“We all know your opinion about that,” Djanali said.

“I for one am glad that we’re finally getting somewhere,” Halders said.

“This could be our breakthrough,” Ringmar said.

Ringmar rolled in a VCR with an oversized television screen and put in the videotapes from the crime scenes one by one. They began discussing the patterns on the floor.

These tapes are horrible, Winter thought. It’s like we’re seeing everything through the murderer’s eyes, and you can bet he taped it too and it’s lying in a drawer someplace or playing to an avid audience. “There’s a clue for us somewhere,” he said.

The video camera zoomed to the oval pattern on the floor.

“We think it’s a dance.” Ringmar pointed to the screen. “The two rooms show striking similarities, as if the murderer acted the same way both during and after the crime.”

“What kind of dance?” Bergenhem asked

“When we know that, we’ll be in much better shape,” Winter answered. “Sara Helander here will be working on it from now on,” he continued, nodding at the person to Halders’s right. “You all know Sara.”

Helander lifted her hand in acknowledgment. She had been called in from the wanted persons group. Crossing her legs, she brushed back a lock of hair from her left temple and kept her eyes fixed on the screen.

“If it’s the fox-trot,” Halders said, “we can pick him up any night of the week at the King Creole Club.”

Helander spun around. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Forget it.” Halders turned back to the video.

“How are we ever going to make anything out of all this?” Bergenhem asked.

“How do you make anything out of anything at the beginning of an investigation?” Helander retorted.

Winter nodded in approval. Police work was all about waiting until the impossible became possible. A dance? Why not? He had jotted down the name of the album in Jamie’s CD player and given it to Helander. There’s a tape somewhere with audio, he thought, and it might be music or it might be something else that only people with certain predilections can stand the sound of.

“What does the London team have to say about this?” Djanali asked.

“I’ve been trying to get hold of the chief investigator all morning,” Winter answered.

“How about INTERPOL?” Halders asked.

“We need to be talking directly with London at this point,” Winter said.

Winter stood where he had been during the meeting, while Bergenhem sat next to him and jotted down some notes.

“Try to be as discreet as possible,” Winter said.

“How many strip joints can there be?”

Winter fingered the package of cigarillos on the table in front of him. When he opened the blinds, he saw a whole class of students crossing the street from Kristinelund High School, no doubt on a field trip to the upholders of public order. At the front of the pack was a man in his early fifties, a wrinkled Seeing Eye dog leading blind youth, none of them much younger than the victims of the murders Winter was investigating. He closed his eyes. “Any questions?” he asked, turning to Bergenhem.

“Can you give me a week?”

“We’ll see. I know someone you can talk to right away.”

Winter went home early that night and made an omelet. Cutting up the tomatoes, he thought briefly of the Mediterranean sun that watched over his vagabond parents.

A restless feeling chafed at him. He walked over to the stereo but stood there idly. He thought about opening a bottle of beer, then changed his mind and decided to go for a run in the Slottsskogen woods across Sprängkullsgatan Street. He’d pulled the jersey halfway over his head when he heard the phone ring. It was Angela, one of his girlfriends-the best idea of all.

He pulled her to him as soon as she walked through the door. In bed he bent down and lifted her by the thighs. He was in a hurry, and it felt like an eternity before his body erupted, his mind blissfully empty.

They lay on their backs in the silent room. “You needed that,” she said.

“It takes two.”

The phone on her side of the bed began to ring, and she rolled over to pick it up while he gazed at the smooth contours of her hips and thighs. “Hello?” she said, listening intently. “That’s fine, go ahead and put him through.”

How does she manage? he wondered. It’s almost like she’s my wife.

“Yes, he’s right here.” She looked over her shoulder. “It’s a chief inspector calling from London -MacSomething,” she whispered to Winter.

WHlLE ANGELA HEADED FOR THE SHOWER, WlNTER SQUlRMED HlS way across the bed to pick up the phone. She closed the bedroom door.

“Erik Winter here.”

“Good afternoon, this is Steve Macdonald in London. I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”

“Not anymore. I’m glad you called back.”

“I got the message.”

“We have some things to talk about.”

“You can say that again. Somebody else was also… Sorry, I’m not talking too fast, am I?”

“Not at all.”

“You Scandinavians speak excellent English. That’s more than I can say of us in south London.”

Winter heard the shower running. Soon she would come out and wave good-bye as if it had all happened in a distant, stormy dream. He felt the dried perspiration at the top of his forehead. “Your English is easy to understand,” he said to Macdonald.

“Well, just tell me if I need to repeat anything. It’s my own special blend of Scottish and Cockney.”

Winter heard Angela turn off the shower. He pulled the sheet up to his waist, suddenly embarrassed by the stranger’s voice. Or maybe I’m just cold, he thought.

“We’ve got to get down to the nuts and bolts of this,” Macdonald went on.

“I’m with you all the way.”

“I’ve been reading your reports, and the last one makes me feel like we’re standing on some kind of stage.”

“A stage?”

“Somebody’s out to prove something.”

“Isn’t it always that way?”

“This guy is a little too clever,” Macdonald said. “We’re not talking about your everyday sociopath.”

“You’re right. He’s a sociopath, but there’s something more.” Angela slowly opened the door and threw him a kiss. He nodded back. She turned around and walked out. He heard the front door close and the elevator cage rattle.

“We just talked to Jamie’s parents for the first time,” Macdonald said. “Or rather his mother. They live on the outskirts of London.”

“Our database expert mentioned that.”

“I heard that he called his counterpart over here. He speaks good English and they had no trouble communicating.”

Winter saw Möllerström in his mind’s eye, the way he enunciated every syllable. Why doesn’t everyone have an e-mail address? Möllerström had wanted to know. Is English easier to write than speak? Halders had asked.

“It’s a strange investigation.” Macdonald paused. “Actually, it’s several investigations rolled into one. My boss has put our team on the case full time.”

“Same here.”

“Nothing new on the letters?”

“We talked to Geoff ’s pen pal, but she couldn’t help us out very much. She didn’t notice anything unusual in his last letter, only that he was excited about coming to Gothenburg. As far as the letter that he supposedly received from someone else in Sweden is concerned, we don’t know anything yet. His pen pal had no idea who it might be from.”

“I guess it’s to be expected that he no longer had the letter when you found him.”

“No new witnesses who saw Per?” Winter was still mulling over Macdonald’s remark about being onstage.

“Yes and no, you know what it’s like. Everybody has seen everything and nobody has the information you’re looking for. To say that our phones are ringing off the hook would be an understatement.”