It was tonight. A magic night.

He turned up the volume on the CD that had been on repeat all evening, U2’s

All That You Can’t Leave Behind, louder, a pencil on a piece of paper on the coffee table started to tremble. He was standing in the midst of a deafeningly loud blast when he saw the red light on his mobile on the desk and switched off the music and heard the phone.

He went over to the mobile, his ears ringing, like an overpowering silence.

“Hello?”

“Str… klrk… prr…”

A buzzing, even louder than the one in his ears.

“Hello?” he said.

“… nt thing…”

It sounded like Bertil.

“Where the hell are you, Bertil? Where have you been?”

Ringmar’s voice came and went.

“I can’t hear you,” Winter yelled.

“Sme… hrrrlg… bo… bllrra… cal…”

“I can’t hear you, Bertil. Reception is bad.”

“I… ca… ho… the…”

“Can you hear me? Eh? Come to my place as soon as you can. I repeat, as soon as you can.”

He hung up, and immediately called Ringmar’s mobile number on both his own mobile and the desk phone, but couldn’t get through. He repeated what he had just said for the answering machine.

His mobile rang again, for the thousandth time. As long as the phone keeps ringing, there is still hope.

“I’ll put you through to an angry man from personnel,” said Peder, a colleague from Police Operations Center. “That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”

“Hello? Hello? Hello, for fuck’s-” Winter heard.

“DCI Erik Winter here.”

“Hello? Who?”

“I’m the one who’s been trying to contact you,” said Winter. “We’re busy with a case and I need some information.”

“Now?!”

“You have a streetcar driver by the name of Mats Jerner. I want to know what route he drives, and what his working hours are.”

“What!?”

Winter repeated his question, calmly.

“What the hell… What is this?”

“We are busy with an extremely serious case, and I want your help,” said Winter, still calm but louder. “Can you be of assistance?”

“What was the name again?”

“Jerner. Mats Jerner.”

“I’m one of… I can’t keep track of all the names. Jerner? Wasn’t he the one in that accident?”

“Accident?”

“There was a crash. I think he was suspended. I can’t remember. Or maybe he’s on sick leave? He reported sick later, I think. I’m not sure.” Winter heard a scraping noise, then something fell and broke. “Shit!”

“How can I find out more about this?” asked Winter.

“Why don’t you ask him?”

“He’s not home.”

“He isn’t, eh.”

“He’s been working this afternoon and is due to work tomorrow,” said Winter.

“I know nothing about that,” said the official, whose name Winter still didn’t know.

“Who will know?”

Winter was given a telephone number, evidently a new one as the receiver at the other end was put down for quite a while and he could hear muffled curses in the background.

Before he had chance to call the number he’d been given, his desk phone rang.

“Janne Alinder here.”

“Hello.”

“I’m still at the station. Sorry about the delay. I had a-”

“Forget it. Have you found anything?”

“I saw your message on the intranet and a few memos. I’ve been away for a few days.”

“Did you find anything in your notes on the report from Lena Sköld?”

“No. But I found something else.”

“And?”

“I don’t know what it means. But I’ve found something.”

“Well? Out with it.”

“We had a crash at Järntorget on November 27. A streetcar and several cars. No fatalities or anything like that, but a drunk standing next to the driver’s cabin had fallen into the windshield and smashed his skull. It was a mess. And the driver was… odd.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’d run a red light, but it wasn’t really his fault. But, well, he was odd.

He was sober and all that. But with regard to what you asked about: He stuttered.” Alinder had the conversation on tape, and had just listened to it:

“We can help you.”

“H-h-h-h-h-h.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“

Ho-ho-ho-ho-how?”

“He was really stressed,” said Alinder. “Maybe not all that surprising, but he was extremely nervous. I don’t know. He was odd, as I said.”

Winter could hear paper being turned over at the other end of the line.

“That’s about all I can come up with on the stuttering front,” said Alinder.

“What was the driver’s name?” Winter asked.

More rustling of paper.

“His name is Mats Jerner,” said Alinder.

Winter felt his hair stand on end, a draft of wind blew through the room he was standing in.

“Could you say that again?”

“His name? Mats Jerner. With a J.”

“He crops up in another case,” said Winter. “I interrogated him yesterday. Today.”

“You don’t say.”

“What route was it he drives?” Winter asked.

“Hang on a minute.” Alinder looked it up and reported: “Number three.”

“What direction was he coming from when the accident happened?”

“Er, from the west. Masthugget.”

“OK.”

“There’s another thing,” said Alinder.

“What?”

“It makes the whole thing even odder.”

“Well?”

“I don’t have any notes about it or anything like that. I didn’t remember it tonight in the car when I called you, or as we were driving to the station. It came to me when I was reading the reports from the accident and the interviews.”

He remembered it like this:

He had been the first one to enter the streetcar after he’d managed to get the driver to open the doors. He’d looked around: The man at the front with the blood pouring out of him, a woman weeping and making high-pitched wailing noises, some children huddled together on a seat with a man who was still holding his arm around them as protection against the crash that had already taken place. And two young men, one white and one black.

The driver had just sat there, staring straight ahead. Then he’d slowly turned his head to look at Alinder. He’d seemed uninjured and calm. He’d lifted up his briefcase and placed it on his knee. Alinder hadn’t noticed anything special in the driver’s cab, but then again, he didn’t know what they normally look like.

There had been something hanging from a peg behind the driver. Alinder had registered that it was a toy animal, a small one, a little bird perhaps, green in color that didn’t stand out from the wall it was hanging against. It had a beak. Maybe there was a bit of red there as well. It had looked like a sort of ornament.

The driver had swiveled around in his seat, raised his left hand, unhooked whatever it was, and put it into his briefcase. Aha, Alinder had thought. A mascot. We all need some kind of company. Or protection, perhaps. To ward off bad luck. But that bundle of feathers hadn’t done much to help this poor bastard, he’d thought.

A little bird, green in color.