He found himself looking at another picture of a house, but a different one, north of Angelika Hansson's home, south of Jeanette Bielke's.

"What the hell…" exclaimed Ringmar.

"This is where Beatrice Wägner's parents live," Winter said.

"What is all this?" Helander said.

"Where Beatrice Wägner lived," said Winter in a tone that tried to change the atmosphere, break the spell.

No people here either, another summer picture, late, long shadows. Winter looked at the remaining photographs in his right hand. What was in store? He'd secured Bielke's detention, his arrest, but he didn't feel satisfied.

"Good God," said Djanali.

"What's next?" Bergenhem leaned closer to see the next photograph.

Winter turned over the three remaining prints. They studied them in silence.

"Well, it looks like we've got our man," Bergenhem said.

"But why?" asked Helander, voicing what everybody was thinking. Madness, they all thought as well. Madness explains everything yet nothing.

He studied the last three photographs again, starting with the one on the left.

The house on the other side of the river, where Halders had disappeared.

The cave-like hollow where Angelika and Beatrice had been found, and Jeanette attacked.

The place where they'd found Anne Nöjd. Where her final… no, not words, where her final… screams, screams of terror, had been recorded by her own answering machine.

All the pictures had long shadows. They'd all been taken when the area hadn't been cordoned off.

Ringmar said what everybody was thinking.

"Did he know what he was going to do? Had all these photographs been taken… before? Did he take them before they happened?"

Good God, thought Aneta Djanali for the eighteenth time. The only thing missing is a picture of a place we don't recognize, and that will be where we find Fredrik. Good God. Just think, if we'd had these pictures… before. Before the crimes were committed. Murder will be committed there and there and there, and if you can find the locations quickly you might be able to strike a blow for peace.

The camera was upstairs with Beier.

Bielke was sitting in a cell, or maybe lying down.

"We have jobs to do," said Winter.

The shadows were lengthening outside. It would soon be evening. We'll be there soon enough, he thought.

Winter went to Yngvesson's studio. It had a dry smell, as if from another year. Dust was dancing in tunnels of light over the computer. Tapes spun around, emitting their dead screams. It was hard to breathe.

When this is all over I'll give up smoking. We'll buy a house by the sea, and I'll take a year off work, and then we'll see.

"Still just bits and pieces," Yngvesson said.

"Should I come back another time?"

"This afternoon."

"So far it hasn't been possible to recognize a voice. Really recognize. Do you think it will be possible? A voice we've heard before?"

"I'm trying to get as close to the voice register as possible, Erik."

Kurt Bielke was staring at a point somewhere above Winter's head. The camera was on the table between them. Beier's forensics team had finished with it. There were several fingerprints on it, corresponding to others, as yet unidentified, found in Bielke's home. They hadn't taken Bielke's fingerprints yet. Soon, though. Winter had spoken to Molina about detaining him. Give me an hour, Molina had said. No. You spend another hour with him. Then call me.

After that we'll take blood tests. Then it'll be over.

Bielke was still staring.

"I'll ask you one more time: do you know who this camera belongs to?"

"I've never seen it before."

"It was found at your house."

Bielke didn't respond. Winter looked at the tape recorder.

"I'll repeat what I just said: it was found at your house, Kurt Bielke."

Bielke shrugged.

"Why was it there?"

"Where?"

"At your house."

"Where in my house?"

"We found it in one of the cars in your garage."

"I have no idea."

Winter thought. The air in the room already felt too hot and too scarce.

He wanted a confession. Now. Everybody wanted to go home. It was summer outside.

"You have been identified at the scene of a crime."

Bielke said nothing. He could have said, "What scene, what crime?" but he said nothing.

"Talk to my family," he said now.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Talk to my family."

"Why?"

"They know where I've been."

"I'm asking you."

Bielke didn't reply to that. There was no answer in his eyes, nothing. His eyes were a blue reminiscent of over-washed jeans, blue going on white, and soon destined to fade away altogether.

What happens if the fingerprints and DNA and the whole damn mess don't turn up anything? Winter thought. If we have to let him go?

He asked again, kept on asking. Bielke answered intermittently.

Winter called Molina after an hour, and was granted the extension he asked for. It meant that he gained time, a maximum of four days to prepare a charge.

"Be sensible about this, now," Molina said.

Winter hung up without comment. He felt a degree of relief. As that feeling drifted away with the smoke from his cigarillo out of the window and over the river, he thought again about what Bielke had said.

The family.

The man was crazy. Everything he said might well mean something, but only to him.

He called the SOC team. Beier answered.

"Are your boys still at Bielke's house?"

"Not right now. Why?"

"I'm going there."

"Have you nailed him?"

"I don't know. When will we hear from Linkoping?"

"About the glass, you mean? They're working overtime on it, I can promise you that. But you know how it is."

They had vacuum-cleaned Bielke's shoes and clothes one at a time and found some very small pieces of glass that would be compared to the broken glass they'd found after the Hanssons' house had been broken into. It wouldn't necessarily tell them anything, but they could measure various properties of the shards and establish if it was the same type of glass they'd found in the shoes, or in the breast pocket. It might be a pointer, no more than that. There were an awful lot of panes of glass. But one thing could lead to another, and then to another.

Yet again a hot afternoon with no promise of cooling down as evening drew in. The sun was still strong as it started to sink down to the horizon he was driving toward. All growing things were shrinking in the heat, starting to die and emitting the same dry, acidic smell that permeates old folks' homes as the bodies of ancient inhabitants dry out with the onset of death. The same smell of decay mixed with pungent disinfectant.

Winter turned into the Bielkes' drive.

There was nobody on the verandah. He noticed that Jeanette's window was wide open.

The family.

Bielke's deranged eyes might have indicated something. Jeanette. Was she the key to the riddles? Her relationship with her father was complicated. A silly word, given the context. He was standing at the front door, which was slightly ajar. Was she crazy, too? Her mother? Was she normal?

He made a face at his thoughts, possibly an ironic smile: what's the point, where are we headed, are there really any alternative routes to take, in which world does life weigh heaviest?

He knocked on the door, which opened slightly more as a result. He shouted. No answer. He shouted again, and went inside. On his left he could see the west side of the garden though a window in the room beyond the big, bright entrance hall. The shadows were now at their longest. The gulls were shrieking louder than ever, as they hoped to find tidbits in the gardens.