Back home, the burglar had difficulty concentrating. Snowflakes danced outside his window, and he could feel a draft through the sill. Some children were picking up the snow as soon as it hit the ground, while his son stood there with a carrot in his hand. A nose for a snowman, he thought. Why does that remind me of Michael Jackson?

“A penny for your thoughts,” his wife said.

“What?”

“You looked like you’d just discovered the theory of relativity.”

“I was thinking about Michael Jackson.”

“The singer?”

He kept his eyes on the children. The lower part of the snowman’s body was done. No legs, of course. A snowman with legs-that was a new concept.

“You meant the singer, right?” she repeated.

“What did you say?”

“Hello, anybody home?”

He turned and looked at her. “Yes, Michael Jackson. Kalle’s got a carrot in his hand, and he’s waiting for them to put a head on the snowman so he can give it a nose.” He glanced back at the children. “Michael Jackson had a nose operation or something a year or two ago.”

“That’s news to me.”

“It’s true. Is there any more coffee?”

She got up and took the coffeepot from the counter.

“So what did you do all day?” she asked after he had poured some milk in his cup, followed by the coffee, and taken a few sips.

“What do you mean?”

“You looked a little upset when you came home.”

“I did?”

“You weren’t your usual self.”

The snowman had a head now, and Kalle had stuck the carrot into a blank surface that would soon turn into a face with pebbles for eyes and gravel for a mouth.

“Did you have a bad day?” she persisted.

“No.”

“I thought you were in a better mood the last few days.”

“The caseworker at the employment office always looks right past me,” he said finally.

“Past you?”

“She sits there, and we talk and talk, but her eyes are on the window behind me. Like some job was about to climb in. Or she feels like jumping out.”

“A job will climb in soon. Take my word for it.”

She knows me through and through, he thought, but she hasn’t guessed anything yet. When the hauls get a little bigger, she might suspect something, but that won’t be anytime soon. Maybe I’ll get a regular job first. Bigger miracles have happened. But by then I might not want it anymore.

He couldn’t get the bloodstained clothes out of his mind. When he had stood and stared at them, they seemed to be beckoning to him, or screaming something for his ears only.

He would never know how he had managed to get the clothes back in the garbage bag, and he could only pray that he had left the bedroom in the same shape as he’d found it. Why hadn’t the idiot just burned them? I haven’t seen anything, he told himself.

THE MUFFLED SOUNDS OF WINTER FOLLOWED THEM INTO POLICE headquarters and lingered in their clothing as they rode the elevator to the fourth floor of the homicide division.

The corridors were lined with tile. For most of the year, noises that made their way in from the street bounced dissonantly off the walls. Now they just rolled by like loosely packed snowballs. A circle of silence surrounds everyone and everything, Winter thought as he stepped out of the elevator and turned the corner. Maybe January is my month after all.

The investigation team gathered in the conference room. The massive effort of the first few days was winding down. Only the core group was left. Just like always.

Most of the remaining fifteen inspectors were crowded in here, and their clothes still smelled of raw cold and overheated engines.

Ringmar, who was acting as the assistant chief investigator, hadn’t slept the night before and had done his best to make sure that nobody else had either. He hadn’t bothered to comb his hair, which was his way of saying how serious things were.

If we were at war and I was the platoon leader, Winter thought, I would demand Ringmar for my assistant or threaten to hang out at the mess hall all day long. He took the folder that Janne Möllerström, their database expert, was holding out to him. If we were at another kind of war, he corrected himself.

Möllerström was new and quite young. He had already done an excellent job in a couple of difficult homicide cases, and Winter had insisted on having him again.

Sometimes there were two database guys, but Möllerström was all you needed. He kept track of everything, and the preliminary investigation database was his most prized possession.

Winter swallowed and felt the scratchiness he had noticed when getting out of bed that morning, a raw feeling way down in the left side of his throat. “Who wants to start?” he asked.

They looked around at each other. Winter was as disciplined as they came, and when he let go of the reins like this, it meant he was looking for some creative thinking about the murder. Or murders.

Nobody said anything.

“Lars?”

Lars Bergenhem shifted in his chair. His face has taken on real character since they made him an inspector, Winter thought.

“I’ve read the reports from London,” Bergenhem offered.

“And?”

“I was thinking about the glove.”

“Go on.”

“The London team found the imprint of a glove in the bed-and-breakfast, and Fröberg found a similar one in the dorm here.”

“Correct.”

“The imprint is in the same place in both rooms.”

“Correct.”

“That’s all I had.” Bergenhem’s features relaxed.

“There’s another thing,” Ringmar said from his favorite corner. He always stood there and fiddled nonstop with his mustache. It might look like he was vain about his appearance, but he simply thought more clearly when his fingers were in motion. “Those marks,” he explained.

Winter looked at Ringmar, swallowed and felt the scratching sensation in his throat again.

Ringmar continued. “Is there anything in the latest report from INTERPOL and London about marks in the middle of the room?”

“No,” Möllerström said, “but they’re not even finished with half of the room yet.”

“That means we’re faster than they are.” This from an inspector who would be leaving the core group soon.

“It doesn’t mean a damn thing,” Ringmar snapped, “until we get all the exact times down.”

“Let’s not turn this into a game of one-upmanship between London and Gothenburg,” Winter said.

“My sentiments exactly,” Ringmar said. “Where was I?”

“The marks,” Möllerström answered.

“Right. The forensic specialists found these marks almost smack-dab in the middle of the room, and now they’re sure what they are.”

“They’re pretty sure,” Winter corrected him.

“Reasonably sure, let’s put it that way,” Ringmar went on. “They’re working on the comparisons right now. I just talked with them, or rather with INTERPOL.”

“It’s time for some direct contact with London,” Winter said.

“Are you planning to keep us in suspense all day long?” a woman’s voice said. Aneta Djanali was one of the few women at Homicide, new to the division but never apologetic about it. Ringmar had talked to Winter about her, and they agreed that she would remain in the group as they prepared for the long haul.

“The marks were from a tripod,” Ringmar said. “It might have been for a video camera or a regular camera-or a pair of binoculars, for that matter-but it’s definitely a tripod.”

“How the hell can they tell?” someone asked from the middle of the room.

“Say that again?”

“How can they be certain that it was a tripod?”

“They aren’t certain, as we just pointed out,” Winter said. “But the lab is in the process of eliminating everything else.”

“So the bastard recorded the whole thing.” The inspector looked around the room from his spot by the door.