“He might have been,” said Carlström. “Who can keep track of that?”

“What did his wife think about it?”

“Who?”

“Gerd. His wife.”

“I don’t know.”

“What does that mean?” asked Winter.

“What I said.”

“How did you know Gerd?” Winter asked.

Carlström didn’t answer. Winter repeated the question. Carlström coughed. Winter could see that he wasn’t going to say anything else about Gerd, not at the moment.

“Would Mats have been up to attacking those boys?” he asked. “As some sort of revenge? An indirect revenge? In return for what the others had done to him?”

“That sounds crazy,” said Carlström,

“Has he ever said anything along those lines? That he wanted to get someone back?”

“He never said much at all,” said Carlström, and Winter detected a touch of tenderness in his voice. Unless it was tiredness. “He didn’t want to say much. Avoided anything hard. That’s the way he was when he first came here.”

“Have you spoken to him this Christmas?” Winter asked.

“No.”

Winter said good night. He checked his watch again. Almost midnight now. He could still hear Carlström’s voice echoing in his ears.

Carlström could have done it, Winter thought. He could have taken revenge on old man Smedsberg, for instance, and everything associated with him. For something Smedsberg had done to Mats. Or to himself.

There was something else Carlström had just said. Winter hadn’t thought about it at the time, but now, a minute later, he was going over the conversation again, in his head.

He didn’t want to say much, Carlström had said about his foster son. That’s the way he was when he first came here. There was something else.

Avoided anything hard. What did he mean by anything hard?

Winter dialed Carlström’s number again and listened to the ringing. This time nobody answered in the house in the flats.

Winter hung up and thought. He lifted it again and dialed Mats Jerner’s number. He listened to the ringing just as he’d listened to the ringing at Jerner’s foster father’s house.

He hung up, went to the kitchen, and made a cup of double espresso. He drank the drug while standing by the kitchen window. The courtyard down below was glistening from a thin layer of snow and frost. The outside thermometer showed minus four degrees. The light from the Christmas tree in the courtyard shone all the way up to Winter’s apartment. He was reminded of Bertil’s neighbor, the mad illuminator, and of Bertil. He took his cup back into the study and called Bertil again, but there was no answer from any of the numbers. He left a message on Bertil’s mobile. He called Police Operations Center but they had no information about Ringmar. Nor any other kind of information. No car accident, no boy, no abductor.

He could hear his stomach. Some Thai curry the day before, or whenever it was, and since then nothing but whiskey and coffee. He went back to the kitchen and made an omelette with chopped tomatoes, onion, and quick-roasted paprika. The telephone rang as he was eating. He could reach the kitchen telephone from the table, and answered with his mouth full.

“Is that Winter? Erik Winter?”

“Chllm… mmm… yes.”

Winter could hear the sound of an engine-the call seemed to be coming from a car.

“Ah. Good evening, er, good morning, er, Janne Alinder here. Linné-”

“Hello, Janne.”

“Er, we’ve just come back from the country. No mobile in the world gets through to our cottage. I saw you’d been trying to contact me.”

“Good that you called.”

“No problem. We had a some trouble with the electricity in the cottage, so we had to pack up and go home in the end. I’m not a hundred percent sober, but luckily the wife is.”

“Can you remember if Lena Sköld mentioned anything about her girl saying that the man whose car she sat in stuttered?” Winter asked.

“Stuttered? No, I can’t remember anything about that off the top of my head.”

“Or if she spoke about a parrot?”

“A what?”

“A parrot. We’ve just sent out a message to all the Gothenburg police stations about that. We think the abductor had an ornament or something hanging from his rearview mirror. A parrot. A bird in any case. Green, or green and red.”

“A parrot? No. Have the witnesses seen a parrot or something?”

“The children have,” said Winter.

“Hmm.”

“It feels reliable,” said Winter.

“You’re certainly doing overtime on this case,” said Alinder.

“You will be too,” said Winter. “Right now, and maybe more later. If you’re prepared to.”

“Overtime? Of course, for Christ’s sake-I know what’s involved.” Winter could hear a slight slurring, but Alinder wasn’t so drunk that he wasn’t thinking straight. “What do you want me to do?”

“Check your notes one more time.”

“Have you checked with any of the others?”

“I’ve tried to contact Josefsson at Härlanda, but I haven’t gotten ahold of him yet.”

“When do you want this done?”

“As soon as possible.”

“I can instruct my chauffeur to drive me to Tredje Långgatan. Even if I can’t find the station, she will.”

The silence after the phone call almost took him by surprise. He stood up and shoveled the remains of the Basque omelette that had been his Christmas dinner into the trash. It was past midnight now. He turned on one of Angela’s CDs that had now become his too. He opened the balcony door, breathed in the night air, and contemplated the Christmas tree and its star that seemed to be reflecting images of the city all around. The stars in the bright sky. Away in a manger, no crib for a bed. He thought about Carlström, his barn, and lit a cigarillo, the music from U2 behind him, delicate synthesizers, the words,

Heaven on Earth, we need it now.

The telephone rang.

42

WINTER RECOGNIZED NATANAEL CARLSTRÖM’S BREATHING, HEARD the rush of air in the wood-burning stove, the wind howling around the godforsaken house, all that solitary silence.

“Sorry to disturb you so late,” said Carlström.

“I’m up,” said Winter. “I tried to call you not long ago. Nobody answered.”

Carlström didn’t answer now either. Winter waited.

“It’s Mats,” said Carlström eventually.

“And?”

“He called here, not long ago.”

“Mats called you?” Winter asked. He could hear Carlström nod. “What did he want?”

“It was nothing special,” said Carlström. “But he was upset.”

“Upset? Did he say why?”

“What he said didn’t… didn’t make sense,” said Carlström. “He talked about the sky and heaven and other things that I couldn’t understand. I was very upset.”

It sounded as if he’d been surprised to hear himself saying that, Winter thought.

Things I couldn’t understand, Carlström said.

“When I tried to call you again it was regarding something you’d said about Mats earlier on. You said he avoided anything hard. What did you mean by that? What exactly was it that he avoided?”

“Well, er, it was sort of everything that he found hard to say. And it was harder for him when he was upset. Like he was when he called just now.”

Winter could picture Mats Jerner in his office in police headquarters. The calm, the few seconds of uncertainty, which was normal. The impression that he had all the time in the world in a very unusual place on Christmas Eve.

“Are you saying that he found it hard to pronounce words?”

“Yes.”

“That he stuttered?”

“He stuttered then, and he stuttered now, just now, when he called.”

“Where did he call from?” Winter asked.

“Where? He must have called from home, surely?”

“Can you remember what he said? Tell me as exactly as possible.”

“I couldn’t make heads or tails of it.”