Death Angels

by Ake Edwardson

  The owner closed the window and turned to Bergenhem. “You haven’t seen anything because there’s nothing to see. Gothenburg may not be the innocent place it once was, but there’s no market for snuff movies here.”

  Bergenhem could tell the owner was considering how to complete his thought.

  “You probably think I’m naïve about the people in this city. But you’ve come to the wrong person if you believe I would be involved in that kind of thing. It wouldn’t have a chance here even if I were. We aren’t depraved enough yet.”

  “Yet?”

  “Even though it’s bound to happen eventually.”

  “You seem pretty sure of yourself.”

  “Do you know why I’m even bothering to talk to you about this stuff? I’ll tell you why—it’s because we club owners have our ethics just like everybody else.”

  “And what are those ethics, exactly?”

  “What?”

  “Where does love of your fellow man stop and the profit motive begin?”

  The owner looked Bergenhem over as if trying to figure out where he was going to dump his body afterward. “There are limits to everything,” he said.

  “Just in Gothenburg, you mean?”

  The owner picked at a seam in his jacket, then rubbed the bridge of his nose. Bergenhem could tell that he was about to get up and thank him for a pleasant visit. All his talk about ethics had a bombastic hollow-ness to it, like the low rumble of bass through the wall. Which had just stopped—intermission time.

  “You’ve never received any requests from customers who are interested in something different?” Bergenhem asked.

  “Just from you.”

  “Nothing beyond the visible selection?”

  “The visible selection? That’s a new expression.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “No.”

  “Come on, now.”

  “What I’m trying to say is that we don’t get any requests like that because we have everything our customers could possibly want. I don’t know how familiar you are with the movie industry, Inspector, but it might surprise you to discover how much is legal these days.”

  “Okay, I got you.”

  “Anything else on your mind?”

  Not right now, Bergenhem told himself, but I’ll be back. Something the owner just said doesn’t make sense. I should have brought a tape recorder. Better to go someplace where I can jot down my notes. “No, that will be all for today,” he said to the owner, rising from his chair.

  They walked out of the office together. Bergenhem heard the music start up like rolling thunder and made his way over to the curtained doorway. The younger woman was dancing to Tina Turner, her eyes staring into another world. For a couple of minutes, Bergenhem stood transfixed, and when he finally left, the owner followed him with his eyes.

  It was late afternoon and the sun had already set. Winter sat in Ringmar’s office reading the interrogation report.

  “What do you think?” Ringmar asked.

  “Not so much to think about.”

  “It’s like he was embarrassed.”

  “For not having called us about the letter sooner?” Winter asked.

  “You know I’m talking about something else.”

  “It’s outrageous that people still have to keep this kind of thing secret even though society professes to be so tolerant.”

  “Maybe there’s another letter somewhere.”

  “Another letter that tricked Geoff into coming to Gothenburg? I’ll believe that when I see it.”

  Ringmar pointed to the report. “Meeting somebody online—is that common these days?”

  “That’s what I’ve heard.”

  “He couldn’t really explain why they had switched to regular mail.”

  “Yeah, I noticed that.”

  “Maybe they thought it was safer.”

  “Could be,” Winter said. “It lent the whole exchange an old-fashioned air of secrecy.”

  “We’ll have to keep this guy in mind and hope something else turns up.”

  “I’ve been thinking about why we didn’t find a letter from him in Geoff’s dorm room. He had no reason to throw it out, did he?”

  “No.”

  “Where is it, then?”

  “Maybe he wasn’t the kind who saves letters.”

  “A letter from a boyfriend who was one of the main reasons he came to Gothenburg? I’d bet anything he kept it, but somebody else got their hands on it.”

  “Why would anyone else be interested?”

  “Because something in it was incriminating.”

  “Incriminating about what?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”

  “So Hitchcock took it?” Ringmar asked.

  “Right.”

  “Because something in it would give us a lead?”

  “I don’t know.” Winter reached for his cigarillos but remembered where he was. Ringmar hated it when the smell of smoke filled his office long after the culprit was gone.

  “We’ll talk to this guy again, but not right away,” Ringmar said. “I was thinking about the flights between London and Gothenburg the other night. The passenger lists we requested have started to arrive now, and we need an extra office to go through all of them, not to mention more staff.”

  “Lists for the past three months?”

  “Right.”

  “How long do the airlines keep them?”

  “Two years for the flights out of Gothenburg.”

  “Two years?”

  “It’s a shot in the dark, Erik.”

  “How many daily departures between London and Gothenburg?”

  “Five round-trips on weekdays. The first is Scandinavian Airlines at 6:10. A.M. and the last is British Airways at 5:45 P.M. Then there’s an extra Scandinavian Airlines flight out of Gothenburg at 5:50 on Sunday morning.”

  “Not all go to Heathrow, do they?”

  “British Airways has a 7:15 A.M. flight to Gatwick.”

  “That’s right, I was on it once.”

  “You have one of those travel passes, don’t you?”

  “I used to.”

  “Every flight between Gothenburg and London carries a hundred to a hundred and twenty passengers.”

  Winter nodded.

  “Guess how many that makes in a year.”

  “I don’t have my pocket calculator on me.”

  “Somewhere around four hundred thousand.”

  “That many?”

  “Yep.”

  “But we’re limiting ourselves to three months,” Winter said.

  “That’s still too much work.”

  “Any period we choose is going to be too much work.”

  “Assuming we find the time,” Ringmar said, “I suggest we start with the flights the victims took. Then go backwards week by week. But we still don’t have the lists from London for the departures to Gothenburg.”

  “I guess we’ll have to do it the way you suggest.”

  “We’re still talking about a hell of a lot of passengers.”

  “The lists show each passenger’s final destination, right?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “I hope so,” Winter said. “That way we can cross out those who left from Gothenburg but had connecting flights to Blackpool, Cape Town or wherever.”

  “Assuming they weren’t pulling a fast one.”

  “I’m trying to be a little constructive here. We both know what an impossible task this is.”

  “Sorry.”

  “So that leaves the passengers who flew round-trip between London and Gothenburg.”

  “On their own passports.”

  “Right.”

  “The airlines check each ticket against the passenger’s passport, but if you have a fake one . . .”

  “So all we have to do is identify everyone who flew on a valid passport. It’s a simple process of elimination. Then we nab the others.” Winter smiled.

  “We can star
t with those who flew back and forth within a few days—say, a week or so.”

  “Now you’re being constructive.”

  “Constructive idiocy.”

  “We’ll rule out as many passengers as we can. Somebody’s got to do it.”

  Ringmar scratched his arm. “Maybe it’s constructive to track down the murderer this way,” he said finally, “but I’m not as convinced as you are.”

  “I’m never convinced.”

  “We have no evidence that the murderer commuted between Gothenburg and London. We don’t even know how many murderers we’re looking for.”

  There was nothing for Winter to say. The role of investigators was to try out different theories one by one, occasionally several at a time. They didn’t let go of a hypothesis until they ran into a dead end, and even then they didn’t discard it entirely.

  “All three murders were similar,” Ringmar said, “but there are plenty of possible explanations other than that it was the same guy.” They had already hashed this out a hundred times.

  We have no choice but to plod along, Winter mused. We think out loud, and suddenly somebody comes up with something that hasn’t yet been said and we pounce on it. “They were paid to do it, is that what you mean?” he asked.

  “Could be.”

  “But what was the purpose?”

  “The profit motive. I could be wrong, but I really think someone was out to make a movie.”

  “We haven’t found any link between the three kids,” Winter said.

  “Except that they might all have been homosexual or bisexual.”

  “But we can’t even be sure about that.”

  “Perhaps they never had the chance to find out themselves.”

  “But at least it’s something they had in common.”

  “Maybe.”

  “And it might have been the cause of their deaths,” Winter said. “Indirectly at first, and then as directly as could be.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Curiosity about something that was secret or forbidden got the better of them, and that’s what made them let a stranger into their apartments.”

  “There might have been another reason.”

  “Like what?”

  “What could persuade you to let a stranger in?” Ringmar asked.

  “Lots of money?”

  “No.”

  “A movie contract?”

  “Try again.”

  “A case of whisky?”

  “You’re getting warmer.”

  “Somebody I knew.”

  “Bingo.”

  They sat there silently.

  An angel flitted through the room.

  “You’re giving me goose bumps,” Winter said.

  “Somebody they knew.”

  “It’s certainly possible, but I’m skeptical somehow.”

  Ringmar tried to weave together the various strands of the conversation in his head.

  “I’m pretty sure there’s only one murderer,” Winter said. “He’s been here and there, and he’s here or there now too. Gothenburg or London.”

  “We look for this person in the victims’ past. If he’s there, we grab him.”

  “That’s not where we’re going to find him. Not in their past.”

  “The past and the present, where do you draw the line?”

  Winter had no answer.

  23

  HE WAlTED WlTH THE OTHERS. EVERYBODY WAS SlLENT, LOST lN their own thoughts. When the sliding doors opened, he walked through and onto the airport bus. He was tired, and apparently so was everyone else.

  The bus made its rounds of the downtown area. New passengers got on. They shivered outside the Park Avenue Hotel. A few airport personnel boarded at Korsvägen Street, the crisp creases of their uniforms belying their weariness, as if only their clothing were holding them upright.

  Out on the expressway, the driver did his best to break the sound barrier. But the sonic boom could never have reached him, drifting as he was between sleep and waking, Ijahman Levi’s reggae blasting in his headphones.

  The bus finally stopped outside the international terminal. He grabbed his bag and got off. It was snowing again. Travelers jogged with their carts from the parking lot.

  Voices drifted to the ceiling of the terminal like sleepy bees. The Scandinavian Airlines attendants finished their check-in preparations and the long line began to move. He glanced at his watch: six o’clock. The flight to Heathrow was scheduled for ten after seven. He had skipped breakfast and was planning to grab a cheese sandwich and a coffee before takeoff.

  When his turn came, he held up his bag for the blue-uniformed attendant to see.

  “Is that all your luggage?”

  “Yes, it’s small enough to carry on, isn’t it?”

  She nodded, checking his ticket and passport. “Do you have a seating preference?”

  He shrugged. It didn’t make a bit of difference to him.

  “A window seat in the middle of the aircraft. Will that do?”

  He shrugged again and she smiled, printing out his boarding pass and handing it to him along with his return ticket and passport. “Have a nice trip.”

  He nodded and stuffed everything into his right breast pocket, then strolled over to the escalator and rode up to security.

  His sandwich and coffee finished, he watched people wander around the duty-free shops. He had promised to buy some perfume for his mother on the way back. The name was in his wallet somewhere. They must sell it in London too, he thought. Otherwise it was crap.

  Someone he recognized walked up to him, and he turned off Dr. Alimantado, who was standing outside a hovel in a Kingston slum dissing the police. The music stopped with a long backbeat. He pulled the headphones out of his ears.

  “So you’re off to see the world.”

  He nodded. “London.”

  “Same here, but just for the day.”

  “Just for the day? Is it really worth it?”

  “They want me to pick up some papers.”

  “There’s always the mail.”

  “Some things are a little sensitive.”

  “I guess.”

  “How long are you going to be there?”

  “A week, I think.”

  “Haven’t you decided? It’s enough to make a man jealous, anyway. Been in London before?”

  “Only once.”

  “Do you have a place to stay?”

  “Hell no.”

  “Have you gotten any tips?”

  “My parents mentioned a place in Bayswater, so I guess it will be there. Or maybe I’ll stay at a couple of different hotels.”

  “Don’t you have a job to go to?”

  “I haven’t graduated yet.”

  “I see.”

  “I’ve got some brochures and I want to check out a few schools.”

  “Colleges?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What are you going to study?”

  He folded his napkin into smaller and smaller squares. He looked up at the departure board. The plane had arrived at the gate. “Maybe English. Or design or photography—that’s the school I have the best feeling about.”

  “Is it hard to get in?”

  “I don’t know, but we’d better go now if we’re going to make the plane.”

  “Relax, we’ve got plenty of time.”

  “Then there’s the music.” He took his bag and started to get up.

  “What music?”

  “I’m into the new reggae, so I thought I’d go down to Brixton and buy a few CDs, plus some of the old stuff I can’t get here in Sweden.”

  “Hmm.”

  “I found a bunch of places online.”

  “Record stores?”

  “Stores, discos, clubs—seems like a pretty cool scene.”

  “Brixton? Isn’t that a long ways from Bayswater?”

  “A few stops on the tube, that’s all. ‘The Guns of Brixton’ by The Clash. My dad’s got it. Have you heard it?”
<
br />   “No.”

  They walked over to Gate 18, showed their passports and tickets, then boarded the plane. He shoved his bag into the overhead rack and squeezed his way over to the window seat.

  He fastened his seat belt and looked out. Bare trees lined the edge of the airport. The runways were a shimmer of concrete.

  Snowflakes stuck to the window and melted. He listened to the first part of the safety instructions, put his headphones on, closed his eyes and tapped his right foot to Dr. Alimantado.

  A while later he was thrust backward in his seat. He opened his eyes and saw the blur of the runways like gray speed lines against a transparent background.

  Then everything turned to white. They rose straight through the clouds and were soon cruising far above the earth. He tried to remember the last time he had seen a blue sky. Whenever it was, it had been nothing like this.

  24

  THERE WAS THAT RESTLESSNESS AGAlN, LURKlNG lN THE PlT OF his stomach like a predator.

  Are you mature enough to be a father? he asked himself. Is it too big a step, or is something else bothering you?

  He had felt the baby kicking earlier that evening, and his hand was still throbbing hot and cold.

  “What’s going on?” Martina asked, squinting at him.

  “Nothing.”

  “You just had an expression like something horrid had crossed your mind.”

  “It’s just the job.”

  “What about the job?” she persisted.

  “The late hours are getting to me, that’s all.”

  “Haven’t you got the afternoon shift all week?”

  “Yes, but they should call it the evening shift.”

  “Or the night shift. You come home smelling of cigarette smoke.”

  Bergenhem took the road that led from their row house to the bridge. The sunlight over the bridge had worn a different aspect the last day or two, like a promise. Will you have the same feeling fourteen years from now? he wondered. Will your heart still leap when spring is on the way? In fourteen years, the trees will tower over the house and you’ll be a detective inspector and your kid will be starting high school.

  Then we’ll hole up in some secret hideout, like Birgersson, for the last week in February when the whole world is waiting out winter’s last gasp. Birgersson is never tan when he comes back. Where the hell does he go, anyway?