“How do you know there was a break-in, then?”

“Eh?”

“How do you know there was a break-in if there wasn’t anything to steal?”

“You see that kind of thing if you’ve had the same cowshed all your life. You see if somebody’s been in there.” He washed the bun down with a mouthful of coffee. “You see that kind of thing,” he said again.

“Really.”

“Oh yes.”

“But nothing was taken?”

“A few things, but that doesn’t matter.” The old man was staring into space now. “That’s not the point.”

He said nothing,

“The point is that you don’t want anybody prowling around when you’re not there. Or are fast asleep in bed.”

“I can understand that.”

The old man looked at him, his eyes pointing in different directions.

“You don’t look all that well,” he said.

“I’ve been, er, been sick.”

“What’s been up with you?”

“Nothing serious.”

“Flu?”

“Something like that.”

“So you came here to get a whiff of cow shit.”

“Yes.”

“Well, all you need to do is breathe in deeply,” said the old man, who snorted again, although he might have been laughing.

“I have.”

“Take as much as you like.”

He raised his cup to his mouth again but couldn’t bring himself to drink. The damp air in the kitchen made him shudder. The old man hadn’t had time to light a fire after his work in the fields. God only knows what he’d been doing out there.

“I think I have a few things here still.”

The old man didn’t respond, didn’t seem to have heard.

“I was thinking about it the other day, and I remembered a few things.”

“What kind of things?”

“Toys.”

“Toys?” The old man refilled his cup, the black sludge that could kill. “What do you want toys for?” He looked hard at his visitor. “Don’t tell me you have a kid?”

No answer.

“Do you have a kid?” the old man asked again.

“No.”

“I didn’t think so.”

“They are my… memories,” he said. “My things.”

“What are these toys you’re on about?”

“They’re in a box, I think.”

“Oh Lord, for God’s sake,” said the old man. “If there’s anything it’s upstairs, and I haven’t been up there since Ruth died. “ He stared at his visitor again. “She asked about you.”

“I’ll go up and take a look,” he said, getting to his feet.

The stairs creaked just like they used to.

He went into the room that was once his.

It smelled of nothing, as if this part of the house no longer contained any memories. As if everything had disappeared when the old man stopped using the upstairs and made up a bed in the small room behind the kitchen. But things hadn’t disappeared, he now thought. Nothing disappears. They are still there, and they’re getting bigger and stronger and more awful.

The faint afternoon light was trying to force its way in through the little window at the gable end. He switched on the light, which was a naked forty-watt bulb hanging from the ceiling. He looked around, but there wasn’t much to see. A bed that he hadn’t slept in. An armchair he remembered. Three wooden chairs. A wobbly table. Three overcoats were hanging on a rail to the right.

There was sawdust on the floor, in three little piles. There were a few cardboard boxes in the far corner under the window, and he opened the one on the left. Underneath a few tablecloths and handkerchiefs he discovered the two things he was looking for: He picked them up, tucked them under his left arm, and carried them down to his car.

The old man came out.

“So you found something?”

“I’ll be going now,” he said.

“When will I see you again, then?” asked the old man.

Never, he thought.

Winter parked behind the building that contained half the shops in Doktor Fries Square. It wasn’t his first time here. Once he’d had a toothache so bad that he had had double vision for a few seconds before getting out of his car. When Dan, his dentist, had touched the tooth responsible Winter had felt for his gun. Not really. But the tentative touch by the dentist had almost made him lose consciousness.

This time he wasn’t going to visit the dentist. That might have been better. Young men being viciously attacked was worse.

The square was practically deserted. This could be the 1960s, he thought. That’s what it looks like here. I must have been four years old, maybe three. I must have been here as a three-year-old. Dad’s dentist had his office here even then. It must have been around here, surely?

His mobile vibrated in the inside pocket of his overcoat.

He looked at the screen.

“Hello Mom.”

“You saw my number, Erik?”

“As usual.”

“Where are you now?”

“At Doktor Fries Square.”

“Doktor Fries Square? Are you at the dentist’s?”

“No.” He stepped to one side to avoid two young women, each of them pushing a stroller. “This is where Dad used to go to the dentist’s, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, I think so. Why do you ask?”

“It doesn’t matter.” He could hear the rustling in the mobile all the way from Nueva Andalucía to 1960s Gothenburg. Perhaps she was reading a newspaper at the same time. “What’s it like on the sunshine coast?”

“Cloudy,” she said. “It’s been cloudy all day, and yesterday as well.”

“That must be awful,” he said. “Cloudy on the Costa del Sol.”

“Yes.”

“What’s the Spanish for Cloudy Coast?” he asked, taking out his pack of Corps and lighting a cigarillo. It tasted like a part of the early winter surrounding him, a dark taste filled with heavy aromas.

“I don’t know,” she said.

“You’ve been living down there for years and years and you still don’t know the Spanish word for cloud?”

“I don’t think there is one,” she said.

He laughed out loud.

“Did you know that the Japanese don’t have a word for blue?” he asked.

“Ah, I know the Spanish for that,” she said. “It’s azul.”

“El cielo azul,” said Winter, gazing up at the gray sky overhead.

“The sun is just beginning to break through over the sea,” she said. “This very minute, as we’re speaking.”

He knew what it looked like. Some years previously he had spent a few days in a hot Marbella in early autumn while his father was dying in the local hospital.

One morning he’d left the breakfast table at Gaspar’s and walked down to the beach under a leaden sky, and in the space of a few seconds the clouds over the Mediterranean had been torn apart and the sun swept over the water all the way to Africa.

“Was there something special you wanted to talk about?” he asked.

“Christmas,” she said. “I’ve been thinking about it again. Will you be able to come here for Christmas? You know I’ve asked you before.”

“I’m not sure if it will be possible.”

“Think about Elsa. She’d enjoy it so much. And Angela.”

“What about me?” he said.

“You too, Erik. You would too.”

“I really don’t know what the work situation is for both of us,” he said. “It’s not quite clear what will happen on Angela’s ward.”

“There must be other doctors, surely?”

“There are not many available when it’s a big holiday.”

“Make sure that Angela can get away,” she said. “What does she say about coming to Spain?”

“Can’t you come home instead?” he asked.

“I’ll be coming in the spring. But it would be such fun to celebrate Christmas with you all down here. We’ve never done that.”

“Have you asked Lotta?”

His sister made regular visits to his mother, with her two teenaged daughters.

“She and the girls are probably going to do something with some close friends.”

“What’s his name?” asked Winter, thinking about how his sister was trying to find a new man after her grim divorce.

“She didn’t say anything about a him.”

“OK, I’ll look into it.”

“Don’t interfere in her life, Erik.”