“You or Karin told us that she was Per’s girlfriend, but that’s not how she described it.”
“You know how it is at that age. They must have broken up or something.”
“It’s more like they had never gone out, not really.”
“And here I thought that I was the one having trouble getting my words out. What are you trying to say—that they were only friends, or that Per never got it together to screw her?”
Winter didn’t like either alternative.
“Answer me, for Pete’s sake.”
“More like the latter,” Winter said finally.
“He never screwed her. Is that what you mean by keeping me informed?”
Winter started to answer, but Lasse interrupted him. “Is this some kind of newfangled interrogation method, Mr. Investigator?”
“Please try to understand, Lasse. This is the type of information that’s absolutely essential if we’re going to get the answers we need.”
“What fucking answers?”
“We’ve got to find out as much as we can about Per and his . . . interests.”
“Like whether he was a fag?”
“Was he?”
Lasse dropped his eyes and started rubbing his chin again. “Leave,” he said quietly.
“Pull yourself together, Lasse.”
“You ask me if my son was a pervert, and then you tell me to pull myself together?”
“I don’t know a thing about Per’s sexual orientation. That’s why I’m asking.”
Lasse sat with his head bowed over the coffee table and finally looked up at Winter.
“I wouldn’t ask if it weren’t important,” Winter insisted.
Lasse muttered something indecipherable.
“Sorry, I didn’t get what you said.”
“Hell if I know.”
Winter waited.
“I can honestly tell you that I have no idea. It’s true that he didn’t date a lot, but I never thought much about it. I was a late starter myself.”
The dog continued to bark, as if it couldn’t stop until Lasse’s ordeal was over. It’s not his dog but it’s a kindred soul, Winter thought.
“Have you talked to Karin about it?” Lasse asked.
“Not yet.”
“Ask her.”
The dog stopped barking.
“I’m really sorry to put you through all this,” Winter said.
“I’m telling you the truth. Even if I knew Per was gay, I wouldn’t lie to you about it.”
How would Lasse have reacted if Per had told him he was gay? Winter remembered the way Mats had been the last year of his life—so fragile and tormented by feverish dreams. “There’s nothing for anyone to be ashamed of,” he said.
“You mean that I was ashamed of Per.”
“No.”
“I don’t have anything against gays, but this came a little suddenly, that’s all.”
“We don’t know anything yet, I assure you. But we can’t ignore any possible clues.”
“Go ahead and talk to Karin and his friends. Do you need to search his room again to check this out?”
“No, but I appreciate your cooperation.”
As he was walking out, Winter glanced over at his sister’s house. He had spent part of his childhood there and come back to visit on occasion. After her divorce, she had grown a little too neurotic to be a general practitioner. Things got better when she bought the house from their parents and moved back in along with her children.
Nobody’s home, you can call tonight, he thought.
13
THE FRONT HALLWAY WAS COOL AND DARK EXCEPT FOR A STREAK of white light from the other rooms of the apartment. Winter took off his shoes and picked up the mail under the slot in the door: a circular from Mercedes about their new rollout, the latest police newsletter, postcards from a girlfriend vacationing in Thailand and another one in the Canary Islands, a slip from the Kungsport Avenue post office that a package of books had arrived, and a letter with a Spanish stamp—he recognized his mother’s purposeful handwriting and saw a little red blot in the bottom right corner of the envelope that could be anything but was probably a drop of wine.
He walked into the kitchen, set the mail on the table and the two plastic shopping bags from the Saluhallen indoor market on the counter. He emptied the bags: a halibut fillet, an eggplant, a yellow pepper, a zucchini, several tomatoes, a pint of kalamata olives and sprigs of fresh thyme and basil.
He sliced the eggplant, arranged it on a tray and sprinkled salt on the pieces. After pitting a few olives, he poured a little oil into a baking dish, turned on the oven and sliced the pepper, tomatoes and squash. He patted the eggplant dry and sautéed the slices in a large skillet. In the dish, he overlapped the vegetables along with minced garlic and the olives, scattered herbs on top, added a little more oil and finished off with a few twists of the pepper mill. Finally he put the dish in the oven beside two potatoes that he had cut in half and sprinkled with sea salt. He waited fifteen minutes and laid the fish on top of the vegetables.
He ate alone in the living room, looking out over the city and forgoing the distraction of music or a book. He drank half a bottle of carbonated mineral water. You should cook more often, he told himself. It calms you down. The doubting Thomas that has always tormented you about putting up a good front stops knocking on the door.
He smiled to himself and stood up. As he carried the glass and tray through the hallway, he heard the elevator jangle its way up to his floor. The cage opened and closed in rapid succession, followed by the ringing of his doorbell. He glanced at his watch—it was nine o’clock.
He went into the kitchen, put the glass and tray down, walked back to the hallway and opened the door. It was Bolger.
“Hope you’re not getting ready for bed or something.”
“Come in, pal.”
Bolger closed the door behind him, removed his leather jacket and kicked off his shoes.
“Would you like some coffee?” Winter asked.
“If it’s not too much trouble.”
They went into the kitchen and Bolger sat down at the table while Winter fussed with the espresso machine. “Just in case we were planning on sleeping tonight.” He smiled.
“Not that I have any information that would make you sleepy,” Bolger said. “Or keep you up, for that matter.”
“Maybe you just felt like talking.”
“Hmm.”
“You haven’t been here in a while.”
“I don’t remember much about the last time. I was smashed, no doubt.”
“You were pissed off about one thing or another.”
“There’s always something . . .”
“Anyway, I’m glad you came,” Winter said. “I need you more than ever.” He filled two small cups, put them on the table and sat down across from Bolger. He seems uptight about something, Winter thought. He hasn’t aged much since high school—as long as you don’t look too closely, that is. “What have you found out?” he asked.
“Apparently Jamie was a popular guy, but that’s true of most bar-tenders.”
“At least early in the evening.”
Bolger sipped his coffee. “This tastes like melted asphalt.”
“Then I succeeded.”
“Am I supposed to chew on it or something?”
“You got it.”
“When you work at a bar, you’re surrounded by people who aren’t your friends exactly but they think of you as one of them.”
“I see.”
“Casual acquaintances, but something more.”
“Jamie must have had other friends too.”
“A couple of boyfriends.” Bolger took another sip.
“So it’s true?”
“That’s what they say. Or Douglas, rather, the guy who runs the place. No specific evidence or anything, but it’s not the kind of thing you can hide. He gave me a couple of names. I brought them with me in case you need them.” He took out his wallet, unfolded a slip
of paper and handed it to Winter.
“Thanks.”
“They’re both around the same age as he was,” Bolger said.
“Hmm.”
“Fags, I would assume.”
“Okay.”
“I have no idea if they’re the violent kind.”
Winter committed the names to memory, put the slip of paper in his breast pocket and sipped his coffee like bitter medicine that you take for no apparent reason. “How have other restaurant owners been reacting to all this?”
“It’s a rather unpleasant affair, of course, but nothing to get all riled up about.”
“I understand.”
“It’s not like he went and got himself murdered because he was a bartender.”
“No.”
“Somebody has too little brandy in his Lumumba, racks his brain about how to get back at the barkeep and finally takes his revenge.”
“Perhaps I chose the safer occupation after all.”
“Or a martini that isn’t dry enough, or shaken instead of stirred.”
Or maybe as thick as this coffee, Winter thought. My spoon can almost stand straight up in it.
“At my place, we let some ice settle in the vermouth for a while,” Bolger said. “Then we drain the glass and put the ice in the gin.”
“Somebody might call that stinginess.”
“Our customers call it style.”
Johan has never been very good at wearing a poker face, Winter thought. Or maybe too good.
“Do you think somebody in the restaurant industry could have done it?” Bolger asked.
“You know I never speculate.”
“But it’s possible, right?”
“Anything’s possible, and that complicates matters, doesn’t it?”
“Do you want me to ask around some more?”
“Definitely; I need all the help I can get.”
“Douglas said something about having seen a new face several times at his bar recently,” Bolger volunteered. “He said that he usually notices when someone comes back a second or third time.”
“Hmm.”
“It’s hard to remember entire groups, but if somebody shows up alone often enough, it tends to stick in your mind.”
“Was there something unusual about this particular customer?” Winter asked.
“That’s basically all he had to say.”
“I’ve read all the witness statements, but Douglas didn’t mention anything about that when we talked to him.”
“I guess you’ll have to ask him again.”
“Right.”
“A little footwork for the chief investigator.”
Winter reached for the espresso machine. “More coffee?”
14
BERGENHEM HAD ASKED HlMSELF MORE THAN ONCE WHY HE had been assigned to the county criminal investigation unit. It wasn’t his decision, or maybe it was, after all—they knew perfectly well what he wanted to do. He had no interest in the narcotics, technical or white-collar crime divisions, and larceny didn’t have nearly the same appeal. Violence was tangible and concrete—dirty business committed by people who were settling private scores, however bizarre.
It wasn’t until the victims were wholly innocent—when one side held all the power, when children lay on stretchers and faced a lifelong disability—that his job began to trouble him. Three-year-old girls who would never see again, six-year-old boys who kicked soccer balls one day and were beaten black and blue by their fathers the next.
He wasn’t going to become thick-skinned. He wanted to be just the opposite, a warrior battling all the odds.
Bergenhem buried his face in Martina’s hair until he could scarcely breathe. They had been married a year now, and she was eight months pregnant. Their child would be kicking a soccer ball before they knew it. Bergenhem would play goalie.
An inspector almost straight out of the National Police Academy. He felt as if he had won some kind of award but had no idea what for. He was promising material, someone had said. Material for what?
The first few weeks had been particularly lonely. He had been a little shy at the academy, and making his mark among forty other inspectors at Homicide—or the thirty who weren’t in the wanted-persons group—was an even more daunting challenge. He didn’t really understand why they were keeping him on Winter’s team as the investigation went forward.
He had his assignment, and he knew that his position was secure even if it took a while before things started to happen. Something always happened, eventually. That was Winter’s mantra. Nothing stands still, everything flows—but better a deceptive calm than chasing your tail without ever getting anyplace.
Loneliness. He recoiled from the jargon of his profession, and he wasn’t cynical enough to learn it—not yet, at least. He couldn’t simply laugh off the misery he encountered, and that made him feel like a square peg in a round hole.
He noticed that Winter rarely smiled. Winter wasn’t a square peg in a round hole, and he didn’t laugh at the wrong times like Halders was in the habit of doing, or even Ringmar every once in a while.
Bergenhem admired Winter and wanted to be like him but didn’t think it would ever happen. It wasn’t Winter’s style—his elegance or whatever you wanted to call it—that Bergenhem craved for himself. That quality ran deeper in Winter than in others, sure, but it was his toughness that struck Bergenhem. An iron fist in a velvet glove. Winter was surrounded by an aura of stern concentration, and when he worked, his features shifted but his gaze remained steady. Maybe he let his guard down when he was off the job, but Bergenhem didn’t see him then.
There were all kinds of rumors about Winter and women, that he used them to relieve the pressures of his job. He had a reputation that would have been devastating if he weren’t a man. But the rumors all had to do with the past, and Bergenhem suspected that Winter had learned to be more discreet in his erotic adventures. He didn’t really give a damn one way or the other. Winter meant something else to him altogether.
Where will you be in twelve or thirteen years? The aroma of Martina’s hair filled his lungs. Will you be lying here and brooding over the same thoughts about the world around you? Some people walk in worn-out shoes. How many more will be destitute in twelve or thirteen years?
“What are you thinking about?”
Martina turned over on her side, a little clumsily, supporting herself on her right elbow and lifting her left leg. He ran his hand over her belly. It stuck out like one of those orange cones they used during soccer practice. He didn’t play soccer anymore. His coach had said that he hoped Bergenhem had learned his lesson and would be more careful in other areas of his life.
“Nothing special,” he answered.
“Tell me anyway.”
“Some people walk in worn-out shoes.”
“What does it mean?”
“That’s all. Some people walk in worn-out shoes. The phrase just popped into my head.”
“It sounds like a song or something.”
“Right, that’s where it’s from. I heard Marie Fredriksson sing it once with Eldkvarn. But Cornelius Vreeswijk wrote it a long time ago.”
“Some people walk in worn-out shoes.”
“Yes.”
“That’s a good title.”
“Hmm.”
“I can see them in my mind, all the unfortunate ones in their worn-out shoes.”
“Right now?”
“They’re not so unusual these days,” she said, pointing vaguely at the world outside the bedroom window.
“Is that the kind of thing you think about?”
“Not that much, especially now, to be honest about it.” She placed her hand on her belly. “Right there, do you feel it?”
“What?”
“Put your hand . . . No, there.”
At first he didn’t notice anything, but then there was a tiny movement, or the hint of one.
“Do you feel it now?”
“I think so.”
“What does i
t do to you?” she asked, her hand on top of his.
“I can’t really describe it. Give me a couple of hours and I’ll come up with something.”
“That’s what you always say.”
“This time I promise.”
She closed her eyes, and he felt another flutter under his hand.
They lay there silently.
The egg timer went off in the kitchen.
“The potatoes,” she said, not moving.
“To hell with them.” He smiled.
“Do you think I’m too soft to be a police officer?” Bergenhem asked over dinner. “Like I’m not up to the job?”
“No.”
“Be honest.”
“How could I say you’re too soft? The softer, the better.”
“To be a policeman?”
“What?”
“Too soft to be a policeman?”
“It’s a good thing.”
“To be too soft?”
“It’s the kind of job where you get hard too fast, and that’s the worst thing that can happen.”
“I don’t know. Sometimes I doubt if I’ll make it through the day.”
“Don’t let go of that doubt.”
“What?”
“Don’t let yourself get stiff and hard.”
“So it’s better to be soft?”
“It’s much better to be soft like overcooked asparagus.”
“But sometimes I’m more like raw asparagus, right?”
“What do you mean?”
“Not all of me.”
“What part of you?” She reached across the table and squeezed his biceps. “Overcooked asparagus.”
“I’m not talking about anything above my waist.”
Bergenhem stepped inside Bolger’s bar. He’s just as tall as Winter, Bergenhem thought, but seems twice as big. It could be his leather vest, or his features. You’ve been here for three minutes and his expression hasn’t changed. He’s as old as Winter, but until people get past forty, their age is always hard to pin down.
“You don’t strike me as a restaurant goer,” Bolger said.
“No.”
“Not much for nightlife?”
“It depends on the night.”
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