“Can’t I ever have a thought of my own?” Bergenhem wondered.

“Well, you said it first,” said Winter with a smile.

Bergenhem sat down and leaned forward.

“Maybe they spoke to each other. It’s pretty harmless to exchange a few words with a newspaper boy.”

Winter nodded, and waited.

“Maybe they did make some sort of contact.”

“Why didn’t Smedsberg say anything about that?” Winter asked.

“Why do you think?”

“Well, it’s possible. Everything’s possible. They exchanged a few words. The guy continued on his way. The newspaper boy went on delivering.”

“Come on, Erik. That can’t be what happened. Smedsberg would have told us about it if it was.”

“Give me another theory, then.”

“I don’t know. But if they made contact and exchanged more than a few words, Smedsberg must be concealing something from us.”

“What would he be concealing from us if that’s the case?”

“Well…”

“Does he want to hide the fact that he spoke to a stranger? No. He’s an adult, and we are not his parents. Does he want to hide the fact that he was a bit drunk and doesn’t want us to remind him and others of that fact? No.”

“No.” Bergenhem repeated Winter’s word, knowing where he was heading.

“If this hypothetical reasoning leads us to wonder what he wanted to hide, it might have to do with his orientation,” Winter said.

“Yes,” Bergenhem agreed.

“So what is he trying to hide from us?” Winter inhaled again and looked at Bergenhem.

“That he’s gay,” said Bergenhem. “He made some kind of contact, this fake newspaper boy responded positively, maybe they were heading for Smedsberg’s dorm, and all hell broke loose on the way there.”

“But we’re living in the twentieth century in an enlightened society,” Winter said. “Or in the twenty-first, actually. And why would a young man want to conceal his orientation to the extent of shielding a person who tried to murder him?”

Bergenhem shrugged.

“Well, why would he?” asked Winter again.

“We’ll have to ask him,” said Bergenhem.

“We will. Why not? It would explain a lot.”

“One other thing,” Bergenhem said.

“Yes?”

“It’s connected.” Bergenhem looked at Winter. “Where are the newspapers?”

“Yes.”

“He was carrying a bundle of papers, but not a single subscriber received one and we haven’t found any.”

“We haven’t looked,” Winter said. “We’ve assumed that the papers were delivered.”

“That’s true, of course.”

“They might be around there somewhere. A pile of them. It would be useful if we could find them, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“But when we spoke to the newspaper delivery people, we’d taken Smedsberg’s word for it that he’d seen a newspaper boy at that particular time.” Winter scratched his nose. “Why do we believe that if we have reservations about other parts of his story?”

“So we need to find other witnesses who saw a fake newspaper boy at that place and at that time,” said Bergenhem.

“Yes, and we’ve already started on that.”

Bergenhem stroked his hand across his forehead, from left to right. His four-year-old daughter had already acquired the same habit.

“This line of reasoning could shed new light on the other attacks,” he said.

“Or cast a shadow over them,” Winter said. “Maybe we should backpedal, not get ahead of ourselves.”

Pedal, he thought the moment he’d said it. A bicycle. Perhaps the attacker had ridden up on a bike. That would explain the speed, the surprise. A silent bike. Soft tires.

“But just think,” Bergenhem continued. “Four attacks, no witnesses of the actual violence, no trace of the attacker. The victims didn’t see or hear anything, or not much at least.”

“Go on,” Winter said.

“Well, maybe they all made contact with the person who clubbed them down.”

“How? Did he pose as a newspaper boy every time?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps he posed as something else, somebody else, so as not to scare them.”

“Yes.”

“Have we checked this newspaper boy business in connection with the other cases?” Bergenhem asked.

“No. We haven’t gotten that far yet,” said Winter.

“It would be worth following up,” Bergenhem said. “We haven’t asked the people living in the areas concerned about newspapers.”

Yes, Winter thought. You don’t get answers to unasked questions.

“And then,” Bergenhem said, “there’s the business of the other victims’ sexual orientation.”

“All gay?”

Bergenhem made a gesture: Could-be-a-possibility-but-how-do-I-know.

“Young gays who spotted an interesting possibility and paid dearly for it?” asked Winter.

“Could be,” Bergenhem said.

“So they fell victim to a gay basher? Or several? A homophobe?”

“It’s possible,” said Bergenhem. “And I think there’s just one attacker.”

“And what’s the orientation of the culprit?” Winter asked.

“He’s not gay himself,” Bergenhem replied.

“Why not?”

“I don’t know,” said Bergenhem. “It doesn’t feel right.”

“Are gays nonviolent?”

“Gay bashers aren’t homosexual, are they?” said Bergenhem. “Is there such a thing as a gay gay basher?”

Winter didn’t respond.

“This attacker isn’t gay,” said Bergenhem. “I know we can’t rule anything out, but I already have a very strong feeling that it isn’t the case here.”

Winter waited for Bergenhem to say more.

“But it’s too early to think anything about anything,” Bergenhem said.

“Not at all,” said Winter. “This is the way we make progress. Talking it over. Dialogue. We have just talked ourselves into a possible motive.”

“And that is?”

“Hatred,” said Winter.

Bergenhem nodded.

“Let’s assume for the moment that these four young men don’t know one another,” said Winter. “They have no common background, nothing like that. But they are linked by their sexual orientation.”

“And the attacker hates gays,” said Bergenhem.

Winter nodded.

“But how did he know that his victims were gay? How could he be so sure?”

“He didn’t need to wait long,” said Winter. “Only long enough to be invited to go home with them.”

“I don’t know…”

“You were the one who started this line of reasoning,” Winter said.

“Was I?”

“Yes.”

“OK. But maybe the attacker knew all four of them.”

“How could he?”

“It could be that he has the same predilections. Maybe they knew each other from some club. The Let’s All Be Gay Club, I don’t know. A pub. Confidential contacts. In any case, it developed into a drama of passion.”

“With quite a lot of people involved,” Winter said.

“There could still be more,” said Bergenhem.

Winter scratched his nose again. It was possible that they were on entirely the wrong track. Then again, they might have made progress. But this was just a conversation, just words. Words were still the most important tools in existence, but everything they’d been talking about now needed to be followed up with questions and more questions and actions and visits to streets and staircases and new interviews and telephone interviews and reading after reading after reading after run-through after run-through.

“There’s another one as well,” said Winter, “and it has nothing to do with sexual orientation.”

“What’s that?”

“If there really was a fake newspaper boy there, if we can get Smedsberg’s claim corroborated by others, how could this person have known that he would be able to operate that morning undisturbed?”

Bergenhem nodded.

“He must have known the real one was indisposed. Otherwise the real one and the fake one might have bumped into each other. But she didn’t show up. How could he have known that?”