Winter nodded.

“A relative of yours? Winter isn’t that common a name.”

“He was my father.”

“Really? It’s a small world sometimes.” Then she looked as if she was thinking about what Winter had just said. He was my father.

“When did you finish working at Krokens Livs?”

She was watching him as she replied. She’d noted the rapid change of subject.

“I take any job that’s going when I’m at home,” she said. “As you can tell-I mean, Krokens Livs!”

Winter explained some of the background to why he was there. Asked a few questions.

She’d seen the photograph of Manhattan Livs. But the only thing she could remember clearly as being of any interest at all was when the policeman caught the shoplifter.

“I beg your pardon?”

“There was a police officer in the shop, in uniform, and he caught a shoplifter who was on his way out with a handful of videos. He said he’d forgotten to pay, and, of course, you always believe that!”

“But he was a petty thief?”

“I think he’d stolen a few things before. I recognized him, or at least I think I did.”

“What happened?”

“The police officer asked me if I wanted to make a formal complaint, as he put it. But he looked so wretched… I said no.”

“So you didn’t report him?”

“The officer said he would see to it. The thief had produced his ID card, I saw that.”

“Then what happened?”

“He just showed his ID, sort of.” She held up her hand as a demonstration. “The officer made some notes and then they left and that’s all I know.”

“So you didn’t make a formal complaint?”

“No, like I said. He was going to see to it.”

“Why was he there? This police officer?”

“I can’t remember. I suppose he was buying something. Or renting a video. He’d done that before.”

“So you recognized the police officer?”

“Yes… he’d been in a few times. Sometimes in uniform and sometimes in civvies.”

“Did you talk to him?”

“I did when that shoplif-”

“Any other time, I mean?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“You don’t know his name?”

“No. Is it important?”

I don’t know, Winter thought. It could be extremely important, or just an everyday occurrence.

“Is it so important?” she asked again.

“Would you recognize this police officer if you saw him again?”

“I don’t know. I’m not very good at faces.”

“You recognized the shoplifter.”

“Yes… because that was different. It was sort of… a crime. I looked at him more than I did the policeman.”

“Did you see the shoplifter again?”

“Not in the shop.”

“But somewhere else?”

“In the street on one occasion, when I was either coming to work or leaving. I suppose he lived nearby. He looked the other way when he saw me.”

“You don’t remember his name?”

“I never heard what it was. The policeman wrote it down.”

“Was there a squad car outside? Did the police officer have a patrol car outside the shop?”

“Good question. No, I can’t remember. But I didn’t look out of the window just then.” She looked Winter in the eye. “Police officers are all the same anyway. Tall, fair-haired. It’s hard to distinguish between them.”

Morelius was on his way to see his mother. The road was very icy.

The traffic got worse as he came to Söderleden, and came to a standstill at the golf club. Idiots in thick anoraks and woolly hats were waiting to tee off and hit balls into thirty-foot snowdrifts.

“This is a surprise,” his mother said.

“I felt like getting away.”

“You’ve lost weight, Simon.”

“Not a lot.”

He noticed the photograph of his father over the piano in the drawing room. He was looking solemn, as always, an expression made more austere by his clerical collar. White against all the black.

51

He sat in the dark. After last time he thought they might have fitted a new lock, but it was still the same one. Not that it would have mattered.

People passed to and fro. There was a special kind of echo in there. Sounds traveled through the cubbyhole as if along a tunnel, from the noisy stairwell where all hell was let loose when the elevator went up or down and the front door slammed shut. You needed to put your fingers in your ears for that.

Perhaps those were his footsteps out there now. Awkward. Who was in control now, then? Whoever has control now, put your hand up.

He raised his right arm, and as far as he could see, there was nobody else in there holding up their own hand. Control.

It was obvious when he arrived that he was in control. Anybody with eyes to see could see that.

He wept.

He missed her. Her face once when she turned around on her bicycle and laughed.

He repeated the prophet’s name as a mantra. Repeated it over and over again. He kept the other god at bay. He kept the faces away and if he continued doing that they would disappear.

He wept.

Where were they? He was sitting here after all.

Perhaps those were his footsteps again out there. Or hers.

He’d gone past when there was a car parked outside the shop that could have been his. Then he’d run home. His heart in his mouth.

He stood up now, in the dark. He had nothing to drink with him this time.

Outside in the street the sun felt hot on his face.

Somebody looked at him as if he still had… as if he was in charge. You couldn’t see it from his clothes now, but you could see it about him even so. Now.

He walked uphill all the way, then down the slope to the hospital. He stood outside, waiting. Saw her. He knew exactly.

It had gotten to 5:00 P.M. There were six couples who had just introduced themselves. The man sitting to Winter‘sright felt a great need to describe his work.

The group of parents was mixed, some of them already had children. Winter recognized the midwife. It was the same one he’d met before, with Angela. Elise Bergdorff. She gave them ten minutes to write down what they wanted to know, what they hoped to get out of the meetings. There would be five meetings. By the end of March. Just before the event.

“Ask about reducing the pain,” Winter said.

“Ask yourself,” said Angela, giggling.

“Clothes,” Winter said. “What we should buy. How much you have to plan beforehand.”,

“But we’ve said we’re not going to plan anything.”

“No harm in asking.” He continued writing.

“What are you writing?” asked Angela, looking happy. Everybody looked happy, except for the man who wanted to go on about his work as if he couldn’t wait to get back to it.

I’ve never longed to get back to work, Winter thought. Not like that. This is more important.

“How do we know when the baby is hungry and when it’s full?”

“Good, Erik.”

“How much sleep?”

“For whom?”

“For me, of course,” he said. He started writing again after a short pause.

“What are you writing now?”

He looked up with a different expression on his face.

“Let me look,” Angela said, grabbing his notepad and reading it. She looked at him: “Are my eyes deceiving me? ‘Check police force addresses against the pornography replies.’ Is that one of the questions you want to ask the midwife?”

“I thought of something.”

“Erik…”

“Maternity care,” he said quickly. “You’ve talked about maternity care after the reorganization.”

“Write it down,” she said. He didn’t. “I mean it literally,” she said.

The midwife offered them coffee, as this was the first time. In future perhaps they might like to take turns in bringing something nice with them, if they felt like it.

I can bake some brownies, he thought.

The midwife talked about relationships, how things change during pregnancy and after the birth. The men and women looked at one another.