Morelius was eating the usual deep-fried prawns from Ming. Why could they never think of anything else to order?

Somebody from the Gothenburg council was on television, explaining what the millennium celebrations would entail. If you believed him, they would be more impressive than anything on offer in London and Sydney and New York.

In fact Gothenburg would be subjected to the same old uproar, the same old crowds of staggering revelers. Tears, shrieks, guffaws, fireworks projected at eye height by lunatic antiaircraft gunners in the center of town. The same old uproar as usual.

“I’ve changed my mind,” Bartram said.

“Eh?” said Morelius, getting up to throw away half of the prawns and the sickly salad. As usual.

“I’m going to work on New Year’s Eve after all. In the thick of the revelry.”

“Welcome to the club,” Morelius said. “But you’d already changed your mind. First you were going to work, but you decided not to.”

“Yes. But just like you”-Bartram scraped the last bit of sauce from the foil container-“I’ve decided to work after all.”

“Why not do a good deed,” Morelius said. “Others need time off more than we do.”

“Speak for yourself.”

“What’s your reason, then?”

“I have nothing better to do,” said Bartram, going to switch off the television that was now showing the weather forecast for western Sweden. It was going to be fine but cold again. ‘And I’ll get time off later instead.“

“When?”

“In summer, maybe. How the hell should I know now?”

“What will you do?”

“In summer? No idea. It’s a long way off.”

“We have the revelry to cope with first,” said Morelius.

He went to his locker and opened it. His overcoat smelled of the cold that hadn’t completely gone away when the rain came.

Tomorrow he would see Hanne again, and it would be the last time. She couldn’t help him anymore, and he didn’t need any help. It had happened, but now it was more like a dream. He couldn’t say any more than that. Maybe he wouldn’t know what he’d said when he said it. He’d forgotten all the questions he’d asked himself during the night with the videos playing on the TV screen, and he never did know what they were about anyway.

He put on the earphones of his Walkman and pressed PLAY. Just a few minutes. He saw Bartram moving his lips and switched the music off again.

“What?”

“I can hear it plain as day.”

“Really.”

“Sounds awful.”

Patrik had asked to speak to the short-haired younger policeman, and Winter took the call immediately after he had come back to his office from Mölndal.

“Hello?”

“Er… hello… Patrik Strömblad here…”

Winter hadn’t recognized his voice. There was something gravelly about it.

“Hello, Patrik.”

“Well… that CD. Sacrament.”

“Yes?”

“Jimmo has it. My friend Jimmo…”

Bergenhem had searched the attic at Desdemona in vain. But in the end they were receiving help from another quarter.

“He has that exact disc? Daughter of Habu… whatever.”

“That exact one, yes,” Patrik said. “He could go straight to it. You can buy it chea… There are bett…”

His voice had become inaudible.

“What?”

“You can buy it cheap.”

Winter couldn’t help giving a little laugh.

“Okay! Where is it?”

“I have it here.” Patrik seemed to snort into the receiver. “An ugly cover.” His voice was unclear again, as if he were chewing something.

“Can you come here with it?” Winter asked. “Now?”

“Just the cover?”

“Don’t joke with me, Patrik.”

“I wasn’t joking.” It didn’t sound as if he was joking.

“Can you be here in half an hour?” Winter checked the time. ‘Aren’t you at school?“

“No…”

“Can you come here to the police station? Or we can meet in town.”

“Can’t we do it tomorrow?”

“Why?”

“I’m… I don’t know if I…”

“What’s the matter, Patrik?”

“Er… all right, I’ll come.”

Winter put down the phone and looked at the anonymous cassette in one of the pigeonholes on his desk. He put it into the stereo and played the first tune at high volume, took out the photographs again but only looked at the first two. He picked up the phone and rang Beier, but his colleague in forensics was out. Winter examined one of the photographs again, and made a note.

29

It was Halders, of all people, who found the connection. He hadn’t said anything at the meeting. He found it later, during the afternoon, and marched in to Winter without even knocking on the door. He was carrying a black book.

“About that Habakkuk,” he said. “The guy who’s the father of the daughter.”

“Yes, I know who you mean,” Winter said, looking up from his latest notes.

“He was a prophet. He has his own book in the Bible.” Halders held up the Bible. “A short one.”

The Old Testament, Winter thought. The canonical books. Of course. They ought to have thought of that sooner. They were too profane.

“Well done, Fredrik.”

“There was something in the back of my mind. When I realized what it was, I dashed down to the library, and there was his name. The prophet Habakkuk, in between Nahum and Zephaniah.” Halders held up the Bible again. “I know what made me think of it. I haven’t managed to dig out the old Bible I got when I was confirmed, but I’m sure the vicar wrote some reference or other on the flyleaf to Habakkuk.”

“How could you remember that?”

“And then forget it?”

“Remember, I said.”

“I suppose it was the name, because it was so unusual. A friend said it was a misprint for ‘Haveacock,’” Halders looked at the book in his hand. “That was pretty irreverent.” He looked at Winter again. “I must have looked up the text because I was curious. The same as now.”

Winter took the book from Halders. It was the 1995 version. Winter looked up the Book of Habakkuk and started reading. The clergyman who prepared Halders for confirmation must have been a bit of a prophet himself. The text was about the work of the crime squad. The first chapter went:

“I am Habakkuk the prophet. And this is the message that the LORD gave me.

“Our LORD, how long must I beg for your help before you listen? How long before you save us from all this violence?

“Why do you make me watch such terrible injustice? Why do you allow violence, lawlessness, crime, and cruelty to spread everywhere?

“Laws cannot be enforced; justice is always the loser; criminals crowd out honest people and twist the laws around.”

“Therefore the law is paralyzed, and justice never prevails. The wicked hem in the righteous, so that justice is perverted.

“‘Criminals twist the laws around.’ ‘Why do you make me watch such terrible injustice?”’ Winter read the beginning of the first chapter again. He had spent a lot of time dealing with injustice and evil, but he had started to think differently-or perhaps he’d thought this way from the very beginning: evil was not some kind of creature in the underworld. Evil was people, actions. Evil was injustice. It arose from cruelty. It was caused by violence.

“‘Laws cannot be enforced.’”

Like hell they can‘t! He closed the holy book with a bang and put it on his desk. It could be a coincidence, but he didn’t believe in coincidences. If the murderer chose that particular music and a CD with that particular title, there was a reason. They would soon have the disc with its cover, and the Bible, and they would read it all.

Why? Did the murderer want to tell us that the world is evil? That he had seen the writing on the wall? Did he want to tell us that his world was evil? The murderer’s world? Or Winter’s world? The human world. Were they the same?

The text. He was waiting for Patrik. More reading to come. The men in black at Desdemona had said that black metal was meaningless without the words, but they were words that nobody could pick up just by listening.