Frozen Tracks

by Ake Edwardson

  Table of Contents

  About the Author

  By the Same Author

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  FROZEN TRACKS

  Åke Edwardson was born in 1953. He has worked as a journalist and as a press officer for the UN, and has written books on journalism and creative writing. Now a professor at Gothenburg University, he is also a prize-winning author, both for his best-selling detective novels and for his books for children. He has on three occasions been awarded the Swedish Crime Writers' Award for best crime novel.

  Laurie Thompson was editor of Swedish Book Review 1983–2002 and has translated many books from Swedish, including novels by Henning Mankell, Håkan Nesser and Mikael Niemi.

  ALSO BY ÅKE EDWARDSON

  Sun and Shadow

  Never End

  ÅKE EDWARDSON

  Frozen Tracks

  TRANSLATED FROM THE SWEDISH BY

  Laurie Thompson

  This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  ISBN 9781409078029

  Version 1.0

  www.randomhouse.co.uk

  Published by Vintage 2008

  2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

  Copyright © Åke Edwardson 2001

  English translation copyright © Laurie Thompson 2007

  Åke Edwardson has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs

  and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

  This electronic book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  First published with the title Himlen är en plats på jorden in 2001

  by Norstedts, Stockholm

  First published in Great Britain in 2007 by

  Harvill Secker

  Random House

  20 Vauxhall Bridge Road

  London SW1V 2SA

  www.vintage-books.co.uk

  Addresses for companies within The Random House Group Limited can be

  found at: www.randomhouse.co.uk/offices.htm

  The Random House Group Limited Reg. No. 954009

  A CIP catalogue record for this book

  is available from the British Library

  ISBN: 9781409078029

  Version 1.0

  1

  One of the children jumped down from the climbing frame into the sandpit below, and he laughed out loud, suddenly, briefly. It looked like good fun. He wanted to join in, but that would mean getting out of his car, walking round the fence and in through the gate, and climbing up the frame, which was red and yellow.

  A drop of rain fell on the window, then another. He looked up and could see the sky was darker now. He turned his attention back to the playground and the trees beyond it and along the left-hand side. There were no leaves on the branches, the trees were naked. Things you couldn't see in the summer were visible now. The city was naked. That thought had struck him as he drove there through the wet streets. This city is naked again. He didn't like it. It was almost worse than before.

  Now another child jumped down. He could hear the boy laughing as he lay in the sand, he could hear that even when the radio was on, as it was now. He wasn't listening to it. He was listening to the boy's laughter. He was laughing himself now. He wasn't happy, but he was laughing because, hearing the child laughing, it sounded so much fun to be a child getting up to climb the frame and jump down once more.

  It stopped raining even before it had really started. He wound the window down a bit more. There was a smell of autumn turning into winter. Nothing else smelled like it. Leaves lay on the ground and had turned black. People were walking along paths through the park. Some were pushing prams. A few people were standing around in the playground, grown-ups. There weren't many of them. But lots of children, and many of them were laughing.

  He had also laughed, not now, but when he was a child. He could remember laughing once when his mum had lifted him up high and his head had caught the ceiling lamp and there had been a light up there that had gone out when she put him down again.

  Somebody said something on the radio. He didn't hear what, as he was still in a land where he was a small boy who'd come down to the ground again and his mum had said something that he could no longer remember; he couldn't remember any of it, but she had said something and afterwards he had spent a long time thinking about what she had said, how important it was to him, those last words she had said to him before walking out of the door, never to come back.

  She never, ever came back.

  He could feel his cheek was wet, like the windscreen would have been if it had continued raining. He heard himself saying something now but didn't know what it was.

  He looked back at the children.

  He could see the room again. It was later but he was still a small boy; he sat looking out of the window and there was rain on the window pane and he'd made a drawing of the trees outside that didn't have any leaves left. His mum was standing beside the trees. If he drew a car, she was inside it. A horse, and she was riding it. A little child, and she was holding its hand. They were walking on grass where red and yellow flowers were growing.

  He drew the fields. He drew an ocean on the other side of the fields.

  Every night he made a bed for his mum. He had a little sofa in his bedroom and he made her a bed on it, with a blanket and a pillow. If she suddenly appeared she'd be able to sleep there. Just lie down without him needing to get the bed things ready, it would be all done.

  Now he wound the window right down and took a deep breath. Wound it up again and started the engine and drove round the playground so that he could park immediately outside the entrance. He opened the door. There were several other cars around. He could hear the children's voices now, as if they were actually inside his car. As if they'd come to his car, to him.

  There was music on the radio now, and that voice he recognised came back and said something. It was a voice he'd heard several ti
mes. It spoke when he drove back from work at the end of the day. Sometimes he drove at night.

  He could feel how wet the ground was under his feet. He was standing beside his car but didn't know how he'd got there. It was strange: he'd thought about the radio and then suddenly he'd been standing beside the car.

  Children's laughter again.

  He was standing beside the playground that was next to the trees that no longer had any leaves, only bare branches.

  The video camera in his hand was hardly any bigger than a cigarette packet. A little bit bigger, perhaps. Amazing what they could make nowadays. He could hardly hear the faint hiss when he pressed the button and filmed what he could see.

  He moved closer. There were children all around but he couldn't see a single grown-up just then. Where were all the grown-ups? The children couldn't manage on their own, they might get hurt when they jumped down from the red and yellow climbing frame or fell off the swings.

  The climbing frame was right here, next to the entrance. He was standing by it.

  A leap.

  'Wheee!'

  Laughter. He laughed again himself, jumped, no, but he could have jumped. He helped the little boy to his feet. Up again, up, up! Lift him up to the sky!

  He took it from his pocket and held it out. Look what I've got here.

  It was three paces to the entrance. Then four more to the car. The boy's steps were shorter, six to the entrance and eight to the car.

  Children, children everywhere; it struck him that he was the only one who could see the boy now, keep an eye on him. The grown-ups were standing over there with their coffee cups making steam in the air that was cold and damp, just like the ground.

  Several cars. The boy couldn't be seen at all now, not from any direction. Only he could see him, he was holding his hand now.

  'There we are. Yes, I've got a whole bag full, how about that? So, let's open the door. Can you climb in all by yourself? You are clever.'

  * * *

  The back of the student's head had been struck in such a way that the wound looked like a cross, or something very similar. His hair had been shaved off, making the wound all the more visible. It was horrific, but he was still alive. Only just; but he had a chance.

  As they left the hospital, Bertil Ringmar's face looked blue, thanks to the lights in the entrance hall.

  'I thought you ought to see that,' said Ringmar.

  Winter nodded.

  'What weapon would make that kind of wound?' wondered Ringmar.

  'Some sort of pickaxe. Maybe an agricultural implement. A kitchen utensil. A gardening tool. I don't know, Bertil.'

  'There's something about it, I don't know. It reminds me of something.'

  Winter zapped the doors of his Mercedes. The car park was deserted. The car lights flashed like a warning.

  'We'd better have a word with our yokel,' said Winter as they drove down the hill.

  'Don't make fun of it.'

  'Make fun of it? What is there to make fun of?'

  Ringmar made no reply. Linnéplatsen was just as deserted as the car park had been a few moments back.

  'This is the third one,' said Ringmar.

  Winter nodded, loosened his tie and unfastened the top two buttons of his shirt.

  'Three youths more or less battered to death with something, but we can't work out what,' said Ringmar. 'Three students.' He turned to look at Winter. 'Is there a pattern?'

  'You mean the fact that they're all students? Or that we think the wounds look like a cross?'

  'That they're all students,' said Ringmar.

  'Students form a big category,' said Winter, continuing in a westerly direction. 'There must be thirty-five thousand of them in this city.'

  'Mmm.'

  'Plenty of people to make friends with, even if they only mix with their own kind,' said Winter.

  Ringmar drummed his fingers on the armrest. Winter turned off the main thoroughfare and drove north. The streets grew narrower, the houses bigger.

  'A pickaxe,' said Ringmar. 'Who wanders around with a pickaxe on a Saturday night?'

  'I daren't even think about it,' said Winter.

  'Were you a student here in Gothenburg?'

  'Briefly.'

  'What did you read?'

  'Prudence. Then I packed it in.'

  'Prudence?'

  'Introduction to Jurisprudence. But I dropped it, like I said.'

  'Imprudence follows Prudence,' said Ringmar.

  'Ha, ha,' said Winter.

  'I was a student of life myself,' said Ringmar.

  'Where do you study that? And when do you qualify for a degree in it?'

  Ringmar gave a snort.

  'You're right, Erik. A student of life is examined all the time. Continuous assessment.'

  'By whom?'

  Ringmar didn't reply. Winter slowed down.

  'If you turn right here, you'll avoid that awkward junction,' said Ringmar.

  Winter did as he'd been advised, made his way past a couple of parked cars and pulled up outside a timberclad detached house. The inside lights cast a faint glow over the lawn and between the maples that reached up to the sky like human limbs.

  'Why don't you come in for a late-night sandwich?' Ringmar asked.

  Winter looked at his watch.

  'Is Angela waiting up for you with oysters and wine?' wondered Ringmar.

  'It's not quite the season yet,' said Winter.

  'I expect you'll want to say good night to Elsa?'

  'She'll be fast asleep by now,' said Winter. 'OK, I'll have a bite to eat. Have you got any south Slovakian beer?'

  Ringmar was rummaging in the fridge as Winter came up from the cellar, carrying three bottles.

  'I think I only have Czech pilsner, I'm afraid,' said Ringmar over his shoulder.

  'I'll forgive you,' said Winter, reaching for the bottle opener.

  'Smoked whitefish and scrambled egg?' Ringmar suggested, examining what was in the fridge.

  'If we've got time,' said Winter. 'It takes ages to make decent scrambled egg. Have you got any chives, by the way?'

  Ringmar smiled and nodded, carried the ingredients over to the work surface and got started. Winter sipped his beer. It was good, chilled without being cold. He took off his tie and hung his jacket over the chair back. His neck felt stiff after a long day. A student of life. Continuous assessment. He could see the student's face in his mind's eye, then the back of his head. A law student, just like he'd been once. If I'd stuck with it I could have been Chief of Police now, he thought, taking another sip of beer. That might have been better. Protected from the streets. No bending over bodies with shattered limbs, no new holes, no blood, no wounds in the shape of a cross.

  'The other two don't have an enemy in the world,' said Ringmar from the stove, where he was stirring the egg mix with a wooden fork.

  'I beg your pardon?'

  'The other two victims who survived with the crossshaped wounds on their heads. Not an enemy in the world, they reckon.'

  'That goes with being young,' said Winter. 'Not having an enemy in the world.'

  'You're young yourself,' said Ringmar, lifting up the cast-iron pan. 'Do you have any enemies?'