Frozen Tracks

by Ake Edwardson

  'We're busy producing lots of copies,' Winter said. 'We've written a text.'

  'You realise what will happen once the wanted notice becomes public?' Ringmar said.

  'Goodbye, secrecy,' said Winter.

  'And all the rest follows, like it or not.'

  'I suppose it's just as well that we get to that stage,' said Winter.

  'The press will give us hell,' said Ringmar. 'Or the media, as they call it nowadays.'

  'Can't be helped.'

  'I get the impression, Erik, that . . . that you're looking forward to it.'

  Winter said nothing.

  'This is going to be some Christmas,' said Ringmar. 'You're on your way to Spain, I gather?'

  'I was. Angela and Elsa are flying tomorrow. I'll follow when I follow.'

  'I see.'

  'What would you have done, Bertil?'

  'It depends what we suspect this is all about. If it's the worst-case scenario, then there's no question about it,' said Ringmar.

  'We'll have to interview the children soon,' said Winter.

  30

  The flat was being haunted by the ghost of Tom Joad as Winter stood in the hall with his overcoat half off and heard the sound of Elsa's feet on the way to greet him. Angela dropped something hard on the bedroom floor. Another bang from the bedroom, Elsa's face lit up; Winter was down on his knees.

  It had started snowing outside. Flakes were still melting on his shoulders.

  'Would you like to come outside with me and see the snow, Elsa?'

  'Yes, yes, yes, yes!'

  The pavement was white, and the park.

  'We make snowman,' said Elsa.

  They tried, and managed to make a small one. The snow wasn't really wet enough.

  'Have carrot for nose,' said Elsa.

  'It would have to be a little one.'

  'Can Daddy get it?'

  'Let's use this twig.'

  'Snowman breaking!' she said as she pressed the twig into the middle of the round face.

  'We'll have to make another head,' he said.

  They were back home after half an hour. Elsa's cheeks were as red as apples. Angela came out into the hall. Springsteen was singing on repeat about the dark side of humanity. Angela's songs had become his as well.

  'Snow!' shouted Elsa and ran into her room to draw a snowman like the real one she'd just made.

  'And I'm going to take all this away from her,' said Angela, looking at him with a faint smile. 'Tomorrow we shall fly away from the first white Christmas of her life.'

  'It will disappear during the night,' he said.

  'I don't know if that was pessimistic or optimistic,' she said.

  'Everything depends on the context, doesn't it? Positive, negative.'

  He hung up his overcoat and wiped a few drops of water off his neck. He undid another shirt button.

  'Where's your tie?' she asked.

  'A chap out there borrowed it,' he said, gesturing with his thumb at the park outside.

  'A silk tie. Must be the best-dressed snowman in town.'

  'Clothes maketh the man,' said Winter, going into the kitchen and pouring out a whisky. 'Would you like one?'

  She shook her head.

  'You don't have to go,' he said. 'You could stay at home. I'm not forcing you to go.'

  'I thought that this afternoon as well,' she said. 'But then I thought about your mum. Among other things.'

  'There's nothing to stop her coming here.'

  'Not this Christmas, Erik.'

  'Do you understand me?' he asked.

  'What am I supposed to say to that?'

  'Do you understand why I can't go with you now?'

  'Yes,' she said. 'But you're not the only person in Gothenburg who can interrogate a suspect. Or lead an investigation.'

  'I've never claimed that I am.'

  'But you have to stay here even so?'

  'It's a question of finishing something off. And it's only just begun. I don't know what it is. But I have to follow it through to the end. Nobody else can do that.'

  'You're not the only one on the case.'

  'I don't mean it like that. I'm not talking about me as a lone wolf. But if I break off now, I won't be able to come back to it. I'll . . . lose it.'

  'And what does that mean? What will you lose?'

  'I don't know.'

  She looked at the window, which was being pelted with snowflakes hurled by strong gusts of wind.

  'Something terrible might have happened,' said Winter.

  'Have you appealed to the public for information?'

  'Yes.'

  'Ah, that reminds me, your reporter contact, or whatever we should call him, at Göteborgs Tidningen, Bülow, has rung.'

  'I'm not surprised. He'll ring again.'

  'Can you hear the phone ringing? Of course you can't. That's because I've pulled the plug out.'

  'I can hear The Ghost of Tom Joad,' he said.

  'Good.' She made a gesture. 'Is this case going to take up all your time for the whole of the Christmas holidays?'

  'That's why I'm staying behind, Angela.' He took a drink of whisky now; a cold heat passed down his throat. 'I can't say any more than that. You know me. Don't you? I can do my job or I can pack it in. Either or. I can't do it by halves.'

  'Why bother to make plans for a holiday at all, then? It's pointless. It would be better to work all the time, eighteen hours a day, all the year round, year after year. Always. Anything else would be half measures, as you say.'

  'That's not what I'm saying.'

  'OK, OK. I understand that you have to keep going now. That things are happening all the time. That what has happened to the little boy could be horrendous. Or is horrendous.' She was still looking at the snow on the window. 'But it never stops, Erik.' She turned to look at him. 'More horrendous things happen all the time. And you are always there, in the thick of it. It never stops, never.'

  He said nothing.

  I did take six months' paternity leave, he thought. That might have been the best time of my life. The only time of real value.

  'I've been looking forward to this trip,' she said.

  What should he say? If we miss one Christmas together, there'll be a thousand more to come? How did he feel himself? What did it mean to him, not spending the special days with Angela? And Elsa? How many days were they talking about?

  'I might be down there with you the day after,' he said.

  'The day after the day?'

  'Stay here, Angela. We'll go there together the moment all this is over.'

  'Sometimes when I think about you and your job it's as if you're some sort of artist,' she said. 'No fixed working hours, you choose yourself when and how you work, you sort of direct the work yourself. Do you understand, Erik? It's as if you . . . create your work yourself.'

  He didn't respond. There was something in what she said. It wasn't possible to explain it, nobody could. But there was something in it. It was a frightening thought.

  'I can't explain it,' she said.

  'It's not possible,' he said. 'But I understand what you're saying.'

  'Yes.'

  'Of course you should stay here over Christmas,' he said again.

  'Let me think about it,' she said. 'Maybe it's best for all concerned if we go to Spain, Elsa and I.'

  Five days, he thought out of the blue. It'll be all over in five days. It'll be over by Boxing Day.

  He knew already that wasn't going to be something to look forward to. Irrespective of what happened, he knew there was something dreadful in store after the Christmas holiday. Or during it. He knew that he would be surprised, find questions and answers that he hadn't formulated. He would be left with unanswered questions. See sudden openings that had previously been welded together. And new walls. But he would be on the way all the time, really on the way, and this moment at this table would be the last bit of peace he would have. When would he be able to return here, to this? To peace?

  'Will you marry me, Ang
ela?' he asked.

  The telephone rang the moment he plugged it in again. It had just gone midnight. Nothing new on his mobile, and nobody had that number unless he'd given it to them personally. Hans Bülow wasn't among those.

  'What's going on, Erik?' asked Bülow.

  'What do you want to know?'

  'You've sent out an appeal for information about a four-year-old boy called Micke Johansson?'

  'That's correct.'

  'What's happened?'

  'We don't know. The boy is missing.'

  'In Nordstan? In the middle of the Christmas rush?'

  'That's precisely where and when such things happen.'

  'Has it happened several times, then?' asked Bülow.

  'I meant in general. Children get lost when there are lots of people around.'

  'But this one hasn't come back?'

  'No.'

  'A full day has gone by.'

  Winter said nothing. Bülow and his colleagues could follow the hands on a clock just as well as he could.

  Angela moved in bed. He hung up and went quickly out into the kitchen and picked up the receiver of the wall telephone. The reporter was still there.

  'So somebody has kidnapped the boy?' said Bülow.

  'I wouldn't use that term.'

  'What term would you use?'

  'We don't know yet what's happened,' said Winter again.

  'Are you looking for the boy?' asked Bülow.

  'What do you think?'

  'So he's disappeared.' Winter could hear voices in the background. Somebody laughed. They ought to be crying, he thought. 'It sounds like a very serious business,' said Bülow.

  'I agree,' said Winter.

  'And then there was the abuse of that English boy.' Winter could hear the rustling of paper near Bülow's telephone. 'Waggoner. Simon Waggoner. He was evidently kidnapped as well and mistreated and left on his own.'

  'No comment,' said Winter.

  'Come on, Erik. I've helped you before. You ought to know by now, after all the contact you've had with the media, that facts are better than rumours.'

  Winter couldn't help laughing.

  'Was that an ironic laugh?' asked Bülow.

  'What makes you think that?'

  'You know I'm right.'

  'The statement is correct but the messenger is wrong,' said Winter. 'I deal in facts, you deal in rumours.'

  'That's what can happen when we don't get any facts to work with,' said Bülow.

  'Don't work, then.'

  'What do you mean?'

  'Don't write anything until you know what you're writing about.'

  'Is that how you work?'

  'I beg your pardon?'

  'Do you sit around doing nothing until you get a little piece of the jigsaw?'

  'I wouldn't find a little piece of the jigsaw if I sat around doing nothing,' said Winter.

  'Which brings us back to the point of this conversation,' said Bülow, 'because I'm also doing something to find a little piece of the jigsaw that I can write about.'

  'Ask me again tomorrow evening,' said Winter.

  'I have to write about this now,' said Bülow, 'tonight. Even you must understand that.'

  'Hmm.'

  'We've already got facts in connection with the Waggoner case.'

  'Why have you waited before publishing them, then?' asked Winter.

  Winter could hear that Bülow was hesitating before answering. Was he going to say: 'No comment'?

  'We've only just got hold of them,' said the reporter. 'In connection with the appeal for information about the other boy.'

  'Oh.'

  'Can you see a connection, Erik?'

  'If I say yes, and you write that, it's hard to see what the consequences would be,' said Winter.

  'Nobody here is going to create panic,' said Bülow.

  Winter was about to burst out laughing again.

  'What creates panic is the indiscriminate spreading of unconfirmed rumours, and I'm looking for facts,' said Bülow.

  'Haven't we had a conversation about that very topic before?' said Winter.

  'Is there a connection?' asked Bülow again.

  'I don't know, Hans. I'm being completely honest with you. I might know more tomorrow or the day after.'

  'That's Christmas Eve.'

  'And?'

  'Will you be working on Christmas Eve?' asked Bülow.

  'Will you?'

  'That depends. On you, amongst other things.' Winter heard voices in the background again. It sounded as if somebody was asking Bülow a question. He said something Winter couldn't hear and resumed the conversation. 'So you don't want to say anything about a link?'

  'I'd prefer you didn't raise that question just now, Hans. It could make a mess of a lot of things. Do you follow me?'

  'I don't know. I'd be doing you yet another favour in that case. Besides, I'm not the one who makes all the decisions here,' said Bülow.

  'You're a good man. You understand.'

  The alarm clock woke him up from a dream in which he had rolled a snowball that grew to the size of a house, and kept on rolling. An aeroplane had passed overhead, and he'd been sitting on top of the snowball and waved to Elsa, who had waved back jerkily from her window seat. He hadn't seen Angela. He had heard music he'd never heard before. He'd looked down and seen children trying to make an enormous snowball, but nothing had moved, not even Elsa's hand as the aeroplane had passed by and vanished into a sky where all the colours he'd seen earlier had been mixed together to form grey. He'd thought about the fact that when all those brilliant colours were combined, the result was simply grey – and then he'd woken up.

  Angela was already in the kitchen.

  'The snow's gone,' she said. 'As you predicted.'

  'There'll be more.'

  'Not where we'll be.'

  'So you've made up your mind?'