BERGENHEM RETURNED TO THE ROOM. THE SHOW HAD STARTED up again. Two women he didn’t recognize were onstage. After a while he realized that one of them was the older woman from before and that the younger one was gone.

He sat down at the same table. The air was thick with cigarette smoke and the room seemed to have shrunk. More men sat around the tables, devouring the dancers with their eyes. Tina Turner was singing again, asking what love had to do with it.

Bergenhem spotted the younger woman now. She was sitting at one of the tables talking with two men, and he didn’t like what he saw.

He didn’t want her with those fucking pigs, and the feeling surprised him. It’s not moral indignation that’s got me riled up, he thought. I know this is none of my business, so what is it?

She’s my age, he told himself. She’s not a fourteen-year-old who grew up too fast. The men are forty-five and beyond help. And I shouldn’t have an opinion about any of this.

She got up and one of the men followed her. They walked through a door on the right side, by the stage. He kept his eyes on them the whole time.

“Inspector Bergenhem?”

Something stirred to his right, and he looked up at a man with his blond hair in a ponytail and a suit that was lusterless against the colors of the stage. Bergenhem straightened up a little. “Yes?”

“I’m the owner. You wanted to see me.”

“Oh, right.” Bergenhem stood up. “I had a couple of questions…”

“How about we go to my office?” The owner scanned the room and the stage, then looked back at Bergenhem. “This way,” he said.

His office was just to the left on the other side of the curtain. It had a window-the first one Bergenhem had seen at Riverside -with a view of the alleyway. The owner halted as soon as they were inside the door, apparently waiting for Bergenhem to do or say something. “I’m glad you’re playing it straight,” he said finally.

“What?”

“I’m grateful when a policeman doesn’t sneak around and pretend to be someone he’s not.”

“It wouldn’t work anyway.”

“Not after a while, no.”

“There you have it.”

“It’s annoying when the police treat us like we’re not capable of taking care of ourselves or running a respectable establishment.”

Bergenhem heard strains of Tina Turner through the south wall, mostly the bass lines. It sounded like she had a barrel over her head.

“I heard you were looking for me,” the owner said.

“You didn’t have to bring me all the way in here.”

“We don’t have anything to hide.”

“I didn’t think you did.”

“So what can I do for you?”

Bergenhem explained as much about the case as he was authorized to, hinting at the police’s suspicions. He acts like he’s wearing earplugs, Bergenhem thought, but it’s obvious he’s soaking it all up. He understands everything and he will answer the questions he admits to having heard.

“Snuff movies? In Gothenburg?” The owner sat down in an armchair, crossing one leg over the other. His cigarette smoke swirled through the barely open window and out into the night air. Two train signals sounded through the gap. There was a railyard a couple of blocks away, deserted and windswept and sparsely populated by freight cars that jostled each other in the dark. “Never heard of anything like that. What made you come to me?”

“We’re talking to everyone who owns this kind of establishment,” Bergenhem lied.

“Never heard of it.”

“You must have.”

“You don’t believe me?”

“I mean you must know that such movies exist.”

The owner frowned. “Are you putting me on?”

“What?”

“If I heard you right, you wanted to know about snuff movies in Gothenburg. Not Bogotá or Los Angeles or London, or wherever the hell they’re a box office hit.”

“Haven’t you ever seen a snuff movie?” Bergenhem realized he’d made a mistake before the words were out of his mouth.

“God knows why I’m sitting here and putting up with all these idiotic questions of yours.”

Bergenhem wasn’t sure what to say next. The wind magnified the sound of two freight cars bumping, iron against iron.

“But what the hell,” the owner continued. “Okay, I’ve never seen a snuff movie. Have you?”

“What?”

“You’re an inspector. I assume you’ve seen most everything.”

“No, never.”

“And why not?”

Bergenhem slumped down in a chair. The bass lines were heavier and deeper. Maybe they had put on a new set. No voices came through the wall and the door was soundproof.

Extinguishing his cigarette, the owner went over and opened the window a few inches more to let the foul air out.

The railyard sounds disappeared, as though the fact that the window had been open just a crack was what had made them audible. An open window evokes silence, Bergenhem thought. It’s like the new highspeed trains. The faster they go, the less you hear. Finally you don’t notice them at all until they’re about to run you over.

The owner closed the window and turned to Bergenhem. “You haven’t seen anything because there’s nothing to see. Gothenburg may not be the innocent place it once was, but there’s no market for snuff movies here.”

Bergenhem could tell the owner was considering how to complete his thought.

“You probably think I’m naïve about the people in this city. But you’ve come to the wrong person if you believe I would be involved in that kind of thing. It wouldn’t have a chance here even if I were. We aren’t depraved enough yet.”

“Yet?”

“Even though it’s bound to happen eventually.”

“You seem pretty sure of yourself.”

“Do you know why I’m even bothering to talk to you about this stuff? I’ll tell you why-it’s because we club owners have our ethics just like everybody else.”

“And what are those ethics, exactly?”

“What?”

“Where does love of your fellow man stop and the profit motive begin?”

The owner looked Bergenhem over as if trying to figure out where he was going to dump his body afterward. “There are limits to everything,” he said.

“Just in Gothenburg, you mean?”

The owner picked at a seam in his jacket, then rubbed the bridge of his nose. Bergenhem could tell that he was about to get up and thank him for a pleasant visit. All his talk about ethics had a bombastic hollow-ness to it, like the low rumble of bass through the wall. Which had just stopped-intermission time.

“You’ve never received any requests from customers who are interested in something different?” Bergenhem asked.

“Just from you.”

“Nothing beyond the visible selection?”

“The visible selection? That’s a new expression.”

“You know what I mean.”

“No.”

“Come on, now.”

“What I’m trying to say is that we don’t get any requests like that because we have everything our customers could possibly want. I don’t know how familiar you are with the movie industry, Inspector, but it might surprise you to discover how much is legal these days.”

“Okay, I got you.”

“Anything else on your mind?”

Not right now, Bergenhem told himself, but I’ll be back. Something the owner just said doesn’t make sense. I should have brought a tape recorder. Better to go someplace where I can jot down my notes. “No, that will be all for today,” he said to the owner, rising from his chair.

They walked out of the office together. Bergenhem heard the music start up like rolling thunder and made his way over to the curtained doorway. The younger woman was dancing to Tina Turner, her eyes staring into another world. For a couple of minutes, Bergenhem stood transfixed, and when he finally left, the owner followed him with his eyes.

It was late afternoon and the sun had already set. Winter sat in Ringmar’s office reading the interrogation report.