Frozen Tracks

by Ake Edwardson

Never, he thought.

  Winter parked behind the building that contained half the shops in Doktor Fries Torg. It wasn't the first time. Once he'd had toothache so bad that he had double vision for some seconds before getting out of his car. When Dan, his dentist, had touched the tooth responsible, Winter had felt for his gun. Not really. But the tentative touch by the dentist had almost made him lose consciousness.

  This time he wasn't going to visit the dentist. That might have been better. Young men being viciously attacked was worse.

  The square was practically deserted. This could be the 1960s, he thought. That's what it looks like here. I must have been four years old, maybe three. I must have been here as a three-year-old. Dad's dentist had his surgery here even then.

  His mobile vibrated in the inside pocket of his overcoat.

  He looked at the screen.

  'Hello, Mum.'

  'You saw my number, Erik?'

  'As usual.'

  'Where are you now?'

  'At Doktor Fries Torg.'

  'Doktor Fries Torg? Have you been to the dentist's?'

  'No.' He stepped to one side to avoid two young women, each of them pushing a pram. 'This is where Dad used to go to the dentist's, isn't it?'

  'Yes. Why do you ask?'

  'It doesn't matter.' He could hear the rustling at the other end, all the way from Nueva Andalucía to 1960s Gothenburg. Perhaps she was reading a newspaper at the same time, but he didn't think so. 'What's it like on the sunshine coast?'

  'Cloudy,' she said. 'It's been cloudy all day, and yesterday as well.'

  'That must be awful,' he said. 'Cloudy on the Costa del Sol.'

  'Yes.'

  'What's the Spanish for Cloudy Coast?' he asked, taking out his packet of Corps and lighting a cigarillo. It tasted like a part of the early winter surrounding him, a dark taste filled with heavy aromas.

  'I don't know,' she said.

  'You've been living down there for years and years, and you still don't know the Spanish word for cloud?'

  'I don't think there is one,' she said.

  He laughed out loud.

  'Did you know that the Japanese don't have a word for blue?' he asked.

  'Ah, I know the Spanish for that,' she said. 'It's azul.'

  'El cielo azul,' said Winter, gazing up at the grey sky overhead.

  'The sun is just beginning to break through over the sea,' she said. 'This very minute, as we're speaking.'

  He knew what it looked like. Some years previously he had spent a few days in a hot Marbella in early autumn while his father was dying in the local hospital.

  One morning he'd left the breakfast table at Gaspar's and walked down to the beach under a leaden sky, and in the space of a few seconds the clouds over the Mediterranean had been torn apart and the sun swept over the water all the way to Africa.

  'Was there something special you wanted to talk about?' he asked.

  'Christmas,' she said. 'I've been thinking about it again. Will you be able to come here for Christmas? You know I've asked you before.'

  'I'm not sure if it will be possible.'

  'Think about Elsa. She'd enjoy it so much. And Angela.'

  'What about me?' he said.

  'You as well, Erik. You would as well.'

  'I really don't know what the work situation is for both of us,' he said. 'It's not quite clear what will happen on Angela's ward.'

  'There must be other doctors, surely?'

  'There are not many available when it's a big holiday.'

  'Make sure that Angela can get away,' she said. 'What does she say herself about coming to Spain?'

  'Can't you come home instead?' he asked.

  'I'll be coming in the spring. But it would be such fun to celebrate Christmas with you all down here. We've never done that.'

  'Have you asked Lotta?'

  His sister was a regular visitor to his mother, with her two teenage daughters.

  'She and the girls are probably going to do something with some close friends.'

  'What's his name?' asked Winter, thinking about how his sister was trying to find a new man after her grim divorce.

  'She didn't say anything about a him.'

  'OK, I'll look into it.'

  'Don't interfere in her life, Erik.'

  'I meant that I'll look into the possibility of getting time off so that we can visit you over Christmas.'

  'You ought to have done that already, Erik.'

  He didn't respond.

  'I can make a Christmas ham,' she said.

  'No, no! If we come we want fish and shellfish.'

  Winter found it hard to picture his mother in front of a cooker; she had never been that kind of mother.

  She could stoop over a work surface in the kitchen, but that would be in order to cut slices of lemon for some drinks, or to prepare a cocktail shaker. One drink too many at times. But she had always been good. She had treated her children with respect. He had grown up to become a man who tried to do the same with the people he came across. He had a reason. Far too many people didn't have a solid base against which to brace themselves when the going got tough.

  'It's almost December,' she said. 'You ought to be booking flights, and doing it now. It might be too late already.'

  'So you ought to have phoned earlier,' he said.

  She said nothing.

  It suddenly dawned on him why. She had been waiting for as long as she could in the hope that he would ask her if they could visit her over Christmas. She'd only been hinting that they should before. Now she couldn't wait any longer.

  'I'll book provisional flights,' he said.

  Why not? Over twenty degrees, lots of places with good tapas and a few extremely good restaurants. It was only one Christmas. He'd spent so many in Gothenburg wrapped up in a shawl of freezing-cold winds from the sea. Long days between Christmas and New Year when it never became properly light but everything was enveloped by a mist that a poor detective was unable to see through as he staggered through the city in search of a solution to a case. Holmes. My name is Sherlock Winter Holmes.

  They hung up. He stood in the square for a moment with not the slightest idea of why he'd gone there.

  He drove back to town, leaving the plain behind him and all the smells associated with that world.

  His head had been overfilled with memories, and now he tried to get rid of them, to let them blow away through the open window. The slipstream tugged at his hair and his cheeks. It felt good.

  He followed a circular route he knew well. The network of motorways sucked him slowly in towards the city centre, like a spiral rotating inwards. Or downwards, he thought as he stopped for a red light in the Allé.

  He parked at the same place as before. Perhaps it was exactly the same spot. No. He used the maple tree as a marker, and that showed him it was a slightly different spot.

  He touched his forehead and felt the sweat. The back of his neck was also wet, and the back of his head.

  He touched the parrot hanging from his rear-view mirror. Bill was with him. He touched the little bear on the seat next to him. Odd that he'd never given it a name. It was always Bear.

  He touched the parrot lying next to Bear: it looked exactly the same as Bill. The colours were almost identical, maybe something red was yellow instead, but the difference was so slight that you could hardly see it.

  'What do you want them for?' the old man had asked as he got into the car.

  'They're mine,' he'd said.

  'That weren't what I asked. I asked what in hell's name you wanted them for now.'

  'They're mine,' was all he'd managed to come out with.

  The only things he had left from his childhood.

  'You've always been odd,' the old man had commented.

  Those words had almost been enough to make him run the old man over. To make a big circle round the farmyard then come back and really show that he didn't want people to talk about him like that.

  He held up the bird so that it
was looking past him and at the trees and the lawn and the playground where children were on the swings or running round and playing tag or playing hide and seek, and there were far too many of them and far too few grown-ups to keep an eye on the children and make sure that nothing happened to them.

  He would have to help them.

  He got out of the car and left his things behind, but he didn't lock the doors.

  He'd positioned the car so that it was pointing towards the road back to the park, and he walked past the square and after only one or two minutes found himself behind the high-rise buildings, and he could feel the sweat again and he suddenly felt sick, his head spinning round as if he were on a roundabout. He paused and breathed deeply, and that felt better. He walked a few more paces and somebody said something.

  He looked down at the boy, who was standing beside a bush.

  'What's your name?' asked the boy.

  14

  He looked at his hands on the steering wheel. They were shaking. He had to keep moving them to new positions, to make sure his driving wasn't affected. He didn't want that to happen.

  All the parking places were taken, which was unusual. He drove round the block, and when he returned there was a vacant space.

  He drank a glass of water in the kitchen before taking off his shoes. He'd never done that before. He always left his shoes in the hall, so as not to bring grit and dirt into the flat, as had happened now. He'd cleaned the flat yesterday, and wanted it to be nice and tidy for as long as possible.

  He put down his glass and looked at his hand, and what was on the palm of it, and he turned his head away again and walked all the way through the kitchen and the hall to the bathroom, where he washed his hands with his face averted. As he couldn't see properly what he was doing, water splashed down on to the floor, but that couldn't be helped.

  He dried his hands. The telephone rang. He dropped the towel. The phone was still ringing. He went into the hall.

  'Hell . . . hello?'

  'Is that Jerner? Mats Jerner?'

  'Er, yes.'

  'Hello, this is Gothenburg Tramways, Järnström here. I'm calling in connection with that accident at Järntorget. I'm responsible for the inquiry.'

  Järnström and Järntorget, he thought. Did they select inquiry chairmen on the basis of their names? Or the victim. My name fits in as well.

  'It's almost finished, in fact,' Järnström went on.

  'Have we met?'

  'No.'

  He heard the rustling of paper.

  'It's all over bar the shouting,' said Järnström. 'You can start again.'

  'Start work again, do you mean?'

  'Yes.'

  'So there'll be no more interrogations?'

  'Interrogations?'

  'Questions about how I do my job.'

  'That's not what—'

  'So it's not my, er, not my fault any more?'

  'Nobody ever said it was. You were—'

  'I was suspended.'

  'I wouldn't call it that.'

  'What would you call it then?'

  'It's just that we had to hold this inquiry and it's taken a bit of time.'

  'Whose fault was it, then?'

  'I beg your pardon?'

  'WHOSE FAULT WAS IT, THEN?' he yelled down the telephone. The man was evidently a bit deaf and he had to speak more loudly. 'WHO'S GOING TO CARRY THE CAN FOR EVERYTHING THAT'S HAPPENED?'

  'Calm down now, Jerner.'

  'I am calm.'

  'It's all over and done with now,' said Järnström. 'As far as you're concerned.'

  'Who isn't it all over and done with for?'

  'I'm not with you.'

  'Is it the drunk it's not all over and done with for? It was all his fault.'

  'That kind of thing is a problem,' said Järnström.

  'Who for?'

  'For Gothenburg Tramways,' said Järnström.

  'For the drivers,' he said. 'It's a problem FOR THE DRIVERS.'

  'Yes.'

  'That's what causes this kind of thing.'

  'Yes, I know.'

  'Was there anything else?'

  'No, not at the moment. We might need to ask you about the odd detail later on, but tha—'

  'So I just need to turn up for work again?'

  'That's precisely why I phoned you, to tell you that.'

  'Thanks a lot,' he said and hung up. His hand was starting to shake again. It was clean now, but it was shaking.

  He went back to the kitchen and sat down, then stood up again immediately and went into the hall, felt in his right-hand jacket pocket and took out the souvenir he had of the girl.

  He sat on the sofa and contemplated it. Then burst into tears.

  It had never gone as far as this before. Never. He'd felt it coming on and had driven round in a big circle first in the hope of maybe being able to snap out of it, but instead he'd been sucked into the spiral, and he'd known it would end up like this.

  What would happen next time?

  No NO NO NO!

  He went to fetch the video camera from the hall, and continued arguing with himself.

  He watched the film showing on the television screen.

  He heard the boy's voice asking what his name was. He heard himself replying without knowing then what he'd said. But he didn't say the name he had now. He said the other name he'd had when he was a boy, a little boy like him, no, bigger, but little even so.

  The film was flickering on the screen. Cars, trees, rain outside, traffic in the street, a set of traffic lights, then another, his own hand on the steering wheel. The boy. A glimpse of his hair. No voice now, no sound at all. His hand. A glimpse of the hair again, no face, not in this film.

  Winter tried to think in time with the music. Which was in tune with the November twilight outside. Car headlights on the other side of the river were stronger than the light from the sky.

  He had taken the same route that Stillman, the law student, had walked that night. Climbed up the steps and passed Forum and his own dental surgery and the library and stood in the middle of the square where the attack had taken place. How could it happen? How could Stillman avoid seeing what was coming? Bicycle, perhaps? But that was difficult to believe. Somebody creeping up from behind? Hmm. No, he didn't think so. Somebody Stillman had arranged to meet? Who came sauntering up at the same time, from behind or the side or in front? More likely. But Stillman ought to have noticed, for God's sake. Ought to have been able to say something about it afterwards.