Patrik felt inexplicably light-hearted and took the stairs to Dagmar Petrén’s house two at a time. But when he was almost to the top he had to catch his breath, bending over with his hands on his knees. He certainly wasn’t twenty years old anymore. The woman who opened the door definitely wasn’t either. He hadn’t seen anything so little and wrinkled since the last time he opened a bag of prunes. Stooped and hunched as she was, she hardly came up much past his waist, and Patrik was afraid she’d snap in two in the slightest breeze. But the eyes that looked up towards him were as clear and alert as a young girl’s.

‘Don’t stand there puffing, son. Come in and have a cup of coffee.’

Her voice was surprisingly powerful, and Patrik suddenly felt like a schoolboy as he followed her obediently inside. He resisted a strong urge to bow and struggled to maintain the snail’s pace so as not to run over Mrs Petrén. Inside the door he stopped short. Never in his entire life had he seen so many Santa Clauses. Everywhere, on every available surface, there they were. Big ones, little ones, old ones, young ones, winking ones and grey ones. He felt his brain go into overdrive to handle all the sensory input flowing towards him.

‘What do you think? Aren’t they magnificent!’

Patrik didn’t know quite what to say, and after a moment he managed to stammer a reply.

‘Yes, absolutely. Fantastic.’

He gave Mrs Petrén an anxious look to see whether she could hear that his words didn’t really match his tone of voice. To his amazement she gave him a roguish smile that made her eyes flash.

‘Don’t worry, boy. I’m well aware that it’s not really your taste, but when one gets old it involves certain responsibilities, you understand.’

‘Responsibilities?’

‘One is expected to show a bit of eccentricity to be interesting. Otherwise one is simply a sad old crone, and no one wants that, you know.’

‘But, why gnomes?’

Patrik still didn’t quite understand. Mrs Petrén explained it to him as if she were speaking to a child.

‘Well, the best thing, you see, is that one only needs to put them up once a year. The rest of the year I can keep the place nice and tidy. Then there’s the advantage that it brings a pack of children running up here at Christmastime. And for an old crone who doesn’t have many visitors, it’s a joy to the soul when the little creatures come and ring my bell to see the Santas.’

‘But how long do you keep them up, Mrs Petrén? We’re in the middle of February now.’

‘Well, I start putting them up in October and then take them down around April. Although you must realize that it probably takes a week or two to put them up and take them down.’

Patrik had no difficulty at all visualizing that it would take time. He tried doing a quick calculation in his head, but his brain hadn’t really recovered from the shock of the whole scene. Instead he turned to Mrs Petrén with a direct question.

‘How many do you actually have here?’

The reply was instant. ‘One thousand four hundred and forty-three, no excuse me, one thousand four hundred and forty-two-I happened to break one yesterday. And one of the nicest ones at that,’ said Mrs Petrén with a sad expression.

But she pulled herself together, her eyes flashing again. With astonishing strength she tugged on Patrik’s sleeve and more or less dragged him to the kitchen, where in contrast there was not a Santa to be seen. Patrik discreetly smoothed out his jacket but had a feeling that she would have grabbed hold of his ear instead if she could reach that high.

‘We’ll sit here. One gets a bit testy always having a bunch of old men around one. Here in the kitchen they’re banned.’

He sat down on the hard kitchen bench after all his offers of assistance were brusquely refused. Steeling himself at the thought of some thin, wretched boiled coffee, his mouth fell open for the second time at the sight of the huge, stainless-steel, hypermodern coffee brewer enthroned on the worktop.

‘What would you like? Cappuccino? Café au lait? Maybe a doppio espresso-you look like you could use it.’

Patrik managed only a nod. Mrs Petrén was apparently enjoying his amazement.

‘What did you expect? An old percolator from ’43 and hand-ground beans? No, just because I’m an old crone doesn’t mean that one can’t enjoy the good things in life. I got this from my son as a Christmas present a couple of years ago, and it’s always running, I can tell you that. Sometimes there’s a queue of old ladies from the neighbourhood waiting to have a drop.’

She patted the machine tenderly, which was now sputtering and fizzing as it whipped up milk to an airy froth.

As the coffee was being prepared, one fantastic pastry after another materialized on the table in front of Patrik. Not a Finnish pin roll or Karlsbad kruller as far as the eye could see; instead big cinnamon buns, stunning muffins, sticky chocolate biscuits, and fluffy meringue cakes were set out as Patrik’s eyes grew bigger and bigger. His mouth started watering so much that saliva threatened to run out the corners of his mouth. Mrs Petrén chuckled when she saw the expression on his face, and sat down across from him on one of the Windsor chairs. She served them each a cup of hot, aromatic, freshly brewed coffee.

‘I understand that it’s the girl in the house across the way that you want to talk to me about. Well, I already spoke with your superintendent and told him what little I know.’

With an effort Patrik detached himself from the sticky bun he had just sunk his teeth into. He had to clean his front teeth with his tongue before he could open his mouth.

‘Yes, Mrs Petrén, perhaps you would be so kind as to recount what you said? Is it all right if I turn on the tape recorder, by the way?’

He pressed the red button on the tape recorder and made sure to chew thoroughly while waiting for her reply.

‘Yes, of course you may. Well, it was Friday, the twenty-second of January, at six thirty. And please don’t be so formal. It makes me feel ancient.’

‘How can you be so sure of the date and time? It’s been a couple of weeks since then.’

Patrik took another bite.

‘Well, you see, it was my birthday that day, so my son and his family were here. We had cake and they brought me presents. Then they left just before the six-thirty news on channel 4, and that was when I heard a devil of a row outside. I rushed to the window that faces out back and over by the lass’s house, and that’s when I saw him.’

‘Anders?’

‘Anders the painter, yes. Drunk as a lord he was, standing there yelling like a madman and banging on the door. Finally she let him in and then it was quiet. Well, he may have kept yelling, I don’t know anything about that. It’s impossible to hear what goes on inside these houses.’

Mrs Petrén noticed that Patrik’s plate was empty, so she pushed over the tray of cinnamon buns to tempt him. He didn’t need a great deal of persuasion. He quickly helped himself to one on top.

‘And you’re quite sure, Mrs Petrén, that it was Anders Nilsson? No doubts on that point?’

‘Oh no, I’d know that rascal anywhere. He used to come over at all hours, and if he wasn’t here then he’d be down with the drunks on the square. I never did understand what he had to do with Alexandra Wijkner. That girl had class, I have to tell you. Both good-looking and well-brought-up. When she was little she’d often come over for juice and buns. She used to sit right there on the bench, often together with Tore’s little girl, what was her name now…?’

‘Erica,’ said Patrik with his mouth full of cinnamon bun, and he felt a tingle in the pit of his stomach just from saying her name.

‘Erica, that’s right. She was a nice girl too, but there was something special about Alexandra. She had a radiance about her. But then something happened…she stopped coming by and hardly ever said hello. A couple of months later they moved to Göteborg, and then I didn’t see her until she started coming here on weekends a couple of years ago.’