“It’s just a bit stiff,” Morelius said.

“Watch out for drafts.”

“I will.”

“You’d better stay indoors tonight.”

“Why?”

“Drafts. There’s a nasty wind blowing through Gothenburg tonight.”

“Bullshit. It’ll be a routine shift.”

“It’s payday today, Simon.”

Morelius and Bartram were walking down the Avenue. Some preferred to walk it alone, and Morelius had been one of those; but the last six months had been different. Being on his own no longer felt like liberation as far as he was concerned. He’d been well and truly scared on several occasions. Had seen things that terrified him.

On one occasion he’d come face-to-face with death in the Gnistäng Tunnel when a young couple drove straight into the wall. He’d been in the following car and seen everything. Like in a film. Real, but somehow unreal. The Mazda in front of him had swerved left and crashed into the wall with a noise of shattering glass and twisting metal. He wasn’t even on duty he’d just been driving around for fun, as he sometimes did when he was off duty. He’d managed to pull off an emergency stop, then leaped from his car and raced over to the wreck where the girl was hanging with… with… He’d gotten violently sick, right in front of her, like your ordinary… and then he’d tried to phone, but even as he was punching in the number he could hear sirens as his colleagues and an ambulance converged on the scene.

He thought about that now, as they passed the park for the second time. Beautiful people glittered on the other side of the windows, in bars, in restaurants. Women. Bartram turned to admire the sights to the left.

“Watch out for that stiff neck.”

“Ha, ha.”

“Maybe it would be worth it.”

“The trick is to compensate by looking in the other direction as well.”

Morelius looked in the other direction, over the Avenue. A gang of kids was approaching from Götaplatsen. One of twenty or so that were tempted to gather in the center of town on a Friday night. The Avenue became an odd mixture of middle-aged elegance, desperate thirty-year-old crises, and desperate fifteen-year-old crises.