Still, despite everything he was on the way back to some kind of normality. The banter that morning had been a positive sign. He was glad about that. Therapy? Could be.

He was glad that Aneta had caught on, and played along.

Maybe the two of them were going somewhere together. No, not maybe. We are going somewhere together. Very slowly, very carefully.

He turned around, slowly, carefully. The student had come up the steps from Karl Gustavsgatan. Maybe he was tired. Certainly a bit drunk. Beer. Aryan Kaite, as black as could be, like Aneta; and what a name! Aryan. Perhaps a plea from his parents, it had struck Halders when he talked to the kid after he’d come around. An Aryan black man. Weren’t they the first humans? Africans?

This one was studying medicine.

A horrible wound to the head. Could have killed him. The same went for the others. He thought about that as he stood by the steps looking down at the paving stones sparkling in the sunlight. All of them could have been killed, but nobody had died. Why? Was it a coincidence, a stroke of luck? Was that the intention? Were they meant to survive?

This is where the blow had been delivered, in the square, Kapellplatsen. Then darkness.

Linnéplatsen was surrounded by tall buildings that were new but meant to look old, or at least in time blend in with the century-old patrician mansions.

Jens Book had been clubbed down outside Marilyn’s, the video store. Halders was standing there now. There were five film posters in the windows, and all of them depicted people brandishing guns or other weapons.

Die Fast! Die Hard III! Die and Let Die! Die!

But not this time either. Jens Book was the first victim. Studying journalism. The Aryan, Kaite, was the second. Jakob Stillman the third. In the same department as Bertil’s daughter, Halders remembered, and moved to one side to avoid a cyclist who came racing down from Sveaplan. Gustav Smedsberg was the fourth, the yokel studying at the university of technology, Chalmers. Branding iron. Halders smiled. Branding iron my ass.

Book was the one with the worst injuries, if it’s possible to grade them like that. The blow had affected nerves and other things, paralyzing the kid on his right side, and it was not clear if he would recover mobility. Maybe he wasn’t as lucky as I was, Halders thought as he backed out of the way of a cyclist evidently determined to ride straight ahead. Halders very nearly fell through the door of the video store.

He thought about the blows again. First the one he’d received. Then the ones that had injured the young men.

It had all happened so quickly. Wham, no warning. Nobody noticed anything in advance. No footsteps. Just wham. No chance of defense, of protecting themselves.

No footsteps, he thought again.

He watched the cyclist ignoring a red light and riding straight over the crossroads, displaying a splendid contempt for death. Die? Pfuh!

The cyclist.

Have we asked about a possible cyclist? Have we thought about that?

He had interviewed the Aryan himself, but there had been no mention of a bicycle.

Had the attacker been riding a bike?

Halders stared down at the pavement, as if there might still be some visible sign of bicycle tracks.

Lars Bergenhem had some news before lunch. Winter was smoking a Corps. The window overlooking the river was open a couple of centimeters, letting in air he thought smelled more distinctly than his cigarillo smoke did. The Panasonic on the floor was playing

Lush Life. Only Coltrane today, and in recent weeks. Winter had unfastened two buttons of his Zegna jacket. Anybody coming into his office now who didn’t know any better would think he wasn’t working. Bergenhem came in, saying:

“There was no newspaper delivery boy there.”

Winter stood up, put his cigarillo down on the ashtray, turned down the music, and closed the window.

“But the kid saw him,” he said as he was doing this. “Smedsberg.”

“He says he saw somebody with newspapers,” said Bergenhem, “but it wasn’t a newspaper delivery boy.”

Winter nodded and waited.

“I checked with Göteborgs Posten delivery office and on that particular morning, the day before yesterday, their usual employee for that round called in sick just before it was time to start delivering, and it took them at least three hours before they could find a replacement. So that would have been at least two hours after Smedsberg was attacked.”

“He could have been there anyway,” Winter said.

“Eh?”

“He could have called in sick but showed up anyway,” Winter said again. “He might have started to feel better.”

“She,” said Bergenhem. “It’s a she.”

“A she?”

“I’ve spoken to her. There’s no doubt. She has an awful cold, and a husband and three children who were all at home that morning and give her an alibi.”

“But people received their morning papers?”

“No. Not until her replacement showed up. According to GP, in any case.”

“Have you checked with the subscribers?”

“I haven’t had time yet. But the girl at GP says they had lots of complaints that morning. As usual, according to her.”

“But Smedsberg says he saw somebody carrying newspapers,” Winter said.

“Did he really say that he’d seen the actual newspapers?” Bergenhem wondered.

Winter sorted through the pile of papers in one of the baskets on his desk and read the report on the interviews Ringmar had submitted.

Ringmar had asked: How do you know it was a newspaper boy?

Because he was carrying a bundle of newspapers and went into one of the buildings, and then I saw him come out again and go into the next one, Smedsberg had replied.

Was there a cart outside with more newspapers? Ringmar had asked.

Good, Winter thought. A good question.

No. I didn’t see a cart. There could… No, I didn’t see one. But he was definitely carrying newspapers, that was obvious, Smedsberg had answered.

“Yes,” said Winter, looking at Bergenhem. “He said that this person was carrying newspapers and went in and out of apartment buildings in Gibraltargatan.”

“OK.”

“But there was no cart-don’t they usually have one?” Winter said.

“I’ll check,” said Bergenhem.

“Check who the replacement was as well.”

“Of course.”

Winter lit his cigarillo again and exhaled smoke.

“So, we might have a fake newspaper boy here, hanging around the area at the time of the attack,” he said.

“Yes.”

“That’s interesting. The question is: Is it our man? And if it isn’t-what was he doing there?”

“A mental case?” Bergenhem suggested.

“A mental case pretending to be a newspaper boy? Well, why not?”

“A mild form.”

“But if he is our man, surely he must have planned it. A bundle of newspapers etcetera. On the spot at that particular time.”

Bergenhem nodded.

“Did he know that Smedsberg would go that way? Or did he know that somebody or other would come by? That students often stagger over Mossen in the early hours? In which case it could have been anybody?”

“Why go to the trouble of lugging newspapers around?” Bergenhem said. “Wouldn’t it have been enough simply to hide?”

“Unless he was using that disguise or whatever we should call it, that role, to establish some kind of security,” Winter said. “Melt into the background, create an atmosphere of normality. What could be more normal at that hour than a hardworking newspaper boy?”

“Maybe he even made contact,” Bergenhem said.

Winter drew on his cigarillo again and watched it growing murkier outside. The sun had wandered off again.

“That had occurred to me too,” he said, looking at Bergenhem.