“No.”

“It happened late last evening.” Macdonald handed Winter a piece of paper. “I have the kid’s name here.”

Winter read it: Christian Jaegerberg.

The victim had already been removed. Winter saw stains on the floor, footprints tracing a pattern from the door to the chair in the middle of the room.

The bed hadn’t been slept in. A little stack of CDs lay on top of it. The shades shut out the night. Voices droned on in low-key professionalism. Cameras flashed.

The plastic bags were everywhere, coded on the outside, filled with hair, teeth, bloody skin, flesh and bodily fluids.

We’re in hell, Winter thought. Hell on earth is right here, in this room.

He moved his head from side to side. Blood-swelling behind his forehead, roaring in his ears-had replaced the pleasant vacuum.

Macdonald told him what he had found out so far.

It was a critical moment for everybody.

“He was interrupted,” Macdonald said.

“What?”

“The owner’s son walked by and heard something. He pounded on the door and wouldn’t let up.”

“And then what?”

“He’s sitting in a room by the lobby. He’s mentally disabled, not to mention shocked as hell. We tried to talk to him but didn’t get anywhere. I’m just about to give it another shot.”

They went out into the hallway, which reeked of vomit that Winter hadn’t noticed before.

“One of our men,” Macdonald said. “It happens all the time.”

“They’re only human.”

“We’ve got dozens of officers knocking on doors in the neighborhood.”

They were sitting as though someone had screwed them into their chairs. The owner held the hand of his son, who was around thirty but could pass for twenty-five. His disability exaggerated his features. His eyeballs moved back and forth but lacked focus. He wanted to get up, but the owner held him firmly in place.

“I want to go-o-o,” he rasped, as if his vocal chords were weighed down by rocks.

“Soon, James,” the owner said.

“Go-o-o.”

“He walks around the hotel all day long,” the owner said. “That’s the only thing he does.”

Macdonald nodded and introduced Winter. They sat down on a couple of chairs that a uniformed policewoman had brought from the lobby.

“Tell us again what happened,” Macdonald said to the owner.

“James came down and started screaming and stamping his foot. He kept pulling on me, and I went back upstairs with him after a while.”

“Did you see anyone else on the staircase?”

“No.”

“No doors opening?”

“Not right then.”

“What happened next?”

“What?”

“What did you do after that?”

“We got upstairs and I saw it, all the blood.”

“What did James do?”

“He screamed.”

“Did he see anyone or anything?”

“I don’t know. I’ve been trying to get him to talk.”

“You didn’t notice anyone go up to the room?”

“No, I probably don’t spend as much time at the front desk as I should.”

“Nobody ran down the stairs afterward?”

“No.”

“Nobody at all?”

“I didn’t hear anything.”

“But James heard something unusual?”

“He must have, because he never bothers the guests otherwise.”

“He interrupted it,” Winter said.

James turned his face toward Winter, and his eyes regained their focus. “He-e-e came ou-ou-out.”

“He came out?” Winter repeated.

James nodded and squeezed the owner’s hand.

“Did the guy come out?” Winter persisted. “The guy who was staying there?”

No answer.

“Did a big man come out?”

James’s eyeballs began to roll again, then stopped when they got to Winter. “I pou-ou-ounded.”

“Go on.”

“I pou-ou-ounded on the door.”

“Keep going.”

“He-e-e came ou-ou-out.”

“Who came out, James?”

“Hi-im.”

“The guy?”

James shook his head harder.

“Hi-im.”

“Somebody else? Not the guy?”

“Hi-im,” James said, trembling.

“He must be talking about a visitor,” the owner said. He turned to James. “Was he white like him?” He took Winter’s wrist and pointed at the palm of his hand.

James continued to tremble, rocking back and forth as if a song were playing in his head.

“James,” the owner continued. “The man who wasn’t staying in the room, was he white like these two men who are sitting here now?”

James didn’t react.

“I think we need to get him to the hospital,” the owner said.

“Bla-a-ack,” James said suddenly, grabbing his head and running his hands down his cheeks.

“Black?” the owner asked, pinching himself and holding his arm up to James’s face. “Black like you and me?”

“Bla-a-ack.” James repeated the gesture with his hands.

“Black hair, did he have black hair?” Macdonald pulled on the strands that hung over the right side of his forehead. James gave a start.

Macdonald removed the rubber band from his ponytail and let his hair fall over his shoulders. “Long black hair?” he asked, tugging on his own. James twitched, continuing to sway from side to side like a mourner. His eyes resembled caves.

“Bla-a-ack,” he said again and pointed to Macdonald.

“And white?” Macdonald asked, running his fingers across his face and pinching his cheeks. “White? A white man? White skin?”

“Whi-i-ite.”

THEY SAT lN MACDONALD’S OFFlCE, ALONE FOR THE FlRST TlME in twelve hours. Macdonald’s eyes were nuggets of coal. The skin of his face looked like it had been taped to his cheekbones. His hair still hung loose over his shoulders.

Winter was wearing a sport jacket and black jeans, a gray button-down shirt without a tie, and dark boots. His chin and cheeks were unshaven.

So much for Scandinavian elegance, Macdonald thought. “I hope you realize that you’re more than an observer now,” he said.

“When does your team get together?”

Macdonald held his wrist up and looked at his watch. “In an hour.”

It was dusk. The dying light filtered through the blinds and shredded Macdonald’s face into blue strips.

“We’re never going to be this close again,” Winter said.

“Assuming he’s our man.”

“If not, we have a brand-new problem, right?”

“Then he’s got to be our man.”

A stack of papers started to vibrate. Macdonald brushed them aside and picked up the phone. Winter noticed that the papers came from a printout of Macdonald’s policy file. I follow the policy to a T, Macdonald had told him. It gives me cover for everything I do. That way I can justify my decisions when the top brass call me in for my monthly grilling.

“Hello?” Macdonald picked up a pen and asked a few short questions, taking notes.

Winter studied Macdonald as he played his role in the eternal cycle of evil that both of them and every other homicide investigator around the world were part of. He could have been sitting there himself with the receiver pressed against a sore ear, Macdonald could have been in Winter’s chair, or they could have been two other detectives in a crowded room in Singapore, Los Angeles or Stockholm. Or Gothenburg. It was all the same, and everyone was interchangeable. It’s bigger than life, he thought. It was there before we came, and it will be there after we’re gone.

Macdonald clenched his pen harder. “That was the lab-at Lambeth.”

“Yes, I remember.”

“He went about it the same way.”

“Exactly the same?”

“As far as they can tell right now.”

“Marks on the floor?”

“Yes.”

“Jesus.”

“All of a sudden he was in a hurry to get out of there.”

The sun had set and Winter saw Macdonald’s face in silhouette.

“Our poor witness pounded on the door and howled like a baby,” Macdonald said. “The murderer didn’t panic, but he stopped whatever he was doing.”