"What's your mom's name, Mattias?"

"Eh?"

"What's her name?"

He said nothing.

Have I made a mistake? Winter wondered.

Mattias looked at Cohen now, then at Winter.

"Where is my mom?"

"We don't know," said Winter. "We're looking for her too." He leaned forward. "Why can't we find her, Mattias?"

"How should I know?

"When did you last see her?"

"Dunno."

"It doesn't look like you live together."

Mattias didn't respond.

"Where does she live?"

He didn't answer.

"Where is she, Mattias?"

"She lives with him. Samic." He looked at Winter. "It's a long time now. It's been a long time." He stroked his hand across his mouth. "They've been living together for a long time." He rubbed his forehead. "I've told her I don't like it. I've told her before." He gave a sudden, short laugh. "I showed 'em. I showed that bastard! Now it'll never happen again… never again!"

Winter waited. The boy seemed animated, but only for a few seconds.

"I showed him, too," Mattias said. "Just like… them."

"Why did you kill the girls, Mattias?"

The boy was in a different world, seeing things only he could see.

"Th… they shouldn't have been there," he said.

Winter listened to the sound of air circulating around the room. He could feel the sweat on his back. His arm had started to hurt again, badly.

"Th… they had no business being there. I… I told them."

He stared at the wall behind Winter where so many had stared before while being interrogated.

"It was their own fault," said Mattias. "If they hadn't been there, it wouldn't have… been like that."

"Why was it their fault?"

"Jeanette."

"Jeanette? Was she there?"

"Sh… she went with th… them once."

"Was Jeanette at the club?"

Mattias nodded. Winter didn't know what to believe.

"What did she do?"

The boy nodded again. Perhaps he hadn't heard the question.

"What did she do there, Mattias?"

"She was outside."

Winter could see the house in his mind's eye, the street, the lights, the door, the hall, the stairs, the wall.

"Outside?"

"Sh… she was only outside but th… that was enough."

"Enough? Enough for what?"

"Fo… for him to follow her. Follow her and d… do wh… what he d… did."

"Who? Samic?"

Mattias nodded.

"Th… they won't do it again. Never again." He looked at Winter now. His body was crumpled up, as if it had no bones. "He did it."

"Johan Samic?"

The boy shook his head.

"N… not that. The other thing."

"Kurt Bielke?"

The boy nodded. There was a glint in his eye, as if he'd just shared a secret with Winter. There were spots of red in the whites of his eyes and saliva in the corners of his mouth.

"What did Kurt Bielke do?"

"I heard him and Samic talking about it," said Mattias, in a voice that suddenly sounded loud and clear. "He'd done it and could do it again." His voice was lower now. "H… h… he… it was his fault as well. That… Jeanette."

"Could do it again? What do you mean?"

"He'd done it once, hadn't he?"

"Why…?"

"It could have been him the other times as well, couldn't it?" He interrupted Winter's question.

"But it was you, Mattias."

"It could have been him." Mattias raised both hands in the air. "It could have been him."

"Do you know who he is? Who Kurt Bielke is?"

"He's a shit."

"What else is he?"

"They say he's my dad, but I don't believe that."

"What does your mom say?"

"I haven't gotten around to asking her," said Mattias, and he laughed.

She didn't know what her son had done, Winter thought, and when it eventually dawned on her, she was scared. She left him in order to get help, but no help was forthcoming from there. It was even worse there.

And then we arrived. Halders arrived.

Cohen looked at Winter, who hadn't followed up with another question.

"Where is Angelika's boyfriend?" Cohen asked.

"Who?"

"Angelika had a boyfriend, didn't she?"

"He's gone now," Mattias said.

"What do you mean, 'gone'?"

"He was the same as the rest of 'em." Mattias looked up, stared past Cohen and Winter. "And he came to me asking loads of questions. Same as you guys."

Mattias was full of hatred for everybody and everything that had destroyed his life. Something inside him had snapped, and he had gone somewhere from which he could never return.

Ringmar was in third gear and worried about the headlights shining so far ahead.

"I'll turn the lights off," he said.

"Watch out for deer," said Winter.

Ringmar couldn't help smiling. He peered into the faint, uncertain light hovering between day and night over the trees.

"Samic raped Jeanette," Winter said.

Ringmar didn't respond. He was too busy trying to keep the car on a road that was no more than a black line between the fir trees.

"He'd had a hold on Bielke for all those years, a big hold. He exploited it."

"How do you know that?"

"Bielke told us during the latest interrogation." Winter turned to face Ringmar. "The boy said so as well."

"There are a lot of villains in this story," said Ringmar.

"And victims," said Winter. "Most of them are victims."

"Hmm."

"They're all victims in their different ways," said Winter. "That never ends." He tapped the dashboard. "Stop a minute."

Ringmar pulled to the side of the road and turned off the engine. The silence was more distinct in among the trees and stones and bushes. Winter consulted the map again, as he'd done before they left town, once his pulse rate had fallen a little. He shone the flashlight down at the floor.

"It was only a name," he said. Vennerhag had mumbled the name of the cottage, and the direction. He'd managed to do it twice.

"One kilometer, maybe a bit less. There's a fork in the road there, then it's another five hundred meters." Winter dropped the map. "We'll walk from here." He opened the door. "Park the car sideways so that Lars will understand what's going on when he and the others get here. It'll make a roadblock as well." Winter could see that there were deep ditches on either side of the road. He stood up, lost his balance slightly, and automatically supported himself on the side of the car with his injured arm. The stab of pain shot all the way up into his scalp.

"We'd better wait for the others," Ringmar said.

That was the only right thing to do, of course. He could see that. But there was something inside him that said there wasn't enough time.

"There's not enough time for that," he said, feeling the intense pain seeping out of his body. "I'm sure of it."

"We're only talking about half an hour, Erik. Max."

"It's not only that. There'll be too many of us later. All at once."

He set off walking alongside the ditch. Ringmar followed suit. There was a smell of water full of weed, of plants that hadn't yet shriveled up in the sun. The sun didn't penetrate very far into here, and Winter detected smells that seemed to be hundreds of years old.

When all this was over he would go walking in the woods with Angela and Elsa, and creep under the trees and dig up some moss. Mushrooms in the autumn. Wellington boots through damp undergrowth. He shivered again in the thin, knitted sweater that was irritating his shoulders. His deck shoes were sticking to his feet as if glued.

They'd gone as far as the fork. Winter pointed right. He crossed the road and walked through the trees, which were less dense there. He could hear a great northern diver calling in the distance. He knew there was a lake behind the house they were heading for. The bird called again, a lonely cry through the early morning light that was starting to scrape out shapes and contours. The bird sounded close now. Winter could feel the ferns and bracken brushing his shins, and once a sting. His wet shorts clung to his thighs and backside.