Death Angels

by Ake Edwardson

  “Shit flows downward. Or maybe in both directions and meets in the middle. Someplace in this paradise we call Soho is somebody who knows.”

  “I envy your optimism.”

  “Thanks for the tea hour, Frankie.”

  “I’ll call you on Friday.”

  Macdonald gave a half wave and walked out. Turning right outside the theater, he crossed Wardour Street and continued east on Old Compton. The rain had stopped. People sat at outdoor cafés and pretended it was spring. I envy their optimism, he thought.

  When he got to Greek Street, he went into the Coach and Horses pub, ordered a Theakston Old Peculier and wriggled out of his coat. It was the usual crowd of literary wannabes, has-beens and lethal combinations of the two. A couple of authors who had come close to making it big spent most of their time here drowning their sorrows in drink. The place was always half empty at this time of day.

  An intoxicated woman three stools away was carrying on a conversation with two men at a nearby table. “You have no fucking idea what it means to be a gentleman,” she shouted, then raised her glass to her lips.

  16

  STURE BIRGERSSON’S OFFlCE WAS IMMACULATE. NOT A COFFEE stain or piece of paper on his desk. Winter harbored a certain admiration for the way the division chief arranged his world: concentration on one thing at a time, no reminders of everything that was still unsolved, no remnants of incomplete thoughts, no reports resembling books whose authors had died in the middle of writing them.

  They called Birgersson the Boss in the corridors of police headquarters, but that had more to do with his position than his personality. Birgersson sat eternally in his office and waited. He read but drew no conclusions. God knows what happens to all the reports after he’s done with them, Winter thought as he crossed and uncrossed his legs in front of the desk.

  Birgersson was a Laplander who had wound up in Gothenburg by chance, not design. Unlike everyone else from northern Sweden, he didn’t go back and hunt in the fall. He always took two weeks off, but Winter was the only one who knew where he went, and he wouldn’t have told anyone else if his life depended on it. In all the years Winter had been acting division chief during those times, he had never needed to call Birgersson. He couldn’t conceive of a situation he wouldn’t be able to handle on his own.

  “I have to admit you’ve got a healthy imagination.” Birgersson had the peculiar accent of someone who’d grown up in a mining district near the polar circle and spent his adult life in the hustle-bustle of a European metropolis.

  Winter brushed a speck of dust off his tie, leaned forward and tugged on the seat of his pants, which had gathered too tightly on one side when he’d sat down.

  “Not so much in the way of results, but you compensate for that with creativity,” Birgersson continued, lighting a cigarette.

  “We’re making progress.”

  “Shoot.”

  “You’ve read the reports.”

  “It wears me out to go back and forth between all the different styles.” He pointed to the empty desk as if it were overflowing with stacks of paper. “William Faulkner one minute, Mickey Spillane the next.”

  “Which do you prefer?” Winter asked, lighting a cigarillo.

  “Faulkner, of course. He was a small-town boy too.”

  “But you don’t feel like you’re seeing any results.”

  “No.”

  “I don’t look at it that way. We’re reading the witness statements, we’re going through the files on our favorite jailbirds, not to mention some of the more obscure ones. I’m not the only one who’s online from morning to night. And we’ve got all our sources working for us, and I mean all.”

  “Hmm, have you talked to Skogome?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s too early, Sture. I don’t want a profile by a forensic psychologist until we’ve got more to go on.”

  “That’s exactly what I was talking about.”

  “What?”

  “Not enough results.”

  “What you’re talking about,” Winter said, “is longer reports and more bullshit to feed the press and evidence so strong that it will reach out and grab the police bigwigs.”

  “Speaking of the press, I hope you’re ready for them.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “A fresh planeload of British reporters has just landed,” Birgersson said, “and they’re not taking any prisoners this time.”

  “Not taking any prisoners? You’ve been watching too many Holly-wood action movies.”

  “This afternoon I want you by my side, partner.”

  “So you’re going to be there too?”

  “Orders from the top.”

  “I see.”

  Birgersson put out his cigarette.

  “I’m leaving tomorrow,” Winter said.

  “Remember that your trip is unofficial.”

  “Of course.”

  “Police force to police force.”

  Winter took a puff of his cigarillo and scanned the room for evidence that it had ever seen a piece of paper. Nothing.

  “I have no idea what to expect from London,” Birgersson said. “But their DSI seems to be on top of things. Their detective superintendent.”

  “I know what it means.”

  “He has nothing but praise for your contact, that chief inspector.”

  Birgersson looks like a dwarf birch, Winter thought. One that’s made a heroic effort to straighten up and climb down from the mountain. Funny I never noticed it before. “Macdonald,” he said.

  “On his way up just like you.”

  “Right, on an eleven o’clock flight tomorrow morning.” Winter put his half-smoked cigarillo in an ashtray that Birgersson had taken out of a desk drawer.

  “Who knows, maybe you’ll have the whole thing solved by the time you get back. Meanwhile, we’ll do our best to hold down the fort.”

  “Now that’s reassuring.” Winter smiled.

  “I suggest you go to your office and get yourself into the right frame of mind for the press conference.”

  “Wouldn’t it be easier to take an extra beta-blocker?”

  Birgersson broke into a hoarse laugh that could have been lifted from one of the action videos he guffawed his way through one night a week.

  The press conference started off badly, staged a recovery in the middle and ended in chaos. Birgersson was exasperated before fifteen minutes had passed. Winter answered the questions that swarmed at them both.

  The Swedish tabloid reporters were more restrained, taking the opportunity to pick up a few tricks of the trade from their aggressive British colleagues.

  “Is this your first case?” This from the ugliest person Winter had ever seen. His face resembled five pounds of meat loaf molded by an arthritic potter. He acted drunk but was sober as a judge. Like the other Englishmen, he was wearing a threadbare suit, having landed in Scandinavia without a coat.

  “Is the murderer Swedish?” somebody else asked.

  “How many similar cases have you had?”

  “Describe the murder weapon.”

  “What were the victims doing in Sweden anyway?”

  “What kind of sex crime was involved?”

  “Excuse me?” Winter balked, examining the reporter. She had blue eye shadow, blond hair with black roots, a narrow face and a spiteful mouth.

  “What kind of sex crime?” she repeated.

  “Who said that it was a sex crime?” Winter asked.

  “Isn’t it rather obvious?”

  Winter looked the other way, hoping that someone would rescue him with a question about the weather in Sweden, what soccer team he rooted for . . .

  “Answer the question,” somebody shouted.

  “We don’t have anything that points to a sex crime,” Winter said.

  “Like what?” someone else asked.

  “What did you say?”

  “What is it that you don’t have?”

  “How abou
t sperm?” Winter asked.

  The room fell silent for a few seconds.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” a reporter asked in Swedish.

  “We didn’t find any traces of sperm,” Winter said, “which means we can’t be a hundred percent sure that it was a sex crime.”

  “But it might be?” the reporter persisted.

  “Certainly.”

  “Speak English,” a British reporter shouted.

  “What did he say about sperm?” somebody else asked.

  “They found a shitload of sperm,” the reporter with the pockmarked face explained.

  “Whose sperm?”

  “What did the lab tests show?”

  “Was there sperm on only one of the victims, or both?”

  “Was it on his body or his clothes?”

  Winter could tell Birgersson was longing for the cool emptiness of his office. After he had straightened out some misunderstandings and asked the reporters to publish a few facts that would help the investigation, he fielded a couple more questions. The television cameras, both British and Swedish, whirred away.

  “Have you checked out everybody who’s come here from England recently?” a Swedish reporter asked.

  “We’re working on it.”

  “How about people heading the other direction?”

  “We’re working on it,” Winter lied.

  17

  ANGELA CAME OVER TO HELP HIM PACK, BUT HE TRAVELED light and insisted on saving space for some books he planned to buy in London.

  “If you ever get out of here,” she said.

  “The sky is clearing.”

  “Call the airport first thing in the morning.”

  “Excellent idea.”

  “What do you expect to accomplish—arrest this serial killer or something?” Angela ran her fingers over the collar of a white shirt on top of the pile by the suitcase.

  “He’s no serial killer.”

  “What?”

  “He’s no serial killer,” Winter repeated, folding two pairs of socks and putting them in the suitcase.

  “Is that so?”

  “It doesn’t look that way.”

  “Uh-huh?”

  “It’s even worse.” He turned to her. “Could you hand me those pants, please?”

  “Take them yourself.”

  “Okay.”

  “Come and get them,” she said, her eyes wide and misty as if she had been walking through rain.

  Winter lunged across the bed, grabbed the pants from her, smoothed out the wrinkles and put them on the chair. He took her hands and folded them behind her back as she leaned forward toward the bed.

  “Now you’ve got me where you want me.”

  He doubled her long skirt halfway up her back, let his hand glide over her right hip and worked his finger under her panties. As she parted her legs, he moved his hand downward and felt how wet she was. His forehead was pounding and she gasped, raising her chin. He carefully squeezed his fingers further in, unbuckled his belt with his left hand and pulled down his zipper. All my blood is there and nowhere else, he thought, leaning against her thigh for a second. When she started to moan louder, he gradually entered her, stopping only for a moment when he couldn’t go any farther.

  After a few seconds they were in sync. He held her firmly by the hips, as though she were treading water above the bed.

  He leaned forward, reached inside her sweater and cupped her breasts. Now she had dived into the water and was floating beneath him. He squeezed her hard nipples. She turned her head to the side and looked back at him. He caressed her cheek and lips with his left hand. Opening her mouth, she licked and sucked on his fingers one by one. Her tongue had the same rough texture as her sweater.

  As they moved faster, he braced his left knee against the bed, grasped her hips with both hands and summoned all his strength to hold on as she trembled and then cried out, throwing her head back. His eyes dimmed. His power seemed to plunge him into unconsciousness as it poured into her. They clung to each other one last time, and he held her.

  18

  THE SNOW HAD STOPPED AND EVERYTHlNG HAD FROZEN OVER night. The Monday morning sun had bleached the edge of the cold front.

  Bergenhem shuddered in the kitchen, made some coffee and opened the blinds. The trees outside the window were wrapped in mist, which slowly dissolved as the colors of the day reappeared, coming back from their resting place, he thought, reinventing themselves and gliding back into the objects all around him. A juniper bush lost its transparence just after the clock struck eight. The fence emerged from behind its curtain of white, and his car glistened under its snowy blanket as if startled by the first dashes of sunlight.

  He had the afternoon shift. Martina was asleep. He felt vaguely restless, a low murmur in his chest. He drank his coffee quickly and put the cup in the dishwasher, then went into the bathroom and splashed some water in his eyes. As he brushed his teeth, he probed the jagged edge of one of his canines and felt an icy coldness there when he rinsed out his mouth.

  He tiptoed back to the bedroom and picked up his clothes from the Windsor chair next to the doorway. Martina stirred in her sleep, or half stupor. The sheet had slipped down and revealed her thigh, a spring hillside in the midst of a snowy landscape. Walking over to the bed, he ran his fingers over her bare skin and grazed it with his lips. She murmured something and moved again without waking up.

  He put on his heavy sweater, boots, leather jacket, hat and gloves. The fresh snow was in the way, and he had to kick the door open.

  He took the shovel that was leaning against the house and hacked at the frozen crust, plowing his way down the driveway to the car. This summer you are building a carport, he told himself. Assuming you can get hold of cheap wood.

  He brushed the snow off the hood and windshield as best he could and tried to open the driver’s door to get a scraper, but the key wouldn’t go in. He stared dumbfounded through the window at the can of lock lubricant in the inside pocket of the passenger door.

  He tried the other doors and the trunk, but they were all frozen shut. In the shed behind the car, he dug out a nine-inch length of wire, which he managed to slide through the crack in the door, and he was finally inside. He grabbed the lubricant, sprayed the lock, waited a few seconds and then worked the key in. Putting the bottle in his jacket pocket, he scraped the entire windshield. He was pleased with himself, as if this interlude had prepared him for the trials and tribulations of the day.

  The ignition sputtered for a few seconds before turning over. He put the defroster and heat on high. A Phil Collins song was playing on the first station he came to. He flipped the dial for a while but soon tired of it and slid R.E.M.’s Automatic for the People in the tape deck instead. It had been number two on the Billboard charts in the winter of 1992, when he had taken a long field trip to London during his last semester at the Academy. He had gotten drunk at a pub in Covent Garden and found himself in bed with a party girl in Camden. He could never quite remember how they had wound up at her place. Automatic for the People. My automatic is for the people, he’d said, because that’s a cop’s job, and he’d gulped down some more wine while she giggled under the sheets.

  He had met Martina the following spring.

  As Bergenhem drove south, the open fields quickly gave way to glass and concrete. In Torslanda, smoke poured out of Volvo’s main assembly plant on his right. Ahead loomed the Älvsborg Bridge. The glitter of oil tanks almost blinded him as he approached the abutment.

  The second wave of the morning rush hour rolled across the freeways as commuters descended from the north into downtown Gothenburg.

  Driving onto the bridge, he glanced quickly to his right, and when he reached the top, he saw a clear purple stripe below the rising sun. From this vantage point, the horizon changed according to the time of year. It was impenetrable on most winter days, as if someone had built a wall over the water. But on mornings like this, you could see through the shimmering light as it slowly tur
ned to blue. The city had pulled back its curtains.

  Leaving the bridge behind him, he continued west with no destination in mind. This restiveness had whispered in his ear for as long as he could remember, though it had grown louder the last month or two. He wondered whether it had to do with the blunt little cone that stuck out from Martina’s belly, and he felt ashamed of himself.

  He drove to Frölunda Square, turned around and came back through Gnistäng Tunnel. His mind went blank in the darkness, and he had to blink and shake his head when the sky reappeared and the sunlight stung his eyes. Fear struck him suddenly, like a premonition. He was cold, but the heat was already as high as it would go. Driving back over the bridge, he stared straight ahead the entire length of it.

  Winter’s taxi swerved in and out near Mölnlycke, found a spot in the outer lane and zoomed past an airport bus. There’s plenty of time, he thought. It must be a matter of professional pride for the driver to get you there as fast as possible.

  The phone hummed in the inside pocket of his sport coat. He pulled out the antenna and answered.

  “Erik!” His mother sounded slightly out of breath. No doubt she had just jogged from the kitchen table to the refrigerator and back. “Are you at home?”

  “I’m on my way to the airport.”

  “You’ve always been such a smart boy, Erik.”

  Winter looked at the driver, who was staring fixedly at the road as though he were considering whether to veer over to the right lane and smash his way through the guardrail into the cliff.

  “You’re a traveling man,” she continued. “They always need you someplace.”

  “I spend most days going back and forth between the Vasaplatsen subway station and Ernst Fontell Square,” he said.

  “Fontell what?”

  “It’s the square in front of police headquarters, on Skånegatan Street.”

  “I see.”

  “There’s all my traveling for you. Sometimes I even ride my bike.”