“I can’t make up my mind about the sofa,” Angela said when he answered. “I just had to get some advice without delay.”

“I hope you’re not lifting anything?”

“No, of course not.”

“I think you should bring it with you if you can’t make up your mind. I’ve got loads of room, after all.”

“But where would we put it?”

“Can’t this wait until tonight?”

“I wanted to be as well prepared as possible.”

“Hmm.”

“It’s a big decision, this.”

“I know.”

“Have you really thought it through? Maybe we should buy a house…”

“Come on, Angela.”

‘All right, all right. It’s just that everything’s so bewildering. Everything.“

Maybe that’s the right word, Winter thought, brushing some drops of rain off his shoulder. Bewildering. For the first time in his adult life he was about to start living with somebody else. He and Angela had been conducting an affair for years, but now they were going to live together. He had the feeling that she was the driving force behind the decision. No, that wasn’t fair. He would have to accept some of the responsibility as well.

There was no alternative. Either they would live together or… it would be over. But they’d gone beyond that now. He wouldn’t dare to call it off. The loneliness would be too great, no doubt about it. It would make things worse. Lonely into the new millennium. New Year’s Eve: a disc in the CD player and a glass of something. That would be it. Bleak prospects lit up by all the fireworks.

Soon there would be only three months left before the year 2000. And he was going to be forty, and before long not the youngest detective chief inspector in Sweden anymore.

Winter got back on his bike.

“See you at eight,” Angela said, and he switched off his phone.

It was night in the apartment, no lights burning anymore. A standard lamp had been on all day, but the bulb had gone. As dawn broke, autumn sidled in through the venetian blinds and a roller blind in the bedroom let in patches of light.