'Are you being serious, Bertil?'
'I certainly am.'
'So,' said Winter, 'we have an attacker who dipped his weapon into dry ice before launching his attack.'
'And where could he have done that?' asked Ringmar.
'He might have been carrying the dry ice in a thermos flask,' said Winter. 'For instance.'
'Would it leave any traces afterwards?' asked Bergenhem.
'I wouldn't have thought so,' said Winter. 'Who would know about this kind of thing? Animals and dry ice and that kind of stuff?'
He looked at Ringmar.
'Inseminators,' said Ringmar. 'They keep sperm in a deep freeze.'
Winter nodded.
These guys are in the wrong trade, Bergenhem thought.
15
The children were asleep. Halders and Aneta Djanali were on the sofa and Halders was listening to U2. All That You Can't Leave Behind.
He had flashes of dark memories.
He didn't know if Aneta was listening. She was contemplating the rain lashing the glass door leading out on to the patio. The noise of the rain was getting louder now.
He felt Aneta's hand round his neck.
'Shall we have that massage now?'
He bowed his head slightly; she got up and stood behind him and started massaging his damaged vertebrae. He could feel himself relaxing as she massaged away.
Was it a year ago that his ex-wife was killed? It was the beginning of June, he remembered that. The school leaving examinations had taken place in mid-May so the seniors had left already, but his children had still been going to school, the last few days of term. It had been hellishly hot, and hell had continued for him.
They caught up with the bastard eventually. Halders had tried to track him down himself, but failed. Then he'd been injured in the course of duty. An idiotic injury. Caused by an idiot – himself. No, he thought as Aneta kneaded the back of his neck like a professional, it wasn't me, not then. It was somebody else.
The bastard hit-and-run driver had been a pathetic type who was not worth pummelling to death. When Halders saw him, long afterwards, the cretin meant nothing to him any more. He felt no hatred. He didn't have the time for that, nor the strength. He'd needed all his strength for the children, who were slowly beginning to understand what had happened to their lives. Nothing would ever be the same as before. Margareta's voice had gone, her body and her movements. They had been divorced, he and Margareta, but that didn't matter.
'Mum's in heaven now,' Magda would sometimes say.
Her big brother would look at her without comment.
Perhaps he doesn't believe her, Halders sometimes thought as he sat with them at the breakfast table. Doesn't believe in heaven. Heaven is up there in the sky, just something we can see from the earth. It's the same up there as it is down here. Mainly air and rain, and big distances between everything.
'How's it feel now?' asked Aneta.
Aneta's hands were on his shoulders. One hand on his chest.
'Time we went to bed?' he said.
Angela drove through the rain. It was really evening now, even if the transformation had been barely noticeable. If you could put it like that. She smiled. December was almost here, and she was looking forward to the Christmas holidays. Her work with her patients was getting more arduous. They grew more tired as the year drew to a close, and she too became more tired. She had managed to arrange time off between Christmas and New Year. Erik had muttered something earlier on about going to the Costa del Sol. She had hoped that Siv would phone. She got on well with Siv. She also got on well with a blue sky and a bit of sun and a glass of wine and barbecued langoustines.
But first she had a few errands to run in Haga. The shopping mall would be open until eight this evening.
She crossed over Linnéplatsen and started down Linnégatan, checked her rear-view mirror and saw the blue light rotating, suddenly, silently, as if a helicopter had landed soundlessly behind her.
The police car was still there. She wondered why they'd been called out. I can't pull in just here and let them pass. Now they've switched on the siren. Yes, yes, all right, I will as soon as I can.
She saw a gap outside the off-licence and pulled in to it.
The police car parked behind her. The light was still rotating, as if something serious had happened right there. She couldn't see anybody lying on the pavement.
She looked in the mirror again and saw one of the officers get out of the car, and she turned icy cold, totally mute, completely filled with terror, as everything she had been through not so very long ago came back to her. The memories were there like beams of light spinning round in circles. She had been kidnapped by a man in a police uniform. She had been stopped by somebody she thought was a police officer and Elsa had been in her stom—
There was a tap on the window and she could see his black glove. She didn't want to look. More knocking and she looked, quickly. She saw his gesture: wind down this window.
She felt for the panel on the door but couldn't find the button. Now. The window wound down in a series of nervous jerks.
'Didn't they teach you at driving school that you're supposed to stop when a police car tells you to?' he said, and there was brutality in his tone.
She didn't answer. She thought: didn't they teach you the basics of politeness and civility at Police College? Have you even been to Police College? Have you even been to primary school?
'We've been behind you for ages,' he said.
'I . . . I didn't think that . . . that it was me you were after,' she said.
He looked at her, seemed to be studying her face. His own face was in shadow, flecked with the evening's electric lights. There was hardness in his eyes, perhaps even something worse than that. A desire to hit something or somebody. A calculated provocation. Or maybe he's just tired. But everybody gets tired by work. She was tired out herself at the moment. Even so she could still behave in a civilised manner.
She knew a few police officers by sight, but this wasn't one of them. She glanced in the mirror to see if there was anybody else in the police car, but she couldn't see anything through the rain streaming down the rear window of her Golf.
Her first week in a small car, and this happens.
'Are you feeling all right?' he asked.
She didn't answer.
'Driving licence,' he said.
She found it eventually. He checked it and said: 'Angela Hoffman?' and she nodded.
He took a couple of steps back. She assumed he was running a check on her name. For a moment she wished she had Erik's surname. Mr Brutal Face would recognise it. Mumble something and give her back the driving licence and drive off with his fucking blue light and harass some other victim.
She calmed down. She could have made her irritation obvious. Or her fear. But that might well have only made things worse.
Perhaps we should get married? I could add Winter after Hoffman.
I might feel safer in the streets then.
A wedding by the sea.
Admit that you have thought about that.
The officer returned and handed back her licence, muttered 'Angela Hoffman' again and returned to his car and the blue light that had been spinning round nearly all the time and had attracted a little group of people on the pavement, curious to see the criminal whose papers were being examined by the long arm of the law. Curious to catch a glimpse of the criminal's haggard face, she thought, and made a racing start and headed north, having forgotten what pointless errands she had been going to run in these parts, and she turned eastwards into the first street she could find and was home five minutes later and outside the flat door from the basement car park in another four, and shortly afterwards her boots ended up in two corners of the hall.
'I thought you'd brought several other people home with you,' said Winter, coming out of the kitchen with Elsa in his arms. 'It sounded like riot police on a call-out.'
'Hold on while I count to ten,' she said.
'Only afterwards,' she said. 'I was stopped by one of your colleagues on the way home.'
'A road block?'
'No. Sheer devilment.'
Elsa was struggling in his arms, wanting both to greet Angela and to finish her evening meal.
'Just a moment,' said Winter, going back to the kitchen, sitting Elsa on her chair and letting her continue eating. There was food all over the table.
'I think I'm going to be sick,' said Angela, who had come into the kitchen still wearing her overcoat.
She left the room.
Shortly afterwards he heard her crying somewhere else in the flat.
He picked up the telephone receiver and rang his sister.
'Hello, Lotta. Is Bim or Kristina at home this evening?'
'Bim's here. Did you want her for anything special?'
'Do you think she could babysit for us at extremely short notice?'
'There are bastards in every job,' said Winter.
'Somebody like that is not fit to be a police officer,' she said. 'You can't behave like that.' She was holding her wine glass in her hand.
'I can easily find out who it was,' he said.
She had seen the furrow between his eyes. He would be capable of doing something drastic. There was a dark streak inside him that could turn him into – anything at all. For one brief, horrific moment.
'And do what?' she asked.
'You'd rather not know,' he said and took a sip of the Puligny Montrachet.
'Let's forget about it now,' she said, taking a drink and looking out of the window. 'We're here after all.' She looked at him and nodded her head towards the functionalist white building on the other side of Lasarettsgatan. 'I quite like the curtains in my old flat.' She looked at the balcony and the window beside it, up on the fifth floor. There was a light on.
There was a good view from the flat, in all directions, from the top of Kungshöjd.
He nodded.
'I sometimes miss it,' she said.
He nodded again.
'I was there for quite a few years,' she said.
'So was I,' he said.
'For you it was what you might call an overnight flat,' she said with a smile. 'Although you seldom stayed all night.'
'I miss the view,' he said.
'But this place didn't exist then,' she said, looking round the restaurant.
Bistro 1965 was new, and this was the second time they'd been there and it wouldn't be the last. Perhaps they would be the first regular customers.
Angela's pilgrim mussels grilled with coriander came with pumpkin purée. After all, it was Halloween not long ago, she'd thought as she ordered it. Winter's slightly smoked goose fillet came with aubergine and vanilla oil.
'It's good,' she said.
'Mmm.'
'Should we have a bad conscience because Elsa wasn't allowed to come as well?' she said, taking a sip of water.
'We can take the menu home with us and read it out to her tomorrow evening,' he said.
'I might want to read it myself,' she said, looking at the gastronomic glossary attached to the back of today's menu. 'Do you know what escalavida is, for instance?'
'It's a purée made from paprika and onions and aubergine and lemon, among other things.'
'You've been reading it beforehand, on the sly.'
'Of course I haven't.' He took a sip of wine and smiled. 'Why is it called reading on the sly, incidentally?'
'What's gremolata?'
'That's too easy.'
'Good Lord.' She looked up. 'Get off your high horse.'
'Come on, give me a real challenge.'
'Confit?'
'Too easy.'
'Vierge?'
'Vierge?'
'Yes, vierge.'
He glanced down at the menu he had on his knee. 'That's not on the list.'
'Huh! I knew you were cheating.'
A car passed by in the street outside. The evening had cleared up. There were stars visible in the sky above Angela's former home.
When he'd gone there for the first time, he'd been in uniform. It wasn't while he was on duty. Are you mad? she'd asked him. The neighbours will think I'm a crook.
I forgot, he'd said.
How can you forget a thing like that? she'd asked.
'What are you smiling at?' she heard him say.
'That first time,' she said, nodding in the direction of the block of flats, which was gleaming in the light from the street lamps. A car was coming up the hill from Kungsgatan. 'You came in uniform.'
They continued the conversation. It calmed them down. There's always a feeling of being absolutely private when you're sitting in a public place surrounded by strangers, Winter thought. A strange paradox.
He took a sip of wine. His glass now contained Fiefs de Lagrange, to accompany the rack of lamb with gremolata, ragout with lima beans and artichokes, and this vierge that he hadn't thought about when he ordered: a light sauce comprising virgin olive oil, tomato, lamb stock, garlic and herbs. He'd had a taste of Angela's red wine risotto.
The waitress changed the candle. There were fewer people in the restaurant now. Winter's mobile rang in the inside pocket of his jacket.
Elsa, Angela thought.
'Hello?' said Winter.
'It's Bertil. Sorry to disturb you.'
16
Winter could see the boy through the door. He was asleep. Or more likely anaesthetised on compassionate grounds. Angela was standing beside Winter. They'd taken a taxi from the bistro. I want to be present this time, she'd said. You shouldn't have to face up to everything on your own. Besides, it's my workplace. Even my ward. And Elsa's asleep.
'He could have frozen to death,' said Ringmar, who was standing on the other side of Winter.
'That, or some other awful fate,' said Winter. He'd read the reports, not that there were many of them so far. One by the hospital doctors, and one by Pia Fröberg, the forensic pathologist.
'When was the alarm raised?' Winter asked.
'It can't have been long after he disappeared,' said Ringmar.
'When was that? When did he disappear?'
'Soon after four.' He checked his notes. 'About a quarter past four. But that timing hasn't been confirmed.'
'Is that information from the day nursery staff?'
'Yes.'
'What exactly happened? What did they do? What did he do?'
'Nobody can say for certain.'
'So he was wandering around on his own?'
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