“Calm down now, Erik.”

“I am calm.”

“What’s the reason?” Ringmar asked.

“We don’t know yet.”

Ringmar eased off. He recognized Winter’s fervent involvement, and his own.

“Perhaps it’s easier to abduct a child if you’ve been keeping it under observation for some time,” said Ringmar.

“Perhaps.”

“Instead of just marching up and wheeling the stroller away. I mean, the mother might have been within reach.”

Winter nodded. He tried to picture the situation but wasn’t very successful. There were too many people in the way.

“For Christ’s sake, Erik, we could be dealing with an abducted child here.” Ringmar rubbed away at his eye. “Or I suppose it’s possible that the boy woke up and staggered off all by himself?” He peered out from underneath his rubbing. “It’s a possibility.”

“We have lots of officers searching,” said Winter.

“Down by the canal?”

“There as well.”

“Do you have a picture of the boy?”

Winter pointed at his desk, where a little photograph must have been lying all along.

“We’re busy making copies,” Winter said.

“You realize what will happen once the wanted notice becomes public?” Ringmar said.

“Goodbye secrecy,” said Winter.

“And all the rest follows, like it or not.”

“Just as well,” said Winter.

“The media will give us hell,” said Ringmar.

“Can’t be helped.”

“I get the impression, Erik, that… that you’re looking forward to it.”

Winter said nothing.

“This is going to be some Christmas,” said Ringmar. “You’re on your way to Spain, I gather?”

“I was. Angela and Elsa are flying tomorrow. I’ll follow when I follow.”

“I see.”

“What would you have done, Bertil?”

“It depends what we suspect this is all about. If it’s the worst-case scenario, then there’s no question about it,” said Ringmar.

“We’ll have to interrogate the children soon,” said Winter.

30

THE APARTMENT WAS BEING HAUNTED BY THE GHOST OF TOM Joad when Winter stood in the hall with his overcoat half off and heard the sound of Elsa’s feet on the way to greet him. Angela dropped something hard on the bedroom floor and the volume was high and piercing: The highway is alive tonight, but where it’s headed everybody knows, another bang from the bedroom, Elsa’s face lit up, Winter was down on his knees.

It had started snowing outside. Flakes were still melting on his shoulders.

“Would you like to come outside with me and see the snow, Elsa?”

“Yes, yes, yes, yes!”

The pavement was white, and the park.

“We make snowman,” said Elsa.

They tried, and managed to make a small one. The snow wasn’t really wet enough.

“Have carrot for nose,” said Elsa.

“It would have to be a little one.”

“Can Daddy get?”

“Let’s use this twig.”

“Snowman breaking!” she said as she pressed the twig into the middle of the round face.

“We’ll have to make another head,” he said.

They were back home after half an hour. Elsa’s cheeks were as red as apples. Angela came out into the hall. Springsteen was singing on repeat about the dark side of humanity, still loud:

It was a small town bank it was a mess, well I had a gun you know the rest. Angela’s songs had become his as well.

“Snow!” shouted Elsa, and ran into her room to draw a snowman like the real one she’d just made.

“And I’m going to take all this away from her,” said Angela, looking at him with a faint smile. “Tomorrow we’ll fly away from the first white Christmas of her life.”

“It will disappear during the night,” he said.

“I don’t know if that was pessimistic or optimistic,” she said.

“Everything depends on the context, doesn’t it? Positive, negative.”

He hung up his overcoat and wiped a few drops of water off his neck. He undid another shirt button.

“Where’s your tie?” she asked.

“A guy out there borrowed it,” he said, gesturing with his thumb at the park outside.

“A silk tie. Must be the best-dressed snowman in town.”

“Clothes make the man,” said Winter, going into the kitchen and pouring out a whiskey.

“Would you like one?”

She shook her head.

“You don’t have to go,” he said. “You could stay at home. I’m not forcing you to go.”

“I thought that this afternoon as well,” she said. “But then I thought about your mom. Among other things.”

“There’s nothing stopping her from coming here.”

“Not this Christmas, Erik.”

“Do you understand me?” he asked.

“What am I supposed to say to that?”

“Do you understand why I can’t go with you now?”

“Yes,” she said. “But you’re not the only person in Gothenburg who can interrogate a suspect. Or lead an investigation.”

“I’ve never claimed that I am.”

“But you still have to stay here?”

“It’s a question of finishing something off. And it’s only just begun. I don’t know what it is. But I have to follow it through to the end. Nobody else can do that.”

“You’re not the only one on the case.”

“I don’t mean it like that. I’m not talking about me as a lone wolf. But if I break off now, I won’t be able to come back to it. I’ll… lose it.”

“And what does that mean? What will you lose?”

“I don’t know.”

She looked at the window that was being pelted with snowflakes hurled by strong gusts of wind. Springsteen was singing, again and again:

I threw my robe on in the morning.

“Something terrible may have happened,” said Winter.

“Have you appealed to the public for information?”

“Yes.”

“Ah, that reminds me, your contact at the newspaper, Bülow, called.”

“I’m not surprised. He’ll call again.”

“Can you hear the phone ringing? Of course you can’t. That’s because I’ve pulled the plug out.”

“I can hear ‘The Ghost of Tom Joad,’ ” he said.

“Good.” She made a gesture. “Is this case going to take up the whole Christmas holiday?”

“That’s why I’m staying behind, Angela.” He took a drink of whiskey now; a cold heat passed down his throat. “I can’t say any more than that. You know me. Don’t you? I can do my job or I can pack it in. Either or. I can’t do it by halves.”

“Why bother to make plans for a vacation at all, then? It’s pointless. It would be better to work all the time, eighteen hours a day, all year round, year after year. Always. Anything else would be half-assed, as you say.”

“That’s not what I’m saying.”

“OK, OK. I understand that you have to keep going now. That things are happening all the time now. That what has happened to the little boy could be horrendous. Or is horrendous.” She was still looking at the snow on the window. “But it never stops, Erik.” She turned to look at him. “Horrible things happen all the time. And you are always there, in the thick of it. It never stops, never.”

He said nothing.

I did take six months’ paternity leave, he thought. That might have been the best time of my life. The only time of real value.

“I’ve been looking forward to this trip,” she said.

What should he say? If we miss one Christmas together, there’ll be a thousand more to come? How did he feel himself? What did it mean to him, not spending the special days with Angela? And Elsa?

How many days were they talking about?

“I might be down there with you the day after,” he said.

“The day after the day?”

“Stay here, Angela. We’ll go there together the moment all this is over.”

“Sometimes when I think about you and your job it’s like you’re a sort of artist,” she said. “No fixed working hours, you choose yourself when and how you work, you sort of direct the work yourself. Do you understand, Erik? You… create your work yourself.”

He didn’t respond. There was something in what she said. It wasn’t possible to explain it, nobody could. But there was something in it. It was a frightening thought.