“I bet it’s just migraine.”

“You’ve never had migraine before.”

“What sort of a comment is that? Say that to somebody who’s getting MS.”

“That wasn’t funny.”

“Well, stop nagging me.”

He got out of bed and strode from the room.

“Coffee’s ready,” she called after him, but he didn’t answer.

Angela had put on her overcoat, pulled on her leather boots, and left the apartment, and he wouldn’t have been able to hold her back by force.

He picked up the letter. It felt like a wet leaf. The letter heading was a disaster. Just as the conversation had been a disaster. The quarrel.

She came back after seven minutes, but she wasn’t carrying a bag of Danish pastries. She kicked off her boots and went to the living room, where he was still standing with the letter in his hand. She hadn’t taken her coat off, as if to signal that this was going to go on all evening. Backward and forward.

“Rereading it, are you?”

“No…”

“You’d damn well better have a good explanation.” She ripped off her coat and threw it on the floor. “A true explanation.” She took a couple of paces toward him. “Do you understand, Erik? I want to know the truth. No spin and no goddamn lies.”

“You don’t need to swear like that.”

“I’ll swear as much as I damn well want.”

‘All right, ALL RIGHT.“ He looked around the room, then put the letter on the coffee table. ”Should we keep standing, or should we sit down?“

She went to the sofa and sat down. He followed her.

“Listen now,” he said to her profile. She was staring out at the electric-blue sky. It was fine weather, like most evenings. She’d only been out a few minutes, but her cheeks were flushed. “This woman was an interpreter at the police station. I met her when I reported the theft of my wallet.”

“Terrific.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“A great way to meet.”

“Do you want me to explain this, Angela?”

“Yes, please.” She was still staring straight ahead.

“Anyway I met her again when I got the money from the bank. It was pure coincidence. We just bumped into each other outside the bank.”

“Maybe she was following you? Shadowing you?”

“Angela, don’t get paranoid.”

“Paranoid? Is that the chief inspector’s diagnosis?” She moved her head for the first time and looked at the letter on the coffee table: it had started to dry out and was curling up. A papyrus roll, Winter thought. The Dead Sea Scrolls. You can read about the past there. It can be true or false, depending on how you interpret it.

“And then you never left each other’s side until I arrived,” she said.

“Angela, that’s not true and you know it.”

“What is true, then? I’m still waiting.” She nodded at the letter again. “That wasn’t about a chance meeting outside a bank.”

Winter closed his eyes, then looked out the window and saw only the evening, the night.

“That evening… that night… after my dad died. And afterward as well. I felt so… disconsolate. Sad. I went back to my room quite late. It was the night before you arrived. I sat on my bed and it felt so… so hard in a way as if I’d made a mistake that I couldn’t put right. Or as if we’d all made a mistake. Or both of us.” He looked at her and saw that she was listening. “I don’t really know what I thought. But it felt impossible just to sit there on the bed staring at the picture of the Madonna on the wall and emptying the whisky bottle. If there’d been a television set… I don’t know. Spanish football or some stupid talk show. I don’t know. But I couldn’t just sit there. I went out for a walk, up to the Old Town.”

“And she was sitting there, waiting for you?”

“It wasn’t like that at all. It was another coincidence.” She turned to look at him and he continued, quickly. “It WAS a coincidence. She was sitting in a little square with some friends.” It had been a coincidence, he told himself. When he’d seen her in the square that first time, it had been a coincidence. Then something twitched in his legs and he went back there. The sorrow, his thoughts. Perhaps the shame. “I said hello, and joined them, and had a drop of wine.”

“And that was all?”

“That was it, really”

“REALLY?”

“Yes. I went back home with her and drank a drop more wine and that was all. Mainly lots of taxi rides and an early sunrise over Torremolinos.”

“Torremolinos?”

“That’s where she lives.”

“And you went back there with her to watch the sun rise? You really are a pushy tourist, Erik. Forcing your way into a stranger’s apartment or whatever you did in order to watch a new sunrise.”

“Angela… I know. I should never have gone back with her and I… didn’t want to. It wasn’t ME… but all those other things. But I swear to you that nothing happened.”

“You said a few minutes ago that one shouldn’t swear.”

“Angela…”

“Can you give me one good reason why I should believe all this?”

“Because it’s true.”

“Ha.” She stared out of the window again. “Ha, ha.”

“I don’t know what I can do to get you to… We can contact her if you like.”

“Don’t be stupid.”

“I really am telling you the truth. I promise. We got to her place and drank a glass of wine and I slept for a while in the living room. She didn’t make any passes and neither did I.”

“Real gentlemen, both of you.”

He stood up and could feel the sweat pouring down his back. He didn’t know what to do now, or what to say.

“It was just my… restlessness,” he said.

“I think it was more than that.”

“What do you mean?”

“This, among other things,” she said, pointing to her stomach.

“For Christ’s sake, Angela!”

“Now you’re swearing again.”

“You mustn’t say things like that.”

“It could well be true. We’re supposed to be telling the truth, aren’t we? Perhaps you’re not the kind of man who should have a family.”

“You’re wrong. You’re so wrong.” He sat down again, tried to take her hand, but she wouldn’t let him. “I’m so pleased about it. I’m so pleased about everything.” He was holding her hand now. “You’ve got to believe me, Angela.”

“Everything, you say?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you simply throw that letter away, then?”

“That’s a good question. I meant to. I don’t know. Maybe because I find it difficult to throw any papers away. Everything is documentary evidence as far as I’m concerned. Evidence. Reports. Well, you know.”

“Have you reported back?”

“Eh?”

“Have you replied to the letter?”

“No. Of course not.”

“And you expect me to believe that as well?”

“It’s the absolute truth.”

He was getting into the part. No, not the part, the situation. It was an interrogation. She was the opposition and he was the suspect. He was the suspect and she was conducting the interrogation, and she was good. She’s better than me, he thought.

So this is what it was like. Searching for the truth in the gaps between the words of what the suspect said. There might be fragments of the truth in those gaps. But he was telling the truth. It was the truth. In all important and essential points it was the truth, and he was forced to convince a skeptical interrogator of that. He wouldn’t be able to do it yet. It would take a long time.

Aneta Djanali could feel the sun in her eyes. Beams were targeting the highway and dazzling the drivers. Before long there’ll be a massive crash and we’ll be in the middle of it, she thought. She could smell the familiar aroma of newly baked bread when they passed Pååls. Halders was staring forward, into the white glow, as if to guide her along the right path.

She turned off at the Järnbrott exit and it was like getting her sight back.

“So, here we go again,” Halders said, pointing at the snow piled up three feet high by the side of the road. “Snow,” he said, turning to Djanali. “It’s called snow.”

Here we go again, she thought.