“Were they talking?”

“I heard voices, but they were too far away for me to catch any words.” Anderton rose from the table.

“Are you going somewhere?”

“I was going to boil more water. Permission granted?”

“Of course.”

“Do you know what language they were speaking?” Macdonald asked.

Anderton sat back down. “Wasn’t it English?”

“We don’t know yet.”

“Why would they be speaking another language?”

“Did they seem to understand each other?”

“The character was doing most of the talking, but it looked like the kid understood him. Of course, they weren’t there very long.”

“I see.”

The kettle began to whistle. Anderton went over to the stove and fixed more tea, his back to Macdonald. “I was just about to come out of the bushes when they left.” He sat down again.

“Did they see you?”

“I have no idea. The kid turned around once and he might have noticed me. But what difference does it make now? He’s dead, right?”

“How long did you watch them walk away?”

“I didn’t stare at them until they disappeared over the horizon, if that’s what you mean. I was in a hurry to get home and watch East-Enders. And it was already getting dark.”

“Which way did they go?”

“Straight south across Windmill Drive.”

“We’re going to need your help to put together a composite sketch of this man.”

“But I barely saw his face. I can’t just make things up, can I?”

Macdonald sighed.

“Okay, okay, I wasn’t trying to be a wise guy or anything.”

Macdonald jotted down a note to himself.

“I’ll do whatever I can. It’s not like I don’t realize what you’re up against, and I do feel sorry for the kid. Not to mention his parents. I mean, I called you guys, right? First thing I did when I saw it in the South London Press.”

“Yes, a lot of people would have been afraid to come forward at that point.”

“I hope you get your hands on the motherfucker. We’re behind you all the way.”

Macdonald had the impression Anderton was including everyone in the former British Empire.

Macdonald made his way through the traffic to Clapham Common South Side and entered the Dudley Hotel at the corner of Cautley Avenue -twenty-five pounds a night, up front. He broke the seal on the door and walked to the middle of the room. The stench of blood was everywhere. You’re used to blood, he told himself, but nothing like this. He’d grown up on a farm and seen a thousand pigs slaughtered, but it didn’t turn his stomach the same way. Human blood has a cloying sweetness that throws you off balance, he thought.

So this is where they were going. It might have been right after Anderton saw them. Assuming it was them. The kid had been here for two days. Why had he chosen this hotel, of all places? What would make a Swedish kid stay down here in Clapham? Nothing wrong with Clapham, but you’d think someone his age would have found a cheap joint up in Bayswater. Or Paddington. He would have had plenty of other young foreigners there to hang out with.

The wallpaper, off-white originally, was now a sickening orange.

Macdonald closed his eyes and concentrated on the echoes from the walls. Before long he heard a muffled scream and the sound of a body writhing on the floor.

His right eye ached, forcing him back to the present.

How had the man convinced the kid to bring him here? Was it only sex? Or had he promised something else? Drugs?

Why here? Did he know people in Clapham or up in Battersea? Or over in Brixton?

He’d been robbed, but that wasn’t the motive. All that had happened afterward.

We can’t even confirm his identity with his teeth, Macdonald thought. They’re not in the British records.

The victim had scrawled his name and hometown in the guest book when he’d checked into this shabby bed-and-breakfast on the south side of the former capital of the world. His name was Per Malmström. He was from Gothenburg. That’s all they had to go on.

That’s somewhere on the west coast of Sweden, Macdonald thought. Per was blond, like so many of his compatriots. What have they got that makes them all towheads? We’re also exposed to the same merciless winds and sky.

The Gothenburg police must know about it by now, assuming INTERPOL is on the case.

He closed his eyes again, listened to the walls roar, the floors shriek.

A BOY IN HIS LATE TEENS HAD BEEN SPOTTED WITH A MAN IN downtown Gothenburg. Nobody could recall exactly where-maybe the Brunnsparken area. They hadn’t been seen together before that.

Three people might have caught sight of them after they left Brunnsparken, and that was a hell of a lot to go on. Who knows, maybe there were more than three.

They were obviously together, but they didn’t look like father and son.

According to a couple of witnesses, the kid had dark, badly cut hair, and since Winter knew how unreliable such testimony could be, he made a quick mental note and let it go at that.

There’s always a trail to follow, he thought as he walked by a sports complex. It might feel like you’re not getting anywhere, but it’s just a question of patience.

The icy soccer fields below him were in hibernation, dreaming of last year’s glory. In three months, players would be kicking the shit out of each other, the gravel soft and redolent of sweat and menthol.

Soccer isn’t a sport, Winter thought. It’s a million little injuries, the feeling of loose bone chips rattling around your knees. I could have been something, but I wasn’t injured often enough.

Nobody remembered what the man looked like. But they showed no reluctance to describe him anyway. He had been tall, average height or a bit short. Compared to the kid? No, compared to the streetcar, somebody said, and Winter closed his eyes as if he were exorcising the world’s ingratitude.

The man’s hair had been blond, black and brown. He had been wearing a suit, leather jacket and tweeds. He had horn-rimmed glasses, dark sunglasses and no glasses at all. He was stooped over, his posture was perfect, he was bowlegged and he had long, muscular legs.

What kind of world would we live in, Winter mused, if everybody looked at it the same way?

Winter had seen for himself that the kid’s hair was dark. Whether it had been “badly cut” was impossible to tell. The coroner and forensic specialists were done, leaving Winter alone in the dorm room at the Chalmers University of Technology. The body had already been carried out.

The walls reeked of blood. It’s not a real smell, he thought. It assaults the mind more than the senses. The color is what does it, the pale remnants of life splattered on ugly yellow.

The sun crept in from the right and cast its harsh light on the opposite wall. When he squinted, the colors disappeared and the wall became a luminous rectangle. He closed his eyes and felt the blood dissolve in the sun’s heat, heard the wall murmur about what it had witnessed less than twelve hours earlier.

As the murmurs turned to shrieks, Winter put his hands over his ears, crossed the room and opened the door to the hallway. He closed it again and heard the roar inside the room, and it struck him that the same ear-splitting silence had reigned while the crime was being committed.

Winter walked past the bar, turned around and retraced his steps. The decor was subtle and understated, but in sharp contrast to the pale sky outside, with colors that offered coolness in the summer and warmth in the winter. Johan knows how to pick his interior decorators, Winter thought, sitting down at one of the two tables by the window. A young waitress came up and he ordered a malt whisky.