Frozen Tracks

by Ake Edwardson

  'Olives are good for you,' said Djanali. 'Unlike baked pig's trotters.'

  'For Christ's sake!' screamed Halders. 'Why did you mention pig's trotters? You've made my feet hurt.'

  At last the banter is getting back to normal, Winter thought. About time too.

  'Perhaps he wants to brand pigs,' said Halders. He sounded serious now. 'Our attacker. Branding people he regards as swine.'

  'If it is a marking iron, or whatever it's called,' said Winter.

  'We'd better start making comparisons,' Ringmar said. 'We'll have to get hold of a branding iron.'

  'Who's going to volunteer to have their head bashed in so that we can make comparisons?' Halders wondered.

  Everybody stared at him.

  'Oh no, no, not me. I've already had a bash on the head, that's enough for this life.'

  'Maybe it wasn't enough, though?' said Djanali.

  Have I gone too far? she thought. But Fredrik asks for it.

  Halders turned to Winter.

  'The answer could be in the victims. Maybe there is a link between them after all. They don't have to be random choices.'

  'Hmm.'

  'If we can find a common denominator we'll have made a start. We haven't checked up on the first two in detail yet. Not enough detail, at least,' Halders continued.

  'Well . . .' said Ringmar.

  'Well what? I can think of ten questions they weren't asked. But I must say I think this last bloke's story is a bit odd. Gustav. The farmer's boy.'

  'What do you mean, odd?' asked Djanali.

  'Confused, muddled.'

  'Perhaps that makes it more credible,' said Winter.

  'Or incredible,' said Halders. 'How can you fail to notice somebody creeping up on you in the middle of a football pitch?'

  'But the same thing applies to the others as well,' said Djanali. 'Are you seriously suggesting that they're all in it together? That the victims allowed themselves to be injured? Or at least knew what was going to happen to them?'

  'Maybe there's something important he's trying to tell us but doesn't dare,' said Ringmar.

  Everybody understood what Ringmar was getting at. People often told lies, and usually because they were scared.

  'We'll have to ask him again,' said Djanali.

  'Nothing surprises me any more,' said Halders. 'OK, maybe they weren't all aware of what was going to happen to them. But maybe they were, to some extent at least. This Gustav, though, he might have other reasons for telling us this story.'

  Nobody spoke. Winter contemplated the sunlight blazing in through the window. We need some light, he'd thought as he raised the blinds shortly before the others arrived. Let there be light.

  The trees in the park outside had been pointing at him, black fingers glinting in the sun. The sky was as blue as it was possible to be in late November.

  'He also said something about a newspaper delivery boy. We'd better check up on that,' Winter said, still staring into the heavens. 'Bergenhem can look into it when he gets back from lunch. Somebody was working there that morning and might have seen something.'

  'Or done something,' said Ringmar.

  'All the better if that's the case. We'll have solved it.'

  'What about the other attacks?' asked Djanali. 'Were there news paper boys around then as well?'

  Winter looked at Ringmar.

  'Er, we don't actually know yet,' Ringmar said.

  'Is that code for we haven't looked into it yet?' asked Halders.

  'Now we have a time pattern that is becoming clearer,' said Winter, getting to his feet. 'All the attacks took place at about the same time – in the small hours before dawn.'

  'In the wee small hours of the morning,' said Halders.

  'We're trying to interview everybody who might have been around the areas where the incidents took place, and now it's the newspaper delivery boys' turn,' said Winter.

  'That's hard work,' said Halders.

  'Interviewing newspaper boys?' said Djanali.

  'I've worked as a newspaper boy,' said Halders, ignoring her.

  'Good,' said Winter. 'You can give Bergenhem a hand, then.'

  'I'll take another look at the locations first,' said Halders.

  7

  He was at Kapellplatsen, standing on the edge of the square. The high-rise buildings concealed the sun that would remain up in the northern sky a bit longer yet.

  Halders turned his head, and felt how stiff it was. He couldn't swivel his head round any more. The blow to the vertebrae at the back of his neck had left behind this physical reminder. He could just about manage to turn his head to the right; to the left was worse. He'd had to learn to turn his body instead.

  Other memories were worse. He had once run all the way across this very square with Margareta when they were very young and very hard up and very happy. The number seven tram had already set off and he had stood in the way and nearly been mangled. But it had stopped. And Margareta had nearly died laughing once she'd got over the shock. And now she really had died, not just nearly died – been mangled by a drunk driver, and it was debatable whether or not he'd got over the shock, or ever would do. God only knows. They'd been divorced when it had happened, but that didn't mean a thing. Their children were still there, as a reminder of everything that life stood for. That's the way it was. If there was a meaning at all, that was it. Magda's face when lit up by the sun at the breakfast table. The spontaneous joy in the little girl's eyes, which turned into diamonds in that flash of light. The feeling inside himself. At that moment. Happiness, just for one second.

  Still, despite everything, he was on the way back to some kind of normality. The banter that morning had been a positive sign. He was glad about that. Therapy? Could be.

  He was glad that Aneta had caught on, and played along.

  Perhaps the pair of them were going somewhere together. No, not perhaps. We are going somewhere together. Very slowly, very carefully.

  He turned round, slowly, carefully. The student had come up the steps from Karl Gustavsgatan. Maybe he'd been tired out. Certainly a bit pissed. Beer. Aryan Kaite, as black as could be, like Aneta; and what a name! Aryan. Perhaps a plea from his parents, it had struck Halders when he talked to the lad after he'd come round. An Aryan black man. Weren't they the first humans? Africans?

  This one was reading medicine.

  A horrible wound to the head. Could have killed him. The same applied to the others. He thought about that as he stood by the steps looking down at the paving stones sparkling in the sunlight. All of them could have been killed, but nobody had died. Why? Was it a coincidence, a stroke of luck? Was it the intention? Was that a possibility? Were they meant to survive?

  This was where the blow had been delivered, in the square, Kapellplatsen. Then darkness.

  * * *

  Linnéplatsen was surrounded by tall buildings that were new but meant to look old, or at least in time blend in with the hundred-year-old patrician mansions.

  Jens Book had been clubbed down outside Marilyn's, the video store. Halders was standing there now. There were five film posters in the windows, and all of them depicted people brandishing guns or other weapons. Die Fast! Die Hard III! Die and Let Die! Die!

  But not this time either. Jens Book was the first victim. Studying journalism. The Aryan, Kaite, was the second. Jakob Stillman the third. In the same department as Bertil's daughter, Halders remembered, and moved to one side to avoid a cyclist who came racing up from Sveaplan. Gustav Smedsberg was the fourth, the yokel studying at the university of technology, Chalmers. Branding iron. Halders smiled. Branding iron my arse.

  Book was the one with the worst injuries, if it was possible to grade them like that. The blow had affected nerves and other things, paralysing him on his right side – and it was not clear if he would recover mobility. Maybe he wasn't as lucky as I was, Halders thought, as he backed out of the way of a cyclist evidently determined to ride straight ahead. Halders very nearly fell through the door of the video store
.

  He thought about the blows again. First the one he'd received. Then the ones that had injured the young men.

  It had all happened so quickly. Wham, no warning. Nobody noticed anything in advance. No footsteps. Just wham. No chance of defence, of protecting themselves.

  No footsteps, he thought again.

  He watched the cyclist ignoring a red light and riding straight over the crossroads, displaying a splendid contempt for death. Die? Pfuh!

  The cyclist.

  Have we asked about a possible cyclist? Have we thought about that?

  He had interviewed Aryan Kaite himself, but there had been no mention of a bicycle.

  Had the attacker been riding a bike?

  Halders stared down at the tarmac, as if there might still be some visible sign of cycle tracks.

  Lars Bergenhem had some news before lunch. Winter was smoking a Corps. The window overlooking the river was open a couple of centimetres, letting in air he thought smelled more distinctly than his ciga rillo smoke did. The Panasonic on the floor was playing Lush Life. Only Coltrane today, and in recent weeks. Winter had unfastened two buttons of his Zegna jacket. Anybody coming into his office now who didn't know any better would think he wasn't working. Bergenhem came in.

  'There was no newspaper delivery boy there.'

  Winter stood up, put his cigarillo down on the ashtray, turned down the music and closed the window.

  'But the student saw him,' he said as he was doing this. 'Smedsberg.'

  'He says he saw somebody with newspapers,' said Bergenhem, 'but it wasn't a newspaper delivery boy.'

  Winter nodded and waited.

  'I checked with the Göteborgs Posten delivery office, and on that particular morning, the day before yesterday in other words, their usual employee for that round phoned in sick just before it was time to start delivering, and it took them at least three hours before they could mobilise a replacement. So that would have been at least two hours after Smedsberg was attacked.'

  'He could have been there even so,' Winter said.

  'Eh?'

  'He could have called in sick but turned up even so,' Winter said again. 'He might have started to feel better.'

  'She,' said Bergenhem. 'It's a she.'

  'A she?'

  'I've spoken to her. There's no doubt. She has an awful cold, and a husband and three children who were all at home that morning and give her an alibi.'

  'But people received their morning papers?'

  'No. Not until her replacement turned up. According to GP, in any case.'

  'Have you checked with the subscribers?'

  'I haven't had time yet. But the girl at GP says they had lots of complaints that morning. As usual, according to her.'

  'But Smedsberg says he saw somebody carrying newspapers,' Winter said.

  'Did he really say he'd seen the actual newspapers?' Bergenhem wondered.

  Winter sorted through the pile of papers in one of the baskets on his desk and read the report on the interviews Ringmar had submitted.

  Ringmar had asked: How do you know it was a newspaper boy?

  Because he was carrying a bundle of newspapers and went into one of the blocks of flats, and then I saw him come out again and go into the next one, Smedsberg had replied.

  Was there a trolley outside with more newspapers? Ringmar had asked.

  Good, Winter thought. A good question.

  No. I didn't see a trolley. There could . . . No, I didn't see one. But he was certainly carrying newspapers, that was obvious, Smedsberg had answered.

  'Yes,' said Winter, looking at Bergenhem. 'He said that this person was carrying newspapers and went in and out of blocks of flats in Gibraltargatan.'

  'OK.'

  'But there was no trolley – don't they usually have one?' Winter said.

  'I'll check,' said Bergenhem.

  'Check who the replacement was as well.'

  'Of course.'

  Winter lit his cigarillo again and exhaled smoke.

  'So, we might have a false newspaper boy here, hanging around the area at the time of the attack,' he said.

  'Yes.'

  'That's interesting. The question is: is it our man? And if it isn't, what was he doing there?'

  'A loony?' Bergenhem suggested.

  'A loony playing at being a newspaper boy? Well, why not?'

  'A mild form of loony.'

  'But if he is our man, surely he must have planned it. A bundle of newspapers et cetera. On the spot at that particular time.'

  Bergenhem nodded.

  'Did he know that Smedsberg would go that way? Or did he know that somebody or other would come past? That students often stagger over Mossen in the early hours? In which case it could have been anybody.'

  'Why go to the trouble of lugging newspapers around?' Bergenhem said. 'Wouldn't it have been enough simply to hide?'

  'Unless he was using that disguise, or whatever we should call it, that role, to establish some kind of security,' Winter said. 'Melt into the background. Create an atmosphere of normality. What could be more normal at that time in the morning than a hardworking newspaper boy?'

  'Maybe he even made contact,' Bergenhem said.

  Winter drew on his cigarillo again and watched it growing murkier outside. The sun had wandered off again.

  'That had occurred to me as well,' he said, looking at Bergenhem.

  'Can't I ever have a thought of my own?' Bergenhem wondered.

  'Well, you said it first,' said Winter with a smile.

  Bergenhem sat down and leaned forward.

  'Perhaps they spoke to each other. It's pretty harmless to exchange a few words with a newspaper boy.'

  Winter nodded, and waited.

  'Perhaps they did make some sort of contact.'

  'Why didn't Smedsberg say anything about that?' Winter asked.

  'Why do you think?'

  'Well, it's possible. Everything's possible. They exchanged a few words. The lad continued on his way. The newspaper boy carried on delivering.'

  'Come on, Erik. That can't have been what happened. Smedsberg would have told us about it if it was.'

  'Give me another theory, then.'

  'I don't know. But if they made contact and exchanged more than a few words, Smedsberg must be concealing something from us.'

  'What would he be concealing from us if that's the case?'

  'Well . . .'

  'Does he want to hide the fact that he spoke to a stranger? No. He's an adult, and we are not his parents. Does he want to hide the fact that he was a bit drunk and doesn't want us to remind him and others of that fact? No.'