“And perhaps also something from the Skarin boy. Probably.”

“Are they trophies, Erik?”

“I don’t know. No. Not in that way.”

“Are the things he’s taken similar to things he has himself?” said Birgersson, putting down the cigarette and rocking backward and forward in his swivel chair, which emitted a whining sound.

“That’s a very good question,” said Winter.

“That somebody could answer, if only we could find a somebody,” said Birgersson.

“There are the children.”

“True. But I was thinking of other grown-ups. Grown-up witnesses.” He contemplated Winter, Winter’s Corps, Winter’s shirt unbuttoned at the neck, and his tie that looked like a noose. “Are we dealing with a grown-up here, Erik?”

“That’s a very good question.”

“A child in a grown-up body,” said Birgersson.

“It’s not that simple,” said Winter.

“Who said it was simple? It’s damned complicated,” said Birgersson. He suddenly turned around, as if he could feel the beams on the back of his neck from the two stars that seemed to be nailed to poles towering up over Lunden behind Ullevi Stadium. He turned back again.

“This is an ugly mess,” he said. “You know I think such expressions are unprofessional and I don’t like them, but I’m going to use it in this case all the same.” He lit another cigarette and pointed it at Winter. “Nail the bastard before something even worse happens.”

28

ANGELA CALLED AS WINTER WAS LEAVING BIRGERSSON’S OFFICE. He saw his own home number on the display.

“Yes?”

“Erik, the nursery-school manager just called. Our nursery school, that is.”

“Is Elsa at home?”

“Yes, yes, thank God.”

“What did she want?”

“They saw a strange person hanging around.”

“OK, do you have her phone number handy?”

He called immediately on his mobile, still only halfway to his office.

He was sitting in her office, which was decorated with children’s Christmas drawings. It wasn’t the first time he’d been in this room, but the first time on business like this. The only people in the nursery school were the cleaning staff. The silence was strange, almost unnatural for rooms that were normally echoing with children’s voices. He’d been here before in the evening, for parents’ meetings, but then the quietness had been different, a grown-up murmur.

“Somebody filming them,” Winter said.

“Yes. A delayed reaction, you might say. Lisbeth started to think about it when one of the fathers picking up his kid started taking video footage,” said the manager, Lena Meyer.

“Where exactly was it?”

“As they were crossing the soccer field.”

“Where was he standing?”

He heard a timid knock on the door behind him.

“This should be her now. Come in!”

Lisbeth Augustsson opened the door. She nodded to Winter-she’d spoken to him many times, but they’d only exchanged a few words. She was about twenty-two, possibly twenty-five, hair in thick brown plaits, red ribbons. She sat down on the chair beside Winter.

“Where exactly was he standing when he was filming?” Winter asked.

She tried to describe the spot.

“He followed us too,” she said.

“Still filming?”

“Yes, it looked like it.”

“Did you recognize him?”

“No.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Well, I can’t be certain, obviously. I didn’t see him for all that long either. And he had a camera in front of his face.” She smiled.

“Nobody you’d seen before?”

“No.”

“What made you report this to Lena?” Winter asked.

“Well, there was this business about the girl who said she’d, er, spoken to somebody. Ellen Sköld. That makes you a bit suspicious.” She looked at Lena Meyer. “We’re always careful, of course.”

She knew nothing about the other children. Not much about Simon Waggoner, not yet. Winter and his colleagues wouldn’t be able to keep that secret for much longer.

“Have you ever seen anyone filming you before?” Winter asked. “When you were out on an excursion somewhere? Or here at the nursery school?”

“No, I can’t say I have. It was just today.”

“Please tell me exactly what happened, as accurately as you can,” said Winter.

“There’s not a lot to say. I looked up once and saw him but didn’t really think about it. I mean, you often see people with video cameras nowadays, don’t you? But then I looked again, and he was still there, filming-apparently filming us.” She threw her hands up. “And when he seemed to notice that I’d seen him, that I was looking at his camera, he turned it away and pretended to be filming the buildings on the other side of the street, or whatever.”

“Maybe he was,” said Winter.

“Was what?”

“Filming the buildings. Maybe he wasn’t pretending.”

“It looked like he was.”

“What happened next?” Winter asked. “Did you continue watching him?”

“Yes. I watched for a bit longer, but we had the children to think about. And he turned away after only a few seconds and walked off.”

“In which direction?”

“Back toward Linnéplatsen.”

“Did you see him from the side? Or from behind?”

“From behind, I think. I didn’t watch very long. I mean, we had other things to think about. But then I remembered it again, later.”

“Can you describe what he looked like?” Winter asked.

“Well… He was sort of normal looking. The camera was in the way so you couldn’t see his face. His jacket was blue, I think, and trousers, I assume.” She gave a laugh. “He wasn’t wearing a skirt, I would’ve remembered that, and, well-that’s about it.” She was still thinking. Winter had sat thousands of times with witnesses trying to remember. Everything they said could be accurate, but it could also be totally misleading. Colors that were definitely green could be yellow, six-foot men could be dwarfs, women could be men, men women, trousers could be… skirts. Cars could be mopeds and 100 percent certainly dogs could turn out to be camels. No. No camels had cropped up in any of his cases, not yet.

Children could be children. Cease to be children, disappear. Cease to exist. Or never be children again, never be whole persons again.

“He had a cap!” she said suddenly.

“You said before he had a camera in front of his head.”

“In front of his face. I said in front of his face. And not all the time I was watching him. I remember now that you could see the cap over the top of the camera. And I saw it as well when he turned to film the buildings on the other side, if that’s what he was doing.”

“What kind of a cap?”

“Well, it wasn’t a Nike cap. Not one of those baseball things.”

Winter thought about Fredrik Halders: He often wore a baseball cap over his shaven skull. Nike, or Kangol.

“More like an old man’s cap,” she said.

“An old man’s cap?” said Winter.

“Yes. One of those gray or beige things old men always seem to wear.”

Winter nodded.

“Yes, one of them,” she said. “Gray, I think, but I’m not sure. A sort of gray pattern.”

“Was he an elderly man?” Winter pointed to himself. “Like me?”

She smiled again, big teeth, perfectly shaped, white; Nordic, if you could call them that.

“I really couldn’t say,” she said. “But he could have been about your age. Despite the cap. He walked normally, he wasn’t fat or anything like that, he didn’t seem old. He wasn’t an old man.”

“Would you recognize him if you saw him again?”

“I don’t know. But if he was wearing the same clothes, and carrying a video camera-well, I might.”

“Have you spoken to anybody else about this?” Winter asked. “Apart from Lena.” He nodded in the direction of Lena Meyer.

“No.”

“How many staff were out this afternoon with the children?”

“Er, three, including me.”