As you grow older you search for simplicity. I’m getting older. I’ll soon be forty. That’s old, relatively speaking. Maybe I’m not a simple person, but I can learn, still. Or perhaps I’ve always been a simple soul. Angela has noticed that. That’s why she’s picked me out of ten thousand others.

He put the fourth disc into the CD player and selected the tenth track, his favorite all this last month, or at least ever since the decision was made. The decision. I’m happy with you in my arms, I’m happy with you in my heart, happy when I taste your kiss, I’m happy in love like this. The simple life. Angela had understood. Maybe he would find happiness.

The ballad oozed through the room as he got undressed, happy, baby, come the dark, and suddenly he was in the shower thinking of nothing. He could hear the music through the water, and then the sound of a key as Angela let herself in.

Lars Bergenhem drove over Älvsborg Bridge. The car was rocking in the wind. He was off duty, and when he came to the tunnel he wondered what the hell he was doing there. In the tunnel. In the car. He could be sitting at home, watching his two-year-old daughter as she slept. That’s what he used to do. Ada would sleep, and he would watch. He could be watching Martina cleaning up the kitchen after Ada ’s evening meal. He could be doing the cleaning up himself.

It had started the way it always did. A word neither of them understood. After Ada had fallen asleep it was so quiet that he didn’t have the strength to try to find words that wouldn’t make everything worse. He was used to investigations, but this was too much for him. He was a detective, but he wasn’t a detective of love. Didn’t that come from some song or other? “Detective of love?” Elvis Costello? “Watching the Detectives.”

He turned northward when he came to Frölunda Torg, heading back. A drive he’d done before, but not for a long time.

Everything had been fine. The apprehension inside him had long since died away. Had it come back? Was it his fault? Was it to do with him or Martina? Those words that neither of them wanted to understand. Where did they come from? It was like a headache.

His townhouse looked cozy when he got out of the car. Cozy. There were more lights on than necessary.

Martina was in the kitchen with a cup of tea. She’d been crying and he felt guilty He had to say something.

“Is Ada asleep?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

“What is?”

“That she’s asleep. Ada.”

“What are you talking about? You just march out of the house and drive off, then come back home as if nothing had happened.”

“What did happen?”

‘And you need to ask?“

“Was it me who started it?”

She didn’t answer. Her head was bowed but he knew she was crying again. He could do one of two things. Either say something sensible or go out to the car and drive over the bridge again.

“Martina…”

She raised her head and looked at him.

“We’re both tired,” he said.

“Tired? Is that it? We should be merry and bright and be thinking about Christmas that’s just around the corner. Ada has started talk…” She let her head sink down toward the table again.

He was searching for words. The wall clock was ticking louder than before.

“Is it going to be like this until I go back on duty?” he said.

She muttered something.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Not everything is about you going back on duty again,” she said. “Does everything have to be calm and quiet so that you have enough strength to work as a detective?”

“You know what I mean.”

“I won’t know anything at all soon.”

He stood up and went to Ada ’s room and watched the girl sleeping with her thumb in her mouth. She didn’t make a sound. He bent down over her face and listened for her breathing, and heard a faint peep as she breathed in through her nose.

They had let things calm down as far as was possible. He was drinking coffee in the living room and Martina came in from the kitchen.

“Winter and Angela are going to live together,” he said.

“Why do you call him Winter when his name’s Erik? People don’t refer to us as Bergenhem and Martina, do they?”

“No, of course not, but people just usually call him Winter.”

“It’s not so personal that way, is that it? Does that make it easier? Is that what it’s all about?”

“I… I really don’t know.”

Martina had met Angela for the first time nearly two years earlier, just before Ada was born. It had been pretty dramatic. Bergenhem had been badly injured and had disappeared and Winter had asked Angela to go with Martina in the ambulance while he searched for his colleague.

“I hope it turns out well,” she said as he sat, lost in thought. “I think it will.”

“What?”

“The move. Moving in together. Erik and Angela. I hope it goes well.”

“Yes.”

“Where are they going to live?”

“I haven’t asked. But I… well, I suppose the obvious place is his apartment. It’s bigger than hers.”

“How do you know?”

He looked at her. She was smiling now.

“I don’t know, to tell you the truth,” he said. “It’s funny. I just took it for granted.”

“Perhaps they’ll buy a house.”

“I can’t imagine Winter in a house.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know… He seems part of the city somehow. High-rise buildings, squares, taxis.”

“I don’t think so. He’ll buy an old house in Långedrag and fill it with his family.”

“That sounds like Utopia.”

“It will soon be the year 2000,” she said. “Anything can happen.”

Not quite anything, he thought. Some things mustn’t happen. It would be best if everything stays as it is, as it is just now.

“There might be a moving-in party,” she said. “When’s it happening?”

“What?”

“Them moving in together, into wherever it is they’re going to live?”

“Before Christmas, I think.”

“Good. I’m happy for them.”

Angela arrived before eight. Her hair was down and gleamed in the light from the staircase following her in through the open door. Perhaps she had a new expression in her eyes, something he hadn’t previously noticed: a conviction that there was a future for them despite everything. But there was something else as well. The other thing. It appeared as a different sort of light in her eyes, as if the strong lamps on the staircase had shone through the back of her head and given them a special glow.

She pulled off her boots and dirty water splashed onto the parquet floor. Winter saw, but made no comment. Angela knew that he had noticed. She raised both hands over her head.

“It won’t happen again,” she said.

“What won’t?”

“I saw you looking.”

“And?”

“You were thinking at that moment: what the hell is going to happen, what will my floor look like once she’s moved in.”

“Hmm.”

“It’s something you’ll have to work on,” she said.

“Meanwhile I suppose I’d better go around to your place with muddy shoes and wander around the apartment with them on and jump up onto the bed and the armchairs. Get it out of me, as it were.”

“As I said. Work on it.”

He took her hand and they went into the kitchen. There was a smell of coffee and warm bread. On the table was a tub of butter, Västerbot ten cheese, radishes, coarse liver pate, cornichons.

“A banquet,” she said.

“Rustic and simple. But elegant even so.”

“You mean the liver pâté?”

“That’s the rustic bit. Here comes the elegance,” Winter said, going to the work surface and fetching a glass dish.

“What is it?” she asked, going to the table. “Ah. Pickled herring. When did you find the time to make this? I assume you made it yourself?”

“Don’t insult me.”

“When did you find the time?”

“In the early hours of yesterday. Just before two in the morning. And now it’s perfect.”