He heard a sound that he recognized. It was coming from him. He was crying again, and it was because he’d been thinking about the parrot. He’d had a red and green parrot when he was a little boy, and for a while when he was older. It was a real one, and it could say his name and three other funny things, and his name was Bill. He was sure that Bill had been real.

The film had finished. He watched it again from the beginning. Bill was there in several of the scenes. Bill was still there for him because he hung a little parrot from his rearview mirror every time he went out in the car. They might be different, with different colors, but that didn’t matter because they were all Bill. He sometimes thought of them as Billy Boy. His favorite Rotty. The boy was laughing again now, just before everything went black. Kalle Boy, he thought, and the film ended, and he stood up and fetched all the things he needed for copying, or whatever you called it. Cutting. He liked doing that job.

“Sounds like the Incredible Hulk,” said Fredrik Halders.

“This is the first of the victims who’s seen anything,” said Ringmar. “Stillman’s the first.”

“Hmm. Of course, it’s not certain that it was the same hulk who carried out all the attacks,” said Halders.

Ringmar shook his head. “The wounds are identical.”

Halders rubbed the back of his neck. It wasn’t all that long since he himself had received a savage blow that had smashed a vertebra and paralyzed him temporarily, but he’d managed to get the use of his limbs back. For what that was worth, he’d thought a long time afterward. He’d always been clumsy. Now it was taking him time to get back to his former level of clumsiness.