Death Angels

by Ake Edwardson

  COHEN: We also found bloodstains in the trunk and other places in the car.

  VIKINGSSON: I don’t know anything about that.

  COHEN: You have no idea where the bloodstains might have come from?

  VIKINGSSON: Not the slightest.

  COHEN: Why are your fingerprints in the car?

  VIKINGSSON: The only explanation I can think of is that I rode in it. I’ve taken a few illegal taxis in my day.

  COHEN: So you’re saying you might have ridden in it?

  VIKINGSSON: How else would my fingerprints have gotten there? All I can come up with is that it was an illegal taxi.

  COHEN: Why is your acquaintance lying about the parking spot?

  VIKINGSSON: What?

  COHEN: Why do you think your acquaintance claims that you rent the parking spot from him?

  VIKINGSSON: Wait. Now I remember . . .

  COHEN: I didn’t hear what you said.

  VIKINGSSON: My God, I had forgotten all about it. I rent it from him and sublet it to someone else.

  COHEN: You’re sub-subletting a parking spot?

  VIKINGSSON: Certainly.

  COHEN: Can you give us the name of this other person?

  VIKINGSSON: Sure, but the problem is I haven’t heard from him for months. He hasn’t been paying.

  COHEN: But you’ve continued to pay on your sublease?

  VIKINGSSON: Yes, I don’t want to lose the spot.

  COHEN: And you haven’t heard from the person who rents it from you?

  VIKINGSSON: Not in the last few months.

  COHEN: Meanwhile, there’s a car standing in a parking spot that you don’t know anything about, a car that’s got your fingerprints on the wheel and door handles.

  VIKINGSSON: Wonders never cease.

  COHEN: Our tests show that the bloodstains in the car match some of the blood we found in your Gothenburg apartment.

  VIKINGSSON: How many blood types are there altogether? Three?

  COHEN: We also have witness statements that there were bloody clothes in your apartment.

  VIKINGSSON: Who says that?

  COHEN: According to witness reports, a garbage bag in your apartment had bloody clothes in it.

  VIKINGSSON: That’s a lie.

  COHEN: Where did the blood come from?

  VIKINGSSON: What blood?

  COHEN: The bloodstains.

  VIKINGSSON: Okay, I might as well come clean before we go any further.

  Winter exchanged glances with Cohen.

  COHEN: What were you going to tell us?

  VIKINGSSON: I’m no murderer.

  COHEN: You’ll be better off once you confess.

  VIKINGSSON: What?

  COHEN: All this questioning will be over and you’ll feel an enormous sense of relief.

  VIKINGSSON: I didn’t do it, dammit.

  COHEN: What didn’t you do, Carl?

  VIKINGSSON: I didn’t . . .

  COHEN: What did you say?

  VIKINGSSON: I’m not . . .

  COHEN: I can’t hear you.

  VIKINGSSON: There’s a simple explanation for all of this. I do a little hunting on the side with a friend of mine.

  COHEN: A little hunting on the side?

  VIKINGSSON: Yes.

  COHEN: What kind of hunting?

  VIKINGSSON: Moose, deer, rabbits, game birds.

  COHEN: Poaching, in other words?

  VIKINGSSON: Yes.

  COHEN: I asked whether you’re a poacher and you answered in the affirmative. Is that correct?

  VIKINGSSON: Yes.

  COHEN: When do you hunt?

  VIKINGSSON: Whenever I’m in Sweden. That’s why I don’t have any alibis.

  COHEN: And where do you go to hunt?

  VIKINGSSON: The woods north of here, in the Dalsland and Värmland provinces. It’s not for . . .

  COHEN: I didn’t catch what you said.

  VIKINGSSON: It’s not for the money, even though it . . .

  COHEN: Could you please repeat that?

  VIKINGSSON: Even though it pays well.

  COHEN: Why do you poach?

  VIKINGSSON: For the thrill of it.

  COHEN: You hunt for the thrill?

  VIKINGSSON: Do you have any idea what it’s like to be at the beck and call of a bunch of whining passengers all day long?

  COHEN: No, I don’t.

  VIKINGSSON: You should give it a try sometime.

  COHEN: So you hunt whenever you’re in Sweden?

  VIKINGSSON: Yes.

  COHEN: And you use the car we were talking about before? VIKINGSSON: Yes.

  COHEN: A 1988 white Opel Kadett Caravan, license plate number ANG 999?

  VIKINGSSON: Yes.

  COHEN: Where do the bloodstains come from?

  VIKINGSSON: From the game, of course.

  COHEN: From the game?

  VIKINGSSON: When we cut up the carcasses.

  COHEN: There’s human blood in the car and your apartment.

  VIKINGSSON: Somebody must have cut himself.

  COHEN: Who could have cut himself?

  VIKINGSSON: My buddy cut himself once.

  COHEN: What’s his name?

  VIKINGSSON: Do I have to say?

  COHEN: Yes.

  VIKINGSSON: Peter Möller.

  COHEN: The same Peter Möller you rent the parking spot from?

  VIKINGSSON: Yes.

  COHEN: Did you cut somebody up, Carl?

  VIKINGSSON: What?

  COHEN: Did you kill those kids?

  VIKINGSSON: No, goddammit. You’ve got to believe me.

  Vikingsson was ushered back to his cell.

  Cohen turned off the tape recorder and gathered up his papers. The room felt vacant, as if Vikingsson’s voice had been a piece of furniture, now removed.

  “What do you think?” Cohen asked.

  “I’m speechless,” Winter said. “I’ve never met anyone like him.”

  “A raving lunatic.”

  40

  VIKINGSSON WAS ARRESTED THREE DAYS LATER. WHEN THE D.A. walked out of the judge’s chambers, he looked as though he were searching for a bowl to wash his hands in. They had requested that he be held for a month and had been given fourteen days.

  Vikingsson shook his head—he, a petty criminal who didn’t qualify for the major leagues.

  They lined him up next to seven other six-foot two-inch blond or ash-blond men, who could just as easily have been Winter, Bolger or Bergenhem—or Macdonald with a wig on.

  Or the victims, Winter thought. They could have stood there with a thumb in their pants pocket, already hungry even though it was still a couple of hours until lunch. Feeling immortal.

  None of the witnesses could point out Vikingsson. Maybe they had chosen the decoys too carefully.

  Winter had talked with Macdonald, who had arranged a photo lineup in Clapham. Anderton couldn’t identify Vikingsson as the man he had seen with Per in the park. He had the wrong kind of hair.

  There was another difference too, but Anderton couldn’t say exactly what it was. Something about a jacket.

  The whole idea of finding someone who would recognize Vikingsson had been hopeless from the start. They were clinging to what little they had, Winter thought, and time was passing.

  McCoy Tyner was playing the introduction to the John Coltrane Quartet’s “I Wish I Knew.” It was past midnight. Winter sat and waited for dawn to stretch out its hand through the darkness. Coltrane’s music was for the seekers and the restless at heart.

  He got up and made a full circle around the room. The computer shone from the desk behind him, its reflection in the window a square of liquid radiance.

  He had created a new scenario and closed the document just as the gruesome story came to a head. Coltrane was playing “It’s Easy to Remember (but So Hard to Forget).” I’m not so sure about the first part, Winter thought as the short piece drifted through the room. He had been six years old when it was recorded.

  The CD over, he put on Charl
ie Haden and Pat Metheny. It was music to bring back memories, even the ones that flew around the room in circles.

  He went back to his scenario. Scrolling to one of the key paragraphs, he cut and pasted it three pages later. That made it part of the climax. He worked some more on the end of the story.

  His thoughts had descended to a place where he didn’t want to be. They swirled around an image of Bolger’s bar. Vikingsson sat on one of the stools. What was he doing there? Winter had tried his best to rule out a connection between the two men but had come up short.

  He forced himself to think about Bolger. He knew him, but only up to a certain point. He had dragged Bolger into this case as a consultant. Wasn’t that the way it had been? He had turned to an old friend for help.

  He needed to question his assumptions, use his analytical abilities. Assuming he had any left.

  Why had Bolger talked about Red Records as though he had been there many years earlier when it had opened just recently? Winter had checked into it. Bolger claimed that he hadn’t been in London for a long time. He made a point of repeating it on several occasions.

  Winter went over to the stereo and put on New York Eye and Ear Control. The free-form jazz filled the room.

  It seemed like a hundred years since Bolger had played the album for him.

  The clerk at Ray’s Jazz Shop had played it when he was there. Another Scandinavian had been through shortly before. It’s as if the clerk was following instructions, Winter thought.

  The other Scandinavian had also bought the album.

  When calling Winter on his cell phone in his London suite, Bolger had asked whether he had been to any music stores.

  Winter raised the volume until it shook the room, then returned to the desk with the latest phone bill in his hand. Something had bothered him when it arrived the day before.

  He looked at it with fresh eyes. The monthly charge was at the top, followed by a separate list. Domestic calls. Special services. That must be call forwarding, he thought.

  Overseas calls—they referred to it as roaming. And calls from other countries to his phone. He paid for those.

  He put his finger on the call to his suite. He had done some calculations the day before but couldn’t make the charges add up. He and Bolger had talked for quite a while. The bill wasn’t high enough.

  Bolger hadn’t called from Sweden. It was a local call. He must have been in London.

  Bergenhem steadied himself with his feet planted on the deck. The only light was from Marianne’s porthole.

  When she opened the door, he put his arms around her and held her to him.

  They found something to drink. It was warm in the galley.

  “This is the last time,” he said.

  “No more days off?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “So your snooping is over.”

  “It’s my job.”

  “I thought there was something more between us.”

  “There was something more, but not any longer.”

  “Then I think you should leave.”

  “Can’t I just sit here with you for a while?”

  “Poor guy, you don’t know whether you’re coming or going.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Do you want me to give you some information or don’t you?”

  “What?”

  He felt the boat rock, a sensation so familiar that his body immediately knew which muscles to activate.

  “You have a job to do, right?”

  “A bigger one than I ever knew,” Bergenhem said.

  “You’re hopeless.”

  “I mean it.”

  “You took advantage of me.”

  “No.”

  “The hell you didn’t.”

  “In that case, I took advantage of myself too.”

  “Do you want a name?” She flung the words at him in desperation. “Isn’t that what you’re looking for?”

  Bergenhem’s mouth felt dry.

  “There’s somebody you don’t know anything about, even though you think you do. I have no idea what he has to do with all of this, but he scares the shit out of me. And I don’t think he’s alone.”

  “What?”

  “Forget it.”

  The boat swayed again and the jackdaws screeched above the old tobacco building, the din growing louder and louder.

  “I don’t know very much about it,” she resumed. “But I saw him with one of the victims.”

  “What did you just say?”

  “Maybe with two of them.”

  The screeching stopped.

  “When?”

  She shrugged. “He’s a night owl like me.”

  “A night owl?”

  “That’s not so strange. He’s in the industry too.”

  “The porn industry?”

  “Yes, and he’s totally crazy, a psychopath or whatever you call it.”

  “What’s his name?”

  She told him, and Bergenhem made her repeat it to be sure he had heard correctly.

  He felt delirious. A voice told him the right thing to do, but he ignored it. He was alone and he wanted to act alone. “Why didn’t you tell me before?” he asked.

  “I thought my memory was playing tricks on me. All I could remember was a face. I’ve been so confused about everything—about you too. And I’m not ready to die yet.”

  “There’s not going to be any more dying here.”

  Bergenhem stood outside the door. It was lunacy to play the lonesome hero like this. He saw a finger on the bell but it wasn’t his. He pressed again.

  Bolger raised his eyebrows when he opened the door. He was wearing a terrycloth robe. “Hi, Lars.”

  “Hi.”

  “It’s a bit late, isn’t it?”

  “I’d like to come in for a minute.”

  “Can’t we talk tomorrow?”

  “Preferably now.”

  Bolger moved out of the way and Bergenhem stepped inside.

  “You can leave your jacket there.” Bolger nodded at a splintery chair under a mirror. “Do you want some coffee or tea?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “This way,” Bolger said, leading him through the short hallway. “Have a seat.” He pointed to an armchair and sat down across from it on the other side of a glass table.

  Bergenhem looked around the room but couldn’t take it in. You can get up and leave, he told himself, and say that Martina is about to go into labor.

  “You had something to tell me,” Bolger said.

  “Sorry, what did you say?”

  “You’ve got something on your mind, right?”

  Bergenhem searched for the right words. He had just found them when Bolger went on. “You’ve been talking to that stripper, I assume. She says I’m a shady character. I’m surprised you didn’t come by earlier and ask me about her accusations.”

  “I came now.”

  “Am I right?”

  “I have a couple of questions.”

  “You ring my bell in the middle of the night just to ask a couple of questions?” Bolger said. “You think you’re onto something, I can tell it from your face. You couldn’t wait until morning.”

  “We talked to a witness.”

  “We? You mean the stripper passed on some juicy gossip.”

  “I need a little help from you.”

  “It’s too late to switch tactics.”

  “What?”

  “You didn’t come here to ask for my help. You came to point the finger at me.”

  “No.”

  “I’ve done all I could for you, you snotty-nosed brat. I’ve been covering for you while you chase that crazy stripper. Don’t you think I know what you’re up to? You’re not a detective. You’re a baby. She says something about me and the first thing you do is come running here. Erik’s going to get an earful about your nighttime adventures.”