Bolger looked up at Winter. “Never mind.”

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing, I told you.” Bolger got up. “Come on in and we’ll have something to drink.”

Winter watched the evening descend over the water and glimpsed the lights of two boats out on the fjord. They approached each other and merged for a second like a powerful lamp.

They drank coffee and schnapps. The only light came from the fireplace.

“What time does the ferry go back?” Bolger asked.

“Eight o’clock.”

“You can sleep over if you like.”

“I appreciate the offer, but I don’t have the time.”

“Something has been going round and round in my head,” Bolger said.

Winter drank his coffee and felt the sting of the locally brewed schnapps. He took a bite out of a sugar cube.

“Now that I’ve thought about it a little,” Bolger continued, “I wouldn’t be surprised if one or two of the victims had been at my bar.”

“And you waited all this time to tell me?”

“I never actually saw them, but most kids their age show up once or twice a month. It’s become something of a meeting place on Thursday nights.”

“I see.”

“It could be worth checking out.”

“Good idea.”

“I might even have served one of them. It never occurred to me before.”

“Hmm.”

“Let me see their photos again.”

Bolger lit an outdoor brick fireplace that he had recently built on the rocks. He had insisted that Winter join him. The evening was a vault above them. The logs caught fire and Winter saw them shift from orange to crimson. Bolger’s features faded in and out. The flames rose with the smoke. For a moment Winter thought he saw something move in the fire, shadowy figures or writhing bodies.

WlNTER READ THE TWO LETTERS THAT THE BURGLAR HAD WRlTten. The way he described the bloody clothes and the phone call he had heard from under the bed took on a new and ominous significance in light of a couple of the most recent developments. Bloodstains had turned up in Vikingsson’s Gothenburg apartment, and Macdonald had found more in the Stanley Gardens flat.

Blood drips no matter how careful you are, Winter thought.

The stains in Gothenburg were composed of both human and animal blood. It could have been the same mix as on the clothes the burglar had seen, but who knew? The blood in London hadn’t even been analyzed yet.

What a strange conversation the burglar had overheard. Vikingsson had used the word “celluloid”-what was that all about?

They had traced all the calls Vikingsson had made from his cell phone. He never phoned London. He didn’t call anyone in Gothenburg very often either. He had dialed a downtown pay phone the day the burglar was there.

This was all assuming there was some truth to the burglar’s claims and he wasn’t just another lunatic. He seemed sane enough, but you never could tell.

Vikingsson had come back, and they had convinced the D.A. to issue a detention order, which gave the investigators a chance to proceed more deliberately.

They tried to postpone the hearings for an arrest warrant as long as possible. The judge could rule at any time, but Winter hoped he would wait the four-day limit. We’ll never get him arrested on the evidence we have right now, Winter thought, putting the copy of the letter back on his desk.

Four days max.

They would place Vikingsson in a lineup. Beckman, the streetcar driver, would stand on the other side of the glass wall. They would find out how good a memory for faces he actually had.

Winter had read a lot about the cognitive neuroscience of memory. A lineup could either make or break the prosecution’s case.

Police screwups always resulted from clumsiness or ignorance. The human psyche was specially equipped to distinguish between different faces, no matter how similar, and the brain employed a separate system for storing and processing facial information.

He dialed Ringmar’s extension. “Could you come in for a minute, Bertil?”

Ringmar arrived, a flush of excitement in his face.

“You’re looking frisky,” Winter said.

“This might be the light at the end of the tunnel.”

“What tunnel?”

“The one at the beginning of the light.”

“I’ve read through Beckman’s interrogation, and I think he’d be willing to tell us more now,” Winter said.

“Could be, but he’s not much of a witness. He didn’t actually see a crime being committed.”

“We’ll question him again, and take a more cognitive approach.”

“You took the words right out of my mouth,” Ringmar said sarcastically. There were certain expressions that always perturbed him. Winter didn’t understand why.

They would ask Beckman new, more open-ended questions. Leave more pauses for him to fill in. The purpose of the cognitive method was to impose various memory-improving techniques on the witness. They would get Beckman to describe each detail, to relate everything he had seen in a different order and from different points of view.

“We can’t afford to slip up,” Winter said.

“You’re starting to repeat yourself.”

“I want seven decoys in the lineup.”

“You got it.”

Just enough people to fill the first couple of rows of a streetcar, Winter thought.

They would do the same with Svensson, Jamie’s boss. He might be able to recognize the face of the new customer who had popped up at his bar from time to time.

“It’s important to find exactly the right ones,” Winter said.

“You mean the decoys?”

“Yes.”

“That goes without saying.”

They couldn’t very well put Vikingsson next to seven homeless people. Finding the right combination was always a nightmare.

“Cohen is going to question Vikingsson again,” Ringmar said.

“I know. I’m about to head for his office now.”

“We’ve found out a little more about Vikingsson’s background, or personal life.”

“He hasn’t got a family, from what I’ve heard.”

“Neither a wife nor children, if that’s what you mean by family.”

“Yes.”

“He’s not gay.”

“I thought so at first,” Winter said.

“Really?”

Winter remembered the unauthorized search he and Macdonald had conducted in London. No need to mention it, not yet at least. He had seen certain signs, little details that were familiar to him. He thought of Mats. “It doesn’t mean much one way or the other,” he said.

“Except that all the victims were young males.”

“And that there might be a sexual motive that has escaped us thus far.” Winter suspected that such a motive did exist, at least indirectly. The murderer had taken advantage of the victims’ confusion, their search for a sexual identity. It was the simplest thing in the world to do. They might call themselves the ironic generation, or maybe it was adults who referred to them that way. Perhaps they had it together on the outside, but they were looking for something deeper. Beneath it all was a kind of faith. That was both their salvation and their vulnerability. “Kids are so defenseless,” he said.

“Only kids?”

“They’re the easiest people to lead astray.”

“You’re not so old yourself.”

“People take advantage of me, but not that way.”

“You mean it’s all society’s fault.”

“Certainly.”

“Has it always been like that, do you think?”

“Society ends up with the adults it deserves. It’s just a little more obvious nowadays.”

“So there’s nothing left to hope for?”

“I don’t know, Bertil.”

“What are you doing next New Year’s Eve?”

“If you’re asking whether I’ll have a reservation at a restaurant, the answer is no.”

“You’ll sit in your living room and play Coltrane for a beautiful woman.”