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to the neighbors, aside from the occasional party. His friends say that he was utterly harmless, never got into fights or committed any sort of crime. He apparently kept up his interest in photography. This summer I ran into him one day as I was biking to work. He was in the process of photographing a flower near Gutavallen.”
    “What else do we know about his background?” Wittberg cast a glance at Jacobsson’s papers lying on the table.
    “He was born in 1943 in Visby Hospital,” Jacobsson continued. “Grew up in Visby. In 1965 he married a woman from Visby, Ann-Sofie Nilsson. They had a child in 1967, a girl named Pia. Divorced in 1986.”
    “Okay, we’ll find out more about him today,” said Knutas. “And we’ve got to locate Bengt Johnsson.”
    He looked out the window.
    “Since it’s raining, the winos are probably sitting outside the Domus department store, in the mall. That would be the best place to start. Wittberg?”
    “Karin and I can go.”
    Knutas nodded.
    “I’ve started to collate the interviews with his neighbors, and I’d like to keep working on that,” said Norrby. “And there are a couple of people I’d like to talk to again.”
    “That sounds fine,” said Knutas, and then he turned to the prosecutor. “Birger, do you have anything to add?”
    “No. Just keep me informed and I’ll be happy.”
    “Okay. We’ll stop here. But we’ll meet again this afternoon. Shall we say three o’clock?”
    After the meeting Knutas retreated to his office. His new office was twice as big as the old one. Embarrassingly big, he might say. The walls were painted a light color that reminded him of the sand at Tofta beach on a sunny day in July.
    The view was the same as from their conference room next door: the parking lot at Östercentrum and in the distance, the ring wall and the sea.
    On the windowsill stood a healthy-looking white geranium that had only recently stopped blooming in anticipation of winter. Jacobsson had given it to him for his birthday several years earlier. He had brought the potted plant with him from his old office, along with his beloved old desk chair made of oak with a soft leather seat. It spun nicely, and he often made use of that feature.
    He filled his pipe, taking great care. His thoughts were on Henry Dahlström’s darkroom and what he had seen there. When he thought about the man’s crushed skull, he shuddered.
    Everything pointed to a drunken brawl that got out of hand and came to an unusually brutal end. Dahlström had presumably taken a buddy down to the basement to show him some photographs, and they started arguing about something. Most cases of assault and battery started out that way, and every year some drunk or addict on Gotland was murdered.
    In his mind he thought back, trying to summon up a picture of Henry Dahlström.
    When Knutas had joined the police force twenty-five years earlier, Dahlström was a respected photographer. He worked for the newspaper Gotlands Tidningar and was one of the most prominent photographers on the island. At the time Knutas was a cop on the beat, patrolling the streets. Whenever big news events occurred, Dahlström was always the first on the scene with his camera. If Knutas met him at private functions, they would usually have a chat. Dahlström was a pleasant man with a good sense of humor, although he had a tendency to drink too much. Knutas would sometimes meet him heading home from a pub, drunk as a skunk. Occasionally he would give him a ride because the man was too drunk to get home on his own. Back then Dahlström was married. Later on he quit his job with the newspaper and started his own company. At the same time, his alcohol consumption seemed to increase.
    Dahlström was once found passed out inside the thirteenth-century ruin of Saint Karin’s church in the middle of Stora Torget, the central marketplace in Visby. He was lying on a narrow stairway, asleep, when he was discovered by a startled guide and his