Cerruti, Sara Helander thought. Cool. Quality.
“So we still don’t know who she is,” Winter said.
“We’re going through that community today—what’s the name?” Fredrik Halders said.
“Helenevik,” Bertil Ringmar answered.
“There’ll be seven of you,” Winter said.
“Wow.”
“That’s as many as we could scrape together.”
“I meant that’s a lot,” Halders said. “I’m impressed.”
Winter looked at him but said nothing. Fredrik was starting to have increasingly obvious problems with his attitude. Is that how it is to grow old? To step across the magical crest at forty and slowly slide downhill?
“How many of us are going to be working with our fellow officers?” Bergenhem asked.
“What do you mean?” Carlberg said.
“The little party the guys over at investigations had,” Helander said.
“Can’t they investigate that themselves?” Halders asked.
“What the hell do you mean by that?” Janne Möllerström asked.
“Investigation . . . investigations department.”
“Cool it, Fredrik,” Winter said.
“You and Börjesson handle the party animals,” Ringmar said to Bergenhem.
“Some of them are doubtless a little tired,” Bergenhem said.
“They’re not the only ones,” Helander added.
Everyone in the room—all twenty-four of them—suddenly thought of the upcoming weekend. Many of them would have planned the season’s big crayfish party for later that evening or Saturday night. Would they have the energy to have a good time? Would they even make it home? How much overtime was the brass ready to give them?
“Tired? Who’s tired?” Winter said, and yawned and waved auf Wiedersehen to the group. There was a tie-up at the door as everyone tried to get out at the same time.
Winter took the stairs up to forensics and went in through the double doors that protected the department from unwanted visitors.
He was let through. Immediately to the right was the laboratory section—the evidence lab with two employees, a firearms examiner, and a chemist to analyze narcotics and clothing and do the chemical processing of fingerprints.
A few men were sitting in the new coffee room. The National Center for Forensic Science had come through with a substantial sum of money for the department just minutes before the premises were to be deemed inadequate. Beier was able to refurbish and expand the single lab into a rough lab, where materials were brought in; a room for clothing and fiber analysis; a chemistry and toxicology lab; the trace evidence lab that Winter had just walked past; a fingerprint lab; and an isolation room, since they didn’t want to put the clothes from the victim and suspect in the same room.
Impressive, Winter thought. He hadn’t been here for a while. Beier came striding down the corridor. “Want some coffee?”
“You bet.”
They walked back down the corridor, and Beier shut the door behind them.
“What should we start with?” he asked.
“The car.”
“That’s some blurry footage.”
“But it is a Ford?”
“We think so.”
“Escort CLX?”
“Maybe. Probably.”
“Could you see anything more of the driver?”
“Jensen is sitting with it now, trying to peer through the blur, but he’s not very optimistic, nor am I.”
“Can you tell whether it’s a man?”
Beier threw out his arms. “You can’t always tell even when the pictures are sharp.”
Winter drummed his fingers on the desktop. “And one more big question: the plate number.”
“We may have found something there,” Beier said. “Three letters. HEL or HEI.”
“How sure is that?”
Beier threw out his arms again. “We’ll keep at it,” he said. “But in the meantime you can get to work on these, if you’ve got the manpower.” He poured out the coffee, and Winter drank without registering its taste.
“We know that this car may have been in the vicinity of the dump site when the body was left there,” Winter said.
“That’s right,” Beier said.
“That’s something to go on.”
“All you have to do is track down all the Ford Escorts in the city. Or the country.”
“All the CLXs.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No, but that’s where I’m gonna start. That case I worked on last spring, in London—my colleague there told me they were looking for a car and all they had to go on was the color and maybe the make. This is better.”
“Maybe.”
“Of course it’s better, Göran. I can really feel my optimism growing just sitting next to you.”
“Then maybe I’d better rein it in.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t have anything new on that strange marking on the tree. Or whatever you wanna call it.”
“This kid in my department suggested that it might be a Chinese character.”
“Well, that would make things easier.”
“Exactly.”
“Then there are just a billion Chinese to bring in for questioning.”
“You’ve forgotten all the Westerners who know Chinese,” Winter said.
“I suggest you start there,” Beier said.
They sat in silence for a short while, sipped their coffee, listened to the noisy ventilation system. Winter almost felt cold in the chilled air. We’re probably the only two police officers in the whole building wearing ties today, Winter thought, noting that Beier’s leaned toward burgundy. He loosened his own. Beier didn’t comment on it.
“I’m sure it’s connected to the murder,” Winter said.
“Why?”
“It’s just a hunch, but it’s a strong one.”
“Positive thinking, you mean.”
“It’s too much of a coincidence that someone would paint on the tree at virtually the exact same time.”
“Maybe she took part in a ritual.”
“No.”
“You’re sure?”
“That little inlet may have been a haunt for satanists and other fanatics, or maybe even still is, but she didn’t take part in that kind of thing.”
“Maybe she didn’t have a choice.”
“It would have been noticed. Someone would have heard something.”
“Like our colleagues from the investigations department.”
“That department has some of the most keen-eyed officers on the force.”
“Regardless of the state they’re in?”
“A police officer is always prepared.”
“For what?”
“For the worst,” Winter said, and they both became serious. “It’s often been shown that the choice of location is not random. A murderer selects his spot.”
“I agree with you. I think.”
“We have to ask ourselves why she was put there. Why she was lying at Delsjö Lake. Then, why at that particular end of the lake—”
“Proximity to the road,” Beier interjected.
“Maybe. Then we have to ask ourselves why she was lying exactly in that spot. Not five yards this way or that.”
“You really go in for the mise-en-scène.”
“The mise-en-scène involves movement; it’s the opposite of standing still.”
“That was beautifully put,” Beier said.
Halders preferred to wander the path along the shoreline on his own. The houses slept soundly and impassively atop the hillside.
The area reminded him that he was a poor homicide detective who would never be anything else. He would never make inspector, but he didn’t know whether or not he was bitter about it.
If he was in the right place at the right time, his fortune would be waiting for him there. They would shake hands and return to headquarters, and the police chief would invite
him up to his office and at the same time call out to Winter to say, “Now you can just hand everything over to inspector Halders here . . .”
He began the door-to-door inquiries at one of the houses close to a school he didn’t know the name of. He rang the doorbell and heard the chime echo through the cavernous interior. There was an awning above the door that shaded him and caused the sweat on his forehead to roll more slowly down his face and linger on his eyelids. When the door was opened by a woman in a robe, he blinked and bowed his head. She was dark haired, or it may have been just the intense sunlight that was streaming in from the open doors behind her.
“I’m sorry to bother you. I’m from the police,” Halders said, and held out his police ID. “Homicide department.”
He fumbled with his wallet.
“Yes?”
“We’re conducting an in—”
“Is it the murder on the other side of Boråsleden? I just read about it. We were talking about it a moment ago,” the woman said, and a barechested man in swimming trunks suddenly appeared behind her.
“It’s just routine. We have to ask everyone in the vicinity if they’ve seen or heard anything within the last twenty-four hours.”
“When should we be counting from?” the man asked. “My name is Petersén, by the way.” He held out his hand. Halders shook it.
“Same here,” the woman said. “Denise.” She smiled and held out her hand, and Halders squeezed it gently.
“Halders,” Halders said.
“Come in, by the way,” the man said. He followed the couple to an outdoor patio that was paved with what might have been mosaic tiles.
“Would you like a refreshment?” the man asked, and Halders answered with a yes.
“A drink? Gin and tonic?”
“I’m afraid—”
“A beer?”
“That would do nicely.”
The man walked back inside the house, and the woman sank into a folding chair that looked complicated. She nudged a pair of sunglasses to the tip of her nose and seemed to look at Halders. He looked back. She dangled one sandal on her foot. The sandal was red, like the fire in the sun.
“I’m happy to be of service in the meantime,” she said.
Don’t let your imagination run away with you now, Halders thought. Try to keep a little blood up in your head.
The man returned with a tray and three bottles of beer.
15
WINTER HAD FORGOTTEN ABOUT BENNY VENNERHAG, FOR THE moment, when he called.
“I heard you solved it—the attack on your colleague.”
“Where’d you hear that?”
“You haven’t become naive, now, have you, Inspector?”
Winter thought of his hands around Vennerhag’s jaw.
“I’m still in pain,” Vennerhag said.
“What?”
“The brutality of the police force. What you did to me the other day? I could—”
“I may need your help again soon,” Winter said mellifluously.
“I don’t like that tone in your voice,” Vennerhag said. “And in that case it’ll have to be over the phone.” He waited but Winter said nothing more. “What do you need help with?”
“I don’t know yet, but I might be in touch soon.”
“What if I leave town?”
“Don’t.”
“I’m not allowed to leave town?”
“When did you last leave town, Benny?”
“That’s beside the point, Inspector.”
“You haven’t been outside the city limits in four years, Benny.”
“How do you know that?”
“You haven’t become naive, now, have you, Master Thief ?”
Vennerhag snickered. “Okay, okay. I know what it is anyway. I read the papers. But I don’t see how I can be of any help to you when I don’t know anything about it. Who is she, by the way?”
“Who?”
“The dead woman, for Christ’s sake. The body. Who is she?”
“We don’t know.”
“Come on, Winter. There’s no such thing as an unknown body anymore.”
“Maybe not in your world.”
“What do you mean by that?”
Winter was tired of Vennerhag’s voice. He wanted to end the conversation.
“I honestly don’t know who she is,” he said. “I may end up needing your help. And you will help me then, won’t you, Benny?”
“Only if you’re nice.”
“The police are always nice.”
Vennerhag’s laugh cut through the phone line again. “And everybody else is mean. How’s Lotta doing, by the way?”
“She told me that you called and complained.”
“I didn’t complain. And it was for your own good. What you did was out of order. It may be hot as hell, but you keep your emotions in check.”
“Don’t call her anymore. Stay away from her.”
“How far away? You said I wasn’t supposed to leave town, remember?”
“I’ll be in touch, Benny,” Winter said, and hung up the receiver. His hand was sticky.
He stood and pulled off his blazer and hung it over the back of the chair, then rolled up the sleeves of his white shirt, missing his summer outfit of T-shirt and cutoffs. Donning an expensive suit of armor for work sent out signals. What signals were those?
“They’re signals of weakness,” his sister had said the night before. “Anyone who has to take cover behind an Armani or Boss suit isn’t really comfortable in his own skin.”
“Baldessarini,” he had said. “Cerutti. Not Armani or Boss—that’s what you wear when you’re working on your car. Could just be that I like to be well dressed,” he had said. “That there’s nothing more to it.”
“There is more to it,” she had said.
And he had told her: About the fear that took hold of him when he came close to evil’s darkest core, about how that fear had intensified his own fragility like a bubble expanding with air. The knowledge that he couldn’t do anything else with his life, didn’t want to do anything else, became a burden when he knew what that involved. When nighttime came around he couldn’t set aside the day, just take it off and hang it up like one of his jackets and pull on a comfy tracksuit and think about something else. That goddamn Cerutti suit stayed with him all the way into bed.
But there was also something else there. His beautiful clothes were at the same time a form of protection against the apprehension that constantly threatened to force its way into his body.
“That could be one interpretation,” she had said. The problem was that his exterior seldom helped with his interior. “Think about that when you’re ironing your armored shirts,” she had said in the waning night that was moving toward morning.
The surface of the water was a sparkling layer of silver, with glints that looked as if they had been strewn by hand across the lake. It stung Winter’s eyes when he looked to the north.
He walked along the wooded path to the edge of the bog. Crickets were chirping all around him: the sound of intense prolonged heat. A faint breeze brought with it a damp smell from the nearly dried-out bog holes within the dark terrain. Winter saw no one moving around in there, but he knew there were police officers combing the lakeside for clues and people who lived along the water’s edge.
It was nearly twelve o’clock. Few cars could be heard from the highway above and beyond him. From where he stood, beneath the trees, he could count up to twenty different shades of green. Even the rays of sunlight shone green. The very sky to the east was green through the leaves and between the branches. Only the symbol painted onto the bark, eight inches from his nose, was red. Winter took it for just that, a symbol. A symbol for what?
Winter heard a noise behind him and turned around. The outline of a man was moving in his direction. When the silhouette stepped out of the sunlight, Winter saw that it was Halders.
“So you’ve got the time to stand around here, huh, boss?” Halders was wearing short sleev
es, his shirt hanging outside his trousers, and his face was partly in the shade, but Winter could see the sweat glinting on the high forehead that continued upward into Halders’s close-cropped skull. “This is a pleasant spot, sort of still.”
“Did you come from Helenevik? I didn’t hear a car.”
“It’s standing right there,” Halders said, and turned around and pointed behind him as if he wanted to prove that he hadn’t trekked three miles in the intense heat. “I guess I had the same feeling you did. That I wanted a look at the place, seeing as I was in the area anyway.”
Winter didn’t answer. He turned his gaze to the tree. Halders came closer.
“So this is that damn marking. Couldn’t some kids have daubed it up there?”
“Sure. We just need to get that confirmed.”
“And it’s definitely paint?”
“Yes.”
“There’s no way it could be blood?”
“No.”
“But it may have been intended to be blood,” Halders said. “I mean, to look like it was blood and that we should think of it as blood.”
“That’s possible,” Winter said. “How were the folks in Helenevik?”
“Nice and friendly.”
“Oh yeah?”
“A couple in this huge house over there tried to invite me in for drinks.”
“That was nice, but they didn’t succeed?”
“I told them I was on duty.”
“You might have missed an opportunity to find out something really important.”
“About what? You want me to go back?”
Winter shrugged his shoulders and smiled.
“There was something else. But it’s probably my imagination. Might have gotten hold of the wrong end of the stick, so to speak,” Halders said.
“Yeah?”
“Nothing. Otherwise, going door-to-door around here has produced about as little as you might expect. No one’s seen or heard anything.”
“The kennel guy heard and saw something,” Winter said.
“He’s a nutcase.”
“They’re sometimes the ones that prove the most helpful.”
They both heard the sound of an outboard from the lake. A plastic boat with a ten-horsepower motor came from the north and steered in toward the inlet fifty yards from where they were standing. The motor cut out and the boat glided into shore, outside the cordon.
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