He put on a sweater, stepped into his boots, wriggled into his leather jacket and took hold of the door handle just as the bell rang from the other side.
He opened it and found Ringmar standing there.
'Are you on your way out, Erik?'
'Where's your car?'
'Just outside your front door.'
'Good. I can drive,' said Winter. 'Come on, I'll explain on the way.'
They took the lift. Ringmar had left the folding doors open so that it didn't automatically return to the ground floor.
'It's Smedsberg,' said Ringmar as they rattled down.
'What?'
'Old man Smedsberg. Georg Smedsberg. He was the one who attacked the students.'
'Where have you been, Bertil?'
Ringmar's face was blue in the red light of the lift, which tended to highlight his features. There was fire in his eyes. Winter detected a smell coming from him that he'd never noticed before.
'His son knew that all the time, of course,' said Ringmar. 'Or nearly all the time.'
'Have you been OUT THERE, Bertil?' Winter looked askance at Ringmar, who was staring straight ahead. 'Did you go there ON YOUR OWN?' Ringmar continued to stare straight ahead. 'For Christ's sake, Bertil. I've been trying to get hold of you.'
Ringmar nodded and continued to tell his story as if he hadn't heard Winter's question.
'They've all been out there. All the victims. I have half a kilo of muddy soil that will prove it, but we'll manage without the need for forensic evidence.'
'Has he confessed?' Winter asked.
Ringmar didn't answer the question, but continued telling his story.
'I went into the house just as he was about to do God only knows what to the boy. His son. Then it was just a matter of listening. He wanted to talk. He'd been waiting for us, he said.'
They were down. Winter opened the door and Ringmar accompanied him, almost tentatively, still absorbed in his story. Their footsteps echoed in the stairwell.
Ringmar's voice echoed: 'Gustav knew his father wanted to punish the others – or warn them, rather, give them a serious warning that they were not to say anything, that he'd already done it and would do it again – so he came to us with his fairy tale about branding irons.'
They were standing on the pavement. Ringmar's unmarked police car felt warm when Winter touched the bonnet.
'I'll drive,' he said. 'Give me the keys.'
'But it wasn't really a fairy tale, was it?' said Ringmar as they got into the car. 'Branding irons like that did exist, and we checked up. And came to Carlström. And from him to old man Smedsberg. Or was it vice versa?' Ringmar stroked his nose and took a deep breath. 'The boy had hoped we'd get on to his father.' He looked at Winter. 'He didn't dare to say anything himself. He was too scared. He knew he'd never be able to get away from the old man.'
'Has he told you that?' asked Winter, jumping a red light in the deserted Allé.
'He came home with me in the car,' said Ringmar.
'Good Lord. Where is he now?'
'In his room.'
'Are you sure?'
Ringmar nodded.
'Do you believe it all?'
'Yes.' Ringmar turned to look at Winter. 'You weren't there, Erik. If you had been, you'd have understood.'
'Where's old man Smedsberg?'
'With our colleagues in Skövde by now,' said Ringmar, checking his watch. 'Christ, is that the time?' He looked at Winter again. 'They were out there, Kaite and the other lads, and saw the old man attack his son. I'm not clear about all the details, but they surprised the bastard. The boy, Gustav, must have been paralysed. Petrified. His father laid into him.' Ringmar rubbed his face. 'It must have been going on for ages.' He rubbed his face again, making a scraping noise against the stubble on his chin. 'Destroyed, of course. Ruined.' He rubbed, and rubbed again. 'There's nothing to see on the surface, of course, but it's there inside. Ruined by his father. It came—'
'Bertil.'
Ringmar gave a start, as if waking out of something else, from a different dimension. The word came into Winter's head, dimension. We're moving in different dimensions here, one, two, three. The heavens, the ocean, the earth, out and in, down and up. Dreams, lies.
He jumped another red light – the system seemed to be stuck on the merry colour of Christmas. He drove in a semicircle, past the old Ullevi Stadium, the Göteborgs Posten offices, Central Station. It was early morning, but still black night. Dark taxi cabs were parked alongside the railway lines. Follow the tracks, Winter thought.
'He set off for the city and paid them a visit,' Ringmar continued. 'And, well . . . we know the rest.'
'So he was the one who stole the iron from Carlström's barn?' said Winter.
'Yes.'
'It's not the only link with our countryside idyll,' said Winter.
'What do you mean?'
'Smedsberg was married to Gerd, who had previously been a neighbour of Carlström's. Do you remember that?'
'Of course. We checked up on the marriage.'
'I think that Carlström and Gerd Smedsberg had an affair.'
'What makes you think that?'
'Go back and read the case notes, Bertil. Think about how people have reacted. You'll realise then.'
'Is it relevant?' Ringmar asked.
'Carlström's foster son, Mats Jerner, wasn't unknown to Smedsberg,' said Winter. 'I could see that from the start. It was obvious.'
'And?'
'Smedsberg is just as guilty of what's happened. He probably abused Mats Jerner. I'm almost convinced that he ruined Jerner as well, when he was a boy. Or was one of the people who did. Abused him sexually. Smedsberg is just as guilty of what's happened.'
'Just as guilty of what, Erik?' asked Ringmar, who seemed to have only just become aware of the fact that they were heading for somewhere. He looked round as they drove up on to the bridge. 'Where are we going?'
'To Mats Jerner's place,' said Winter.
They were on the bridge. Lights were burning everywhere, as if on a dome rising out of the sea and the land around them on all sides. It's as if the city were alive, Winter thought. But it isn't.
They were alone on the apex of the bridge, then started descending again. Winter could see the water glittering from the reflection of the illuminated oil storage tanks that were the most attractive objects in sight. They passed a tram and a bus. Neither had any passengers.
'I've also got some news,' said Winter, and summed up his Christmas Eve night in one minute flat. They were approaching Backaplan. He turned right, then left. He could feel the adrenalin pumping through his body, creating a heat that cooled him down.
'It could be coincidence,' said Ringmar. 'He just happens to stutter like others do, and has a mascot like others do.'
'No, no, no, no.'
'Yes, yes, yes.'
'We need to take a look at his flat no matter what,' said Winter, and parked. He could see the discreet blue light on his colleagues' car illuminating the sky over the residential area where Jerner lived in one of the threestorey blocks of flats. It looked almost like a new day.
The Hisingen police were waiting outside the building. They had switched off the blue light now. Their car was covered in dirt, as if they'd had to cross a muddy field in order to get there.
'We weren't sure if the flat was in A or B,' said one of the inspectors, gesturing towards the entrance doors.
'Has anybody entered or left?' asked Winter.
'Not since we arrived, and that was ten minutes ago.'
Another car arrived and parked in the car park opposite the blocks of flats. A man got out, carrying a small case.
'The locksmith,' said Winter, gesturing in his direction. 'That was quick.'
The smith opened the front door for them. Jerner lived on the second floor, the door on the right. Winter rang the bell and heard the ringing inside the flat. He played a drum roll with his fingers on the yellow tiled wall that reminded him of the corridors at police headquarters. The echo died d
own and he rang again. There was a scraping noise behind the door opposite. The neighbour was evidently watching them through the peep-hole.
'Open the door,' he said to the locksmith.
'Is there anybody in there?' asked the locksmith.
'I don't know,' said Winter.
The locksmith looked scared, but he had the door open within twenty seconds. After the click he practically leapt to one side. Winter opened the door with his gloved hand. He crossed the threshold with Ringmar close behind him. The two uniformed officers waited on the landing. Winter had asked the locksmith to wait as well.
The hall was lit up by street lights shining into a room at the far end. Street lighting was slowly beginning to mix with the faint light of dawn. Winter saw an open door and the corner of a sofa.
'I'm going to switch on the light,' he said.
He could see Bertil blinking. The light seemed very bright.
There were shoes scattered all over the floor, items of clothing. There was something at his feet and he bent down and saw that it was a length of cord, frayed at one end.
He stepped over a man's boot. Ringmar went into the room at the end of the hall, and switched on a light. Winter joined him and stopped dead to stare up at the ceiling that Ringmar was also staring at. There was no other possible reaction.
'What the hell . . .' said Ringmar.
The ceiling was split into two. On the left it was black with bright yellow stars some fifteen centimetres in diameter. On the right was a blue sky.
The sofa was red and there were several video cassettes on the table, which was low and wide. There was a television set to the left, and a video player on top of it.
Things were scattered over the wrinkled carpet. Winter squatted down again. He could see a toy car, a green ball, a watch.
He was prepared for this. Ringmar wasn't.
'Jesus,' said Ringmar. 'It's him. It is him.'
Winter stood up straight again. He was aching all over; it felt as if he'd broken every bone in his body during the last twenty-four hours.
They moved quickly through the flat. The bed was a mess. There were newspapers on the floor. There were remains of food on the table, butter, bread. On the floor next to the sofa was a plastic cup with a spoon in it. Inside the cup were remains of food, something yellow.
There was a little sock half a metre from the cup.
Winter bent down over a cushion on the sofa and thought he could see small, fine strands of hair.
An unpleasant smell pervaded the flat, a most unpleasant smell.
'He's not here,' said Ringmar, emerging from the bathroom.
'The boy's not here.'
Good for you, thinking first and foremost about the boy, Winter thought.
They examined all the wardrobes, every nook and cranny, looked underneath everything, looked up as well.
In the bedroom Winter found a thin cord tied to one of the bedposts. There were red stains on the cord. He leaned over the bed and saw a green parrot hanging with its beak pointing towards the wall. It was no bigger than the stars in the sky.
'Has he left without taking that with him?' asked Ringmar, peering from behind Winter.
'He doesn't need it any more,' says Winter.
'What does that mean?'
'You'd rather not know, Bertil.' Winter took his mobile from the inside pocket of his leather jacket. 'And I'd rather not tell you.' He almost dropped it. Suddenly, he was no longer in full control of his movements. 'Jerner has a car. We'd better see if it's parked outside.'
He rang for all the reinforcements available.
They were still alone in the flat some minutes later. Winter had phoned Bengt Johansson and then Hans Bülow. They were now faced with a hunt.
There was water on the bathroom floor, and on the draining board in the kitchen. Jerner wasn't on the other side of the moon. Micke wasn't far away.
Winter had gone out and checked the car park, but there was no point. Within the next half-hour everybody in this building would be telling the police everything they knew and had seen.
'Didn't anybody react to the fact that he had a little boy in his flat?' Ringmar wondered.
'Did anybody see?' asked Winter. 'He might have waited until it got dark and then carried the boy up.'
'But later?'
'They never went out.'
Ringmar turned away. Winter stood in the middle of the room. He contemplated the video cassettes in their black cases. He went to the table and lifted them up, one after another. There were no markings, no text.
He looked round. There was a shelf of cassettes on the right, most of them marked. Bought videos. He knew that paedophiles copied their films on to innocent thrillers or comedies. Winter had sat watching films containing everything possible between heaven and earth – at any moment an entirely different sequence could appear, a child who . . . who . . .
But he didn't need to do that now.
Paedophile. If Jerner wasn't a paedophile, what was he? Winter wasn't sure.
'I don't suppose you've seen a camera in here, Bertil?' he said, waving a cassette at Ringmar.
'No.'
There was no cassette in the video player. Winter picked an unmarked cassette at random, put it into the player, found the video channel and started the tape. Ringmar came to stand beside him. They waited while the initial blurred images and buzzing finished.
The pictures suddenly jumped on to the screen, unexpectedly sharp.
Trees, bushes, grass, a football pitch. Children in a long line. Adults at both ends and in the middle. A woman's face that Winter recognised. Another woman was pointing a camera in various directions. The sound was vague, streaky.
The woman suddenly started to grow as the zoom came into play. Her camera was directed at Winter as he stood beside Ringmar in this disgusting room.
We had him, Winter thought. I had him, I talked to him. Micke was here while he was with me. It was only half a day ago. One night. But I didn't see.
Jerner had stood exactly where Winter was standing now and seen the camera pointing at him. What had he thought? Did he care? Did he think the video camera and the cap would protect him?
There was a checked cap hanging out there in the hall. They didn't need it any more. Jerner didn't need it any more.
The buildings on the other side of the road now appeared on the television screen. It was like seeing images of a story you'd been told, Winter thought. Or watching the film of a book you'd read.
A blackout, then Micke Johansson was in the picture, in a pushchair with Bengt Johansson. Winter recognised the location, and so did Bertil.
'Can you phone and ask them to send a car there right now?' he said, without taking his eyes off the screen.
Ringmar rang, and they continued watching the video. Micke Johansson with his dad, with his mum, on his own on a swing, leaving there in his pushchair, half asleep, his legs sticking out. On the way through Brunnsparken heading for the entrance to Nordstan's shopping mall.
Frozen Tracks Page 51