“My head’s more or less clean-shaven,” he said.

“But I don’t see the half-gallon glass of beer and a portion of fish and chips on the table in front of you,” Alicia said.

“What’s this?” Winter asked, indicating the two large plates the waiter had just put down on the table between them.

“Fish and chips,” said Alicia with a laugh. “But you’ll get something else in a minute or two.”

Morelius looked hard at his deep-fried prawns, but they seemed to have taken root in the foil container: he threw them in the trash bin. Everyone on television was going on and on about the millennium. Nobody had ever heard that word until a year ago.

If your work gets under your skin so much that you need to talk to a priest, you can’t be suitable for the job. You have to have a temperament that can cope with it. A surgeon at a cancer clinic can’t demand counseling after he’s been operating and perhaps speaking to a patient.

You simply barge your way through. Barge-your-way-through, Morelius thought.

“Penny for your thoughts,” said Bartram.

“Why? What do you mean?”

“You seemed so damned preoccupied.”

“I was thinking about the Gamlestaden Motorcycle Club, which’ll be having their Christmas party at Harley’s soon.”

“Hmm, that’s something worth thinking about.”

“I’ll miss it this year.”

“You know the date?”

“I checked.”

“The special call-out boys will sort that out. They’ll surround the place with five squad cars.”

Some people can cope with policing the streets, others can‘t, Morelius thought. I’m going to cope. I have so far, haven’t I? Haven’t I? I’ve been out there in the night.

“The girl who worked in the cloakroom at the Park Hotel died yesterday. Did you know that?”

“Eh? No. I knew she was in a bad way.”

“Her boyfriend seems to be about to follow her.”

“Really?”

“Do you think she took it herself?”

“The GHB, you mean? I wouldn’t like to say.”

“She wasn’t the type.”

“None of them ever is.”

“She was pretty.”

Winter said good-bye when they emerged into the Calle Tetuan.

“Perhaps we’ll meet again,” Alicia said. “You know where I am… if you feel hungry again and need some advice.” She looked at him. “Or if you run into any more trouble.” She gave him her business card. Winter put it in his pocket.

“Can I give you a lift if you’re heading east? I have a car down by the bank.”

“No thanks, I have a few things to see to and then I’ll take a bus. I hope everything turns out okay with your father.”

Winter nodded and they went their separate ways. He walked back to the avenida. The car was hot inside and out, and he could feel the sweat trickling down his back even before he’d sat down. His mobile rang.

“I can’t make it,” said his sister. He could hear her coughing again. “Tomorrow, though. For sure.”

“I’m on my way to the hospital again.”

“Is he still awake? Is he with it, I mean?”

“We had a little chat last night, in any case.”

“That’s good,” she croaked.

“I don’t know. He was trying to make a sort of farewell speech, but I wouldn’t let him.”

The wall surface was rough, like the trunk of a tree. Had he found the paintbrush somewhere in the flat? Or had he taken it with him? He was calm enough now to ask questions, but he couldn’t answer them.

There. He’d finished.

They followed his every movement. Him and her. He didn’t approach them. They just had to sit there, and he’d drawn up the blinds so that it wasn’t so dark inside. It wasn’t quiet in there either. It-wasn‘t-quiet-in-there-either. The music was on auto-reverse. The light from outside shone onto the other guy’s head as he kept an eye on everything from the sofa. Nothing moved. He was pleased that nothing moved. It had been harder with her, but now she was still as well, watching him. Nobody was laughing anymore. Who was in charge now? Who was making the decisions now?

He’d shown them.

He’d show him now, make him understand.

He switched off the music, but that was not good. He switched it on again, but lowered the volume and looked around. He could leave now.

14

Angela woke up before midnight with the feeling that something was about to happen. Something she didn’t want to think about.

In the no-man‘s-land between sleep and waking she had seen the images one after another, like slides projected onto the big, bare bedroom wall.

She got out of bed and put on her robe, her heart pounding. She sat at the kitchen table with a glass of milk. Everything was quiet in the street outside. Somebody flushed a toilet in an apartment upstairs. She considered switching on the radio, but decided not to. Mustn’t get too wide awake. She sat with her hand over her stomach. Mustn’t plan too far ahead.

The swishing noise in the pipes stopped. Still no late-night tram outside, no voices in the darkness, which smelled of snow. She could smell it when she opened the window and breathed in deeply. A premonition of winter, and she closed the window, put the glass in the sink, and went back through the hall. The hiss clattered up, stopped on the landing, and she could hear the door opening and shutting and the sound of gravel scraping against the stone floor. She paused in the hall. Why am I standing here? I want to hear those footsteps go in through a door. Mrs. Malmer’s door.

Good grief.

Some more scraping footsteps. They sounded as if they were outside her door, just outside the door. Angela suddenly found herself incapable of moving. Everything was concentrated on listening for those footsteps.

I shouldn’t sleep here when Erik’s away.

This is ridiculous.

A rasping, grinding sound again. Footsteps again; moving away. She could hear the hundred-year-old elevator rattling its way back up, and the soft clatter as it came to a halt in the corridor outside. The clinking of the sliding steel door followed by a little click and the sound of the cage heading back down again.

Angela stood behind the door. She peered out through the peep-hole and could see the landing in a grotesque wide-angled perspective, but there was no sign of anybody outside. The light was still on. She opened the door, and immediately outside were some grains of black gravel, and a shallow pool of water glittering in the light.

That could be from me, she thought. It takes some time for water to evaporate in the stairwell when there’s a constant cold draft coming from below. Persecution mania. I’ll be wandering around checking for pools of water and grains of gravel all over the building next. She gave a little snort and closed the door.

The alarm clock on the bedside table said twelve-fifteen. She’d have to be up again in six hours, ready for the hospital corridors. The lumps of plaster that had fallen out of the green examination-room walls. Did they always have to be green? Doors with the paint peeling off. Patients must lose hope as they sit waiting and see how the hospital is slowly falling apart. If they couldn’t repair a wall, how the hell could they heal a body that had-

The telephone rang. Angela gave a start. It rang again, seemed to be moving across the table. It’ll be Erik, she thought as she lifted the receiver. It’s happened.

“Yes? Angela here.”

Not a word, just the sound of static.

“Hello? Erik?”

A rustling. Another sound that she couldn’t identify. Was that a voice in the background? Perhaps, very faint. Calls were finding it difficult to make their way across Europe tonight.

“I can’t hear anything. Maybe you should redial? Can you hear me? I can’t hear you.”

Now she could hear the echo of voices, but that was normal: fragments of conversation from anywhere in the world could be picked up by different lines and transformed into a sort of Esperanto. It could be any language at all, a conversation on a mountain peak millions of miles away.