Winter's mobile rang on the work surface, where it was recharging. He could reach it without needing to stand up.
'Hello?'
'Hi, Lars here.'
Bergenhem's voice sounded small, as if it were coming from a tunnel.
'What's happened?'
'Carolin Johansson has taken an overdose,' said Bergenhem. 'Micke's mother. Some kind of bloody tablets, they don't know yet.'
'Is she alive?'
'Only just.'
'Is she alive or isn't she?'
'She's alive,' said Bergenhem.
'There were no drugs at her place,' said Winter. 'We ought to have a record.'
'Sleeping tablets, they think. She had visitors at the time,' said Bergenhem.
'I want to know exactly who was there,' said Winter.
'That's no so—' 'I want to know, Lars. Fix it.'
'OK.'
'Is she in Östra hospital?'
'Yes.'
'Do we have somebody there?'
'Sara.'
'OK. How's the father taking it? Where is he?'
'He's there as well.'
'Who's keeping an eye on his telephone?'
'Two new officers. I don't know their names. Möllerström can ask—'
'Forget it for the time being. Have you spoken to Bengt Johansson this morning?'
'No.'
Just as well, Winter thought. I'll call on him this afternoon at his home. Assuming he's back from the hospital by then.
Bertil had gathered what had happened, and stood up.
'Time for a day's work,' he said. 'Another day's work. Christmas Eve or no Christmas Eve.' He looked at Winter. 'They work on Christmas Eve in the USA.'
'How are you feeling, Bertil?'
'Excellent after a good night's wake.'
'Won't Birgitta be looking for you?'
'How the hell should I know?'
'You know where you are with me, Bertil,' said Winter.
'I beg your pardon?'
'I believe you,' said Winter.
'How can you be so sure, Erik? Just because I'm swaying around like a Christmas tree in a storm and blinking like a lighthouse it doesn't necessarily mean that I'm telling the truth.'
Winter couldn't help smiling.
'You're not swaying and you're not blinking.'
'Oh shit, that means I'm found out.'
'Never read newspapers,' said Winter.
'I didn't even show you the front page,' said Ringmar.
'I think I can imagine it,' said Winter.
'And it's not even a member of the gutter press brigade,' said Ringmar.
He went into the hall.
'I'll be going now. Merry Christmas again.'
'See you shortly,' shouted Winter, but the door had already closed.
He went to his desk and checked the telephone number he had added to his computer notes. He dialled it.
'Hello?'
The voice could belong to anybody, could be young, could be getting on. There was a noise in the background that he couldn't identify.
'I'm looking for Mats Jerner.'
'Wh-wh-who's asking?'
'Are you Mats Jerner?'
'Yes . . .'
'My name's Erik Winter, I'm a detective chief inspector. I'd like to meet you. Preferably today. This afternoon.'
'It's Ch-Ch-Christmas Eve,' said Jerner.
It's Christmas Eve for me as well, Winter thought.
'It will only take a couple of minutes,' he said.
'What's it about?'
'We're investigating a series of vicious attacks and, well, one of the victims comes from your home district, and we're trying to get in touch with everybody who's had cont—'
'How do you know where I come from?' asked Jerner.
Winter noticed that he sounded calmer. That was often the case. If you mentioned that you were a police officer, and especially a DCI, most people's voices sounded a bit unsteady at first.
'We've spoken to your foster father,' said Winter.
Jerner said nothing.
'Mr Jerner?'
'Yes?'
'I'd like to meet you today.'
Silence again. That noise again.
'Hello? Jerner?'
'I can come to see you this afternoon,' said Jerner.
'Do you mean come to police headquarters?'
'Isn't that where you work?'
'Yes . . .' said Winter, looking around his flat.
'When do you want me to come?'
Winter looked at his watch.
'Four,' he said.
'That suits me,' said Jerner. 'I pack up at twenty to.'
'Pack up?'
'Come to the end of my shift.'
'What's your work?'
'I'm a tram driver.'
'I see. It sounded a minute ago as if you wanted to keep Christmas Eve . . . free.'
'It was just because of the ph-ph-phone call,' said Jerner. 'Realising that you're at work on Christmas Eve. Ringing people up and asking questions and telling them to come in for more questioning and all that. Ordering them, or whatever the right word is. That was what surprised me.'
It's not an order, Winter thought.
'What do I do, then?' asked Jerner.
'I beg your pardon?'
'I need to know where in police headquarters I should report to, don't I? Or do you expect me to find my own way around the building?'
37
The city was still white as he drove south. Metheny and Haden oozed calm from the CD, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress.
He was blinded for a second as he drove into the tunnel. There was no light. On the way to the darkness at the end of the tunnel, he thought. A horrific thought.
It occurred to him that he'd forgotten to look for the Christmas presents from Angela and Elsa.
Snow lay like cold powder on the fields. Beyond them the sea formed a concave mirror. It wasn't moving at all.
The Bergorts' semi was bathing in one of the day's first sunbeams as he got out of the car. There were Advent candles in two of the windows.
He could smell newly made coffee as he stepped into the hall.
Kristina Bergort offered him a coat-hanger.
'I apologise for disturbing your Christmas Eve,' said Winter.
'But this is important,' she said. 'God, it's awful.'
He could see the open newspaper on the kitchen table: What's happened to Micke? The police have no leads.
He could smell the pungent scent of Christmas hyacinths through the living-room door. That was perhaps the dominant Christmas smell as far as he was concerned, full of memories.
'I've just made coffee.'
'Thank you.'
Winter sat down. He could see the illuminated Christmas tree through the door to the living room. Did Elsa have a Christmas tree in Nueva Andalucía? Surely his mother would have dreamed up something. Lights in the palm trees in the garden? That made him think of Bertil. Where was Bertil supposed to be going this morning? Smedsberg. The other students.
'What's Maja doing?' he asked.
'She's watching the telly. Kids' programmes.'
'Where can we go?'
'Well, you didn't want to be in her room, so I thought maybe we could use Magnus' room. It's a sort of little office. And sometimes I sit there and do some sewing.'
'OK.'
'Shall I tell Maja?'
'Yes please.'
The routine, if that was the right word for it, was the same as usual, and the same as at Simon Waggoner's home: Winter squatting down on the floor and displaying a genuine interest in the child. Being a nice man. Merry Christmas, Maja. I have a little girl just one year younger than you. She's called Elsa.
She looked down. She'd said her name very quietly when they were introduced.
He led the way into the room.
'So, here we are,' he said.
She didn't want to follow him.
'Erik just wants to have a few words with you in there,' said Kristina Bergort to h
er daughter.
The girl shook her head. She was bouncing a little ball that went off course and disappeared into the room. Winter was in there already.
'Aren't you going to fetch the ball, Maja?'
She shook her head again.
'That's Daddy's study,' said Kristina Bergort.
'Where's Daddy?' asked the girl.
'He has to be at work, darling. I told you that this morning.'
On Christmas Eve, Winter thought. Is there anybody else in Sweden who needs to work on Christmas Eve?
'Don't want to,' said Maja.
'We can be in the kitchen,' he said. 'Why don't you bring along some paper and crayons, Maja?' He wanted her undivided attention, but he wanted something else as well.
He set up the camera next to the door.
She was perched on her chair like a bird. The smell of coffee had dispersed, but the hyacinths were still there.
His questions had started to zoom in on her meeting with the stranger.
He had started by asking Maja about her favourite colours. They'd drawn something using them, and then something with colours she didn't like as much. She knew her colours, all of them.
'Have you lost your ball, Maja?'
She looked at the ball on the table between them.
'The other ball,' said Winter. 'The green ball.'
'That's gone,' she said. 'I've lost the green ball.'
'Where did you lose it?'
'In the car,' she said.
'In what car?'
'The mister's car.'
Winter nodded.
'Were you sitting in the mister's car?' he asked.
'Yes.'
'What colour was that car, Maja?'
'It was black,' she said, but she didn't look sure.
'Like this?' said Winter, and he drew a black line.
'No, not as black as that.'
He drew a blue line.
'No.'
A different blue.
'Yes!'
'So the mister's car was this colour?'
'Yes! Blue!'
Maybe they'd hit the jackpot. But there again, a witness claiming to recognise a colour was among the most unreliable pieces of evidence in existence, with the possible exception of car makes. Somebody could swear blind that it was a white Volvo V70 that had driven away from the scene of crime, but shortly afterwards it could be established that it was a red Chrysler Jeep. Typical. It had become more difficult to distinguish between makes of car since their cloning procedures had become more sophisticated. They all had the same slick design, the same nuances. He'd thought a lot about that. He'd had to.
They'd tried showing the child various makes of car, but it hadn't been possible to narrow it down.
He took a piece of paper, and drew a car using a blue pencil. It could have been a Volvo, or a Chrysler. In any case, it had a basic outline, and four wheels.
Maja laughed out loud.
'Was this the car?' he asked.
'No, don't be silly,' she said, but coquettishly.
'Why don't you draw it, then?'
'I can't,' she said.
Winter slid his drawing over to her.
'Let's help each other,' he said. 'Why don't you draw yourself? Where were you sitting in the mister's car?'
'It wasn't that car,' said Maja.
'Let's pretend that this was the mister's car,' said Winter.
He took a yellow pencil and drew a head in the front seat. She took a black one, and drew an eye, a nose and part of a mouth. A profile of a face.
'Where was the mister sitting?' Winter asked.
'We can't see him,' said Maja.
'What would he have looked like if we could see him?' Winter asked.
She drew a head in black, and on top of it something that could possibly be a cap.
'What's that?' asked Winter.
'That's the mister's hat.'
Before Winter had time to ask his next question, she drew a green dot in front of her portrait of herself sitting in the car.
Her ball, Winter thought. Perhaps it was on top of the dashboard until he took it. Assuming that was really where it vanished. If any of this really took place.
But he asked even so, pointing at the green dot.
'What's that, Maja?'
'That's the mister's birdie,' she said.
Aneta Djanali met Kalle Skarin for the second time. At the first meeting she had suggested that something might have been taken away from Kalle.
'The car,' Kalle had said.
They had gone through all the things he had at home, and what was missing.
'He usually took it with him,' Berit Skarin had said. 'I couldn't find it, so maybe . . .'
Now Kalle was playing with a new car on the carpet. Aneta Djanali was sitting beside him. Kalle had proved to be a bit of an expert on cars, and might well have identified the abductor's car as a Japanese make, possibly a Mitsubishi. He had pointed at the Lancer as if he had recognised the estate car model, but he had been less sure of the colours.
He hadn't heard any rude words on the radio.
'Did the mister have any toys, Kalle?' asked Djanali.
'Kalle got sweeties,' said the boy, interrupting his brrrruuumming with the car, which was a Chrysler Jeep.
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