Sun and Shadow Read Free Page B

thing. It appeared as a different sort of light in her eyes, as if the strong lamps on the staircase had shone through the back of her head and given them a special glow.
    She pulled off her boots and dirty water splashed onto the parquet floor. Winter saw, but made no comment. Angela knew that he had noticed. She raised both hands over her head.
    “It won’t happen again,” she said.
    “What won’t?”
    “I saw you looking.”
    “And?”
    “You were thinking at that moment: what the hell is going to happen, what will my floor look like once she’s moved in.”
    “Hmm.”
    “It’s something you’ll have to work on,” she said.
    “Meanwhile I suppose I’d better go around to your place with muddy shoes and wander around the apartment with them on and jump up onto the bed and the armchairs. Get it out of me, as it were.”
    “As I said. Work on it.”
    He took her hand and they went into the kitchen. There was a smell of coffee and warm bread. On the table was a tub of butter, Västerbot ten cheese, radishes, coarse liver pate, cornichons.
    “A banquet,” she said.
    “Rustic and simple. But elegant even so.”
    “You mean the liver pâté?”
    “That’s the rustic bit. Here comes the elegance,” Winter said, going to the work surface and fetching a glass dish.
    “What is it?” she asked, going to the table. “Ah. Pickled herring. When did you find the time to make this? I assume you made it yourself?”
    “Don’t insult me.”
    “When did you find the time?”
    “In the early hours of yesterday. Just before two in the morning. And now it’s perfect.”
    “Now it’s perfect,” she repeated. “All that’s missing is the schnapps, but we’re not allowed to have any of that, are we?”
    “You are not allowed to have any of that,” he said. “I could indulge, but I’ll display my sympathy for your situation. For tonight, at least.”
    “It’s quite usual for men to show their sympathy for their women in a situation like this.”
    “Really?”
    “Some of them even put on weight.”
    “You can count me out on that score.”
     
    Morelius felt stiff. He’d felt stiff before setting out for work, and it hadn’t gone away as a result of the routine workout before the upcoming night shift.
    Afterward he sat on the bench in front of his locker, massaging his neck and looking at the pictures of naked women taped to the inside of Bartram’s locker door. They were fairly innocent pictures, cut out of some 1960s men’s magazine. Not the kind of thing that got printed nowadays. Bartram lived in the past. He sometimes claimed the pictures were of his wife, but he didn’t have a wife.
    They were now in the last week of the six-week rotation. That meant an extra night shift this Friday followed by two more over the weekend. It was the last Friday of the month, payday He knew that people were already out celebrating the fact that their pockets were full. It was just eight o‘clock and the station was closed.
    “A touch of a stiff neck, is it?” Bartram asked, who was fiddling with his pistol, checking the mechanism with an ease born of long experience. His SIG-Sauer still had the original wooden butt. Bartram sometimes went on about losing the Walther, which he considered a better weapon for the job, but not today. He was calm and serious, ready for the coming night and the coming weekend.
    “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