Frozen Tracks

by Ake Edwardson

  'Why?' asked Birgersson.

  'It's got something to do with . . . with himself. With the person he once was.'

  'The person he once was?'

  'When he was like they are now. When he was a child.'

  'We know what he's taken,' said Birgersson. 'A watch, a ball and some kind of jewellery.'

  'And perhaps also something from the Skarin boy. Most probably.'

  'Are they trophies, Erik?'

  'I don't know. No. Not in that way.'

  'Are the things he's taken similar to things he has himself?' said Birgersson, putting down the cigarette and rocking backwards and forwards in his swivel chair, which emitted a whining sound.

  'That's a very good question,' said Winter.

  'That somebody could answer, if only we could find a somebody,' said Birgersson.

  'There are the children.'

  'True. But I was thinking of other grown-ups. Grownup witnesses.' He contemplated Winter, Winter's Corps, Winter's shirt unbuttoned at the neck, and his tie that looked like a noose. 'Are we dealing with a grown-up here, Erik?'

  'That's a very good question.'

  'A child in a grown-up body,' said Birgersson.

  'It's not as easy as that,' said Winter.

  'Who said it was easy? It's damned complicated,' said Birgersson. He suddenly turned round, as if he'd been impaled by the beams of light aimed at the back of his neck from the two stars that seemed to be nailed to poles towering up over Lunden behind Ullevi Stadium. He turned back again.

  'This is a . . . a bit of a bloody tangle,' he said. 'You know I think such expressions are unprofessional and I don't like them, but I'm going to use it in this context even so.' He lit another cigarette and pointed it at Winter. 'Nail the bastard before something even more horrendous happens.'

  28

  Angela rang as Winter was leaving Birgersson's office. He saw his own home number on the display.

  'Yes?'

  'Erik, the day nursery manager has just phoned. Our day nursery, that is.'

  'Is Elsa at home?'

  'Yes, yes, thank God.'

  'What did she want?'

  'They had seen some mysterious person or other.'

  'OK, have you got her phone number handy?'

  He rang immediately on his mobile, still only halfway to his office.

  He was sitting in her office, which was decorated with children's Christmas drawings. It wasn't the first time he'd been in this room, but the first time on business like this. The only people moving in the nursery were the cleaning staff. The silence was strange, not to say unnatural, in rooms that were normally echoing with children's voices. He'd been here before in the evening, for parents' meetings: but then the quietness had been different, a grown-up murmur.

  'Somebody filming them,' Winter said.

  'Yes. A delayed reaction, you might say. Lisbeth started to think about it when one of the fathers collecting his kid started taking video footage,' said the manager, whose name was Lena Meyer.

  'Where exactly was it?'

  'As they were crossing the football pitch. Or at least, as they got to the other side.'

  'Where was he standing?'

  He heard a timid knock on the door behind him.

  'I think this is the lady herself. Come in!'

  Lisbeth Augustsson opened the door. She nodded to Winter – she'd spoken to him many times, but they'd only exchanged a few words. She was about twenty-two, possibly twenty-five, hair in thick brown plaits, red ribbons. She sat down on the chair beside Winter.

  'Where exactly was he standing when he was filming?' Winter asked.

  She tried to describe the spot.

  'He followed us as well,' she said.

  'Still filming?'

  'Yes, it seemed so.'

  'Did you recognise him?'

  'No.'

  'How can you be sure?'

  'Well, I can't be certain, obviously. I didn't see him for all that long either. And he had a camera in front of his face.' She smiled.

  'Nobody you'd seen before?'

  'No.'

  'What made you report this to Lena?' Winter asked.

  'Well, there was this business about the girl who said she'd, er, spoken to somebody. Ellen Sköld. That makes you a bit suspicious.' She looked at Lena Meyer. 'We're always careful, of course.'

  She knew nothing about the other children. Not much about Simon Waggoner, not yet. Winter and his colleagues wouldn't be able to keep that secret for much longer.

  'Have you ever seen anyone filming you before?' Winter asked. 'When you were out on an excursion somewhere? Or here at the nursery?'

  'No, I can't say I have. It was just today.'

  'Please tell me exactly what happened, as accurately as you can,' said Winter.

  'There's not a lot to say. I looked up once and saw him but didn't really think about it. I mean, you often see people with video cameras nowadays, don't you? But then I looked again, and he was still there, filming – apparently filming us.' She raised her arms. 'And when he seemed to notice that I'd seen him, that I was looking at his camera, he turned it away and pretended to be filming the buildings on the other side of the street, or whatever.'

  'Maybe he was,' said Winter.

  'Was what?'

  'Filming the buildings. Maybe he wasn't pretending.'

  'It looked like he was.'

  'What happened next?' Winter asked. 'Did you continue watching him?'

  'Yes. I watched for a bit longer, but we had the children to think about. And he turned away after only a few seconds and walked off.'

  'In which direction?'

  'Back towards Linnéplatsen.'

  'Did you see him from the side? Or from behind?'

  'From behind, I think. I didn't watch very long. Forgot about it, or whatever you might say. I mean, we had other things to think about. But then I remembered it again, later.'

  'Can you describe what he looked like?' Winter asked.

  'Well . . . he was sort of normal. The camera was in the way so you couldn't see his face. His jacket was blue, I think, and trousers I assume.' She gave a laugh. 'He wasn't wearing a skirt, I'd have remembered that, and, well – that's about it.' She was still thinking. Winter had sat thousands of times with witnesses trying to remember. Everything they said could be accurate, but it could also be totally misleading. Colours that were definitely green could be yellow, six-foot men could be dwarfs, women could be men, men women, trousers could be . . . skirts. Cars could be mopeds and one hundred per cent certainly dogs could turn out to be camels. No. No camels had cropped up in any of his cases, not yet.

  Children could be children. Cease to be children, disappear. Cease to exist. Or never be children again, never be whole persons again.

  'He had a cap!' she said suddenly.

  'You said before he had a camera in front of his head.'

  'In front of his face. I said in front of his face. And not all the time I was watching him. I remember now that you could see the cap over the top of the camera. And I saw it as well when he turned to film the buildings on the other side, if that's what he was doing.'

  'What kind of a cap?'

  'Well, it wasn't a Nike cap. Not one of those baseball things.'

  Winter thought about Fredrik Halders: he often wore a baseball cap over his shaven skull. Nike, or Kangol.

  'I reckon it was an old man's cap,' she said.

  'An old man's cap?' said Winter.

  'Yes. One of those grey or beige things old blokes always seem to wear.'

  Winter nodded.

  'Yes, one of them,' she said. 'Grey, I think, but I'm not sure. A sort of grey pattern.'

  'Was he an elderly man?' Winter pointed to himself. 'Like me?'

  She smiled again, big teeth, perfectly shaped, white; Scandinavian, perhaps you could call them.

  'I really couldn't say,' she said. 'But he could well have been about your age. Despite the cap. He walked normally, he wasn't a fatty or anything like that, he di
dn't seem old. He wasn't an old man.'

  'Would you recognise him if you saw him again?'

  'I don't know. But if he was wearing the same clothes, and carrying a video camera – well, I might do.'

  'Have you spoken to anybody else about this?' Winter asked. 'Apart from Lena.' He nodded in the direction of Lena Meyer.

  'No.'

  'How many staff were out this afternoon with the children?'

  'Er, three, including me.'

  'And none of the others noticed anything?'

  'I don't know. As I said, I sort of forgot all about it. Until now.'

  Winter stood up. Thought. He could see the group in his mind's eye. Staff first, in the middle, and at the back. He'd seen a set-up like that lots of times. What did they do? Pause, fuss around, carry on. It was December now. Not long to go before the holidays. Everybody was in the mood. Something to celebrate coming up. Everybody on holiday. In a way, the holiday had already started. What do you do when there's a holiday mood in the air? You sing. Dance. Have fun. Perhaps you might want to record these moments, or this mood. Record it. Watch it again later. Record it. Keep it.

  He looked at Lisbeth Augustsson.

  'Did any of you have a video camera with you when you went out on this excursion?'

  'Er . . . no.'

  'An ordinary camera, perhaps?'

  'Er . . .'

  He could see that she was thinking hard.

  'Did any of you have a camera with you when you went out on this excursion?'

  Lisbeth Augustsson looked at Winter and her face was a picture.

  'Good Lord! Anette had her camera with her! An ordinary Instamatic, or something of the sort. She might have taken a few pictures when we were crossing the football pitch. She said she was going to, but I was looking in the other direction.' Lisbeth Augustsson looked at her boss and at Winter again. 'She might have a picture of him!'

  'Could well be,' said Winter.

  'What on earth made you think of that?' she said.

  'We'd have found out anyway when we spoke to the others,' Winter said. 'Where can I get hold of Anette?'

  Ringmar was waiting for Gustav Smedsberg. He could hear voices in the corridor, somebody trying to sing a Christmas carol. The echo was not to anybody's advantage. A peal of laughter, a woman's voice. Detectives winding down for the holiday.

  But here we are not winding down, we're winding up, up, up.

  He phoned home but there was no reply. Birgitta ought to be at home by now. He needed to ask her what she wanted him to buy from the covered market.

  He tried Moa's mobile. 'The number you have called cannot be reached at this time . . .'

  He would have liked to ring Martin, if he'd known what to say. But that problem was academic, as it were.

  The phone call came from the duty officer. Smedsberg was waiting downstairs in the cosy foyer, 'the charm suite' as Halders called the reception rooms. The first stimulating contact the general public had with the police authorities, step one on the way to the ombudsman.

  Gustav Smedsberg looked thin standing on the other side of the security door. He seemed underdressed, wearing a cap that appeared to be more of an adornment than anything else. If you could regard it as such. Denim jacket, a thin T-shirt underneath. Open neck. The boy's face was expressionless; he might have been bored stiff. Ringmar beckoned to him.

  'This way,' he said.

  Smedsberg was shivering in the lift up.

  'It's cold out there,' said Ringmar.

  'Started yesterday,' said Smedsberg. 'A bastard of a wind.'

  'You haven't got round to digging out your winter clothes, I gather?'

  'These are my winter clothes,' said Smedsberg, scrutinising the buttons in the lift. He shivered again, and again, like sudden tics.

  'I thought you were used to chilly winds where you come from,' said Ringmar. 'And how to cope with them.'

  Smedsberg didn't respond.

  They left the lift. The tiles on the wall were a big help to anybody who wanted to suppress the Christmas atmosphere. The thought had occurred to Ringmar that morning. Or perhaps in his case he had lost the Christmas spirit already. Birgitta had said nothing when he got up. He knew she was awake, she always was. Silent. He'd said a few words, but she'd just rolled over on to her other side.

  'Please come in,' he said, ushering Smedsberg into his office.

  Smedsberg paused in the doorway. Ringmar could see his profile, a nose curved like that of his father. Perhaps there was something in his bearing reminiscent of the old man as well. And in his accent, although the boy's was less pronounced.

  'Please sit down.'

  Smedsberg sat down, hesitantly, as if he were ready to leave at any moment.

  'Will this take long?' he asked.

  'No.'

  'What's it about, then?'

  'The same as we've talked about before,' said Ringmar.

  'I don't know any more about that than I did then,' said Smedsberg. 'He stirred things up about Josefin, and that's about it.'

  'What do you mean? Who's "he"?'

  'Aryan, of course. Isn't he the one we've been talking about all the time?'

  'There are others involved as well,' said Ringmar.

  'I don't know them, like I said.'

  'Jakob Stillman lived in the same building as you.'

  'So did a hundred others. A thousand.'

  'You said before that you didn't know Aryan Kaite.'

  'Yes, yes.' Smedsberg shook his head dismissively.

  'What does that mean?'

  'What does what mean?'

  'Yes, yes. What do you mean by that?'

  'I don't know.'

  'GET A GRIP OF YOURSELF,' said Ringmar, sternly.

  'What's the matter?' said Smedsberg, more alert now, but still with a remote, bored expression that he evidently didn't find easy to shake off.

  'We are investigating serious violent crimes, and we need help,' said Ringmar. 'People who lie to us are not being helpful.'

  'Have I committed a crime?' Smedsberg asked.

  'Why did you tell us you didn't know Aryan Kaite?'