“Yes.”

“You’d come to that conclusion as well?”

“Yes. He wants us to liberate him from his misery”

“The action itself is an anxiety reduction or conversion. When anxiety gets sufficiently strong it deforms the normal. Eventually he’s forced to act and that brings him some calm. Temporary calm because the anxiety starts building up again and he’s back to square one.”

“Back to square one? You mean it will happen again?” Winter looked at the tape recorder and spoke to it. “Unless we stop him, that is.” He turned to the psychologist. “Unless we help him?”

“I think we’re dealing with a person who’s been on the way to becoming psychotic for a long time, and his ego has been increasingly fragmented. Visions, dreams… in the end he has to act them out.”

“He acts out his visions? Is that what you mean?”

“He might have had an experience earlier in life that’s at the bottom of all this. Or an important part of it. Perhaps a long time ago. Perhaps fairly recently. But it was too horrific for him to forget. Though at the same time it hasn’t been possible for him to remember it. Do you see what I mean?”

“I think so.”

“And then it all comes back to him.” She looked at the photographs highlighted in the sunlight from the window, seemingly split in two by sunshine and shadow. ‘And what he finally does is to act out his drama. It’s a force that drives him to turn the drama into reality. Do you follow me? An inner vision becomes external reality“

“What exactly happened, then?” Winter suddenly walked over to the window and adjusted the venetian blinds. The sun had been in his eyes. The conversation had pained him. Lareda’s sober voice intensified his feeling that they were now sinking into an abyss. This is what life’s like. Abysses lurking in the human condition-memories and feelings of isolation and alienation and a lack of contact.

He turned around to face the room. Lareda’s glasses looked black in the shadow inside his office. “What kind of an experience was it? Do you dare make a guess?”

She didn’t answer right away. She took off her glasses and squinted at Winter, who was still by the window.

“He’s been greatly outraged at some point. Perhaps several times, but not necessarily so.”

“Outraged? Greatly outraged? How?”

“I think it has to do with the woman. Women.” She held up one of the photographs again, and Winter went to stand beside her.

“The wounds on their bodies are different, and that can’t be a coincidence. I’ve read the pathologist’s report and studied the pictures on the basis of that. The man here is ‘only’ killed; but it’s different with the woman. She’s more than killed. She’s more than dead.” Veitz ran her finger over the woman’s naked body. “There and there. There. There. None of the injuries were fatal in themselves.” She looked up at Winter. “It’s different with the man.”

“I know. But not how, or why.”

“He’s been greatly offended by women. Perhaps one, perhaps several. Maybe not this woman. Maybe another. She could be a substitute.”

“Substitute? She could be anybody at all as long as she’s a woman?”

“That could be the case. Don’t push me into saying anything more than that.”

“What if I do push you, even so?” Winter remained where he was and she put on her glasses again, then looked up at him. “Can’t you sit down?” she said. “My neck hurts if I have to look up at you like this.”

Winter sat down.

“I’m pushing you,” he said.

“Well, I think that this woman, Louise, wasn’t the one in his dreams or visions. But I can’t be sure.”

“No, I understand that. But he’s been outraged. Was it something to do with sexuality? Do you think his outrage was triggered by something sexual?”

It often is, he thought. Something to do with loneliness and a person’s secrets.

“That’s possible,” Veitz said. “The outrage could be linked with a sexual act, or a sexual conception. He might have been made to feel ridiculous in a sexual context. It could well have been something like that. There are many examples of that nature in forensic psychology”

“Made to look ridiculous?” I’m repeating everything she says, Winter thought.

“In one way or another. A more risky interpretation is that he’s been spiritually castrated. By a woman. And that it happened in somebody else’s presence. A man.”

“Castrated?”

“He’s felt castrated. He couldn’t put it into words when it happened, but now it’s dawned on him. It might have happened with another man looking on. But it’s the woman who’s the guilty one. Who’s done that to him.”

“Who is therefore guilty of making him what he’s become,” Winter said.

“Yes. Who is responsible for his being driven to subject her in this way. And it could be that the ‘her’ is a substitute. His imagination has finally become so strong that he has to turn it into reality. The other reality that he still has a foothold in. The real reality.”

“He can act normally, then? Still?”

“I think so.”

“So he could be any of us?”

“I suppose he could, really” she said, and Winter thought of Angela for a tenth of a second. “But probably not for much longer. It depends on how he handles the fantasy that on one occasion he’s now turned into reality”

She fell silent, deep in thought. She cleared her throat.

“Could you get me a glass of water, please, Erik? Tap water would be fine.”

He went over to the cupboard where several clean glasses were kept and filled one with water for her.

She drank deeply, then went on.

“I can also see an element of domination here-as a consequence of what might have happened. It has to do with the change of identities. It exposes a conflict to do with a desire to dominate.”

“Dominate? Dominate the woman?”

“Domination. The reason for his torture. That’s the woman. And at the same time, the desire to be somebody else. He wants to be two dif ferent people, and acts on that basis. Afterward. After the murder.”

“I don’t get that last part.”

“He wants to dominate as a man, but he also wants to escape from himself and become somebody else. The swapping of heads, or bodies, is a metaphor for that. A way of making it real.”

“So to some extent at least, we’re talking about revenge here? A twisted act of revenge? Frustrated love? Could it be as simple as that?”

“On one level I think it could be.”

‘And the people involved don’t need to be the actual people who are the targets for revenge? For hatred?“ The people in the photographs, Winter thought.

“No.”

“But they could be reminiscent of them? In other words, in one way or another he or she, or both of them, are reminiscent of the real person. Or persons?”

“That could be the case.”

“Does this mean that he-I’m talking about the murderer-could be somebody who’s always thought of himself as inferior? Sexually, for instance. Who’s felt himself to be castrated, ridiculed, without actually having been subjected to a direct… er, public humiliation?”

“A good question.”

“And?”

“It’s possible.”

“That would mean in turn that we might not have any one specific incident involving him that could provide us with any answers.”

“Yes.”

Winter suddenly realized how thirsty he was. He got himself a glass of water and refilled Lareda’s glass. Then he sat down.

The woman who had been killed. Louise. Who was she? Was she part of a history, or just a symbol for somebody else? In which case, who was the real woman? Was there somebody out there who could supply them with an answer? Who’d been in contact? But what if it was Louise? Had they dug sufficiently deeply into her past? Of course not. How far had they gotten?

He would take it upon himself to pay a visit to Kungsbacka. Her mother still lived there. She had answered the questions his colleagues had put to her, but he had some more to ask.