There were a lot of people standing around, in a wide semicircle, a lot of faces. Winter recognized her parents, but nobody else. Angelika was wearing her white cap and laughing at the camera.

That was six weeks ago.

Winter continued sorting the photos into different piles. Why am I doing this? Is it a sort of private therapy because this case is so goddamn distressing? A sort of patience game? Patience. It was all a matter of patience.

The birds were singing outside the window. After a break, the rain was now pattering against the panes once again. Winter had been sitting with a photograph of Angelika in some kind of room with an exposed brick wall behind her. The brick was… well, brick colored. She was looking straight at the camera, but not smiling. Her face was actually expressionless, it seemed to him. There were a glass and some bottles on a table in front of her. A few empty plates with what could be some food leftovers. There was a shadow of something in the top left-hand corner of the picture. A lamp shade, perhaps, or something hanging on the wall.

It was definitely indoors, the light was coming from all directions, and he could see no suggestion of daylight. Maybe there was a faint, shadowy outline of the photographer.

He put the picture down and picked up another one with Angelika in half profile at the same table in front of the same wall, but with no shadow in the top left-hand corner. It was taken from a different angle.

A restaurant, maybe, Winter thought. A bar.

The photos had been in the same envelope as the winter pictures. Maybe they had been taken around the same time. He hadn't found any negatives with them.

Perhaps it was a place she often went to. Maybe one of her regular haunts. Did they have any information about the places she used to go to in her free time? Yes. There were some. Was this brick wall in any of them?

There were no other photographs of places of entertainment or restaurants or bars among the three hundred pictures Winter had sifted through and laid out in about a dozen piles on the table. Not one taken indoors. There were a few of sidewalk cafes. There was a waiter making a face in one of them.

He stood up, left the room, and went to look for Lars-Olof Hansson, who was sitting by himself in the dining room, watching the rain trickle down the windowpane.

"There's something I'd like you to take a look at," said Winter. "If you've got a minute."

"Only one," said Hansson. "I'm waiting for the rain to run down this Windowpane." He pointed. "It can't make up its mind."

Winter nodded, as if he understood.

"What is it?" Hansson asked.

"Some photos," said Winter. "I'd like you to take a look at them." He gestured toward the hall. "In Angelika's room."

"I'm not going in there." Hansson tore his eyes away from the windowpane. There was a smell of both heat and dampness in the room, like the air outside. The wind was making the trees sway. It was like dusk both inside the room and in the garden on the other side of the glass, which was streaked with rain. "I haven't been in there since it happened."

"I'll bring them here," said Winter, going out and returning with the photographs. He handed them to Hansson. The man looked at them, but didn't seem to take them in.

"What's this?" he asked.

"I don't really know," said Winter. "Some kind of a bar. A restaurant, maybe. Don't you recognize it?"

"Recognize what?" asked Hansson, looking at Winter.

"The place. The wall in the background. Or anything else. Angelika's sitting there after all, and I wondered if you knew where it is."

Hansson took another look at the photo he was holding in his hand.

"No," he said. "I've never been there."

"Angelika was there," said Winter. "There were a few pictures in her desk drawer taken there."

"I have no idea where it is," said Hansson. "And… does it make the slightest difference?"

"I don't know," said Winter.

"I mean, she used to go to several different places, the way young people do. I never kept a check on them." He looked at the picture again. "Why should it be important to know where that brick wall is?"

"It depends on who else was there," Winter said.

"Angelika was obviously there," said Hansson. "Maybe she was alone."

"Somebody must have been holding the camera," said Winter.

"Timer control," said Hansson, producing a series of cough-like chuckles. It sounded like an explosion in the enclosed room. "Sorry," he said, when he finished.

"She was there not long ago," Winter said.

Hansson seemed too tired and far too desperate to ask how Winter could know that.

"Other people might have seen her," said Winter. And seen other people as well, he thought.

He had another idea. He went back to Angelika's room and got the pictures of the graduation party, passing them to Hansson, who reached out a hand in a way that seemed almost apathetic.

"It's her graduation party," Hansson said.

Winter nodded. "Could you help me by identifying the people in the picture?"

Hansson studied the photograph.

"Even the ones with their backs to the camera?"

"If you can."

Hansson pointed at the photograph.

"That fatty over there on the left," he looked up at Winter, "that's Uncle Bengt. My brother, that is. He's looking the other way and chewing at a turkey leg or something." He held up his hand to his mouth. "Compulsive eater."

"Who else do you recognize?" Winter asked.

Hansson named them one after the other, sticking his index finger into their faces.

When he'd finished, there were still four left.

"Never seen them before," he said.

"Are you sure?"

"Why the hell shouldn't I be?"

Winter looked at their faces. Three men and a woman. Two of the men looked about forty. One was dark and the other blond, with a beard and glasses. There was something vaguely familiar about him. The third was a boy of around Angelika's age. The woman looked around forty too, maybe a bit younger. She was on the outside, as if about to step out of the picture. She was looking away, in another direction. One of the men was standing next to the boy. The man looked like the boy, or maybe it was the other way around. Southern European appearance, dark and yet pale, pale faces. The man with glasses and beard was holding a balloon and laughing, just as Angelika was laughing. Winter tried to think where he might have seen him before. He didn't recognize the face. Maybe it was his bearing, leaning forward slightly.

"Never seen them before," Hansson repeated.

Winter felt his flesh creep. Something was happening right now, right there. Something's happening. He looked at the four people with the unknown faces. It was as if the others standing around the girl were known to him, now that Hansson had identified them. But these four were strangers.

They could have been sent from some unknown place. Something was happening.

"Isn't that a little strange?" he asked.

Hansson shrugged. "There were a lot of people at the school hall, you can see that for yourself." He pointed at one of the pictures. "I guess these people I don't know got in this photo by mistake."

"Is that likely?" Winter nodded toward the picture. "They look like they're… part of it. Like they know Angelika."

"Well, I don't know them, in any case."

"You didn't speak to them?"

"I just said I don't know who they are, for Christ's sake."

"OK."

Neither of them spoke. Winter could no longer hear any rain pattering against the windows. He could hear a car driving past, the sound of the tires on wet asphalt.

"What the hell were they doing there?" said Hansson suddenly, looking again at the photo. "I didn't invite them." He looked at Winter again. His expression had changed. "I didn't notice them at the time. I suppose I should have."