“His future unmasker. He’s left messages, hasn’t he? They’re aimed at somebody.”

‘At whom?“ Winter asked, but he knew the answer already.

“At you, Erik.” She was sitting in the shadow and her spectacles were black again. “You are the hunter. The detective. The one who will presumably unmask him.”

“So he wants to dominate me? Erik Winter?”

“You in your role as hunter. Detective Chief Inspector Erik Winter.”

“It’s nothing personal, then,” Winter said, but he wasn’t smiling. Nor was Veitz. He looked at her. “Can it become personal?”

“How do you mean?”

“That he actually focuses on… me? Me personally because I’m the hunter?”

“No.”

‘Are you sure?“

“No.”

“He has something I don’t have in this case. He knows why it happened. And who did it. That gives him the upper hand, doesn’t it?”

“In a way, yes. Go on.”

“In that way he already has power over me.” He stood up again, thought, took two steps. “Is there more, Lareda? Is that enough, or not?”

She stood up as well, went to the window, and looked out with her arms folded. She turned around.

“I don’t know if we’re getting anywhere, continuing along these lines. But all right… It could be that you have something that he doesn’t. In order to dominate you, he must get some of it for himself. In order to have power over you.”

“What do I have?”

“Compared with him? Everything. You have everything.”

“What, for instance?”

“A proper life. His life is ruined, may have been in ruins for a very long time. You have a life.”

Winter breathed out. It was still very hot in the room. No empty speech balloons. He didn’t want to go any further in the direction the conversation had taken. Later, but not now.

He went to the Panasonic and switched on the music. Lareda had listened to it at home, and her husband had gone to the cinema to avoid it.

“I prefer Carreras,” she said when the song started.

“For me the borderline comes with The Clash,” Winter said.

“You’re familiar with The Clash?”

“I’m an expert on them.” He motioned with his head toward the CD player on the floor. “But how can anybody analyze this stuff? Has it given you any ideas?”

“Well, speculation mostly… All right. I won’t go on about the ‘intensity’ of the music. You can be misled by that, perhaps look in the wrong direction.”

“The tempo’s not the important thing, is that what you mean?”

“Yes. It can be misleading. Everything gets so much more ghastly with this in both the foreground and the background. Do you follow me? If you come to the scene of a murder and find Carreras singing, the impression you get is different.”

“But, Lareda, we try to be professional here. Carreras, Sacrament… Mysto’s Hot Lips… Tom Jones… it’s not important in that way. I’m not influenced by the music when I’m standing there.”

“You can say whatever you like, but you’re missing the point. I’m saying that the ghastliness of it all is made more intense by the choice of music, and that must influence you when you are searching for answers.”

“How does it influence us?”

“Let me ask you a counterquestion. Do you see a particular type of person when you envisage somebody listening to this? Listening by choice, that is.”

“I try to avoid doing that.”

“That wasn’t what I asked you.”

“I take your point,” Winter said.

“There’s something in the music that might conjure up what has happened. It’s latent. This isn’t background music. This doesn’t invite you to relax with smooth classics at seven.”

“Who does listen to it, then?”

“It could be somebody who’s always listened to this kind of music, but I don’t think so.”

“Why choose it now, then?”

“That’s another good question.”

“I don’t think either that the murderer is necessarily an out-and-out metal type, with long hair and black leather. We’re not setting out to put away the types who dig black metal.”

“Maybe he doesn’t listen at all,” Veitz said.

“That had occurred to me as well.”

“The message-if it really is a message-might be in the words. Maybe we should concentrate on the words. When you lent me the cassette, you said that this music is impossible without the words. Without the booklet with the lyrics that comes with the CD. Didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I’ve tried to think about the words. And the cover. The pictures. We can’t forget them. In other words, all the things that are not the music itself, or whatever we should call it. I haven’t got a word for it,” she said, gesturing toward the CD player. The room was still filled with Sacrament, but Winter turned the volume down now. ‘Apart from the words describing the genre, that is. Black metal.“

Winter agreed. He didn’t have a word for it either. It was more physics than music.

“There are lots of symbols here, but the pattern indicates just one thing,” she said. “The choice of title, the words, even the pictures. It’s all about a sort of tug-of-war between good and evil. Represented by heaven and hell.”

“I’m with you so far.”

“But their relative strengths are not spelled out, as it were. Who will win? Where is the power based?”

“The words don’t provide an answer to that, is that what you mean?”

“They express a wish, rather, but against a background of darkness. Hopelessness. And that’s the world that is part of the key to all this. Perhaps.”

“The world? What world?”

“The world that predominates.” She looked up at him, and he noticed that her facial color had changed slightly. She was getting excited. She was thinking aloud, thinking clearly. “That could be the key question. And the paradox. There’s an enormous difference between committing sin in a world ruled by God, and in a world ruled by the Devil.”

“There’s no hope in a world ruled over by the Devil? A world made up exclusively of evil can offer no hope. Is that what you mean?” Winter said.

“Yes. And that could be the way he sees things. He’s a part of the evil world. But he might still have some idea of the other world.”

“He wants to go there again? Go back to it?”

“He wants to get away from everything he’s having to put up with,” she said. ‘And he wants to make up for a deficiency by committing a crime: castration. A deficiency and a longing. The crime takes him back to his experience of humiliation, and he also wants to show us that ’This is where I fall short.‘ He wants to tell us.“

“He wants to be found out?”

“He wants to be helped. And this is where we find the biggest paradox of all. He’s longing to be helped, and he’s saying that his crime shows you where his deficiency is, and that it is a cry for help.” She looked at Winter, stared hard at him. “In that way he demonstrates that there is still hope.”

“So there is still some hope? Both for him and for me?”

“And all the time there is a longing,” she said. “His dreams are an imagined world that he has now made real.” She looked at the CD player. ‘And, so, we’re more or less back where we started, don’t you think?“

A dream, Winter thought, gazing out the window again at the snow that was starting to glisten in blue. A dream in a winter land.

It was quiet in the apartment. Patrik could hear his father snoring in the bedroom. He was trying to read, but his mind was elsewhere. He had bought a Christmas present, but he hadn’t decided on anything for Ulla. He didn’t want to buy her a Christmas present.

Maybe they’d be spending Christmas Eve somewhere else. And Ria had said that he didn’t need to be at home anyway. He could be with her family at Orgryte. That would be wicked. Celebrate Christmas in a posh house. Wicked.

His father was up now. The whole room seemed to be grunting. Ulla was out buying booze, and he knew that his father wasn’t feeling too well at the moment.