The Shadow Woman

by Ake Edwardson

  A radio car pulled in, and the man behind the wheel gave him a quick nod. Winter raised his hand and continued over to his Mercedes. The Shell station beyond was an amusement park, a loud glare of neon that gave the surroundings a cheerful tinge. Winter caught a whiff of fried sausages and overheated late summer.

  On the other side of the gas station, the traffic was backed up by the cars outside Ullevi Stadium—the whole city was probably gridlocked. Staring stupidly at the keys in his hand, Winter turned back to the front entrance and continued on to the bicycle stand, where he always had a bike parked, in reserve, for situations just like this.

  He pedaled past the central train station and on down to the river. Heading west, he had to weave his way through throngs of people milling about the beer tents at Lilla Bommen.

  He leaned his bike against the iron fence and walked the short path up to the front steps. It had been months since he was last here, and he’d wondered why that was as he biked through the quiet streets of Hagen, taking in the smell of fresh-cut grass. There were no lights on at the house next door, on the left. Six months earlier he’d investigated the murder of a nineteen-year-old boy who’d grown up there.

  The front door of his sister’s house stood ajar. He rang the doorbell.

  “Go round the back,” he heard from inside. He guessed that she was sitting out on the terrace.

  He made his way back down the steps and through the grass to the rear of the house. She stood and gave him a hug. He could smell twilight and wine. Her hair was shorter than he remembered and maybe a little darker, and she felt thin around her arms and chest. He knew that she was going to be turning forty in two months, on October 18. He wasn’t sure whether she’d be having a party when the big day came around.

  “Would you like a glass of wine? Cold. White.”

  “I’d love one. And some water.”

  “I didn’t hear the car.”

  “That’s because I biked.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “The city is completely clogged.”

  “The party?”

  “Yes. Have you been down?”

  “Have you?”

  “Not for the purposes of pleasure,” Winter said, and smiled.

  His sister poured him a glass of wine and left him to fetch some water and two tumblers.

  “I bumped into Angela last week,” she said once she had returned and sat down next to him. “In a corridor, after the rounds. She was up from radiology.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “I hadn’t seen her in ages. It’s as if she’s taking after you. Some kind of silence or something. Her not saying anything, I mean.”

  “About what?”

  “About you and her, for example.”

  Winter waited for her to continue. His sister worked as a staff doctor at Sahlgrenska, and Angela had recently transferred there from a position at Mölndal Hospital.

  “The two most important women in my life are doctors,” Winter said. “I wonder what that means.”

  “It means that you’re a basket case,” his sister said. “But then you’re forgetting our mother.”

  “Oh right.”

  “When did you last speak to her?”

  “The last time she called. Two and a half weeks ago maybe. How about you?”

  “Yesterday.”

  “How is she?”

  “I think she’s cut back to two martinis before lunch,” she said, and they laughed together. “No, seriously. I think Dad’s been on her case about it.”

  “Dad? You gotta be kidding.”

  “When did you last speak to him, Erik?”

  Winter emptied his glass. He saw his hand tremble slightly, and he saw that she caught it.

  “When they moved—escaped to Spain.”

  “I know.”

  “Now you’ve had it confirmed a second time.”

  “Two years. That’s a long time.”

  “He had a choice. He could have done something with his money, for others. And by that I don’t mean me or us. It’s his money. I have my own.”

  “Isn’t it a heavy burden to always sit in judgment?”

  “I’m not a judge. I’m a policeman.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “It was his choice.”

  “Mom went with him.”

  “She’s not responsible for her actions.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” his sister said, straightening up in her chair.

  He reached for the bottle of wine as if he couldn’t hear. “Would you like another glass?”

  She held hers out, almost reluctantly.

  “They have a choice. They could actually return home and face the music.”

  “And what would that change?”

  “It’s not about—look, do we have to talk about this now?” Winter said. “Can’t we just sit here for a while and drink some wine?”

  13

  THE NIGHT SANK SLOWLY INTO STILLNESS, UNTIL WINTER couldn’t read what was written on the wine label. He drank and the wine tasted of metal and earth. He drank again and when he moved his arm he felt as if he was about to lose his balance.

  “How long have you been on your feet today anyway?” his sister asked.

  “Well, since four this morning.”

  “My God.”

  “Those crucial first hours.”

  “And now they’re over,” she said. “Those crucial first hours.”

  “Just about.”

  “But the hunt continues.”

  “If you can call it a hunt.”

  “Want to talk about it?”

  He reached for the glass again but then pulled his arm back, sensing that he wouldn’t be able to get another word out if he took another sip of wine. Instead he stood and walked the few steps to the terrace railing and leaned against it. Over by the hedge a playhouse was peeking out from behind a maple tree. Winter had spent endless nights of adventure in there when he was nine and ten, maybe eleven.

  Despite a sudden urge to go over there, he stayed where he was. The fatigue was causing him to think of his childhood and its loss. You can have an awareness of a previous life but no more than that, he thought. Soon everything will be plowed into the present.

  He turned to his sister. She had pulled a shawl over her shoulders, and it gave her a foreign appearance. A wind from the garden swept through the coarse hairs of his bare legs, but he didn’t feel cold.

  “There’s a child,” he said. “This woman who’s been murdered, whose name we don’t know yet—she’s had a child, and that child must be out there somewhere.”

  “Does that worry you?”

  “Wouldn’t it you?”

  “Sure.”

  “It bothers me. I’ve had trouble concentrating because I’ve been thinking about the fact that Helene has had a child.”

  “I thought you just said you didn’t know her name?”

  “What?”

  “The murdered woman hasn’t been identified. But you just called her Helene.”

  “I did? I better be careful. I’ve given her that name in order to—to get closer to her. When I’m thinking.”

  “Why that particular name?”

  “She was found at Delsjö Lake, near Helenevik.”

  “Helenevik? I’ve never heard of it.”

  “A handful of nice-looking houses across the highway, looking out over Lake Rådasjön.”

  “Helene?”

  “Yes. I think of her as Helene. And I think about her child.”

  He saw Lotta give a shiver, as if more from his words than from the approaching night. “Then you have to find out who she is quickly,” she said.

  “Of course, but I feel despondent. It’s like another descent into hell. Maybe it’s just tonight. Maybe we’ll have to wait till her landlord calls in and says she’s late with the rent.”

  “That could take a long time.”

  “Four months,” he said and sat down again.

  “Have you had a chance to speak to a
colleague about your despondency?” his sister asked.

  “Of course not.”

  “Isn’t that a problem for you? I mean, not just now, but always?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “There was a reason why you came here tonight, beyond just coming to see your dear sister. You wanted to express that doubt to somebody else, get it out of your system so you can keep on working.”

  “Like a confession, you mean?”

  “To you it probably is a confession. Whenever you feel doubt it’s as if you’ve committed a sin.”

  “Bah!”

  “That’s how it’s always been with you.”

  “I don’t know how I should respond to that.”

  “You should respond by saying that you want to have a normal life too, and that, in turn, will lead to you having someone to talk to about your abnormal life.”

  “Abnormal?”

  “You can’t just live one kind of life, twenty-four hours a day.”

  “I don’t. And when I do, it’s because I have to.” He got up and reeled for a moment. He looked at his watch. He had been on his feet for eighteen hours straight. The crucial first hours. He started to walk.

  “Where are you going, Erik?”

  “I’m going down to the playhouse. Is the air mattress still in there?”

  The owner of the dog kennel over on Old Boråsvägen was dead certain that a Ford Escort CLX hatchback had backed up and turned off in the intersection. It was a ’92 or a ’93—maybe a ’94—probably pearl white. Was he certain? Oh yeah, it had looked white in the glow of the lamp all right, you couldn’t know for sure, but one thing was certain, they produced at least a million of that model in pearl white, the man said. “The question is whether it even came in any other color.”

  “But it couldn’t have been an older model anyway?” Fredrik Halders asked.

  “Maybe a ’91 but no earlier than that. They redesigned the Escort in ’91, but maybe you already know that. They made them rounder and more bulbous. And higher. It was one of those.”

  “But it was a CLX?”

  “What?”

  “You said it was a CLX. Why not an RS?”

  The man looked at Halders as if he’d finally said something intelligent. “So you know something about cars?”

  Halders nodded.

  “Then you also know that the RS has a spoiler on the trunk. This car didn’t have no spoiler on the trunk.”

  “Could you make out the plate number at all?”

  “I didn’t have a notepad with me, but it began with the letters HE.”

  “HE? No numbers?”

  “It was hard to see, and letters reflect the light better than numbers.”

  “Really?” A complete nutcase, but good eyes and good at cars, Halders thought to himself. He nodded again and noted it down on his pad. “Anything else?”

  “You mean, did I see anything else?”

  “Yeah. See or hear anything.”

  “Which do you want me to say first?”

  “Did you see anything other than just the car?”

  “No driver anyway. The light was angled so that it was all blacked out on the driver’s side.”

  “No passengers?”

  “Not that I could see.”

  “Where did the car come from?”

  “I don’t know. But it hightailed it off toward town after it had been in there and turned around.”

  Halders scribbled in his pad again.

  “So it must have come from the other direction,” the man said. “From the direction of the lake or Helenevik, right?” Halders looked up from his notepad.

  “Well, it’s possible the driver just drove the wrong way, or changed his mind, or just decided to go for a drive out to that intersection and then turn around and drive home again,” he said.

  Fucking moron, Halders thought.

  “Aha,” the man said. “Now I understand how you police work.” He gestured at his forehead with his index finger. “I would never have thought of that myself, know what I mean?”

  “Did you hear anything?”

  “Other than the sound of the car?”

  “Yes. Before, during, or after.”

  “Which do you want me to say first?”

  Halders sighed audibly. “It’s getting late, and we’re both tired,” he said.

  “I’m not tired.”

  “So you saw nothing else unusual yesterday evening or last night?”

  “That would’ve been difficult anyway, know what I mean?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  They were on the front steps of the man’s house and Halders could see the wire fence of the dog pen glinting beyond the corner of the cabin, illuminated by a lantern that hung on the wall. The kennel owner himself was short and sort of lumpy, and he’d immediately assumed a defensive posture toward the tall Halders, as if preparing to repel an attack.

  “I didn’t understand that last bit,” Halders repeated.

  “It would’ve been difficult to notice anything seeing as there was so much coming and going from your guys’ cabin the whole night, know what I mean?”

  The man’s habit of ending all his statements in that way was starting to piss the hell out of Halders.

  “You mean the function that took place yesterday at the police department’s recreation lodge.”

  “Or the beer lodge, know what I mean?”

  “Were you disturbed by it in some way?”

  “Can’t say I was. But there was a lot of traffic.”

  “Cars, you mean?”

  “Well, that’s traffic, know what I mean?”

  “No pedestrian traffic?”

  “Not that I saw. But there have been festivities up at your beer lodge during which the guests have ended up scattered all over my land in the small hours of the morning. Once there was this plainclothes officer and a woman with barely a stitch on who decided to bed down for the night in the moss behind the foxhounds over yonder.” He jerked his head toward the corner of the cabin.

  That might well have been my fortieth birthday bash, Halders thought to himself. “But nobody was running around in the night last night?”

  “Not that I heard. But you ought to speak to your buddies.”

  “We’re in the process of doing that.”

  “That’s a good idea, know what I mean?”

  “But you’re sure about the car?” Halders was amazed at his own patience.

  “I already told you, know what I mean? We’ve gone into all sorts of detail here, know what I mean?”

  “Well, thanks for all the information. If anything else comes to mind, anything at all, then do get in touch, know what I mean? Even if it’s something that happened earlier, someone who passed by more than once. Anything. You know what I mean?”

  He parked the car outside the police station and walked along the stream. Outside the city hall a couple was drinking something out of transparent plastic cups. That’s not raspberry juice, Halders thought to himself, seized by an urge to grab the cups out of their hands and arrest them—kick up a real stink over some petty shit. Society ought to send a clear message: zero tolerance. Every little goddamn crime should be treated as a crime. Anyone riding a bike without a light should lose their license. Anyone caught drinking in public should be sent to jail. That’s what they did in New York. The city would calm down. The country would calm down.

  Everything and everyone would calm down, except me, thought Halders. The more I think about calm, the angrier I get. How far would I go if society gave me the go-ahead for my brand of zero tolerance?

  He waited together with a thousand others to cross over Götaleden and suddenly found himself crowded together with ten thousand others on the Packhuskajen quay. The fireworks began. Halders’s head was popping. He bought a mug of beer and sat at the very end of a long table and scowled at a man opposite him. The man moved after a few minutes.

  Halders raised his gaze to the sky and saw the fireworks explode.
The light reflected in people’s faces. Their foreheads looked like they were tattooed and their cheeks and chins were stamped with symbols that he couldn’t decipher. He emptied his mug. He thought of Aneta in her white bed at the hospital. The bad thoughts brewed.

  Winter had crawled into the playhouse and lain down on the air mattress. It was only partially inflated, and he felt the grain of the floorboards in the small of his back. Maybe there was old air inside the mattress, some that had remained in the hard corners. Maybe he was lying on air from his childhood.

  He reached out his arms and felt the walls on both sides of him. He fell asleep.

  14

  WINTER BIKED HOME AT DAWN. HE HAD MADE AN ATTEMPT AT around midnight, against his better judgment.

  “Go lie down in the guest room,” his sister said, and that’s what he’d done.

  Now the streets were being swept clean after the night, water flowed over the asphalt, and he nearly fell off his bike while illegally cutting across Linnéplatsen.

  In the apartment he kicked off his sandals and bent down for the newspaper. The Göteborgs-Posten had covered the murder with restraint, without a lot of speculation.

  Helene was without a name, a cold body in cold storage in a white zippered bag. It was Friday morning, twenty-four hours after he had seen her face for the first time. He tried to remember her features, but they melded together with other lifeless faces he’d seen.

  The sun climbed onto the roofs of the buildings on the other side of Vasaplatsen. Winter adjusted the blinds and took out beans and a mill and ground the African coffee, its aroma wafting in his face, invigorating him even before it was brewed.

  He put butter and cheese on two French rolls that he had bought at the local bakery on the ground floor of the building. The butter was cold in his mouth. He ate the cheese by itself, two thick slices. Streetcars rattled past below, and a seagull took off from the balcony with a shriek and darted awkwardly past the kitchen window. Winter drank his coffee and heard the flap of its wings in the early morning stillness.

  The meeting was a short one. Winter took off his jacket and hung it on the back of the chair, rolled up his sleeves, and brushed away something from his pant leg.