Nobody remembered what the man looked like. But they showed no reluctance to describe him anyway. He had been tall, average height or a bit short. Compared to the kid? No, compared to the streetcar, somebody said, and Winter closed his eyes as if he were exorcising the world’s ingratitude.

The man’s hair had been blond, black and brown. He had been wearing a suit, leather jacket and tweeds. He had horn-rimmed glasses, dark sunglasses and no glasses at all. He was stooped over, his posture was perfect, he was bowlegged and he had long, muscular legs.

What kind of world would we live in, Winter mused, if everybody looked at it the same way?

Winter had seen for himself that the kid’s hair was dark. Whether it had been “badly cut” was impossible to tell. The coroner and forensic specialists were done, leaving Winter alone in the dorm room at the Chalmers University of Technology. The body had already been carried out.

The walls reeked of blood. It’s not a real smell, he thought. It assaults the mind more than the senses. The color is what does it, the pale remnants of life splattered on ugly yellow.

The sun crept in from the right and cast its harsh light on the opposite wall. When he squinted, the colors disappeared and the wall became a luminous rectangle. He closed his eyes and felt the blood dissolve in the sun’s heat, heard the wall murmur about what it had witnessed less than twelve hours earlier.

As the murmurs turned to shrieks, Winter put his hands over his ears, crossed the room and opened the door to the hallway. He closed it again and heard the roar inside the room, and it struck him that the same ear-splitting silence had reigned while the crime was being committed.

Winter walked past the bar, turned around and retraced his steps. The decor was subtle and understated, but in sharp contrast to the pale sky outside, with colors that offered coolness in the summer and warmth in the winter. Johan knows how to pick his interior decorators, Winter thought, sitting down at one of the two tables by the window. A young waitress came up and he ordered a malt whisky.