Frozen Tracks

by Ake Edwardson

  'On the basis of Moa's description of me, you mean,' he said.

  She smiled, then turned serious again.

  'Do you know anybody who really disliked Jakob?' Ringmar asked.

  'Nobody disliked him,' she said.

  'Is there anybody he dislikes?'

  'No.'

  'Nobody at all?'

  'No.'

  Maybe it's the times we live in, Ringmar thought, and if so it has to be a good thing. When I was a youngster we were always mad at everything and everybody. Angry all the time.

  'How well do you know him?' he asked.

  'Well . . . he's my friend.'

  'Do you have several mutual friends?'

  'Yes, of course.'

  Ringmar looked out of the window. Some fifty metres away, two youths were standing at the bus stop in the rain, holding their hands up to the sky as if giving thanks. Not an enemy in the world. Even the rain was a dear friend.

  'No violent types in your circle of friends?' asked Ringmar.

  'Certainly not.'

  'What were you doing when Jakob was attacked?'

  'When exactly was it?' she asked.

  'I'm not really allowed to tell you that,' he said, and proceeded to do so.

  'I'd been asleep for about two hours,' she said.

  But Jakob wasn't asleep. Ringmar could see him in his mind's eye, walking across the square named after Doktor Fries. Heading for the tram stop? There weren't any trams at that time of night. And then somebody appeared out of nowhere, and one hell of a bash on the back of his head. No help from Dr Fries. Left there to bleed to death, if the bloke who'd called the police hadn't happened to pass by shortly after it had happened and see the lad lying there.

  Jakob, the third victim. Three different places in the same town. The same type of wound. Fatal, really. Perhaps. But none of them actually died. Not yet, he thought. The other two victims had no idea. Just a blow from behind. Saw nothing, just felt.

  'Do you live together?' he asked.

  'No.'

  Ringmar said nothing for a moment. The two youths had just jumped aboard a bus. Maybe it was getting a bit brighter in the west, a slight glint of light blue. The waiting room was quite high up in the hospital, which itself was on the top of a hill. Maybe he was looking at the sea, a big grey expanse under the blue.

  'You weren't worried about him?'

  'What do you mean, worried?'

  'Where he was that night? What he was doing?'

  'Hang on, we're not married or anything like that. We're just friends.'

  'So you didn't know where he was that night?'

  'No.'

  'Who does he know out there?'

  'Where?'

  'In Guldheden. Round about Doktor Fries Torg, Guldheden School, that district.'

  'I haven't the slightest idea.'

  'Do you know anybody around there?'

  'Who lives there, you mean? I don't think so. No.'

  'But that's where he was, and that's where he was attacked,' said Ringmar.

  'You'll have to ask him,' she said.

  'I'll do that, as soon as it's possible.'

  Winter had taken Elsa to the day nursery. He sat there for a while with a cup of coffee while she arranged her day's work on her little desk: a red telephone, paper, pencils, chalks, newspapers, tape, string. He would get to see the result that afternoon. It would be something unique, no doubt about that.

  She barely noticed when he gave her a hug and left. He lit a Corps in the grounds outside. He couldn't smoke anything else after all these years. He'd tried, but it was no use. Corps were no longer sold in Sweden, but a colleague made regular visits to Brussels and always brought some of the cigarillos back for him.

  It was a pleasant morning. The air smelled of winter but it felt like early autumn. He took another puff, then unbuttoned his overcoat and watched children hard at work on all sides: building projects involving digging and stacking, moulding shapes; every kind of game you could think of. Games. Not much sign of games in the sports grown-ups indulge in nowadays, he thought, and noticed a little lad running down the slope towards a gap in the bushes. Winter looked round and saw the two members of staff were fully occupied with children who wanted something or were crying or laughing or running around in all directions, and so he strode swiftly down the hill and into the bushes, where the lad was busy hitting the railings with his plastic spade. He turned round as Winter approached and gave him a sheepish grin, like a prisoner who'd been caught trying to escape.

  Winter shepherded the little lad back to the fold, listening to some story he couldn't quite understand but nodding approvingly even so. One of the ladies in charge was standing halfway up the slope.

  'I didn't know there was a fence there,' said Winter.

  'It's a good job there is,' she said. 'We'd never be able to keep them on the premises otherwise.'

  He caught sight of Elsa on her way out into the grounds: she'd clearly decided it was time to take a rest from all that paperwork.

  'Hard to keep an eye on all of them at the same time, I suppose?' he said.

  'Yes, it is now.' He detected a sort of sigh. 'I shouldn't stand here complaining, but since you ask, well, it's a case of more and more children and fewer and fewer staff.' She made a gesture. 'But at least we've got them fenced in here.'

  Winter watched Elsa playing on the swings. She shouted out when she saw him, and he waved back.

  'How do you manage when you take them out for excursions? Or take the whole lot of them to the park, or to a bigger playground?'

  'We try not to,' she said.

  Ringmar was with the student, Jakob Stillman. The latter had been living up to his name, but now he seemed able to move his head slowly, and with some difficulty he could focus on Ringmar from his sick-bed. Ringmar had introduced himself.

  'I'd just like to ask you a few questions,' he said. 'I suggest you blink once if your answer is yes, and twice in succession if it's no. OK?'

  Stillman blinked once.

  'Right.' Ringmar moved the chair a bit closer. 'Did you see anybody behind you before you were hit?

  One blink.

  'Ah, so you did see something?' Ringmar asked.

  One blink again. Yes.

  'Was it far away?'

  Two blinks. No.

  'Were you alone when you started walking across the square?'

  Yes.

  'But you were able to see somebody coming towards you?'

  No.

  'So somebody was behind you?'

  Yes.

  'Could you make anything out?'

  Yes.

  'Did you see a face?'

  No.

  'A body?'

  Yes.

  'Big?'

  No blinking at all. This lad is smarter than I am, thought Ringmar.

  'Medium-sized?'

  Yes.

  'A man?'

  Yes.

  'Would you recognise him again?'

  No.

  'Was he very close when you saw him?'

  Yes.

  'Did you hear anything?'

  Yes.

  'Did you hear the sound before you saw him?'

  Yes.

  'Was that why you turned round?'

  Yes.

  'Was it the sound of his footsteps?'

  No.

  'Was it the sound of some implement or other scraping the ground?'

  No.

  'Was it a noise that had nothing to do with him?'

  No.

  'Was it something he said?'

  Yes.

  'Did it sound like Swedish?'

  No.

  'Did it sound like some other language?'

  No.

  'Was it more like a shriek?'

  No.

  'More like a grunt?'

  Yes.

  'Something deeper?'

  Yes.

  'A human sound?'

  No.

  'But it came from him?'

  Yes.
/>
  3

  He drove through the tunnels, which were filled with a darkness denser than the night outside. The naked lamps on the walls made the darkness all the more noticeable. The cars coming towards him made no noise.

  He had the window down, letting in some air and a cold glow. There was no light at the end of the tunnel, only darkness.

  It was like driving through hell, tunnel after tunnel. He was familiar with them all. He would drive round and round the city through the tunnels. Is there a name for this? he wondered. A term?

  Music on the radio. Or had he put a CD in? He couldn't remember. A beautiful voice he liked to listen to when he was driving under the ground. Soon the whole of the city would be buried. The whole of the road alongside the water was being dug down into hell.

  He sat down in front of the television and watched his film. The playground, the climbing frame, the slide the children slid down, and one of the children laughed out loud and he laughed as well because it looked such fun. He pressed rewind, watched the fun bit once again and made a note on the sheet of paper on the table beside him, where there was also a vase with six tulips that he'd bought that same afternoon. Both the vase and the tulips.

  Now the boy was there. His face, then the car window behind him, the radio, the back seat. The boy told him what to film, and he filmed it. Why not?

  The parrot hanging from his rear-view mirror. He'd picked out a red and yellow one, just like the climbing frame at the playground that needed another coat of paint, but his parrot didn't need repainting at all.

  The boy, who'd said his name was Kalle, liked the parrot. You could see that in the film. The boy was pointing at the parrot, and he filmed it even though he was driving. That needed a fair amount of skill, but he was good at driving while thinking of something else at the same time, doing something different. He'd been good at that for a long time now.

  Now he heard the voices, as if the volume had suddenly been turned up.

  'Rotty,' he said.

  'Rotty,' echoed the boy, pointing at the parrot, and it almost looked as if it were about to fly away.

  Rotty. It was a trick. If anybody else were ever to see this film, which wouldn't happen, but if, only if, it would seem as if Rotty was the parrot's name. But that wasn't the case. It was one of his tricks, like all the other tricks you had when you were little and your voice suddenly g-g-g-g-ot s-s-s-s-s-st-st-st-st-st-stu-stu-stu-stu-stu-stuck in mid-stride, as it were, when he first st-st-started st-st-stst- stu-stu-stu-stuttering.

  It began when his mum walked out. He couldn't remember it being like that previously. But afterwards he had to invent tricks that would help him out when he wanted to say something. Not all that often, but sometimes. The first trick he could remember was rotty. He couldn't say parrot, pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa – no, he could stand there stuttering for the rest of his life and still not get to the end of that word. Rotty was no problem, though.

  He heard a sound that he recognised. It was coming from himself. He was crying again, and it was because he'd been thinking about the parrot. He'd had a red and green parrot when he was a little boy, and still had it when he was older. It was a real one and could say his name and three other funny things, and it had been called Bill. He was sure that Bill had been real.

  The film had finished. He watched it again from the beginning. Bill was there in several of the scenes. Bill was still there for him because he hung a little parrot from his rear-view mirror every time he went out in the car. They might be different, with different colours, but that didn't matter because they were all Bill. He sometimes thought of them as Billy Boy. His favourite rotty. The boy was laughing again now, just before everything went black. Kalle Boy, he thought, and the film ended and he stood up and fetched all the things he needed for copying or whatever he should call it. Cutting. He liked doing that job.

  'Sounds like the Incredible Hulk,' said Fredrik Halders.

  'This is the first of the victims who's seen anything,' said Ringmar. 'Stillman's the first.'

  'Hmm. Of course, it's not certain that it was the same hulk who did all the deeds,' said Halders.

  Ringmar shook his head. 'The wounds are identical.'

  Halders rubbed the back of his neck. It wasn't all that long since he himself had received a savage blow that had smashed a bone and para-lysed him temporarily, but he'd managed to get the use of his limbs back. For what that was worth, he'd thought a long time afterwards. He'd always been clumsy. Now it was taking him time to get back to his former level of clumsiness.

  To get back to his old life. His former wife had been killed by a hit-and-run driver. A nasty word. Former. Lots of things had been different formerly.

  He lived now in his former house, with his children who were anything but former.

  He rubbed the back of his neck.

  'What kind of a pick did he use, then?' he asked.

  Ringmar raised both his hands and shrugged.

  'An ice pick?' suggested Halders.

  'No,' said Ringmar. 'That's a bit passé nowadays.'

  Halders examined the photos on Ringmar's desk. Sharp colours, shaved scalps, wounds. Not the first time, but the difference now was that the victims were still alive. The most common head in the archives is generally a dead one. Not these, though, he thought. These are talking heads.

  'Never mind the bloody pick,' he said, looking up. 'The important thing is to catch the lunatic, no matter what sort of weapon he uses.'

  'But it's significant,' said Ringmar. 'There's something, something odd about these wounds.'

  'Yes, no doubt, but we've got to put a stop to it all.'

  Ringmar nodded his agreement and continued perusing the photos.

  'Do you think it was somebody he knew?' asked Halders.

  'That thought had occurred to me,' said Ringmar.

  'What about the other two blokes? The other two victims?'

  'Huh. Saw nothing, heard nothing. A relatively open square. Late. No other witnesses. You know how it is. Had a few, but not completely blotto.'

  'And then wham.'