“Let’s let the bird have a laugh,” he said to Elsa, and burst out laughing himself. “Ha-ha-ha-ha.” She looked a bit frightened at first, but then she couldn’t stop herself from giggling.

Winter picked up a crayon and a blank sheet of paper, and drew something that could just possibly be construed as a seagull laughing. There was even a name for this gull, and he announced it in the top right-hand corner of the picture. “Blackie the Blackhead.” His bequest to posterity. The first drawing he’d made for thirty years.

“It looks like a flying piglet,” said Angela.

“Yes, isn’t it amazing? A pig that can laugh and fly as well.”

“But pigs can fly,” Elsa said.

They were sitting at the kitchen table with a glass of red wine each. Elsa was asleep. Winter had made some anchovy sandwiches, which they’d just finished eating.

“Those things make you thirsty,” he said, getting up for some more water.

“I bumped into Bertil on our ward today,” said Angela.

“Yes, he was there.”

Angela rubbed the base of her nose with her finger. He could see a faint shadow under one of her eyes, only the one. She was tired, and so was he. Not excessively so, but the way you feel after a day’s work. She couldn’t always relax at home and forget about her job as a doctor, but she was better at it than he was. Still, he was better than he used to be-not good, but better. He often used to sit with his laptop, working on a case until he fell asleep in his chair. He was no longer that solitary, and he didn’t miss the old ways.

“That boy got a nasty blow,” she said. “He could have died.”

“Like the other two.”

She nodded. He could see the shadow under her eye deepen when she bent forward. When she leaned back it almost disappeared.

Their… everyday work overlapped. He wasn’t sure what to call it. Their professional activities, perhaps. Was that preordained? He sometimes thought so. When they first met Angela had just decided to study medicine. He’d recently joined the CID as a raw recruit.