“That’s a little too good to be true.”

Ringmar switched on his turn signal and passed another car. They zipped by the suburb of Mölnlycke, a cluster of lights on the left. “Aren’t you the one who wanted quick results?” he asked.

“It wasn’t long ago that we were wondering if somebody had been on one of the flights, and now we’ve got a man who was on all of them.”

“And that’s too good to be true?”

Winter rubbed his eyes. He had dozed for half an hour on the plane, had shaken his head when they’d come around with the food and coffee. “All this is based on the suspicions of a self-confessed burglar,” he said.

“It wouldn’t be the first time we solved a case that way.”

“How discreet have you been?”

“We’re not going to botch a lineup.”

“We can’t afford to.”

“That’s what I’m saying. We won’t jeopardize what we’ve got.”

Waving photographs around before you can get a proper lineup together is a mortal sin, Winter thought. It’s spending your best ammunition, maybe for good. They had tried a photo lineup once, ten pictures in a row in front of the witness, but that was a huge risk.

“We’ve got to play by the book all the way,” Winter said, thinking of his escapade with Macdonald on Stanley Gardens.

“We took Vikingsson’s keys, but we didn’t have the chance to search his apartment very thoroughly.”

“I’ll go there right away.”

“If we want to know anything more about this guy, we’ll have to get a detention order,” Ringmar said, “so we can sit down with him and get to the bottom of things.”

“What does Birgersson have to say about it?”

“He told the D.A. that he’s never going to talk to him again unless he issues an order.”

“That’s quite a threat.”

“Birgersson is willing to take the chance. Also, the D.A. can consider it a promise. But so far he’s looking at whether we have probable cause.”

“And he’s decided that we don’t.”

Ringmar parked outside police headquarters.

Winter’s whole body was stiff as he got out of the car. Welcome to Sweden, he told himself. “What’s going on with Bergenhem, by the way?”

Ringmar locked the door with the remote. “He sniffs around like a bloodhound.”

“Has he come up with anything?”

“He says he’s waiting for a name.”

Winter meandered through Vikingsson’s two-room apartment. It was suffused with an air of transience and sudden departure. What does he need this place for, anyway? he wondered, looking around. Something’s wrong in here. I can sense it.

He rummaged through the drawers. Vikingsson’s apartment on Stanley Gardens was lived-in and comfortable, but these walls-this floor and this ceiling-were mute and impassive, and the rooms rejected him like a foreign object. Had the burglar really been here? What an insolent lot they are.

What are you looking for?

Where would you keep something important, even if you were just passing through?

Papers, rolls of film, addresses, receipts? Where?

Where would you put something that you don’t want anybody to see even though you have no reason to believe that someone is going to come barging in?

He went into the sparsely furnished bedroom: a bed, chest of drawers, bookshelf, chair with a telephone on it.

A telephone.

People had called Vikingsson and he had called them. Winter closed his eyes and imagined the chart on Macdonald’s wall. Phone calls like satellite orbits high above the Western Hemisphere, a map that tracked every last sneeze that went out over the lines.

That was one approach they could take. If Vikingsson was innocent, they would help him prove it.

He opened his eyes and moved around. Nothing on the walls. The chest looked like someone had flung it across the room. He went over and pulled out the drawers, one by one, each of them scraping as it resisted.

He couldn’t budge the bottom drawer. Had the police been in here and tried before?

He pulled harder. The drawer came loose and he fell down and felt like an idiot. He looked around. The drawer was empty.

He lay back on the floor and looked up at the room. A mirror dangled from a hook on the wall above the chest, which now had a gaping hole like a missing row of teeth where the drawer had been. Even eight feet away from the mirror, he could see behind it. Something stuck out like a silhouette in the light that filtered through the space between the mirror and the wall.

Praise the Lord, Winter thought, standing up. He turned the mirror around and looked for the silhouette in the brighter light of the room.

It was gone. He gazed down at the floor. No paper, no photo, no receipt-nothing. A piece of fabric stuck out from the back of the mirror. He didn’t see anything else in there.

He hung the mirror back up and lay on the floor once more, trying to position himself at the same angle. He saw the space and the silhouette again. It was the loose piece of fabric. I’m letting all this get to me, he thought.

He had saved the photos for last. A collage was tacked up on a little bulletin board over the kitchen table. Ringmar had said that Vikingsson was vain. People like that don’t go very far without a mirror or a photo of themselves.

The collage was the only object in the apartment that revealed who lived there. Winter leaned over the table and looked at it. He counted the photos-eight in all, and Vikingsson the only person in each of them.

They had been arranged in a circle. He followed them clockwise, returning to the one on top: Vikingsson sat at some kind of counter that looked like a bar. He took up most of the photo. You could see behind his shoulders and five or six feet along the counter. Somebody had stood behind it and taken the picture with a wide-angle lens. Winter’s gaze meandered from Vikingsson to the area in back of him and off to the side.

Something about the place was familiar. The windows behind Vikingsson… Winter closed his eyes and saw the windows emerge from the past. The same bar. He saw himself sitting there and saying something to the man on the other side.

Take it easy, he told himself. It’s just a coincidence. The city is full of popular bars-and ones that aren’t so popular.

WlNTER COULD ALMOST SMELL THE ADRENALlNE lN THE CONference room. The mood had changed drastically since his departure for London, investigators now in motion, having found their direction.

Winter spent ten minutes telling them about London. “I want to know what each of you is thinking at this very minute,” he said. “Don’t worry if it comes out all jumbled up. Ringmar will write everything down. Okay-lights, camera, action.”

The semicircle they formed around Winter was like half a clock without the hour hand, as if they expected to solve the case before it came around again.

“Welcome back, boss,” Halders said.

Damn ass kisser, Djanali thought. He’s trying to sound ironic, but everyone knows he’s just sucking up.

“Sara?” Winter said.

“The marks on the floor indicate that the murderer was not only very strong, but beside himself with rage,” Helander said.

“Rage?”

“That’s our interpretation based on the way he moved around the room.”

“Hmm.”

“Something he had repressed finally got the chance to come out.”

“The bastard ran amok,” Halders said.

“Do you have people looking at Vikingsson’s past?” Winter asked, his eyes on Ringmar.

“You bet.”

“It seems to start quietly,” Helander continued. “Like a system or a pattern, and then it spirals out of control.”

“You can say that again,” Halders interjected.

“Hold your tongue, Fredrik,” Winter said, “and let us know when you have something constructive to contribute.”