"I won't ask anything else," she said.

"Is it OK if I do?" Winter leaned forward on the sofa. She nodded. A bird flew against the window, then flew off without her seeming to notice the dull thump on the pane. "Is there anything that's… come to mind since you last spoke to Fredrik? Anything at all?"

She shrugged.

"Like what?" she asked.

"Anything at all. From that evening. That night."

"I prefer not to think about it. I told that to… Fredrik as well." She started brushing again, and her face changed. "All I can think about is, am I going to get AIDS or something." She was brushing even more vigorously, and looked at Winter through eyes that were mere slits now. "Or HIV, rather. I don't know the exact terminology."

Winter didn't know what to say. He considered getting up and smoking a Corps by the window.

"Do you mind if I stand by the window and smoke?"

"Course not," she said, and there might even have been the trace of a smile when she added: "But look out for Dad, don't let him see you." She looked away. "He sees everything. He knows everything."

"What do you mean?"

"Oh, nothing. But look out."

"Look down, you mean," said Winter, standing up and taking the slim white packet from his left breast pocket and removing the cellophane from a cigarillo.

"What did you say?"

"I have to look down from here, to look out to make sure your dad doesn't see me."

"Ha, ha."

Winter opened the window and lit his cigarillo. The lawn looked about as big as a football field between the branches of the trees. He could hear the clink of ice cubes in a glass from down below, and faint voices that he couldn't quite catch. Something was poured into a glass. Half past ten, not time for a lunch drink yet. But it was holiday time. He blew smoke out of the window and turned back into the room.

Perhaps their daughter had been infected with HIV.

"What I meant a minute ago when I said I might never be sure about the terminology was that I was supposed to be starting my medical studies this autumn," she said, "but I'm not going to bother now."

"Why not?"

"Ha, ha again."

Winter took a drag at his cigarillo and blew the smoke out through the window. He heard a woman saying something in what sounded like an agitated voice and Kurt Bielke came into view as he strode across the lawn and then along a path to a black car standing in the drive. He started the engine and drove away toward the center of town. Winter remained standing with his back to the room. He heard a lawn mower, saw a cascade of water coming from a sprinkler, saw the two boys coming back on their skateboards, saw a woman with a baby carriage. Everything was normal out there in paradise.

"Do you dream about what happened in the park?" Winter asked after half a minute, turning to face the room.

"Yes."

"What do you dream?"

"That I'm running. Always the same. Running, and I can hear steps coming after me."

"What happens next?"

"I'm not really sure… it's mainly that… running… chasing."

"You never see anybody?"

"No."

"No face?"

"Afraid not." She paused in her brushing and looked at Winter. "That would be great, wouldn't it? If I saw a face in my dreams that I'd never seen in reality, and it turned out to be him. That it was that particular face." She put the brush on the table again. "Would that suffice as proof?"

"Not on its own."

"Too bad."

"But you haven't seen a face?"

"Not then, and not now. In my dreams."

"Do you get dragged?"

"What do you mean, dragged?"

"Does anybody drag you in those dreams? Pull you, try to carry you off?" Winter took another puff. "Drag you."

"No."

"What happened in… reality?"

"I've already answered that. I don't know. I fainted." She seemed to be thinking about what she'd said. "I must have."

"But when you came around you were in a different place from where you'd been walking? Where you remembered that you'd been walking before you were attacked?"

"Yes, it must have been."

"When did you come around?"

She brushed and brushed. Winter could see the suffering in those narrow eyes. It was as if she were trying to brush the demons out of her head with vigorous movements, flattening her hair against her scalp.

"Sometimes I'm sorry I came around at all," she said.

Winter heard the noise of a car behind him and saw Bielke park in the middle of the drive and walk briskly into the house. He could hear voices, but no words.

"Please pass on my greetings to him… the other detective. Fredrik."

"Of course."

"Is he at work?"

"Not at the moment."

"Surely he won't be able to work again after what happened? Not for a very long time?"

Winter looked at her. If you can live, you can work. He thought of what she'd said about coming around, and not coming around.

He heard the sounds of glass and china again from the verandah. Whatever had been said down there hadn't prevented them from having lunch.

"Excuse me," said Jeanette, going into the bathroom and closing the door behind her.

Winter looked around. The room was tidy, almost neurotically so. Everything was neat; in piles, rows. He went to the bookcase. The books were arranged in alphabetical order, by author name.

"Neat and tidy, eh?"

He turned around.

"Since… it happened I've done nothing but clean up in here," she said, nodding in the direction of the books. "Now I'm wondering whether to arrange them by subjects instead."

"There are a lot of books," Winter said.

"But not so many subjects."

"Mostly fiction, I see."

"What do you read?"

Winter felt like laughing. He did. "I read fewer and fewer real books. Literature. But I'm going to change that. I'll be taking a long time off soon. At the moment I read mainly reports connected with preliminary investigations. Witness interviews, stuff like that."

"Exciting."

"It can be very exciting," said Winter. "And I'm not kidding. But first you have to learn how to interpret the language. Different police officers have different languages. When they write their reports. Sometimes it's a bit like trying to crack a code."

"What's so exciting about it?"

"When you come across something that's linked to something you've read somewhere else. And when you eventually see something that you've stared at a hundred times before without actually seeing it. It was there all the time, but you hadn't noticed it."

"What do you mean?"

"You haven't realized the significance. Or you may have interpreted it wrongly. But then the other shoe drops." Winter thought about lighting another Corps. But he didn't. He sat down in her armchair.

"I've stolen most of the books in there," she said.

Winter said nothing, but stood up, walked to the window, and lit another cigarillo after all. There was a middle-of-the-day stillness out there now. Everything he'd heard before was silent.

"Did you hear what I said? Stolen!"

"I heard."

"Aren't you going to do anything about it?"

"I don't believe you."

"Really?"

"Tell me about the sounds he made."

"Huh?"

"You said before that he'd made sounds you couldn't understand. Talk about it."

"I have talked about it; it was exactly like you said. Just a noise. That's what I heard."

"Have you thought any more about it?"

She shrugged.

"Could you make out any words?"

"No."

Winter thought for a moment. "Can you try to show me what it sounded like?"

"Show you what it sounded like? Are you crazy?"

"It might be important."

"So what?"

"What's happened to you could happen to somebody else." He looked at her. "Has happened to somebody else."