"Do you think you can say when this picture was taken?"

"Not off the top of my head."

"Roughly."

"She looks just like she did… toward the end." Wägner turned to face Winter with a pained expression on his face. His voice sounded thick. "Did you hear what I just said, Inspector? She looks just like she did. It's a good thing Lisen isn't here."

Winter said nothing. Wägner's voice returned to normal.

"It could have been newly taken, if you see what I mean." He looked at Winter again. "I think we'd better talk to Lisen after all. She's better than I am at… details."

"I recognize the dress," Lisen Wagner said. Her face was heavy with sorrow as she studied the photographs. "She bought it a few weeks before… it happened."

"Are you sure about that?" her husband asked.

"Yes."

"Two weeks before?" asked Winter.

"About that." She seemed to feel the doubt coming from both men. "I can't forget it." She looked at her husband. "I've thought about it a lot. About that dress." She looked at Winter. "As if it were the last. Her last."

"It's been a few years," said Bengt Wägner.

"That makes no difference."

"In that case she must have picked up the pho-"

Winter was interrupted by Lisen Wägner: "Just before she was murdered."

Winter gazed at the window, avoided her eyes. He didn't want to use that word in there.

"There's a date on the back," said Bengt Wägner. He sounded surprised as he eyed the white surface.

Winter had seen the date. Beatrice had picked up the photographs the week before she died. If her mother remembered correctly, then, these photos couldn't have been taken more than a few days beforehand. But she must have had a full roll. There must be more pictures from that roll.

"Where do you usually have your film developed?" he asked.

"The photo shop at Mariaplan."

"Beatrice too?"

"I suppose so," Bengt Wägner said.

Lisen Wägner had sat down. Her tan was fading. Winter could see the daughter's features in the mother's face.

Winter looked at the photograph in his hand. Beatrice had been in a room where there was an exposed brick wall and tables and dishes. Probably a bar, or a restaurant.

She had been there a few days before she was murdered. She had saved the occasion as a secret souvenir.

Why?

Angelika Hansson had also been there. It must be the same place. When had Angelika been there? There was no date on her photograph. It must have been developed in another shop. Winter pictures. Not… hidden away. But it was the same background, the same place. He had found a link.

Winter sat in his office. It was still Saturday, still hot. Bergenhem was sitting opposite him, browner than before. Looking even stronger.

"So, she saw Angelika with a young man several times," said Winter as he read the document. "Cecilia, her friend."

"Twice," said Bergenhem. "Once at a café and once from a streetcar."

"And he still hasn't contacted the police," muttered Winter to himself.

"No. She's been shown a few pictures, but that hasn't helped." Bergenhem started rolling up his shirtsleeves. "I expect the kid must be abroad." He'd finished with his sleeves. "Otherwise he would've seen our appeals."

Perhaps he's dead, Winter thought. He knew Halders had wondered the same thing.

They needed a name and a face. Cecilia had tried to describe him. He was roughly the same age as Angelika. "He looked sort of pale. Dark, but pale. Kind of Southern European looking."

Winter picked up the photographs from the graduation party he'd found at the Hanssons.

There had been four people whom Lars-Olof Hansson didn't recognize. Three were men and one was a woman. Though one of the three men looked more Angelika's age.

1 He looked sort of pale.

Winter had felt his flesh creep when he first set eyes on the picture, and he felt it again now.

Something was happening.

He showed Bergenhem the photograph.

"I'll call her straight away," Bergenhem said, and did so.

"That's him," said Cecilia. She was wearing a thin blouse and khaki shorts, and had brought the sweet scent of sunscreen with her into Winter's office from the rocks she'd left when Bergenhem called her on her mobile. Her hair was stiff from the saltwater and the wind. "That's him," she said again.

"Take your time," said Winter.

"I don't need to."

"There's no rush."

"I've seen enough. There's no doubt. One hundred percent certain." She studied the photograph, the location, the balloons, as if she were looking for her own face. "I was there myself, but I'm not in this picture."

"You didn't see him at the party?"

"No." She looked at the picture again. "He looks a bit like that older guy." She looked at Winter. "They could be father and son." She turned to the photo again. "I should have recognized him."

Winter said nothing.

"Do you know him then?" asked Bergenhem. "The one who might be his father, the older man? Or anybody else in the picture?"

"Er… I don't know." She was still looking. "I really don't know. Some faces are pretty familiar… and I've known some of them for ages. But I don't remember those two."

"What about her?" asked Winter, pointing to the woman on the edge of the frame, as if about to leave it.

"No."

"This fair-haired man, then? With the beard."

"No, 'fraid not."

They were strangers to Cecilia, just as they had been to Angelika's father.

"They showed up afterward," Lars-Olof Hansson had said. "Don't you understand? They showed up later!… Nobody saw them… But they came with a message. A message from Hell!"

Good God.

"But I do recognize the boy," Cecilia said.

"It was him both times? At the café and when you were on the streetcar?"

"Yes. Definitely him."

"And you spoke to him?"

"We only said hi."

"Nothing else?"

"No." She looked again at the photo. "This is awful," she said. "He was at the party." She nodded at the photo. "Why didn't I see him?"

"What did Angelika say about him?"

"I've already told him over there that she didn't want to talk about it," she said, indicating Bergenhem.

"She must have said something."

"Only that she had no desire to talk about it." She turned to Winter again. "But I still don't understand why I didn't see him there, at the party."

"But you'd seen them together before the party," Winter said.

"Yes… at least, I think so."

"You said a moment ago that you should have recognized him at the party. In that case you must have seen him beforehand, right?"

"Yes… that's true."

"Tell us again when it might have been. At the café and from the streetcar."

She thought again. Yes. It must have been beforehand. In the spring. Late spring, May. May both times. That was what she'd told him over there.

Winter thought. He tried to picture this girl at the graduation party. What might she have done there? Apart from watching and celebrating with her friends?

"Do you have any pictures of your own from that day?" he asked, nodding at the photo.

"Er… yes, I do actually."

"Can you fetch them?"

"What, now?"

"Yes."

"I don't know…"

"You'll be taken home by car to get them." Winter had stood up. "We'd really appreciate it."

An hour later Cecilia was back with a brightly colored envelope. He noticed she'd gotten changed and done something to her hair.