phone. He waited while she spoke.

“She’s there,” Sohlberg said, and put down the receiver.

Winter called Ringmar on his cell phone and learned that Bertil was about to start the interview with Ester Bergman. He hung up and slipped the phone into his blazer’s inner pocket.

Outside, one group had dispersed and another had formed, closer. Winter saw the dark faces, perhaps from Southeast or East Asia. Like the woman walking next to him. He hadn’t asked about her background.

“There are a lot of nationalities in this area,” he said.

“Over fifty percent are non-Swedish,” Karin Sohlberg said.

Winter looked down at her. She was a full head shorter.

“But I am,” she said. “Swedish.”

“I didn’t ask.”

“South Korea,” she said. “Adopted, though some call it abducted.”

Winter didn’t comment.

“I know who my real parents are,” she said.

“You haven’t been back there?”

“Not yet.”

Lena Suominen was waiting for them at the district office. She had already taken out a copy of the deposit slip that was used to pay Helene Andersén’s latest rent: 4,350 kronor for a 750-square-foot, three-room apartment.

Winter looked at the paper.

“So this is a copy?”

“Yes.”

“Where is the original?”

“Of these manually filled-out slips?”

“Yes.”

“At the direct deposit processing center, I would imagine. In Stockholm. Just like the preprinted slips. They end up there too.”

Winter looked at the copy in front of him. Someone had written the property management company’s seven-digit direct deposit number, 882000-3, and then another number in the box for messages to the payee. There was no reference to name or address.

“Is this the apartment number?” he asked, and pointed at the three digits on the copy.

“Yes, 375. That’s the apartment.”

“So you don’t have to write the name?”

“No.”

“Is it usual for tenants to pay their rent this way?”

Lena Suominen looked as if she was smiling, or maybe it was just a movement in her face. “Well, of course, there are those who lose their rent slips and call here asking for the direct deposit number. And then we give it to them. But that’s a different number.”

“Excuse me?”

“For manual direct deposits-that is, for a blank payment slip filled out by hand-we use another number.”

“This one, you mean: 882000-3?”

“No. That’s the property manager’s regular one.”

“So it works anyway? Someone making a payment can use this number for the manual payment slips as well?”

“Yes.”

“But then you’d have to know it-copy it from a regular rental slip, for example.” He was talking to himself. “Does this number apply to all your apartments in Gothenburg?”

“Yes.”

“How many are there at North Biskopsgården? Apartments, I mean.”

Lena Suominen thought for a moment. Around fifty years old, with a wide intelligent face, she spoke with a Finnish-Swedish accent that softened her formal tone. “Approximately twelve hundred.”

“And many of your tenants pay their rent at the post office, I understand? Even with the preprinted slips?”

“Yes.”

“And some by direct deposit from their personal accounts?”

“Yes, and some don’t use the rent slips since they can’t pay the whole rent all at once. Unfortunately, that’s how it is, and that’s problematic for them as well as for-”

“They pay in installments?”

“Yes, well, at least in a first installment. Sometimes that’s all we get.”

“Is that common?”

“Increasingly common.”

Winter thought again about loneliness and poverty. How did it feel when you’d paid only part of the rent for your apartment? Did you stop going into the living room?

“And sometimes you can’t see who’s paid. You can’t read the name or the address or the apartment number. But money’s come in.”

Winter read the copy he was holding in front of him. So they might be able to find the original at the post office’s direct deposit processing center up in the capital. They would have to call them up and ask them to find it and put it in a plastic bag. It was a lead.

At the very bottom of the slip was a string of numbers. Winter could identify the payment date-the first weekday in September, just as Karin Sohlberg had said earlier. By then Helene Andersén had been dead for thirteen or fourteen days.

He couldn’t decipher the other numbers.

“What’s this?” He held out the copy and pointed.

Suominen took the paper, and he saw Sohlberg standing next to her.

“That’s the post-office code number,” Suominen said. “I think the same figures appear on the receipt they give to the person making the payment.”

“You don’t have the phone number of the post office, by any chance?”

“No.”

“Hand me that telephone book behind you,” he said. “The one with the pink pages.” He looked up the number to the Länsmansgården post office, and a woman answered after two rings.

“Hello, my name is Erik Winter and I’m a homicide inspector. We’re investigating a crime, and I was wondering if you could help me with a few factual details. No. Just a fact-No, you’ll do just fine, I think. It’s about the code numbers that appear on your recei-Yes, that’s right, the series of num-No, I just want to ask you about one I have he-Please, just listen to me now. I have a question about the following numbers.” He eventually managed to tell her what those numbers were and where he had obtained them.

He listened.

“So the first one refers to the type of transaction? The 01 indicates that this payment was made by direct deposit? Thank you. The four subseq-Yes, immediately following. The P number? The post office where the payment was made. That number indicates where the transaction took place? I have the number here. I’ll give it to you again. Can you tell me where it is? Get it then. I’ll wait.”

Winter moved the receiver a few inches away from his ear. “These first four numbers say where the payment was made,” he said to the two women. “She’s gone to get some kind of reference catalog.” He heard a voice in the receiver and put it up to his ear again. “Yes, 2237, that’s right. Mölnlycke! Are you sure? Yes, those are the numbers. And then the oth-Okay, what does that me-The cashier, you say? So these numbers, 0030, indicate which cashier handled the transaction? So this number combination indicates that the rent payment for the apartment with this number was made on September 2 at the Mölnlycke post office at this particular cashier’s service window? Is that right? Thank you.”

Winter was on his way into the courtyard when his cell phone vibrated in the inner pocket of his blazer.

“Winter here.”

“Bertil here. Where are you?”

“On my way into the courtyard. You?”

“Outside the apartment. Andersén’s apartment.”

“I’ll be there in one minute.”

Ringmar was waiting in the stairwell. “Beier’s team says someone’s been inside her apartment recently.”

“What does that mean?”

“Probably sometime within the past few weeks. After her death.”

“How can they know that?”

Ringmar shrugged his shoulders. “They’re wizards, aren’t they? But I think they said something about the dust. Stay tuned. They also say it looks like someone rummaged through all the stuff in there and then tried to put it back more or less the way it was.”

“That sounds clumsy.”

“Could be a red herring. The vic-Helene Andersén may have had some kind of special system for organizing her stuff.”

“Or else someone was in there and rummaged around and wasn’t particularly worried about it being discovered.”

“There’s going to be one hell of a commotion when this gets out,” Ringmar said.

“Then we’ll have to see to it that it doesn’t get out,” Winter said.

“How do you mean?”

“A few days from now, someone might walk into the Mölnlycke post office and pay the rent again. We’re going to be there waiting for them.”

“My God,” Ringmar said. “I wonder if it’s even possible. I’m a bit surprised that there aren’t a few TV vans parked out here already.”

They conducted an internal search for Helene Andersén, now that they had her name. Yet another round of searching, only this time with better chances of success.

In a few days we’ll release her name and distribute a real live picture of her, thought Winter. There are photos of the little girl too, on her own and together with her dead mother. If we don’t get any response, that means we’ve come across the loneliest people on earth. They’ve existed but almost only in name.

All the different agencies had to be contacted. Winter hadn’t gone through the mail that was lying in the hall, but the technicians had yet to find any letters from the social services. Perhaps they had disappeared together with the rental slips. Still, there were other ways to find out if she was receiving money from the state or from a job. Soon they would know.

She had a telephone. Winter remembered it, on the little bedside table. Now that they knew her identity, they could pull her phone records and get some history. She’d chosen to have a phone in order to speak to someone.

31

THE POST OFFICE’S DIRECT DEPOSIT PROCESSING CENTER HAD A special department for dealing with “police matters.” A man answered reluctantly. Winter explained.

“Then you’re screwed,” the post-office official said.

“Excuse me?”

“The slips are discarded after two weeks or something. Didn’t you say this rent was paid more than three weeks ago?”

“Yes.”

“So you’re screwed.”

“You better do something about that attitude of yours, you smug son of a bitch. I’m investigating a murder and I want my questions answered. So, what do you mean when you say that the slips are discarded?”

“They’re shredded.”

“And that happens after two weeks?”

“Sometimes after a few days. It depends on how much we have to do.”

“Then what’s the point of sending them to you in the first place?”

“I really don’t know. I’ve asked myself the same question. We don’t have any space here, after all.”

“So there’s a possibility that a consignment of canceled deposit slips sent over to you from some post offices still hasn’t been processed?”

“Not for three weeks. Unless it’s ended up at the very bottom or something, or we’ve been short staff-” Something had suddenly occurred to him. “We actually have been understaffed for the past few weeks. So it’s possible we did fall behind. Where did you say the payment was made, again? Gothenburg, I know, but which office? Can you repeat the direct deposit number and the amount? And the apartment number as well.”

Winter realized he was speaking to someone who hadn’t initially been listening. He repeated what he’d said before.

“Hang on,” the drawling voice said, like one of those jazz musicians who come down from Stockholm for a gig at Nefertiti’s. They play better than they speak.

There was a fumbling sound in the receiver, and the voice returned.

“Can you hang on a bit longer? There might be something else here.”

“I’ll hang on,” Winter said.

“I’ve got it here.”

“You’ve found it?”

“Yes, actually. I’m surprised myself.”

So I wasn’t screwed, thought Winter. “I want you to put that slip into a new envelope right away and put it in a safe place. Lock it in a cabinet.”

“Okay.”

Winter looked at his watch.

“Are you going to be there for another two hours?”

“Yes.”

“Another police officer will be by there within the next two hours to pick up the envelope. He’ll ask for you,” Winter said, and looked at the name he’d written down. “Ask him to identify himself.”

“Okay.”

“And thanks for your help. I apologize for swearing at you before. Good-bye.”

He pressed down on the cradle and waited for the dial tone and called Stockholm again, getting a security consultant who asked if he could call Winter back in half an hour.

He put down the phone and stood up, his left shoulder blade stiff from sitting while speaking on the telephone. Much of his time was spent in stiff positions on the telephone. He ought to do calisthenics in his office. Tonight he would go to Valhalla and sit in the wet sauna, if he had time for it. A sauna and a beer at home and the silence and his thoughts. He ought to call Angela. He ought to-

The phone rang, blared. The tone was turned up loud so that he’d be able to hear it if he was out of the office but still close by.

“Okay,” the security consultant said. “This is proving a little complicated. We have routines when it comes to payments made to a blocked account, but flagging a specific payment, well, that’s actually something new.”

“There’s always a first time,” Winter said. “But what can we do?”

“What you’re asking for is for some kind of a trace to be put on a specific payment that’s going to be made at the Mölndal post office at the end of this week, lasting up to the second weekday in October.”

“Mölnlycke,” Winter said.

“What? Yeah, Mölnlycke. Okay. But it’s too little time to be able to fix the computers and cash registers to respond to specific inputs on the screen, and we actually can’t do it anyway, because all we have to go on is the apartment number. In the best case.”

“Isn’t that enough?”

“The system won’t let us put a trace on that. And if we were to go by the direct deposit number, then some five thousand people, or however many there are, would find themselves subject to an investigation.”

“I see.”

“There is one thing I can do for you, although it is highly irregular. I can send out a memo to all the different post offices, asking them to try to keep an eye out for these numbers.”

“How do you do that?”

“I’d rather not go into that if I don’t have to.”

“But you can get that out right away?”

“Yeah, pretty much. But like I said, it’s highly irregular. Last time was a few years ago when we tried to stop a currency exchange. It’s really only supposed to be used in cases of extreme importance. Top priority.”

“This is.”

“I realize that. But, well, that’s what we can do.”

“Good.”

Winter imagined millions of computer screens receiving the security consultant’s electronic memo. He thought of the office in Mölnlycke. He’d never been in it, had barely even set foot in the district that lay six miles east of the city. But there was a small chance that someone would come back to pay the rent again. If they could just get some discreet surveillance equipment put in place. And not just use the existing security system but also have someone there on the spot. One or two police officers. That is, if there even was any equipment in Mölnlycke. A camera. He noted something down on the pad in front of him.

“But there are other ways too,” the security consultant went on. “You could speak to the postmaster in Mölnd-Mölnlycke about putting up notices for the cashiers at each of the cash registers. So they have the number and maybe reac-”

“Yes, I understand,” Winter said. “I’ve sort of thought of that.”

“Uh, okay. But that’s a right-to-privacy issue. Like a search warrant. The post office needs a written request from a prosecutor.”

“Or from the person in charge of the preliminary investigation,” Winter said. “And that’s me.”

“Sure. I’m just saying you can put a trace on that payment if the people at that office know what the deal is.”

“Thanks for all your help,” Winter said. “I’m very grateful.”

“Then I’ll send out my letter. In case something happens somewhere other than in Mölndal.”

Winter pressed down the cradle button again and waited for a dial tone. With his left hand, he flipped to the number in the phone book and called the post-office security department in Gothenburg. A man answered.

“Bengt Fahlander.”

“Hi. Erik Winter from the Gothenburg Police Department here. I’m investigating a murder.”

“Hi.”

Winter explained the background and asked a question.

“We’ve got a camera at Lindome but not in Mölnlycke,” Fahlander said. “Mölnlycke hasn’t had any equipment like that for quite a while.”

“Why not?”

“Well, the usual. The offices facing the greatest threat get the surveillance equipment. That’s some fifteen offices in the district. Like Lindome. They were robbed a number of times, and in the end we took the initiative to install a CCTV camera.”

“But not in Mölnlycke,” Winter said.

“No. But that wouldn’t make any difference anyway,” Fahlander said.

“What do you mean?”

“The video footage. In certain extreme cases we might be authorized to hold on to it for a month, but almost without exception it’s erased after two weeks. Wiped clean, discarded, you might say.”

What is this goddamn obsession with discarding everything? Pretty soon there wouldn’t be anything to go on when you wanted to search back in time. Two weeks back and you hit a brick wall.

“So even if there had been a camera in Mölnlycke, the video footage for the day you just mentioned-that film would have been erased,” Fahlander said. “But Mölnlycke used to have a camera. For quite a while, I think. Then things calmed down. Crime moved away, you might say.”

“To Lindome,” Winter said. “But now it’s returned, and I would like to set up a camera again.”

“Now?”

“Today, if possible. As soon as possible.”

“You have to submit a formal applic-”

“I know what has to be submitted and to whom. But this is extremely important. And it’s gotta happen quickly.”

“You’re talking surveillance of a public place,” Fahlander said. “That means there have to be signs put up informing the public that the premises are under video surveillance.”

Whose side are you on? Winter wondered. But of course the post-man was right. “Of course,” he said. “Maybe the old ones are still there. Otherwise we can take care of it.”

“Would it be possible to do it a little discreetly?” Fahlander asked.

There were more police officers in the situation room now than when the investigation began what felt like two hundred years ago. It was hot and damp. Ringmar was just opening a window. Winter hung his blazer over the swivel chair and turned to face the group.

“So we’re going to be doing something highly irregular over the next three days-a discreet door to door in North Biskopsgården, but only as part of the preliminary investigation. We keep quiet about the other stuff.”

Ringmar stood up and continued. “If anybody asks what we’re doing there, we just say that we’re slowly making our way through the whole city, searching for the woman’s identity.”

“Her key,” Bergenhem said. “The one who paid her rent has the key to her apartment.”

“That’s right,” Ringmar said. “Either someone has gone in there and looked around thoroughly for something or Helene Andersén kept her things in an odd sort of order.”

“What else is missing?” Sara Helander asked.

“Her rent slips,” Winter said.

“So the crime-the murder-wasn’t committed in her apartment?”

“Not as far as Beier’s men have been able to determine.”

“Would that be realistic, given how far it is to Delsjö Lake?” Börjesson asked.

“Would what be realistic?”

“For her to have been murdered in her apartment and then taken down to Delsjö Lake.”

“In terms of time, it might be possible, but so far we haven’t found any evidence in her apartment to suggest that.”

“Didn’t it attract a lot of attention when we found out where she lived? Enough that the secret could already be out?” Halders asked.

“There were a few curious onlookers, but it’s not unusual for the police to come calling,” Ringmar said. “I didn’t say anything to anyone anyway.” He looked at Winter, who shook his head. “We have to hope our witnesses will keep their oath of confidentiality.”

“How do we deal with the press, then? It would be strange if they didn’t pick up the scent,” Halders said.

“I haven’t heard anything yet,” Ringmar said.

“It would be strange,” Halders said, “if they didn’t already know something.”

“I’ll handle all contact with the press,” Winter said. “I’ve spoken to Sture and Wellman.”

“That’s a damn good idea,” Halders said. “I would have given the exact same order.” He saw that Winter understood that he was serious.

“So where are we now?” Helander asked.

“I’ve spoken to the post office in Mölnlycke,” Winter said. “The camera’s all set. We might even get two. We’re going to try to give the impression that it’s always been there.”

“Who’s going to be in position inside the post office?” Bergenhem asked.

“I was going to suggest that you do it,” Winter said.

“Me?”

“We need to have someone who looks as ordinary as possible,” Halders said.

“Yeah, well we can’t have someone who scares away the customers, can we?” Bergenhem said, and turned toward Halders. “When do you want me to head over there?” he asked, turning back to Winter.

“Now. I’ll talk to you just as soon as we’re done here. And you will be relieved.”

“How’s the search going?” Bergenhem asked.

Winter gazed at his database expert.

“Nothing so far,” Möllerström said. “We’re still working through the central criminal-records database.”

“Has surveillance gotten busy on this yet?” Halders asked. “With the latest, I mean? The names.”

“Of course,” Ringmar said.

“There’s always an informant who knows something,” Halders said. “Take the shoot-out at Vårväderstorget. That could get solved using your stoolie. Someone knows somebody else who knows something more.”

“I know,” Ringmar said.

Winter took the floor again.

“We’re waiting for the list of everyone she’s called.”

“Then it’s in the bag,” Halders said.

She may have only called out for pizza, thought Helander, but she didn’t say it.

Winter felt the team’s impatience, the urge to work and the frustration at having to wait for documents and lists and results to provide a little guidance for the way forward. Another name could pave the way to greater clarity. A new address. A fingerprint. He thought of the technicians leaning over their instruments.

“How’s it coming along with the fingerprints from her apartment?” Bergenhem asked.

“Her daughter’s are there, we presume, since there’s a set that belongs to a child,” Winter said. “There were at least two other unknown sets of prints. In addition to Helene’s, of course.”

“At least?”

“That’s what we know so far. There’s also a partial print. But they’re not done with the whole apartment yet. Then there’s the basement storage room.”

“What do you mean by partial?” Bergenhem asked.

“According to Beier there’s a partial fingerprint on a dresser drawer, I think he said it was. I don’t know how big it is yet, or whether it’s big enough to be used to establish full identity at some point. Forensics doesn’t know yet. But it’s there.”

“Was it a torn glove?” Helander asked.

“Probably,” Winter said, and looked at her. “That was good thinking. There was a piece of fiber next to the print. It could come from the apartment or from anywhere, but someone may have torn a little hole in their glove. Against the edge of the drawer. That’s where the print is.”

32

WINTER PARKED THE CAR NEXT TO FRISKVÄDERSTORGET AND walked north. Thin paper blew across the square toward the southeast. The morning was dry, no rain. Outside the ICA supermarket someone had tipped over a trash can, and three headless bottles lay on the ground. People walked past saying words Winter heard but didn’t understand.

Two police officers he barely knew were there. They weren’t wearing uniforms, but they stood out in the surroundings, strangers in a foreign land.

He went over and said hello. Before them lay the remains of a small fireworks rocket, in red and gold paper with blackened tasseled edges that were slowly being eaten away by the wind gusting from the north-west. The spent paper canisters rolled back and forth.

“Probably another damn ethnic group celebrating its own damn New Year,” one of the officers said, and gestured at the ground. The other sniggered. “Or else they have to set some off every day, to remind them of home back in Kurdistan.”

“What was that?” Winter said.

“What?”

“What you said just now. About the New Year. And Kurdistan.”

“What’s the big deal?” He turned to his partner. “It was just a joke, right?” He looked at Winter. “You got a problem or something?”

“It wasn’t funny,” Winter said. “I can’t have officers with prejudices against the people who live here working this assignment. This investigation is way too important.”

“Oh give me a-”

“I don’t want you here,” Winter said. “Get out of here.”

“This is craz-”

“I decide who does what around here. And I’m ordering you to go back to the station and report to Inspector Ringmar. He’ll assign you new duties. I’ll call him.”

Winter had already started walking away and called Ringmar as he walked. Ringmar answered after the second ring, and Winter explained.

“You can’t do that, Erik.”

“It’s already done. You’ll have to try to send down a couple more guys. We need them.”

It sounded like Ringmar sighed.

“What should I say to those two jugheads when they show up?”

“Just give them something else to do. Put them on the cars.”

“Yeah, maybe they’re better suited to that,” Ringmar said. “Assuming none of the owners is of foreign extraction.”

As Winter neared Helene Andersén’s apartment he heard children’s voices. The temperature had dropped during the night, and on his way into the shop that lay a hundred or so yards from Karin Sohlberg’s residential services office he zipped up his leather jacket.

Immediately upon entering he caught the smell of exotic herbs and spices. The shelves to the right were filled with glass jars of pickled foodstuffs and tin cans containing southern European and oriental dishes.

A sign with “Halal” written on it hung above the meat counter, which was half-filled with sausages, lamb shoulder, and tripe. The vegetable counter was stuffed to the brim with ten different kinds of bell peppers, big spotted tomatoes, strange-looking root vegetables, thick bunches of coriander, and other fresh herbs. The selection was bigger and more interesting than in any of the delicatessens in the city center or the indoor market.

Had Helene ever bought anything here?

Sometime over the course of the day, one of his investigators would come by and ask questions. Winter left the store, and the guy behind the counter looked up, and Winter nodded.

He walked past Karin Sohlberg’s office, which was closed. She’d called in sick, and he could understand that. Unfortunately, the police couldn’t call in sick after a distressing experience, and it was never enough just to get the rest of the day off. What they had was Hanne, and Winter suddenly missed the sound of her voice, or perhaps it was her words.

Hanne Östergaard was a priest from Skår who worked part-time as a healer of souls at the Gothenburg Police Department. She tried to speak to the men and women who had gone through difficult experiences or had seen the consequences of them. The police turned out to be just as vulnerable as anyone else, and more often than not they carried their scars with them for a long time. Forever really.

Hanne had combined a vacation with a leave of absence in order to attend university, and she hadn’t been at the police station since the end of spring. Winter had spoken to her twice during the summer, but that had been by phone. Perhaps she would feel under too much pressure when she came back. That was sure to be the case. A part-time fellow human being and hundreds of scared police officers. An inspector who feared the worst for the coming weeks. He thought about the girl again, Jennie Andersén. He couldn’t keep those horrible thoughts at bay.

He stood in the courtyard, facing the building. They had staked out the apartment but avoided other forms of surveillance. The kitchen window was a dark rectangle against the light-colored brickwork. Black pigeons clung above and below, as if to signify that the silence within was forever. The pigeons sat clustered around her window, hugging the wall as they moved along-like winged rats, thought Winter. He entered the house and continued up to the door. Jennie’s drawing of the rain and sun was still there, an apt depiction of the past six weeks. He saw the ship in the drawing and thought of the boat in Big Delsjö Lake. They hadn’t made any more progress there. Had Helene Andersén and her daughter had access to a boat? Why else would the girl draw a ship or a boat-there were more drawings like it above her bed. When Beier’s men went through the apartment, they found even more children’s drawings, enough to fill a big paper sack.

Winter opened the door and stood in the hall. Someone had been here after Helene’s death. Was it just the rental slips he had come for? Winter pictured a man in order to focus his thoughts more clearly. They hadn’t found any personal letters-no surprise since there wasn’t a soul in the world who’d come asking for Helene Andersén when she’d disappeared. Or her daughter either. How immense could loneliness be? He carried the thought around with him in rooms that smelled of mute sorrow.

They knew the murder had not been committed here, so where had it taken place? In the vicinity of where the body was found? She had made a journey from the northwestern part of the city to the Delsjö lakes in the eastern expanse where all urban development came to an end. Had she made that trip of a dozen or so miles on her own? Had she already been dead?

Winter stood in the kitchen. He heard the sounds from the pigeons’ throats outside the window. A child’s drawing was attached to the refrigerator door by a magnet in the shape of a sailboat. The technicians had chosen to leave it there, and Winter wondered why.

The drawing showed a car with faces in the front window and the back. The car was white. It was raining in half the sky, and in the other the sun was shining. Winter had glanced at the drawing the first time he was here, yesterday. He now saw that the face in the front was drawn in profile and that there was a beard hanging off the man’s chin, like a goatee.

My God, he thought, and felt his blood rise to his head.

The face in the backseat had red hair in pigtails.

Someone with a beard driving a car that the girl is riding in, he thought. He thought of all the drawings they had removed from the apartment. Good Lord, he thought. The girl has drawn everything she’s seen and experienced. All children draw. They draw what they’re going through since they can’t write it down.

Jennie’s drawings are her diary, he thought. We have her diary.

He still felt the blood in his face and told himself that he needed to stay calm, that it was just one lead among many others, perhaps not even a lead at all. Still he felt the excitement. He hadn’t come there for the drawings. It’s not the first thing it occurs to you to take away, especially not if you’ve seen a child draw and know that all children draw, and when you’re trying to make it look like you haven’t been inside the apartment, you know it would look bare without any children’s drawings.

He’s seen her drawing, thought Winter. He knows her. He knows this little family. Take it easy. Remember what Sture said about being too meticulous. The man with the beard could be somebody else-a friend. Or a taxi driver, or just any man from her imagination. I’ll have to go through her drawings one by one. How many are there? Five hundred? Is it usual to hold on to that many? Don’t ask me, he thought, I know nothing about children, and then, just as quickly as he thought that thought, he saw Angela’s face in his mind’s eye.

He stood still in the kitchen. There could be more from the basement, where Helene Andersén had kept a storage room without an apartment number or name. That wasn’t unusual. After a while they’d found it, locked with a little padlock. It contained a few boxes of clothes, a pair of children’s skis, and a chair.

33

WHEN SHE LISTENED, IT WAS AS IF THE SAME CUCKOO WAS SITTING out in the forest hooting to her-at least for a few hours today and yesterday too. Hoo hoo, hoo hoo, it cried, like it was far away beyond the trees.

Her hair was wet and her clothes too. She had spread out her dress underneath her, like a sheet, and it had gotten wet. She felt cold sometimes and pulled it on over her trousers and shirt, and then she felt hot and took it off again. The men came and looked at her when they thought she was asleep-only she was awake, but it was almost like being asleep. She was dizzy the whole time and she had all these goose bumps on her body, like when you’ve been swimming and the wind blows on you before you’ve put a towel around yourself.

The man, the one who always came up to her, brought some pills that he wanted her to swallow. But she couldn’t. He called to the other man.

“She’s not swallowing.”

“Tell her she has to.”

“It doesn’t do any good.”

“You’ll have to dissolve them.”

“What?”

“Dissolve them in water and it’ll be easier for her to swallow. Or put the powder in a cup of hot sugar water.”

The man had bent forward and laid his hand on her forehead again.

“She doesn’t feel so hot now.”

“Maybe she doesn’t need them.”

“What?”

“The pills, for Christ’s sake.”

“I think she needs them.”

“Then do what I told you.”

She’d tried to swallow the glass of water, and it tasted bad. Then she dozed off and heard sounds from outside, like a rumbling or a chugging, and then they were gone. And she listened for the cuckoo, but you couldn’t hear it anymore after the chugging came. She waited for the cuckoo, who was maybe always there.

She thought to herself, I’m not going to be here for long. I’m going to be at home in my new bedroom where it says Helene on the door. My name is Helene, and the men haven’t said it once, so I’ll just have to say it myself. She whispered and it hurt her throat, but she whispered Helene one more time and then it became lighter and all red in her eyes and then she thought she heard the cuckoo again.