She got in the elevator.There were evidently a lot of police cars out this evening. Or was it the same car? A raid on some shady premises in Vasastan. Where the dregs of Gothenburg live. Social dropouts. Desperadoes. Chief inspectors. Doctors. Mad widows with fortunes acquired in mysterious circumstances. There was one of those on the same floor as Erik. Very old, but she doesn’t fool me, Erik had once said when they’d greeted her as she got out of the elevator. Sometimes you can hear noises from her apartment that sound like some kind of mass. Did you see her nails? No? Not surprising because she doesn’t have any. But what she does have is lots of strange visitors.

She’d actually shuddered at the time. She thought about that as she stepped out of the elevator and saw Mrs. Malmer’s dark-painted door.

Rosemary’s Baby. The thought came from nowhere. She was Rosemary, and had moved in, for good. Erik started making late-night visits to old Mrs. Malmer and she would start hearing rhythmic murmuring through the wall. One morning Erik would have a Band-Aid on his shoulder. Somebody would die a tragic death at his workplace. The chief of police. Erik would be promoted into his job. She would be introduced to Mrs. Malmer’s eccentric but very gentlemanly old friend and he would introduce her in turn to a new gynecologist, which could lead…

She’d opened the door to the apartment and the phone was ringing. She put down the shopping bag, kicked off her boots and took a couple of paces to the bureau in the hall where the telephone was.

“Hello?” She could hear her heavy breathing.

“Have you been running up the stairs?”

“Hi, Erik!”

“Is it good for you to run up the stairs? Or have you started doing gymnastics?”

“I took the elevator.”

“That can be strenuous.”

“Yes. I start imagining all the horrible things that might be going on in this building.”

“Old Mrs. Malmer?”

“Why mention her by name?” she asked, noting the tone of suspicion in her own voice. Good Lord!

“That was silly of me. I don’t want to scare you-”

“Stop now and tell me about your father. It sounds as if you’ve been able to relax a bit.”

“Maybe. He was critical again for a while and they did something new to his blood vessels, adjusted something. He’s resting now in the recovery ward.”

“Have you managed to talk to the doctors yet?”

“Are you kidding? You ought to know better than anybody how impossible that is. The world over.”

She thought about the complaints that had been directed at her earlier that day. About her never being there.

“Don’t be too hard on us,” she said.

“Dad isn’t complaining, and that’s the main thing,” he said. “How are things otherwise?”

“I had the classic longing for anchovies and rushed out into the rain and was shadowed by your colleagues.”

“Shadowed? By the crime unit? They can’t have been all that discreet, then.”

“What are you saying? Is it something that you’re behind?”

“Eh? I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”

“Being shadowed. By the crime unit.”

“Do you really feel you’re being shadowed by the crime unit?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You said precisely that just now.”

“I said I was being shadowed by your colleagues. I meant the police.”

She could hear the sigh all the way from the Costa del Sol.

“Let’s start again from the beginning,” he said. “Tell me again. I’ll listen and I won’t say a word.”

“I went out shopping and a police car followed me. Slowly. All the way. When I stopped to see if that really was what it was doing it flashed its headlights and turned off down a side street.”

Winter said nothing.

“When I came back and was about to go through the main door a police car appeared again and drove slowly past, in the same way,” Angela went on. ‘And after it had passed, it flashed its lights again. The taillights this time.“

“Was that all?”

“Yes. For God’s sake, I expect they were keeping somewhere under observation, or whatever you say. It must have been a coincidence. I said it mainly as a joke.”

“Ha, ha.”

“Yes, funny, wasn’t it?”

“Did you get the license plate number? Or numbers if there were two cars?”

“Of course. I noted everything down right away on the inside of my eyelid.” She laughed. “I’m afraid not. I didn’t go to police academy.”

“Well… I don’t know what to say.”

“Forget it. It was a coincidence, of course. Always assuming that you haven’t… haven’t put somebody on to keeping a discreet watch on me, to make sure I’m all right while you’re away.”

“It doesn’t seem to be all that discreet.”

“Well, have you?”

“Are you joking?”

“I’m not sure.”

“I don’t have the power to do anything like that. Not yet, at least.”

“But soon, perhaps?”

“What do you mean?”

“If something happens to your boss? The chief of police. What’s his name?”

“Birgersson. What are you talking about, Angela?”

“Nothing.” She laughed again. “I’m just talking in my sleep, as it were. Or in my daydreams.” Not a sound from the Costa del Sol. “Hello? Are you still there, Erik?”

“This is a very odd conversation.”

“It’s my fault. I’m sorry. I still feel an outsider in this building, even though I’ve been here so often for so many years. But it’s different now. And I suppose it’s really to do with me wanting you back at home again. As quickly as possible. As soon as your dad’s better.”

“We must keep hoping.”

“It might take time.”

“If he has any time left.”

“It sounds as if he has.”

“Now you’d better fix those anchovies.”

“I suppose you get a lot of that kind of thing down there.”

“I haven’t tried any yet.”

“No tapas?”

“There hasn’t been any… time. I stayed at the hospital last night.”

“What was it like?”

“Better than being somewhere else. Anyway, make sure you get some salt down you, so that you don’t think so much about ghosts.”

“Mrs. Malmer?”

“Police cars.”

“I’ve bought some cola sweets as well.”

“Eat them with mashed anchovies and Parmesan cheese.”

“I’ve made a note of that,” Angela said.

The car drove around the town center, then returned to Vasaplatsen. The driver was listening to the emergency call-outs. A traffic jam near the Tingstad Tunnel. A mugging in Kortedala. Somebody who ran away from a tram in Majorna without paying.

He parked at the newspaper stand and bought a paper, any paper. Maybe he’d read it, or just leave it on one of the seats. Maybe he’d just drop it in the trash bin.

Lights were on in most of the apartments. He knew which block, but not which apartment. It would be easy to check the names on the intercom on the front door, but what would be the point of that? He asked himself that question as he got back into the car and fastened his seat belt. What-would-be-the-point-of-that? He had a question but no answer. When he knew why he was going to go up to that door and check the address and the floor, he would also know the answer to several other questions. Things that had happened. That were going to happen. Going-to-happen.

Had he flashed his lights? If he had, there would have been a point. It would have been a start. He looked down at the newspaper on his knee. He didn’t know which one it was: Göteborgs Tidningen or Ex pressen or Aftonbladet, only that there would be things in it, and in the others, that he could have told them about himself, but they hadn’t asked and it was the same as it always was because nobody ever asked him anything, anything with a POINT to it, but that was all over now, ALL OVER NOW He squeezed his hand around the newspaper and tugged at it, and afterward, after a minute, or a year, while he was still sitting in front of the newspaper stand, he looked down again and saw that he had torn the paper in two.