"We've got to find this guy," Halders said, making a face. "He would have been a parent too."

They had to find him. Winter felt the full burden of the case as he drove back to the police station. They had put a lot of resources into finding Angelika's boyfriend, but they had failed.

Maybe they'd solve the problem when they found the father of the child that would never be born. Maybe he murdered Angelika. Maybe it was as simple as that.

The man who murdered Beatrice was somebody else.

And the one who raped Jeanette somebody else again.

No.

He'd parked the car and was inside his office within five minutes. There were a few raindrops still on the ledge under the window he'd left open.

The phone rang.

"We've got a new witness," Bergenhem said.

"Oh?"

"It's… er, the murder of Angelika Hansson, that is. A young man who says he heard some strange noises as he walked past the park that night."

"Does the time fit?"

"Yes."

"What did he hear?"

"A hissing noise, he says. A repeated hissing."

"What did he do?"

"Kept on going. Sped up, in fact."

"He wasn't curious?"

"He thought it was a badger, and was scared."

Winter could understand that. He'd once been chased by a badger.

"But he doesn't think it was a badger anymore?"

"He's seen the news," said Bergenhem.

"And it was at the same spot?"

"It looks like it."

That evening they went to the park. Angela was licking away at an ice cream, Winter was in charge of the stroller, and Elsa was asleep, although she woke up when they were passed by a group of kids on Rollerblades.

"It was about time anyway," said Angela, and she picked Elsa up as she reached out for the ice cream. "No need to arrest them."

"She wants an ice cream," said Winter, carrying Elsa to the kiosk, only to find that it had just closed. The kid in charge of it was just about to get onto his bike and ride off, and Winter wondered whether he should order him to open up again. Elsa realized she wasn't going to get an ice cream, and was not pleased.

"She needs something to hold her attention," said Angela when they came back.

"It was closed," Winter said.

"Think of something else, then."

He carried Elsa to the pond and dipped her feet into the water: the tears turned to laughter. He dipped them in again and mumbled into her ear, then he looked over the water. It was all so familiar. He could see the little open area in front of the circle of bushes, and the trees, and the rock glinting in the last rays of the sun.

He could see a shadow to the left, just where the police tape blocked off the black opening. The shadow was motionless. Winter didn't move either until he felt Elsa squirming in his hands. He didn't take his eyes off the shadow, which had the shape of a person, even more so now as the sinking sun beamed farther in like a searchlight. The shadow moved.

Winter heard Angela say something just behind him, lifted Elsa out of the water, and dumped her in Angela's arms without a word, heard the child's disappointed cries as he sprinted behind the hedge to the left of the pond, came to the pathway on the other side of the bushes, and could see the opening and the cleft that was no longer lit up by the sun, and he pushed his way past a young couple and darted through the shrubbery and saw the trees and all the other nasty but familiar sights, and his pulse was racing as he felt for his gun that was in a closet a long way away.

There was nobody there by the time Winter arrived. He could see the opening between the trees, and the rock, and the twigs and bushes at the sides, and the patches of dusky sky-but no shadow.

The grotto was empty.

The grass outside was bone dry again. There was no point in searching for footprints. But he ought to call somebody who could search for any new objects that might have appeared there. You never knew. You just never knew.

He circled around the clearing, then hurried onto the path behind and followed it for fifty meters. He went back again, and there was Angela with Elsa in her stroller, and she was staring wide-eyed at him as he ducked underneath a sapling.

"If you're going to play hide-and-seek with us, the least you can do is to tell us before you run off," Angela said. "Or maybe you want to hide and then go seeking yourself?"

He brushed a few pine needles off his shoulders and reached for the packet of cigarillos that was no longer in his big, wide breast pocket.

"Now's the time to give up," said Angela, who had seen what had happened.

Winter contemplated the packet on the ground, and bent down. Several of the cigarillos had fallen out and were lying in a semicircle. He walked over to it, picked up the packet, and then the cigarillos one by one-then he noticed a button lying next to the last one. Just a button, white or bony white, a shirt button.

They would have found it if it had been there when they first cordoned the place off after the murder of Angelika. And after the rape of Jeanette.

Since then, anybody at all could have walked past and lost a button.

"Do you have a tissue?" he asked, turning to Angela. He was still squatting.

Angela produced a Kleenex out of her handbag. Winter took it and wrapped it around the button.

"What is it?"

"A button."

"You don't say."

"A shirt button," said Winter. "I think."

"Oh, yes? Well, now we've seen how you go about your business," said Angela, turning to Elsa. "This is how detectives work, Elsa. Look and learn."

"Do you want Elsa to grow up to be an investigator?" said Winter, crouching down again, this time by the stroller. Elsa made a sound. "She said detective," Winter said.

"No. She said perspective." Angela looked at him with a smile. "I think she means that you've got to put your job in perspective." She looked toward the bushes. "Is this the way it's got to be when we go for a walk in the evening?"

"I thought I saw somebody," said Winter.

"Oh, for God's sake!"

"It's more complicated than you think."

"You can say that again."

"There was somebody standing there. It wasn't just your ordinary… passerby."

"Don't forget the button, Erik." She'd seen his eyes glaze over. It had turned cold among the trees. Elsa was trying to clamber out of the stroller. He helped her. "Sorry, Erik. I know it's important… and serious. Awful. But I couldn't resist teasing you a bit."

"That's OK."

He picked Elsa up. They went back to the pond.

"Do you think that… that he's returning to the scene of the crime?"

"Yes."

"You think that's what always happens."

"That's my experience. Others think the same."

"And the shadow that you saw could… have been him?" Winter shrugged. "The moment I saw him I had the distinct feeling that it was… important. Important for the case." He turned to look at her with Elsa on his shoulder. "I don't know anymore, for fuck's sake."

"Fuck," Elsa said. It was one of the first words she had pronounced correctly.

"What's a private life? You tell me," Halders said to Aneta Djanali, in the passenger seat beside him. They were parked outside the Hanssons' house. Djanali could smell the salt of the sea through the open window.

"When does a life stop being private?" asked Halders, turning to look at her. "I can't keep my various lives apart any longer."