'The same attacker every time. Do you think so as well?' asked Ringmar.
'Yes.'
'Mmm.'
'We'd better delve a little deeper into the victims' circles of friends and acquaintances,' said Halders.
'They're all different,' said Ringmar. 'They aren't acquainted and they don't have any friends in common, as far as we know.'
'OK, so they don't move in the same circles,' said Halders, 'we know that. But then again, they're all students in departments located in the town centre, and they might well have bumped into one another without realising it. A nightclub, the student union, a political party, handball, bird-watching, any bloody thing. Clubs for men only with strippers jumping out of cakes and giving a few blow jobs. Maybe that's what it is, and so they think they've got good reason to lie about it. Or a student disco. No doubt they still have them at the union. It must be more likely than not that they'd come across each other somewhere or other.'
'OK,' said Ringmar. 'But so what? Was their attacker there as well?'
'I don't know. But it's a possibility.'
'That would mean he was after those three specifically, wouldn't it?'
'It's a hypothesis,' said Halders.
'But you could just as well say he was ready to attack anybody at all he happened to come across,' said Ringmar. 'Late, deserted, a drop of booze to undermine their natural caution.'
Halders got to his feet and walked over to the wall map of Gothenburg. He stretched both arms back over his shoulders and Ringmar could hear his joints creak. Halders glanced at him with what might have been a little grin, then turned to the map again and put his finger on it.
'Linnéplatsen the first time.' He moved his finger to the right. 'Then Kapellplatsen.' He ran his finger downwards. 'And now Doktor Fries Torg.' He turned round and looked at Ringmar. 'A pretty limited area.' He looked back at the map. 'Like a triangle.'
'Not really within walking distance, though,' said Ringmar.
'There's such a thing as public transport.'
'Not much of it late at night, though. No trams, for instance.'
'Night buses,' said Halders. 'Or maybe the Hulk has a car. Or he just walks. The attacks weren't all on the same night, after all.'
'But why change location?' asked Ringmar.
'He probably thinks we have enough resources to keep an eye on the previous place,' said Halders. 'So he doesn't go back there.'
'Mmm.'
'But we don't.'
'There's something about these places,' said Ringmar. 'It's not just coincidence.' Then he added, as if talking to himself, 'It rarely is.'
Halders made no comment, but he knew what Ringmar meant. The location of a violent assault was often significant. The attacker, or the victim, nearly always had some kind of link with that particular spot, even if it wasn't obvious to begin with. The location is always central. Always start off with the location. Spread your search out from there.
'I've had a word with Birgersson,' said Ringmar. 'After the Guldheden incident. We're probably going to get a few more officers so that we can knock on a few more doors.'
Halders could see the superintendent in his mind's eye. As scraggy as the vegetation in the far north where he grew up, chain-smoking after yet another failed attempt to quit.
'What about the triangle?' asked Halders. 'The triangle theory? Add the third line and you've got a right-angled triangle.' He ran his finger over the map from Doktor Fries Torg to Linnéplatsen.
'No. You're the first to come up with that fascinating link.'
'Cut out the irony, Bertil. You're too nice a chap for that kind of thing.' Halders grinned. 'But Birgersson has a soft spot when it comes to maths, I know that, especially geometrical shapes.'
Halders grinned again. Maybe it was Sture Birgersson wot done it. Nobody could fathom the man. Once every year he would disappear without trace. Winter might know, but then again he might not. Maybe Sture was wandering round the streets in a black cloak, wielding the mechanical cloudberry-picker he'd had as a kid and using it to draw crosses on students' heads. Halders could picture his silhouette in the light from the street lamp: Dr Sture. Afterwards, Mr Birgersson. One might well ask which of them was worse.
'So you reckon we'd get officers because we can see a geometrical shape here?' wondered Ringmar.
'Of course.'
'And the more it changes, the more men we'd get?'
'Obviously. If the triangle turns into a square, it means that the Hulk has struck again.'
'I'll stick with the triangle,' said Ringmar.
Halders went back to the desk.
'If they give us a few more detectives we might be able to do a proper check on what buses run during the night,' he said. 'Talk to the drivers. There can't be all that many of them.'
'Taxis,' said Ringmar.
'What? Our dark-skinned friends are all operating without a licence. When did we last get a useful tip from a cabbie?'
'I can't remember,' said Ringmar.
The sun made everything look even more naked. Yes, that was how it was. You could see what it was really like. Nothing existed any more, just the trunks and branches of trees, and the ground.
The sun isn't serving any useful purpose here, he thought. It belongs somewhere else now. Clear off.
The children had spilled off the tram at Linnéplatsen. It was always the same, day after day. They always walked in a long line over the dead grass of the football pitch in the middle of the square.
Sometimes he followed them.
He'd parked his car on the other side, where the children were headed.
It was the first time he'd driven there.
He'd talked to the boy in his car. It had actually happened.
He wanted to do it again. No. No. No! he'd shouted out loud during the night. No!
Yes. Here he was. Just because he wanted to, well, see, get close. No big deal.
The long procession in front of him was loosening up, and the children were spreading out in all directions. One little girl disappeared into some bushes, emerged on the other side, then turned back again and disappeared behind the shrubbery. He looked at the two women in charge and could see that they hadn't noticed her.
Just think if some stranger had been standing behind the bushes when the little girl emerged on the other side?
There she was again, round the bushes once more, and then back to the other children.
He carried her in his arms, she was as light as a feather. Nobody noticed him; the trees were leafless, but they were densely packed. The surprise when he lifted her up and carried her off. Is this really me doing this? His hand placed so gently over her mouth. It all went so quickly. There's the car. You can drive in and park here, but nobody ever thinks of doing that. Probably think it is not possible, or not allowed.
This is just something I draped over here. Let's lift it up and go into the tent. Yes, this is a tent. Let's pretend!
We've got a radio. Now there's some mister or other saying something. Did you hear that? Now some music.
Now, let's see. You can touch whatever you like. There's lots of interesting things here.
What lovely hair you have! What's your name? You don't know? Yeees, of course you do!
This is Bill. That's his name. Bill. Billy Boy. He can fly. Can you see that? Fly fly fly.
Ellen? Is your name Ellen? That's a lovely name. A splendid name. Do you know what my mum was called? No, you can't possibly know.
What do you reckon, wasn't it a marvellous name, my mum's?
Have some more. Take the whole bag.
He-he-here it co-co-co-co-comes . . .
He stroked his hand over the girl's head. Her hair was like the down on a baby bird, a little fledgling whose heart you could feel beating when you touched it. He'd felt that once on a bird that was even smaller than Bill. He was just as small as a bird too in those days.
He touched her again. The man on the radio was saying something. He found it difficult to breathe
, wound down the window and discovered some air he could use for breathing. He touched the girl again, that down, all those tiny bones. She said something.
Evening was closing in. Clear outlines. The sun was hanging in there between the houses, like a memory Winter was keen to breathe in. He was sneaking a smoke on the balcony, and sampling the late autumnal air in between drags. Winter was closing in. He looked down on Vasaplatsen, and watched people moving off and leaving the square deserted. Everybody was going home, by bus, tram or car, and leaving him and his family to their own devices in their own territory.
Angela hadn't said anything about buying a house for ages, and he knew her view was the same as his, always had been. They were city-dwellers, and the city was for them. The city of stone, the heart of the city. The heart of stone, he thought, taking another pull on his ciga rillo. A beautiful heart of stone. It was better to live here. In the classy suburbs sloping down to the sea, it was so easy to become a clapped-out citizen, past it, on the way out. For God's sake! He'd turned the corner already. Forty-two. Or forty-three. He couldn't remember, and anyway, who cared?
He shivered, standing on the balcony in his shirt sleeves, the cigarillo in his hand fading away just as definitively as the evening out there. A few young people sauntered past down below, full of self-confidence. He could hear them laughing even at this distance. They were all set for a good time.
He went back in. Elsa saw him coming and presented him with the drawing she'd made. A bird flying in a blue sky. These last few weeks all her drawings had been of blue skies and yellow sands, green fields and then lots of flowers in every colour available from her pencil box. Nonstop summer. She hadn't caught on to autumn just yet. He'd taken her down to the park and helped her to collect fallen leaves, carried them back home, dried them. But she'd put off pinning down autumn. Just as well.
'A bird!' she said.
'What kind of a bird?' he asked.
She seemed to be thinking it over.
'A gull,' she said.
'Let's let the bird have a bit of a laugh,' he said to Elsa, and burst out laughing himself. 'Ha-ha-HA-HA.' She looked a bit frightened at first, but then she couldn't stop herself from giggling.
Winter picked up a pencil and a blank sheet of paper, and drew something that could just possibly be construed as a seagull laughing. There was even a name for this gull, and he announced it in the top right-hand corner of the picture. 'Blackie the Blackhead'. His bequest to posterity. The first drawing he'd made for thirty years.
'It looks like a flying piglet,' said Angela.
'Yes, isn't it amazing? A pig that can laugh and fly as well.'
'But pigs can fly,' Elsa said.
They were sitting at the kitchen table with a glass of red wine each. Elsa was asleep. Winter had made some anchovy sandwiches, which they'd just finished eating.
'Those things make you thirsty,' he said, getting up to fetch some more water.
'I bumped into Bertil on our ward today,' said Angela.
'Yes, he was there.'
Angela rubbed the base of her nose with her finger. He could see a faint shadow under one of her eyes, only the one. She was tired, and so was he. Not excessively so, but the way you feel after a day's work. She couldn't always relax at home and forget about her job as a hospital doctor, but she was better at it than he was. Mind you, he was better than he used to be – not good, but better. He often used to sit with his PowerBook, working on a case until he fell asleep in his chair. He was no longer as solitary as that, and he didn't miss the old ways.
'That boy got a nasty blow,' she said. 'He could have died.'
'Like the other two.'
She nodded. He could see the shadow under her eye deepen when she bent forward. When she leant back it almost disappeared.
Their . . . everyday work overlapped. He wasn't sure what to call it. Their professional activities, perhaps. Was that preordained? He'd sometimes thought so. When they'd first met, Angela had just decided to read medicine. He'd recently joined the CID as a raw recruit.
Nowadays she had direct insight into his world, and he into hers. The injured and the dying and sometimes even the dead came from his world into hers, and he would follow them, and then everybody would move back and forth between the two worlds, just like Bertil earlier that day, who'd bumped into Angela when he'd been trying to extract some words from a battered body that Angela was simultaneously trying to heal. Fucking hell. He drank the remains of his red wine. She poured some water into his glass. The radio was mumbling away on the work surface. It was almost night.
'They seem to be in a bit of a mess at the day nursery,' he said.
'What do you mean?'
'Oh, I don't know. Lots of children and not many staff.'
'More and more of one, and fewer and fewer of the other.'
'Yes.'
'Is there something in particular that made you think of that just now?'
'Well, this morning, I suppose, when I took Elsa there. They didn't seem to be able to keep a proper watch over all the children.'
'Is that the police officer in you talking?'
'If it is, doesn't that make it all the more important? All the more serious? The police officer in me sees the shortcomings in the security.'
'Shortcomings in the security? You sound as though you're responsible for President Bush's safety.'
'Bush? He can look after himself. It's his environment that needs protecting.'
'You know what I mean.'
'And what I mean is that you can't risk a child wandering off. There was a little boy who went through a gap in a hedge or something similar and would have disappeared if it hadn't been for the fence on the other side.'
'But Erik, that's why the fence is there. So that the children can't get out. Can't disappear.'
'But nobody noticed him wandering off through the bushes.'
'They don't need to worry about that. The staff know there's a fence on the other side.'
'So there's no problem, is that it?'
'I didn't say that. I seem to remember saying a couple of minutes ago that there are more and more children and fewer and fewer staff. Of course that's a problem, for heaven's sake.' She took a sip of water. 'A big problem. In lots of ways.'
'And that brings us back, well, to security again,' he said. 'What a responsibility it is for the ridiculously few staff. Keeping an eye on all those kids as they go toddling off in all directions.'
'Hmm.'
'When they go out on an excursion. If they dare to go on outings at all. They don't seem to want to risk it any more.' He stroked his chin, making a rasping noise. 'And they have good reason not to.'
He fingered the wine bottle, but resisted the temptation to pour himself another glass. She looked at him.
'You know too much about all the dangers lying in wait,' she said.
'Just as you do yourself, Angela. You know all the things that can make people ill.'
'Is it anything special, this business of security at the day nursery?' she wondered.
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