“It didn’t me.” She took a sip of her water. “It was soothing.”
“Sounds wonderful,” Winter said.
“I thought of us.”
Here it comes, thought Winter. We only managed a few minutes of idle chitchat. “How was your mother?” he asked.
“Wonderful,” she said, “until we started talking about us.”
“It’s not as bad as all that, is it? And was that really necessary?”
“What?”
“To have a long discussion with your mother about us. We can reason it out ourselves, can’t we?”
“Reason it out? Since when did you ever want to reason anything out?”
“I’m considered to be quite reasonable.” He dipped a stalk of blanched celery into the cold dip made of sardines and black olives. It tasted salty and bitter, delicious. “This is really good.”
She looked at him without saying anything.
He wanted to be there in the moment with her, but when he bent forward over the bowls again, he saw Helene’s face as it had looked in the dead blue glow of the morgue. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“Well, it’s not like this is the first time. And I’m not saying that to sound like a cop’s wife sitting up at night waiting.”
“I’m the one who’s waiting in this case,” he said.
She took his hand as he reached for the glass of water.
“What are you waiting for, Erik?”
What was he waiting for? That was a big question. Everything, from the name of a murder victim and a murderer to eternal peace of mind. For the triumph of good over evil. And for her.
“I waited for you today,” he said.
“Maybe mostly for my body,” she said.
“I resent that. I want all of you,” he said, and squeezed her hand.
She let go of his and drank again. A wind came in from the north and snatched a napkin from the table and took it down into the shaft below the balcony. Winter could see the napkin disappear like a butterfly into the shadow of the moon.
“Your mind is so often somewhere else.”
“I know. You’re right, but not all the time.”
“But right now.”
“It’s this case—”
“You know I’m not asking you to change jobs. But it’s everywhere, covering everything like a layer of dust—on us and over everything around us.”
“Not dust,” he said. “There won’t be any dust on us, since I keep stirring it up all the time. Any comparison you like, only not that.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I can’t help it, Angela. It’s a part of me. And of the job or whatever you want to call it.”
He told her how he’d seen Helene’s face just now, in the middle of a meal. He wasn’t looking for it. It had sought him out.
She didn’t ask anything about Helene, and he knew that was a good thing. Maybe later, but not now.
“You sometimes carry around images of your patients in your mind,” he said.
“It’s different with you.”
“I can’t help it,” he repeated. “And it helps me.”
“Does it? The great magical inspector? Eventually it’ll drive you—It could take over. More and more.”
“Eventually it’ll drive me crazy? Maybe I’m already crazy. Crazy enough to do police work.”
“The fight against evil,” she said. “Your favorite topic.”
“I know—it’s pathetic.”
“No, Erik, and you know that’s not what I think. But it can get to be too much sometimes, so big, you know?”
What was he supposed to say? Crime is an army. He was a policeman but he wasn’t cynical. He believed in the power of good, and that was why he spoke about evil. It was impenetrable, like observing the enemy through bulletproof glass. Anyone who tried to comprehend it with reason went under. He was starting to realize this, but he still had the urge to get in close in order to defeat that monster. If you couldn’t use your goodness and intellect to confront evil close up, what were you supposed to use? The thought had flashed through his mind before—a thought that was like a black hole right in the middle of reality, terrifying: that evil could be fought only in kind.
“There’s nothing to wait for,” Angela said when their breathing had calmed.
His head had exploded into a white light as he once again experienced the sensation where the boundaries between body and soul and body and body disappear, and they were united into a single whole for a few seconds while the white light lasted.
After that came the languorous exhaustion. Then the voice returned.
“What are we waiting for?” she repeated. “I want to throw out those damn pills.”
He couldn’t answer. Anything he might say could end up wrong, so he unfolded himself from the bed. “I’m going to get something to drink.”
“Get back here!”
“I’ve got to have something.” He pulled on his shorts by hopping on one leg at a time, then stepped out onto the balcony to fetch glasses and bottles. The wind from the early evening was gone. It felt as if it had grown warmer, warmer, almost, than inside the room.
He raised his gaze and the sky was empty. It might have been one o’clock or two. He could blame work and cycle home, but that would be cowardly. To say that he wanted to spend an hour hunched over the PowerBook, basking in its pleasant electronic glow, would be true in a way, but it sounded insane.
He carried two glasses filled with equal parts white wine and water into the kitchen, but there was no ice left in her freezer, so he walked back to the bedroom and handed one to Angela.
“So tell me what we’re waiting for,” she repeated. “I’m tired of this arrangement.”
“What arrangement?”
“Everything.” She drank thirstily. “I don’t want to live apart anymore.”
“It was your idea from the beginning.”
“I don’t care whose idea it was. And that feels like years ago, back when we were both young urban professionals.”
“We still are.”
“You’re thirty-seven, Erik. You’re nearly forty. I’m thirty.”
He drank and heard a car driving at high speed down on Kungsgatan, going toward Rosenlund. Could be a taxi or a private car on its way down to the hooker strip along Feskekörka. Sometimes the johns produced a heavy flow of traffic below her window, but tonight had been quiet. He wondered why. The conditions were perfect.
“It may sound silly, but playtime is over,” she went on. “You know I didn’t make any demands before, but I am now.”
“Yeah.”
“Is there something wrong? We’ve been together for almost two years and at our age that’s a long time for an LAT relationship.”
“You want us to move in together?”
“You know what I want, but that would be a start.”
“You and me, in an apartment?”
“That is what moving in together usually involves.”
He had to let out a giggle, like a little kid. The situation was untenable, awful. He was being held to account for his desire to live on his own and have her within comfortable reach, within biking distance on a warm evening. She was right; it was as she said. Playtime was over.
“You have to choose sometime,” she said softly, as if to a child that can’t make up its mind. “This is no surprise to you, Erik.”
“We could always see more of each other.”
“So you’re not ready?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“This is the only chance you’ll get.”
21
WINTER LEFT KUNGSHÖJD UNDER PRESSURE FROM THE SUN. HIS black glasses dampened the pain in the crown of his head.
Angela waved from the balcony as he turned down the hill. He had been given time to think it over, but that was really the wrong way to describe it. He couldn’t think of the right way, so he didn’t.
“She hasn’t gotten in touch,” Ringmar said after morning prayer. “Shoul
d we go over there?”
Winter thought for a moment. As the head of the investigation, he had the discretionary authority to “bring in a person of potential interest for questioning.” They couldn’t just barge into somebody’s house, but they could bring someone in for questioning who was important to the preliminary investigation and hadn’t come in voluntarily. He looked in his papers. Andrea Maltzer lived on Viktor Rydbergsgatan. Nice address.
“Okay. Let’s go over there.”
They drove across Korsvägen. Someone merging into the traffic circle in a hurry had not paid proper attention. Two damaged cars stood at a nasty angle, and a uniformed officer was sorting out who was at fault together with two men whom Winter guessed were the drivers. The police sergeant was a man in his fifties, and he looked up as they edged past, then nodded in greeting. Ringmar raised his hand through the window.
“Sverker,” Winter said.
“We did a lot of shifts together,” Ringmar said. “Sweet youth in uniform.”
“I haven’t seen him for a while.”
“He was sick. Cancer in one of his legs, I think.”
“I may have heard something about that,” Winter said, and drove up the hill at Eklandabacken.
Winter scanned the facades along the street, once they’d passed the church, and pulled up in an empty parking spot opposite Andrea Maltzer’s address. The building was tall and the street was in shade. The entryway was broad and austere, the air inside cool from stone and marble. A statue at the foot of the steps depicted a naked woman pointing upward with one finger.
“Looks even nicer than your lobby,” Ringmar said.
The locksmith was waiting for them in a rattan armchair by the front door and stood to say hello.
“Second floor,” Winter said. “Let’s take the stairs.”
The polished tropical hardwood and the lush plants on pedestals made him feel like he was wandering through a managed jungle.
The locksmith got everything ready.
“I’ll ring the doorbell first,” Winter said.
He rang again and heard footsteps and thought they were coming from somewhere else. The doors were massive—impossible to hack your way through with an axe. You’d need a chainsaw and battering ram, with Fredrik at the front.
There was a rattling inside, and the door was opened by a woman who could be the same age as Angela.
She’s calm, Winter thought. This is a surprise for her. She’s simply exercised her right to have a private life and disappeared for a few days.
“Yes?” the woman asked.
“Andrea Maltzer?”
“What’s this about? Who are you?”
“The police,” Winter said, and produced his ID card. She studied it. The locksmith eyed Winter, who gave him a nod, then disappeared down the stairs.
“What do you want?” Andrea Maltzer repeated.
“Could we come in for a moment?”
“Are you also a police officer?” she asked Ringmar.
“Sorry,” Ringmar said, and showed her his ID.
She gave his badge a quick glance and looked at Winter again. She had a face sprinkled with freckles that had grown in number this summer, he guessed. She looks young and fresh, more or less like Peter von Holten when he’s not throwing up all over my desk. Can’t she find someone who isn’t already married? She looks tired, but not worn out.
“Would it be all right?” Winter nodded toward the apartment.
“It’s all right,” she said, and they stepped into the foyer. She lead the way into a living room that resembled one Winter lived in for a period in his life, white stucco and windows that opened out onto a balcony, which already looked searing hot in the morning sun. The balcony door stood open, and Winter saw an empty cast-iron table beneath an umbrella.
She was wearing a tank top and a pair of shorts that were wide and long and looked comfortable. Summer wear, even though it was almost September.
Tomorrow I’ll wear shorts again, Winter noted. There’s no way to cloak yourself anyway. He thought about his sister, who’d called yesterday and invited him over again. He didn’t know why. He’d call her back when he had the time.
“I suppose I ought to offer you coffee or something, but I’d like to know what this is about first,” Andrea Maltzer said.
They asked her what she had been doing at Delsjö Lake. When do you mean? They were as specific as they dared be. Then? She had wandered off awhile after Peter left. Why? She needed to think, and Winter heard Angela’s voice.
Andrea Maltzer had needed to think over why she was seeing a married man “on the sly,” as she put it. Taking his car would have been “compromising.” That was the word she used. She sat in it for a while and then went over to the café and waited for the cab she’d called on her cell phone. They took down all the details, and she shook her head when they asked if she had a receipt—which would have been off the books anyway, if she’d had it. They could check up on that phone call. Winter believed her. People did strange things and perfectly natural things all at the same time. Scratch von Holten, maybe. Fine by me. Winter asked if she’d noticed anything whatsoever while she was sitting there.
“When I was alone? After Peter was gone?”
“Yes.” He could then ask about what they had done together, if they had paid much attention to their surroundings. “It’s important that you think about it. Anything at all could be of help.”
“I can put on some coffee while I think about it.”
“Before you do that,” Ringmar cut in, “could you tell us where you’ve been for the last few days?”
“Here,” she said. “And one other place, but mostly here, I think.”
“We’ve been trying to reach you,” Ringmar said.
“I didn’t want anyone to reach me,” she said. “I unplugged the answering machine and switched that off.” She nodded at the cell phone on the living room table. “And I haven’t read the paper or listened to the radio. Or watched TV.”
“What for?”
“I thought I explained that.”
“Didn’t you hear the doorbell?”
“No. I must have been out then.”
“You didn’t get any messages from anyone?”
“Peter came by and slid an envelope under the door, but I threw it away.”
“What did he write?”
“I don’t know. I threw it away unopened.”
“When?”
“Yesterday. It went out with the trash, in case you’re wondering.”
Winter nodded. It wasn’t hard for someone to stay out of sight if they wanted to. It was even their right.
“I had a few vacation days left.”
Winter nodded again. He wanted to leave, but they weren’t done yet.
“Anything else you’d like to know?” she asked when neither Winter nor Ringmar spoke.
“What you saw, if you saw anything,” Winter said.
“I was going to think about that in the kitchen,” she said.
“That’s right,” Winter said.
He looked around after she left the room. Two framed photographs stood on a paint-stripped cabinet. No picture of Peter von Holten. One of them was of a wedding couple, possibly her parents—the picture looked like it had been taken thirty years ago. Classic matrimonial attire though. No sign of flirting with that era’s flower power.
The other photo was a black-and-white outdoor scene with no people in it—a house somewhere in the archipelago. The house might have been red and it was situated a short distance above a rocky shoreline. He could make out portions of an out-of-focus jetty in the foreground. There were no clouds behind the house. To the left was a sign warning of an underwater cable. There was a stonework stairway, as if carved from the rock, leading from the jetty up to the house.
He recognized it. He had seen this cabin himself, from the sea. You could sail around the promontory to the left and into an inlet three hundred yards farther on and hike up a hill lined with wind-battered j
uniper trees. Just behind the hill, on the lee side, was another house, which had belonged to his parents when he was a kid. He was twelve when they sold it, and he had sailed past it a few times since then but rarely gone ashore. He missed it now.
Andrea Maltzer had returned to the room and saw him in front of the photo. She said the name of the island.
“I thought it looked familiar,” Winter said. “My parents had a house there, but that was a long time ago.”
“My parents bought the place a few years back.”
“I guess that explains why I didn’t recognize you,” Winter said, and turned around. A tray stood on the table, and she had sat down and was eyeing him strangely. “I mean, there were no little kids there back then.”
She smiled but said nothing. Winter sat opposite her. She gestured toward the tray and Ringmar did the honors. Winter suddenly felt impatient, even more restless than usual. The photograph from the island had affected him. There was no room in his head for personal memories right now. Something had led him here too. He didn’t believe in coincidences, never had. Many crimes were solved by chance, or what might be referred to as coincidences, but Winter didn’t believe in them. There was a purpose. Chance had a purpose.
“That’s my refuge,” she said. “That’s where I am when I’m not here. Like yesterday.”
“Do you remember anything from the night we’re talking about?” Ringmar asked.
“I remember that I saw a boat,” she said. “Out on the lake.”
“A boat,” Ringmar repeated.
“A white boat or beige. Plastic, I assume.”
“Was it far out?”
“It was a ways out on the lake. I saw it when I climbed out of the car—when I decided that I’d borrowed Peter’s car for the last time.”
“Describe exactly what you saw,” Winter said. “As best you can.”
“Like I said. A boat out on the water that appeared to be lying pretty still. I didn’t hear anything. No motor.”
“Did you see an outboard motor on it?”
“No. But if there had been an outboard, I wouldn’t have seen it in the dark anyway.” She put down her cup.
“No sound of rowing? You heard nothing?”
“No. But I could see that there was someone sitting in the boat.”
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