“Winter.” No reply. “Hello?” He could hear a crackling noise on the line. He gestured to Angela that she should turn off the music. “Hello? Who is it?” He could hear distant voices flitting through space. Thought he could pick up a few words of Spanish. There was a click, and the line went dead. Winter held the receiver at arm’s length, looked hard at it, then replaced it.

“Who was it?”

“Nobody,” Winter said. “At least, nobody prepared to say anything.” He looked at Angela, who was still standing by the CD player. “Didn’t you say that somebody rang once before but didn’t say anything?”

“Was it him again?”

Winter shrugged and held his arms out wide.

“It was him,” she said. “What the hell’s going on?”

“Sit down,” Winter said, pulling the other easy chair to the window. He switched on a desk lamp. That felt better. “Sit here, Angela.”

“This is scary,” she said, sitting down. “Can’t the call be traced?”

“That’s not as easy as a lot of people think. But nine times out of ten it’s somebody dialing a wrong number and being too shy to admit it. Or they are surprised when somebody they don’t know answers. Then the shock passes and they hang up.”

“You’re used to receiving calls like this, are you?”

“It happens now and then.”

“And you’re trying to convince me that it has nothing to do with… your work?”

“Meaning what?”

“You come up against God only knows what strange people. Maybe they’re trying to frighten you. Get their own back.”

“Stop exaggerating.”

“But that could be it, couldn’t it?”

“I don’t know, Angela. There have been a few calls like this, but I don’t know who made them because he never says a word.”

She gave him a skeptical look.

“Now that I think about it, I wonder if it was a mistake moving in here,” she said.

“Stop exaggerating. I think everybody’s had calls like this.”

“Not me. And I certainly haven’t brought Mr. Creep here with me, if that’s what you think.”

“No, no.”

“What kind of haunted house is this that you live in, Erik?” She thought of the neighbors, could see the stairwell in her mind’s eye. The stark, unpleasant light when she emerged from the lift. When she came home tonight she’d had a momentary urge to creep up to Mrs. Malmer’s door and listen. The memory almost made her smile. Was it something to do with her pregnancy? Anonymous phone calls. Mrs. Malmer’s midnight masses. She was smiling now. She could see that Erik had noticed. She felt silly, embarrassed. A wrong number. Nothing to worry about. Even so…

Winter was still in the easy chair. The lower part of his face was illuminated by the desk lamp. His chin was covered with a day’s growth of stubble. He hadn’t changed since coming home from work, although he had taken off his jacket and tie. The shirt from Harvey & Hudson was unbuttoned at the neck, its discreet stripes almost invisible in the gloom.

She felt worried about him, about what had happened to him. She knew that he was struggling with his memories, the relationship with his father that had drifted away. He was trying to cope with it by not speaking about it, but that was not the right way of approaching it. He needed to talk to somebody, perhaps just occasionally. She could see that his chin had dropped slightly, as if he’d fallen asleep in the chair once the music had finished.

He’s intelligent, he understands. But it’s a big step from understanding to actually coping. Coming to terms with his memories. But keeping quiet doesn’t help. Nor does throwing yourself all out into a new and horrific investigation. It might provide an odd kind of comfort for a brief while, but only for a brief while.

“I can see you’ve got me under the microscope,” he said, raising his chin so that almost all of his face was in shadow.

“I thought you were asleep.”

“I’m resting. I feel better now and am ready for another eighteen hours of work.”

“But you must have something to eat.”

“It’s the middle of the night.”

“Something suitable for the night, then. Did you have anything at all this evening?”

“Coffee. A cheese roll.”

“I could make you a Paris sandwich, but I’ll fry some ham with the egg instead of a burger.”

“A Paris sandwich! Do they still exist? Is the term still in dictionaries nowadays? I haven’t had one of those for at least thirty years.”

“Then it’s about time you did. It’s one of my late-night specialities.”

“There are still things about you that I don’t know, Angela.” He slid down out of the easy chair, crawled over to her, and crouched with his head on her knee. She stroked his head, but her fingers found little purchase thanks to his close-cropped hair. “Dark late-night secrets,” he said. “Yes. Yes! I can’t wait to try it, this Paris sandwich.”

As they ate, he avoided thinking about his father and those last days in Marbella. He almost managed it, but for a split second he could see Alicia in front of him, the table at Altamirano, her surprise, and possibly pleasure, to see him standing there. Her friend had managed to find a spare chair and he sat down. Food was served. They’d been waiting for the food, too long according to Alicia, and she’d looked at him as if expecting him to answer a question he hadn’t heard her ask. He had drunk wine and the black iron balconies on the far side of the little square had seemed closer, as if carried down by the bougainvillea. He could feel the sweat on his brow.

“What do you think?”

Angela was looking at him, and nodded toward his plate.

“Fantastic,” he said, cutting another piece of the bread, egg, and ham.

“Yes, it’s pretty good, isn’t it?”

“And yet it’s so simple.”

“It’s like you say. Fantastic.”

“And so quick. It’s only just turned midnight,” he said, checking his watch. At that moment, the telephone rang.

Patrik and Maria could see the white street through the café window. It was unusual for snow to remain in the city center, on the few occasions there was any. Patrik was waiting for the idiots to put up the Christmas decorations in the streets and the shop windows. A Merry Christmas in November, as it were. Why bother to wait? Celebrate Christmas Eve on November 24. Why not? Santa Claus is coming to town.

“Imagine it happening only just around the corner,” said Maria, taking a drink of her hot chocolate. Smoke was rising from her cigarette lying in the ashtray. Smoke was rising from thirty million cigarettes lying in ashtrays in there, and when they went outside he’d be able to smell smoke in his clothes and right through to his brain. He didn’t like it. There was no need to smoke just because everybody else was doing it.

“A bit farther than that,” he said. “But more or less just around the corner.”

“And that you were the one who discovered it.”

“That old caretaker guy had noticed it as well.”

“Why didn’t he do something about it, then?” she said, taking a puff of her cigarette. “Why didn’t he report it sooner?”

“How should I know? He’s an old guy. Old guys are cowards.”

She laughed, replaced her cigarette in the ashtray, and took another drink of her hot chocolate. What a mixture. If she’d been drinking espresso he could have understood it, but not a cigarette and chocolate. He was drinking espresso. Double espresso. It tasted awful. You didn’t get much either.

“What do you think they saw when they went in?” she asked.

“No, idea.”

“It must have been awful.”

“A dead married couple,” he said. “There’s only one thing worse than that.”

“What?”

‘A live married couple.“

She grinned, but noticed that he wasn’t even smiling. Maybe it wasn’t a joke. She knew what he’d been through, was still going through. She reached for his hand, brushed against her cigarette and burned herself.

“Ouch!”

“That’s what happens when you mess around with that crap.”