The Shadow Woman

by Ake Edwardson

  “You mean crystal clear?”

  “I mean clear enough to see a few numbers or letters or facial features. And we’ll have to speak to the uniform behind the camera. The cameraman.”

  “We’ll have to speak to Beier,” Winter said, and just at that moment the phone rang and it was Beier.

  “We’ve got something on the sign,” he said.

  “The sign?”

  “The marking on the pine tree. The red mark, the sign above the body.”

  “Okay, I’m with you now.”

  “Did you check with the forestry service?”

  “Just a second.” Winter put down the receiver and looked through the thin pile of papers on his desk. “Has anyone checked with forestry and everyone else about that marking on the tree yet?”

  Ringmar didn’t know.

  “Not everything has come in yet,” Winter said into the phone. “So the answer to your question is still no.”

  “Anyway, it was fresh.”

  “How fresh?”

  “Could be from last night.”

  “Don’t tell me it’s blood.”

  “No. Paint, acrylic, one of the hundred or so shades of red.”

  “And it’s only on that one tree?”

  “Seems that way.”

  “What’s it supposed to be?”

  “We’re looking into that now, but, to be honest, I have no idea. It could be a cross, but that’s pure speculation.”

  “How many photos do you have of it?”

  “Quite a few copies, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Distribute it to all the departments. Could be some gang, youth gang or something.”

  “Or satanists. Delsjö Lake is not unknown to satanists.”

  “Delsjö Lake is a big place.”

  “Let me know when you’ve checked with the forestry service,” Beier said. “If service is the proper term under the circumstances.”

  “Send over a few photos,” Winter said. “I was just about to call you, by the way. I have a couple of videotapes that I want you to take a look at.”

  “Send them up,” Beier said, and hung up.

  The phone rang again, and Ringmar watched Winter as he listened intently and jotted something down. After he said good-bye he looked up again.

  “The guy who owns the kennel over by the bog was woken up last night by a couple of his dogs barking. He went outside and saw a car turn around in front of his spread and drive back out toward the road and the highway on-ramp, or at least toward that recreation area.”

  “Could he see the car?”

  “He had a light on down at the gate, and he’s sure it was a Ford Escort.”

  “That’s our car. What time was this?”

  “Just before we saw it on the videotape,” Winter said, and nodded at the mute TV screen. “He even mentioned what year it was.”

  “Is that possible?”

  “He saw the car in real life,” Winter said.

  “Now he can see the replay.”

  “Sometimes I feel like it’s the replay you want to be part of,” Winter said. “Not the first live recording but the replay.”

  11

  THE NATIONAL CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION DEPARTMENT HAD contacted Winter. He sat with the photo of the dead face in front of him. There were missing women who bore some resemblance to the dead woman, but the similarities weren’t enough.

  A courier arrived with the photographs from Beier’s forensics department. Winter studied the marking painted on the bark. He tried to associate movements with the images. Closing his eyes, he thought about messages: a whole collection of them on file. Sometimes somebody wants to tell us something. Or just mislead us.

  Someone knocked, and Winter said come in, and a young detective stepped through the door with a report in hand.

  “What is it?” Winter asked.

  “I’ve spoken to the municipal authority and that mark—”

  “Thanks.” Winter stood up. He recognized the boy but couldn’t remember his name, only that he’d joined the unit a month or two ago. This must be his first murder investigation, Winter thought.

  The detective held out the report.

  “Tell me yourself instead. Have a seat.”

  The boy sat down in front of the desk and tried to look unperturbed. His forehead was all sweaty and he knew it. The blazer he sported was thin and looked cool but was insane to wear in this weather.

  Winter wondered what the boy thought about his vacation-wear cutoffs and T-shirt, his customary dress code having so obviously rubbed off on even the youngest member of the unit. “Can you think in that blazer?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “Take off your jacket and untuck your shirt. You look hot.”

  The detective smiled as you might to a joke you didn’t understand. He crossed his legs.

  “I mean it,” Winter said. “One of the perks of working as a detective is that you can dress however you want.”

  The boy looked like he had decided to be a little tough after all. “That all depends on the assignment, doesn’t it? On the investigation?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Sometimes you’ve got to blend in.”

  “Then you’re doing a good job of that now.”

  The boy smiled and took off his jacket. “It’s damn hot out there.”

  “So, what do the authorities and agencies say?”

  “They haven’t been there—at the dump site. Nobody’s marked any trees lately. The land belongs to the municipality.”

  “What do they mean by that?”

  “By what?”

  “Lately. When were they last there?” Winter bent down and lifted the two sheets of paper his rookie detective had laid on the desk. “What’s your name again?”

  “Uh, Börjesson. Erik Börjesson.”

  “Yes, that’s right,” Winter said, as he scanned the report for the answer he’d just sought. “A month ago. They haven’t carried out any forest maintenance around Delsjö for a month.”

  “No,” Börjesson said. “No work like that.”

  “Have you thought about what it might be, then?”

  Winter noticed the boy was surprised by the question.

  “Who might have put it there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Fishermen? The fishing club?”

  “Have you had a chance to check it out?”

  “No, not yet.”

  “Any other ideas?”

  “You mean something that could provide a natural explanation?”

  “Something that isn’t associated with the murder.”

  “Kids?”

  “Is there anything to suggest that?”

  “I, I don’t know, actually.”

  “It could be worth checking out.”

  “Could have been a couple of lovebirds.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “People who carve their names in the bark and all that,” Börjesson said.

  “The area is popular among people in search of intimate seclusion,” Winter said.

  “It could be that kind of sign,” Börjesson said.

  “Then what would it mean?” He slid a photo over to Börjesson. He looks proud to be here, Winter thought. He’s most actively involved in the investigation when brainstorming with the boss. I should do this more often. “What does this inscription or marking, or whatever it is, mean?”

  “Aren’t they working on that in forensics?”

  “I want to know what you think,” Winter said. He heard a helicopter whirring outside, caught its shadow as it lifted from the helipad to the west of them and flew past his window. The afternoon would wear on toward evening. The lines for tonight’s party would grow longer.

  Mounted police would herd people into the pens at Lilla Bommen and Kungstorget. There the people would scream in each others’ faces until they fell down dead drunk. The police would dismount and bring in the dog buses to haul piles of unconscious bodies to soiled, empty rooms that lay four double flights
of stairs below the room where Winter was now sitting and thinking about his first few years as a law-enforcement officer.

  He had sat on a horse and seen the rabble below him, a sea of panic-stricken movement. That was the young cynicism that was so dangerous to pass along in the years that followed. To see people as a rabble.

  Everyone’s just scared as hell, Winter thought, and opened his eyes. Börjesson was looking at him. Winter stood and walked over to the window, but he couldn’t see through the bright light from the sinking sun to the west.

  He squinted and saw banners that cast reflections and shadows. The banners down there were being carried off to yet another confrontation between opposing groups of protesters.

  There would be trouble again tonight. The party continued and so did the conflict.

  “I think they’re connected,” he heard Börjesson say.

  Winter turned around with blinded eyes. He blinked to get rid of the sunlight in his head.

  “I can’t say what this is supposed to represent,” Börjesson continued, “but it seems like too much of a coincidence for this marking to appear there at the same time as the body.”

  “Good,” Winter said. He could now see Börjesson’s face again. The boy looked like a man, or an adult anyway. He’d taken an idea and was running with it, wasn’t standing still. “I’m trying to find out if any satanic rituals have been held in that area.”

  “Satanists?”

  “They like the forest. Life in the outdoors.”

  “It could be something like that.”

  “Look at this marking again,” Winter said, and walked around the desk and stood next to Börjesson. “What do you think it looks like?”

  The young homicide detective picked up the photo and held it at arm’s length.

  “It could be an H.”

  “Yes.”

  “Or some Chinese character.”

  “That’s a good idea.”

  “Chinese characters mean something,” Börjesson said. “I mean, beyond just a word. It’s like a thing. An object.”

  “You studied Chinese?”

  “In high school, for a couple of years. I did humanities at Schillerska High School.”

  “And became a policeman?”

  “Is there anything wrong with that?”

  “On the contrary,” Winter said. “The force needs all the humanists it can get.”

  Börjesson gave a short laugh and looked back at the photograph.

  “I can compare it to the characters in my books.”

  “How many are there?”

  “Tens of thousands, but only a few thousand are in more common use.”

  Winter stared intently at the symbol. He had to go back there again and study the contours of the tree. It looked as if the person who painted it on the trunk had followed them. The marking looked like it was part of the tree.

  He would have to look at the thing itself, but even now he felt a raw power emanating from the photo, a maniacal force from another world of evil. A message.

  Winter shook his head gently. They started again, the connotations swirling in his mind.

  To him the marking looked like an H. That was also a coincidence. In his mind he had named the woman after the cluster of houses close by: Helenevik.

  For him she had been Helene hours before he had made any serious attempt to study the symbol on the tree. Helene. It felt as if the fabricated name would help him find out who she really was.

  She was dead and the dead have no friends, but he wanted to be her friend right up until she got her name back.

  12

  EVERYTHING IN WINTER’S OFFICE WAS BLACK AND WHITE, WITH no shades of gray. The Post-its on the wall opposite his desk were empty rectangles.

  Lingering there alone in the silence, he was suddenly very tired—a sensation that seemed to spring from the stillness in the room. He closed his eyes, and his thoughts became vague. He saw a child’s face before him and opened his eyes again. He closed his eyes and looked at the face. The hair had no color, and the girl’s eyes were looking straight at him. It was a girl.

  A reflexive jolt roused him just as he was about to tip over in his chair. Must have fallen asleep, he thought.

  He no longer saw the girl’s face, but he didn’t forget her.

  The phone rang.

  “So you’re back at work.” It was his sister.

  “Since this morning. Pretty early,” Winter said. “I was actually back a bit before that but not for real until now.”

  “What’s happened?”

  “ ‘Sounds like murder!’”

  “What?”

  “Somebo—There’s been a murder. It’s true. But I was quoting a song by a band I’ve been listening to, to try to find myself again.”

  “Coltrane, of course?”

  “The Clash. A British rock band. Macdonald—you know, the British inspector I worked with last spring—he sent me a few CDs.”

  “But you’ve never listened to rock in your whole life.”

  “That’s why.”

  “What?”

  “It’s like—I don’t know. I need something else.”

  “And now you’ve got a fresh murder on your hands.”

  “Yes.”

  “So the assault case, or whatever the expression is, you guys have solved that? Or put it aside?”

  “The assault case?”

  “Your colleague, Agneta, with the foreign last name.”

  “Aneta.”

  “That’s the one. Well, apparently she was beaten up, and you know who called me just now?”

  Winter saw a swimming pool, a naked man, sun glittering in the water, and he could almost smell the stench of tanning oil again.

  “I think so.”

  “How could you be so stupid as to drive over to that scumbag’s house and threaten to beat the crap out of him?”

  “Is that what he said?”

  “He said that you came over to his house and tried to strangle him.”

  “I needed information.”

  “Not the right way to get it, Erik.”

  Winter didn’t answer.

  “I haven’t heard from Benny in years,” Lotta said. “And I could almost say the same about you.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Sometimes I wonder when it was you stopped being my brother. No, that sounds pathetic. And crabby. I just mean that I need to speak to you sometimes.”

  “I’m trying.” Winter knew that his sister was right. When her life hit the skids, he didn’t have a thought for anything other that his own career. Or whatever it is I consider my work to be, he thought. He had been immature. She’s right, he thought again.

  “But we were speaking about Benny Vennerhag,” she said. “He called and complained and asked me to keep you away from him.”

  “I’ll talk to him.”

  “Why?”

  “You know why.”

  “Can’t the police manage without their peculiar contacts on the other side? Or haven’t you caught the ones who hurt your colleague?”

  “We’ve caught them. But that bastard shouldn’t be calling you.”

  “Well, at least somebody’s calling me.”

  “Now you’re exaggerating, Lotta.”

  “Am I?”

  “I promise to do better. Åke isn’t causing any more trouble, is he?”

  His sister had gotten divorced from Åke Deventer, and it had been an ordeal filled with bitterness. Now she lived alone with her two kids in the house where they had grown up.

  “He stays away, and that means he isn’t causing any trouble,” she said. “But I had pretty much forgotten the great mistake of my youth, Benny Vennerhag, until I heard his voice yesterday.”

  “You hadn’t even turned twenty-five, I think.”

  “My God. You’re supposed to be considered an adult at that age.”

  “He must have been rattled.”

  “What?”

  “Benny. I must have scared him.”
>
  “You did try to kill him, after all.”

  Winter said nothing.

  “Did it feel good?” she asked.

  “What?”

  “Trying to murder somebody? Was it a good feeling?”

  The room had grown darker. Winter thought about his hands around Benny Vennerhag’s jaw. He no longer remembered what it had felt like. They hadn’t been his hands.

  “Are you there?” she asked.

  “I’m here.”

  “How are you doing, really?”

  “I’m not sure. A woman who’s no more than thirty years old is dead, and we don’t know who she is. That makes me more depressed than I ought to be, at least this early on.”

  “Why don’t you come over here for a bit? It’s been months.”

  Yeah, why not. Everything would still be there when he came back. His anonymous gloomy office at the police station was in that sense bigger than life itself. It was here before he showed up and it would remain after he was gone. “Should I bring something along?”

  “No. But you are coming, then?”

  “Are you alone?”

  “Bim and Kristina are out but only for the moment. They really want to see you, Erik.”

  Winter thought about his nieces. He was an awful uncle. Awful.

  “It’s true,” his sister said. “They haven’t forgotten you.”

  He walked down the empty corridors of the homicide department. Someone had forgotten to switch off the lights in the situation room. He stood in front of the board and considered his own vague lines and arrows, circles and Xs. He wrote “Helene” next to the circle that marked the spot where the body was found. He wrote “transport” in the empty field to the right of the map and noted the arrival and departure times for the car he had seen on the video. Beier’s men were studying the footage now. “We’re short on time,” Winter had told them.

  He thought once again of the lake, the water. How many people owned boats on Delsjö? Had anyone’s boat been stolen, even for a few hours? Maybe the fishing club knew.

  The possibilities were infinite, the disappointments even more numerous. He thought about the child again. She was like something out of a dream or some kind of a message from a distant and frightening land that he had no choice but to visit. We have to find out your name, Helene.

  The parking lot was deserted, and he felt dizzy when he emerged from the police station, like a split-second gap in the middle of his thoughts. As if he wasn’t there.