Please don’t come over here, Morelius thought. Though if it gets much worse we’ll have to go and sort it out. He heard a shout. “NO!” He watched the girl turn on her heel and start running down the Avenue. The gang hesitated. One youth suddenly started running after her. It looked like the kid who’d been lurking in the background at the ER. The group moved off, seeming to be pulled along the wide pavement, away from the woman who was left standing there on her own.

“Do you often think about what it’ll be like, being a father?”

The question took him by surprise. It was like interrogating a suspect. Taken by surprise. No time to think.

“Of course.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“How on earth could I fib about that? It’ll be the most important event of my life, along with my own birth.” He looked at her. Hair combed back. A slight swelling of the stomach. “That, and when I met you.”

“Good answer. But I think you’re already starting to worry about all the bad things that could happen.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, Angela. I’m an optimist, as you know.”

She burst out laughing.

‘About this, anyway,“ he said.

“I think you’re already starting to think what it will be like when… when our child is a teenager roaming around the Avenue with a gang.”

“Come off it.”

“I’m right, though, aren’t I? That’s what’ll happen.”

“There won’t be any Avenue by then.”

“No parade street in Gothenburg anymore? Is that the optimist talking?”

Winter’s mobile rang on the bedside table. It was 12:03 A.M. The few people who had his mobile number rang on police business, apart from Angela, but she was lying in bed beside him, still soft and red, with three small beads of sweat on her forehead.

His mother was the only other person it could be. It’s either murder or Mother, Winter thought, without smiling. He scrambled over to the other side of the bed and answered.