He leaned forward, reached inside her sweater and cupped her breasts. Now she had dived into the water and was floating beneath him. He squeezed her hard nipples. She turned her head to the side and looked back at him. He caressed her cheek and lips with his left hand. Opening her mouth, she licked and sucked on his fingers one by one. Her tongue had the same rough texture as her sweater.

As they moved faster, he braced his left knee against the bed, grasped her hips with both hands and summoned all his strength to hold on as she trembled and then cried out, throwing her head back. His eyes dimmed. His power seemed to plunge him into unconsciousness as it poured into her. They clung to each other one last time, and he held her.

THE SNOW HAD STOPPED AND EVERYTHlNG HAD FROZEN OVER night. The Monday morning sun had bleached the edge of the cold front.

Bergenhem shuddered in the kitchen, made some coffee and opened the blinds. The trees outside the window were wrapped in mist, which slowly dissolved as the colors of the day reappeared, coming back from their resting place, he thought, reinventing themselves and gliding back into the objects all around him. A juniper bush lost its transparence just after the clock struck eight. The fence emerged from behind its curtain of white, and his car glistened under its snowy blanket as if startled by the first dashes of sunlight.

He had the afternoon shift. Martina was asleep. He felt vaguely restless, a low murmur in his chest. He drank his coffee quickly and put the cup in the dishwasher, then went into the bathroom and splashed some water in his eyes. As he brushed his teeth, he probed the jagged edge of one of his canines and felt an icy coldness there when he rinsed out his mouth.

He tiptoed back to the bedroom and picked up his clothes from the Windsor chair next to the doorway. Martina stirred in her sleep, or half stupor. The sheet had slipped down and revealed her thigh, a spring hillside in the midst of a snowy landscape. Walking over to the bed, he ran his fingers over her bare skin and grazed it with his lips. She murmured something and moved again without waking up.

He put on his heavy sweater, boots, leather jacket, hat and gloves. The fresh snow was in the way, and he had to kick the door open.

He took the shovel that was leaning against the house and hacked at the frozen crust, plowing his way down the driveway to the car. This summer you are building a carport, he told himself. Assuming you can get hold of cheap wood.

He brushed the snow off the hood and windshield as best he could and tried to open the driver’s door to get a scraper, but the key wouldn’t go in. He stared dumbfounded through the window at the can of lock lubricant in the inside pocket of the passenger door.

He tried the other doors and the trunk, but they were all frozen shut. In the shed behind the car, he dug out a nine-inch length of wire, which he managed to slide through the crack in the door, and he was finally inside. He grabbed the lubricant, sprayed the lock, waited a few seconds and then worked the key in. Putting the bottle in his jacket pocket, he scraped the entire windshield. He was pleased with himself, as if this interlude had prepared him for the trials and tribulations of the day.

The ignition sputtered for a few seconds before turning over. He put the defroster and heat on high. A Phil Collins song was playing on the first station he came to. He flipped the dial for a while but soon tired of it and slid R.E.M.’s Automatic for the People in the tape deck instead. It had been number two on the Billboard charts in the winter of 1992, when he had taken a long field trip to London during his last semester at the Academy. He had gotten drunk at a pub in Covent Garden and found himself in bed with a party girl in Camden. He could never quite remember how they had wound up at her place. Automatic for the People. My automatic is for the people, he’d said, because that’s a cop’s job, and he’d gulped down some more wine while she giggled under the sheets.

He had met Martina the following spring.

As Bergenhem drove south, the open fields quickly gave way to glass and concrete. In Torslanda, smoke poured out of Volvo’s main assembly plant on his right. Ahead loomed the Älvsborg Bridge. The glitter of oil tanks almost blinded him as he approached the abutment.

The second wave of the morning rush hour rolled across the freeways as commuters descended from the north into downtown Gothenburg.

Driving onto the bridge, he glanced quickly to his right, and when he reached the top, he saw a clear purple stripe below the rising sun. From this vantage point, the horizon changed according to the time of year. It was impenetrable on most winter days, as if someone had built a wall over the water. But on mornings like this, you could see through the shimmering light as it slowly turned to blue. The city had pulled back its curtains.

Leaving the bridge behind him, he continued west with no destination in mind. This restiveness had whispered in his ear for as long as he could remember, though it had grown louder the last month or two. He wondered whether it had to do with the blunt little cone that stuck out from Martina’s belly, and he felt ashamed of himself.

He drove to Frölunda Square, turned around and came back through Gnistäng Tunnel. His mind went blank in the darkness, and he had to blink and shake his head when the sky reappeared and the sunlight stung his eyes. Fear struck him suddenly, like a premonition. He was cold, but the heat was already as high as it would go. Driving back over the bridge, he stared straight ahead the entire length of it.

Winter’s taxi swerved in and out near Mölnlycke, found a spot in the outer lane and zoomed past an airport bus. There’s plenty of time, he thought. It must be a matter of professional pride for the driver to get you there as fast as possible.

The phone hummed in the inside pocket of his sport coat. He pulled out the antenna and answered.

“Erik!” His mother sounded slightly out of breath. No doubt she had just jogged from the kitchen table to the refrigerator and back. “Are you at home?”

“I’m on my way to the airport.”

“You’ve always been such a smart boy, Erik.”

Winter looked at the driver, who was staring fixedly at the road as though he were considering whether to veer over to the right lane and smash his way through the guardrail into the cliff.

“You’re a traveling man,” she continued. “They always need you someplace.”

“I spend most days going back and forth between the Vasaplatsen subway station and Ernst Fontell Square,” he said.

“Fontell what?”

“It’s the square in front of police headquarters, on Skånegatan Street.”

“I see.”

“There’s all my traveling for you. Sometimes I even ride my bike.”

“So where are you going now? Not on your bike, I hope.”

“ London.”

“It’s a dreary city. But I’m proud of you anyway.”

“That’s what you always say.”

Beneath the static on the phone line, Winter thought he heard fragments of words that clung to each other like the language of another planet. “What were you calling about?” he asked.

“Do I need a reason to call my son?”

“We’re at the exit ramp now,” he lied.

“Since you wanted to know, I called Karin Malmström yesterday. She said you had been very kind to them.”

Winter looked out the window.

“She also told me that Lasse has taken it extremely hard. She was surprised to find out that she could handle it better than him.”