“In the hall where I lived we had a girl whose diet consisted exclusively of baked beans, and she used to eat them straight out of the can, with a spoon, without heating them up. It made me feel sick.”

“Don’t baked beans always have that effect?” wondered Halders.

Djanali breathed in the aroma again.

“Isn’t it strange how we have memory chips that kick in as soon as we come across a particular smell?” she said. “That smell is familiar, and so all the memories come flooding back.”

“I hope it doesn’t make you feel too ill,” said Halders. “We’re out on business.”

“But do you know what I mean?”

“Only too well,” said Halders. “There are things I thought I’d forgotten all about, but now they come tumbling out, just like you said.”

“I hope they don’t influence you too much,” said Djanali with a smile.

“Speaking of that girl’s diet,” said Halders. “You should have seen what me and my friends used to eat.”

“I’m glad I didn’t,” said Djanali, and she rang the bell of the hall where Gustav Smedsberg had lived before transferring to Chalmers. Jakob Stillman had a room on the floor directly above, when he wasn’t in Sahlgren Hospital. He’d soon be back here again.

Aryan Kaite lived in the dorm next door. That didn’t necessarily mean that the boys knew one another, or would even recognize one another if they met in the street. This is a pretty anonymous environment, Djanali thought. Everybody minds his or her own business and studies and occasionally slips out into the communal kitchen to fix a bite to eat, then slips back into their room with a plate, and the only time they look at anybody else is when there’s a party. Then again, there’s always a party. I remember in my day it was Saturday every day of the week, every week. Maybe it’s still like that today. If it’s always Saturday, good for them. For me nowadays it always seems to be Monday. Well, maybe not anymore.

Halders read the list of nameplates.

“Maybe one of these people has a grudge against his neighbor?” he said.

“Hmm.”

“Here comes one of them,” he said, as a girl appeared on the other side of the glass door. Halders held up his ID, and she opened it.

“I remember Gustav,” she said.

They were sitting in the communal kitchen. Halders’s and Djanali’s memories were all around them, a swarm of baked beans. Everything was familiar, time had stood still in there just as it had in all other student halls in every city in the country. It smelled like it always had. If I opened the fridge door, I’d be back in my prime, Djanali thought.

“So he was clubbed down?” asked the girl.

“No,” said Halders. “He was attacked, but he escaped uninjured, so he is a very important witness for us.”

“But… why are you here, then?”

“He lived here not long ago.”

“So what?”

It wasn’t an impertinent question. She doesn’t look the impertinent type, Halders thought.

“This whole business is so serious that we’re trying to pin down everybody the victims might have come into contact with,” said Djanali.

“But you said Gustav wasn’t a victim?”

“He could easily have been,” said Djanali.

“Why did he move out of here?” asked Halders.

“I don’t know,” said the girl, but he could see she wasn’t telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

“He didn’t exactly trade up by moving to the Chalmers dorm,” said Halders.

She shrugged.

“Did he have a dispute with anybody here?” Halders asked.

“A dispute? What kind of a dispute?”

“Anything from a minor difference of opinion to all-out war with air raids and antiaircraft fire,” said Halders. “A dispute. Some sort of dispute.”

“No.”

“I’m only asking because this is such a serious case,” he said. “Or series of cases.”

She nodded.

“Is there any special reason why Gustav moved out of here?” Halders asked again.

“Have you asked him?”

“We’re asking you. Now.”

“Couldn’t he tell you himself?”

Neither Halders nor Djanali said anything. They just kept on looking at the girl, who looked out of the window that was letting in the mild November light. She turned to look at them.

“I didn’t know Gustav all that well,” she said.

Halders nodded.

“Not at all, really.”

Halders nodded again.

“But there was something,” she said, and stared out of the window again, as if looking for that something so that she could show it to them.

“What, exactly?” Halders asked.

“Well, a dispute, to use your word.” She looked at Halders. “Not quite antiaircraft fire, but there were a few occasions-several occasions-when he yelled into the telephone, and sometimes there was shouting, sort of, coming from his room.”

“What kind of shouting?”

“Well, just shouting. You couldn’t hear what they were shouting. It was just a few occasions.”

“Who is ‘they’?” asked Djanali.

“Gustav, and the person in there with him.”

“Who was that?”

“I don’t know.”

“Was it a he or a she?”

“A he. A guy.”

“Was there more than one?”

“Not as far as I could see.”

“You mean you saw him?”

“I don’t know for sure if it was the one who was shouting. But a guy did come out of his room shortly after I’d heard them shouting. I was on my way to the kitchen and he came out of the room and headed for the stairs.” She nodded in the direction of the landing. “From the corridor.”

“Did you see him on several occasions?”

“No. Just once.”

“Who lives in Gustav’s old room now?” asked Djanali.

“A girl,” she said. “I’ve hardly met her either. She’s only just moved in.”

“Would you recognize the guy who came out of Gustav’s room?” asked Halders.

“I really don’t know,” she said, looking at Aneta Djanali. “It’s not so easy. It was just the color of his skin. Plus there are lots of them living here.”

“Now you’ve lost me,” said Aneta Djanali.

“Just because people have the same colored skin, that doesn’t mean that they look alike,” said the girl, and started gesticulating. “This has always bothered me. The fact that people’s appearance gets tied up with the color of their skin.” She seemed to smile, briefly. “And it’s not just us, in the so-called Western world. There are people in China who can’t tell one white person from another.” She nodded at Aneta Djanali. “I guess you’re familiar with this. Or have thought about it, at least.”

“So this guy who came out of Gustav Smedsberg’s room-you’re saying that he wasn’t white?” asked Djanali.

“No, he looked like you. He was black. Didn’t I say that?”

He saw a flash of sunlight as he emerged from the apartment building where he lived, a reflection. It was an ugly building, but the flash of sun was beautiful.

Other people said that the sun comes from the sky, but he knew better. The sun comes from somewhere else, where it’s warm and quiet and everybody is nice to one another. A place where there’s nobody who… who does things people shouldn’t do. Where children dance, and grown-ups dance alongside them, and play and laugh.

He suddenly felt sweat on his brow, but it wasn’t the sun-it wasn’t warm enough.

Since he’d been… forced, yes, actually forced to stay away from work, things had gotten worse.

Pacing around and around the apartment.

The films? No, not now. Yes. No. Yes, yes.

Things had gotten worse.

He went to the chest of drawers and took out the things that had belonged to the children and held them in his hand, one after another. That amusing little silver thing that was a bird. He spent ages wondering what kind of bird it was. A canary, perhaps? It certainly wasn’t a Rotty, ha ha.

The green ball was also fun, soft and terrific for bouncing. It didn’t look like it would be a good bouncer, and felt very soft when you picked it up-but boy, could it bounce!