The rain promised by the darkening skies began to fall, tapping against the boat’s fiberglass shell. Christine went to the companionway and slid the top shell closed as drizzle swirled into the cabin. She sank next to him at the built-in dining table, and again he sensed something amiss in her pained expression.

He met her eyes. “What’s wrong, Christine?”

After a long pause, she said, “There’s something you should know.”

“You mean it gets better?”

He’d hoped for a good-natured smile, but didn’t get it.

“When I was in the village yesterday, I bought one thing besides the food.” Christine reached into her pocket and pulled out a small plastic strip. It looked like a Popsicle stick, blue and with two colored bands on one end. She set the stick on the table and Slaton stared at it blankly. Only when he correlated the depth of her gaze did he realize what he was looking at.

“Is that a … you mean we…?”

Christine nodded. “Yes, David. We’re going to have a child.”

*   *   *

At 4:05 that Monday afternoon Sanderson was waiting in Sjoberg’s office while the assistant commissioner was tied up in something called the Interdepartmental Coordination Group. Sanderson briefly considered bursting in on the meeting with his revelations about Deadmarsh, but in the end he decided against it—given his present standing, he supposed drama would not work in his favor.

A ship’s clock somewhere in the room rang eight bells. He thought it sounded silly in a police department, and certainly not fitting for an AC’s office. Sanderson looked around the place and admitted, not for the first time, that he had once aspired to this room. The nameplate on the door might well have been his had he kept a more careerist outlook. He noted two pictures behind the desk. A younger Sjoberg standing on a golfer’s tee box with a commissioner long since retired, both brandishing long-shafted clubs. Another of Sjoberg accepting a plaque of commendation from the mayor, probably for some groundbreaking administrative achievement. Sanderson asked himself the familiar questions. Should he have made more appearances at the moving-up parties? Spent his weekends on the charity fund-raiser circuit? Those were the unwritten rules of the game of advancement, and Sanderson had not played by them. He supposed it was natural to find a few regrets at the end of a career, and he couldn’t deny this was one of his. Still, if he hadn’t achieved rank, he knew he’d earned the respect of the men and women he worked with on a day-to-day basis. If the inspectors and sergeants and constables at Kungsholmsgatan 43 were faced with a challenging case, he was the man they’d want to run it. Of this he was sure.