“Tell me about Mats,” he said.

Open questions.

“What do you want me to say?”

That soon closed.

“How did you get custody of him?”

“Don’t ask me!”

“You offered to take care of him?”

We’ll go on to leading questions instead.

“It just happened, I guess.”

Which work well, and hence are just as worthless as ever.

“Where did he come from?”

Carlström didn’t answer. Winter noticed the moment of pain in his eyes again.

“Did he have any parents?” Winter asked.

“No,” said Carlström.

“What had happened?”

“They were not worthy to be his parents,” said Carlström.

That was a very odd expression to come from this man.

“Not if you can believe the woman from the Child Support Agency,” said Carlström.

Who entrusted a young boy to the care of a lone man, Winter thought. Possibly a psychologically damaged and scared little boy.

“Have you always lived alone, Carlström?”

“Eh?”

“Were you living without a woman when Mats was here?”

Carlström looked at him.

“I’ve never been married,” he said.

“That’s not what I asked,” said Winter.

“A woman was living with me,” said Carlström.

“When? When Mats was here?”

Carlström nodded.

“The entire time?”

“In the beginning,” he said.

Winter waited with his follow-up question. Carlström waited. Winter asked a different question: “What had happened to Mats?”

“I don’t know details like that.”

“What did the woman from the Child Support Agency say?”

“Somebody had… raped him.”

“Who? His father?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” said Carlström.

“It co-”

“

I don’t want to talk about it.”

There was a loud crackle in the wood-burning stove, a birch log had protested, the sound underlined Carlström’s words.

Winter glanced at Ringmar, who shook his head almost imperceptibly.

“Was Mats, er, exposed to anything while he was here?” asked Winter, and noticed that Carlström gave another start. “What I mean is, did anybody in the village hurt him in any way? Interfere with him in some way or other?”

“I don’t know,” said Carlström.

“Anything. Anything at all.”

“So that now he’s getting his own back, is that what you mean? Attacking people in Gothenburg? Is that what you’re saying?”

“No,” said Winter.

“But is it what you’re thinking?”

“The boys who were clubbed down weren’t even born when Mats was a little boy,” said Winter.

“No, precisely,” said Carlström.

But you were, Winter thought. And Georg Smedsberg.

Nobody answered the door at Smedsberg’s house. It was empty, black. It stood like a crumbling fortress on the plain north of Carlström’s farm.

“Maybe he’s playing bridge,” said Halders.

“Where?” said Ringmar.

There was nothing around them but darkness, a sky with pale stars that seemed to be covered by dark veils that only allowed thin wisps of light through. They could hear a humming noise that could be traffic from a long way away or Smedsberg’s ventilation system or just the wind itself that hadn’t come up against any resistance out there.

They went back to Halders’s car and headed south. Their headlights clove through the fields, shone up heavenward when Halders drove up a little hill, the only one for miles around. Nobody in the car spoke; all were deep in thought. Winter felt cold, especially after the conversation with Natanael Carlström, who had watched them drive away without waving.

Winter could see flakes from heaven through the window.

“It’s snowing,” he said.

“The day before the day,” said Halders.

“It’ll be Christmas Eve in two hours,” said Ringmar.

“Merry Christmas, gentlemen,” said Halders.

He parked outside police headquarters, which had Advent candles in every other window.

“Now that really is a neat way to illustrate the shortfall in the police budget,” Halders had said when they set off and it was already dark. “Pretty and neat and symmetrical, but half baked.”

Now he was driving home, to Lunden. They watched his rear lights disappear into the snow.

Winter looked at Ringmar.

“Leave your car here, Bertil. I’ll drive you home.”

Home, Ringmar thought.

They drove in silence. Winter waited while Ringmar walked to his front door. Bertil seemed to be dressed in gold thanks to the ridiculous glare from the neighbor’s lights. Winter watched Ringmar close the door behind him, and immediately got out of his car and walked up the yellow brick road to the door.

Ringmar opened it immediately.

“Are you alone in the house, Bertil?”

Ringmar burst out laughing, as if Winter had said something funny.

“Come back home with me instead. We can talk and have a beer. And celebrate Christmas. I have a guest room.”

They walked back along Ringmar’s path. The neighbor’s Christmas decorations swayed in the wind.

“He’s opened the pearly gates,” said Ringmar, gesturing toward the neighbor’s garden.

36

THE WALL CLOCK IN THE KITCHEN SHOWED IT WAS PAST MIDNIGHT; it was Christmas Eve now. The shepherds would be watching their flocks.

“Merry Christmas, Erik.”

“Merry Christmas, Bertil.”

Ringmar raised his glass to the skies. Winter had put Paul Simon on the CD player in the kitchen:

She’s so light, she’s so free, I’m tight, well that’s me. Ringmar’s head swayed from side to side in time with the palliative music.

“Do you really want to hear about it?” he asked.

“With you celebrating Christmas on your own, without your family? Don’t insult me, Bertil.”

“You’re alone, too.”

“That was by choice, or necessity. I’m off as soon as we’ve cracked the case.”

“When will that be?”

“Soon,” said Winter.

“Martin got it into his head that I, well, did something,” said Ringmar.

Paul sang:

It’s cold, sometimes you can’t catch your breath, it’s cold.

Winter finished off his beer and waited.

“Did you hear what I said?” Ringmar asked.

“What do you mean, Bertil? Did something?”

“The reason why he’s gone into hiding.”

“What does he say you did?”

“I can’t tell you,” said Ringmar. “I can’t bring myself to say it.”

“When did you discover whatever it is that you can’t bring yourself to say?”

Was he being brutal? No. Bertil was too close a friend.

“Yesterday. Birgitta called. Finally.”

“And what did she say?”

Bertil was asleep, or at least he was in bed in the spare room. An hour earlier he had been crying his eyes out over Winter’s kitchen table. Winter was standing in the balcony doorway, smoking. There was snow down below. Tomorrow morning he wouldn’t be trying to build a snowman with Elsa.

Silence reigned. It was as if everybody was sleeping the sleep of the pious before being nice to everybody on Christmas Eve morning, as tradition demanded.

Winter closed the balcony door and returned to his desk and the laptop. Paul Simon had accompanied him into the living room.

We think it’s easy, sometimes it’s easy, but it’s not easy. He stared at his notes that flowed in straight lines, like heartbeats that had ceased to beat: They were straight, devoid of life.

They had spoken. Then Bertil had immersed himself in the case again. The cases. Do you really want to? He’d seen from Bertil’s intensity that it was necessary.

“It could be the foster son,” Ringmar had said. “He’s been the victim of something that has to do with one of these students. Smedsberg. Or it could be the old man. Georg, is that his name?”

“Yes,” said Winter.