They hadn’t arrested anyone. They hadn’t even seen anything out of the ordinary. One of the stolen cars had not been accounted for, but the owner had an alibi and a spotless record.
Not everyone had quite so spotless a record. One-eighth of those 124 people had been convicted of minor offenses and occasionally something a little more serious, but Halders had been a police officer long enough to be able to say whether that was a high or low number.
There was something else in the back of his head. It was one of the ex-felons, Bremer. Georg Bremer. The old man had once done time for burglary. Six months twenty years ago. Halders remembered his house out in the sticks. The road through the wilderness. The horses at the edge of the field. The airplanes coming in over Landvetter and Härryda, which sounded like lightning striking.
Christ, Halders thought. What was it? What was it I didn’t check? What was it I put off till tomorrow?
He flipped through the folders and read.
It was the repair shop.
Aneta had taken notes. He had written his report, but who had checked out the shop where Bremer left his car for repairs? Should he have done it himself ? No. Someone else had been assigned that task. Who was it? It wasn’t recorded here. It didn’t say the name of the repair shop either. Halders had written down the name. It was something generic, like Joe’s Car Repair or something. But the job wasn’t done. Or else it was done but hadn’t been entered. He checked his watch and called Möllerström, who answered on the third ring.
“It’s Fredrik. Can you help me with something?”
Halders sat with his interrogation transcript. Veine Carlberg had checked out the repair shop. Nothing strange about it. The time matched what Bremer claimed in his statement. It was a little odd that he had taken his rust bucket all the way in from the outback, and driven it across town, but the guy who owned the repair shop was an acquaintance.
Still, Halders was also acquainted with the guy who owned the repair shop. He’d brought him in for questioning once: Jonas Svensk. He remembered it, managed to reconstruct most of it with the help of his memory and the report in front of him. Svensk had a past he claimed to have put behind him. Halders hadn’t believed him.
Should he talk to Winter about Bremer and Svensk? Or should he check up on it himself a little more first?
He tried to think. They had leads going in different directions, and they had to pull back on one and focus more on something else. Right now it was the lead through the Billdal bus company. During the briefing this morning, Winter spoke about the house in Denmark and the connection or the link or whatever the hell you want to call it to that Andersen guy.
Halders thought about it. Bremer had a large plot. Aneta had thought of it as a vacation home.
54
ALONE IN HIS OFFICE ONCE AGAIN, WINTER SLOWLY MADE HIS way through the preliminary investigation while he waited for Michaela Poulsen’s call.
The telephone rang, and the switchboard informed him the call was from Ålborg.
“I thought for a while that we’d bungled things even more than I’d thought, and I’ve turned out to be right,” she said.
“Let’s hear it.”
“The photographer is retired but living. It was the local bureau of the paper that took the photo—i.e., not a professional photographer. Anyway, I’ve spoken with him and he remembers the story about the land partitioning and all that. But he couldn’t remember the photograph itself. I went over there and showed him a copy of the newspaper, but he still couldn’t remember taking it, although he must have, he said.”
“When was it?” Winter asked.
“He didn’t know the exact day, but it must have been shortly before the article was published. The vote in the town council came just before it, and that was three days before the article went to print, so he must have taken the photo during those two or three days.”
“Does he have copies?”
“No. That’s where the next link in this chain comes in. Every afternoon he used to hand over his roll of film to the pig truck or some other farmers’ transport—sometimes to the intercity bus—and it would be developed at the main bureau in Ålborg, where the prints were made. Everything is filed away in the archives of the newspaper. They have it all in good order. I know because that’s where I’m calling from now.”
“Have you seen a print?”
“They made me a quick print, and I’ve got the negatives. There are several frames. I’ll take them back to the station and let the photographer down in forensics work on them. Once we have some good enlargements, I’ll give you a call.”
“Excellent.”
“I’ll let you know,” Poulsen said, and hung up.
“Jakobsson has disappeared,” Ringmar said. “His brother thinks he’s been the victim of a crime.”
“The man himself is a crime,” Halders said. “He’s probably holed up somewhere drinking himself into a stupor.”
“But he’s gone,” Winter said. “He went home the day before yesterday and now his brother has reported him missing.”
“What do we think about that?” Bergenhem said to no one in particular.
“We think the worst,” Ringmar said.
Halders stayed behind after the late-afternoon meeting. He’d said a few words to Winter beforehand.
“Let’s go into my office,” Winter now said.
Halders eyed the drawings in the office but said nothing about them. He rubbed his hand over his scalp as if to emphasize the difference between his own crew cut and Winter’s long hair. Winter stroked his hair back behind his ears.
“Have you had a chance to go through all the reports on the owners of the cars yet?” Halders asked.
“No. They’re lying here.” Winter nodded toward the desk piled high with binders and document stacks of varying sizes. In and out trays were a thing of the past.
“There’s one name...”
Georg Bremer. Winter read his rap sheet while Charlie Haden played a solo from the shadow beneath the window: the volume was on low and Haden’s bass was part of the office walls.
Bremer had done time for burglary and criminal damage and had behaved himself while serving out his sentence at Härlanda Prison. No conspicuous drug use. After his release, he disappeared from the world of cops and robbers. He owned a Ford Escort, but that was no crime. He was acquainted with one former biker, as he himself put it. His car may or may not have driven along Boråsleden on the night of the murder. Winter grabbed hold of the lamp and directed it toward his new shelf, where he’d placed the VHS cassette. The sphere of light was reflected in the TV screen.
He walked over to the shelf and pulled out the telephone book, flipping to the B section of the Hindås district. There was one Bremer, Georg.
He picked up the phone and sat there with his finger poised over the buttons. No. Better to wait until tomorrow. All he really wanted was to hear the guy’s voice. Perhaps determine whether this was yet another distraction that they didn’t have time for. And yet he knew he would drive out there the next morning.
“You look like you could do with some sleep,” Angela said.
“Give me a hug,” he said. “No, on second thought, a massage.”
“First I’ll give you a hug,” she said, and did so. They stood still for half a minute. “Now sit down.”
She began to knead his neck and shoulders.
Winter was silent and closed his eyes and felt her strong fists get his blood flowing and make him a little more supple.
She continued.
“I think that’s enough,” he said. “Now you can fetch my slippers.”
“I’m not your housewife,” she said. “Masseuse, yes. Housewife, no.”
“You wouldn’t be able to stand it,” he said.
“So we’re back there again,” she said.
“Angela.”
“No. I know that you came home from Denmark with a fresh batch of horrendous things on your mind and that you’re searching for that little
girl and the murderer. All that, I know. I’m trying to stay out of the way.”
He didn’t know what to say.
“I don’t want to keep going on about it—you know that’s not what I want. But now it’s serious. It’s serious again,” she said, and her hands disappeared from his shoulders.
He’d remained seated while she spoke. Now he stood. She was still turned away.
“I’m going home now,” she said. “I want you to make up your mind. This can’t come as a surprise.”
She turned around, and he saw that her eyes were glistening.
“It’s always the wrong moment,” she said. “You’re tired. You have a lot of stuff to work out. But I also have a lot of stuff to work out. We have a lot of stuff to work out. I don’t want to be alone anymore. I don’t want to.”
She walked out into the hall, and Winter called her name but got no answer.
PART 3
THE WIND BEAT AGAINST HER FACE AS SHE STOOD ON DECK. The sun was low in the sky, a line on the edge of the earth. It was the final voyage. Suddenly the rain came, but she only noticed when she shifted her gaze from the day slipping down behind the horizon. There was a lightning flash, and then another, like her own flashes of memory that came just as suddenly and then left behind great gaps in her thoughts, as if she had surged out of a dream and woken up in another life. The shouts remained in her head like echoes.
Seek out evil in order to destroy it. There was a voice inside her. It came back and told her things. Told all!
The courtyard was in darkness. Behind the window stood the old lady, who lifted her hand like a bird raising its wing. She heard a noise from the swings.
The first few days she had paced in circles around the living room table. It was hot, but she didn’t open the windows. She had been in the basement and come back upstairs. She couldn’t be there.
The sun was here; then it was gone. Everything happened at the same time. I’m cold, Mommy. It’ll be better soon. It smelled of night and rain, and then it became easier to move around again.
She had sat with Mommy a long time. She had slept for a while in the backseat and then crawled up front. It was cold there, and Mommy started up the car and let it run for a while and then turned it off again. Mommy hadn’t answered when she had asked, and she asked again and Mommy’s voice was hard. Then she went quiet. He stood close to her. He had taken the scissors out of her hands. She had one question left and then no more. The cuckoo called. His hands held her. She heard the cuckoo and its wings beating against the wind. There was a scream from the sky.
55
HALDERS DROVE AND ANETA DJANALI SAT NEXT TO HIM. WINTER was in the back. They turned off the highway and made their way through the forest.
The clear-cut was in the process of growing back, until the next time. Old growth survived in narrow reserves. They came to yet another crossroad.
“That’s the last one,” Halders said, and turned to the left. After about half a mile, or a little less, the road opened out onto a slope and ended in front of the house, which was crooked but stable. Winter thought he recognized it. The garden consisted of the hillside in front, and behind the house Winter could see the forest and parts of a field. Now he heard the gloomy sound of hooves against the earth. Horses were running somewhere back there, perhaps startled by the sound of Halders’s Volvo. They’d parked next to Bremer’s Escort. It was covered in mud, hardly pearl white anymore beneath the crud, since it was being driven on forest roads in late October.
Winter couldn’t make out the license plate.
To the left of the house, ten yards away and an equal distance from the edge of the forest, stood a windmill.
It was yellow and the vanes weren’t moving. It was about four and a half feet high.
Halders knocked on the door, which had a window with a curtain. No one opened up.
They hadn’t called ahead.
“What is it?” The man had stepped out from behind the house. “You again.” He approached them and pointed. “The car’s standing right there, in case you’re wondering.” He looked at Aneta Djanali and Halders. “I recognize you.”
Winter shook his hand. Bremer was tall and his hand dry. His eyes looked past Winter. He was wearing rubber boots, and Winter saw that one of them had a gash above the foot. Winter knew that beneath the knitted cap on his head the sixty-nine-year-old was bald. His mustache was dark. He was skinny and wizened, as Aneta had said in the car on the way out.
“May we come in for a moment?” Winter asked. He looked up at the sky, low above the glade. “Looks like it’s starting to rain.”
“A little rain never hurt anybody,” Bremer said. “But sure, we can go inside.”
Aneta Djanali met Winter’s eyes as they stepped up onto the porch. The hall inside was dark. Bremer took off his boots, and the police took off their shoes and followed him into a room with windows facing the back of the house.
Winter looked out, and the horses were gone. He turned toward Bremer and took a step forward. “It’s about your car again,” he said. “And a few other things.”
“What about my car?”
“We’re talking to all the owners of this kind of car. To see if maybe they can remember anything else that might help us.”
“Help you with what?”
“Aren’t you aware that we’re investigating a murder?” Winter asked. “And a disappearance in connection with that murder?”
Bremer looked at Halders. “He mentioned something about it.”
“Is that all you’ve heard of it?” Winter asked.
“Maybe something on the radio or TV. I don’t know. I mind my own business.”
Winter made up his mind when he saw the horses emerge from the bushes. They were moving in perfect symmetry, floating above the high grass.
“Do you know Jonas Svensk?”
“Svensk? Well, he owns the repair shop where I leave my car when it’s acting up. Why do you ask?”
“We’re in the process of looking into any potential connections here,” Winter said, expressing himself as cryptically as he could.
“What connections? What’s my car got to do with it?”
“I didn’t say anything about that.”
“You didn’t? You were talking about the auto repair shop.”
Winter took a breath. “I’d like you to accompany us back to the police station so we can discuss this further.”
“What’s this all about? If you think I’m using my car to move around stolen goods or something, you’re welcome to take a look.”
Winter didn’t answer.
“You think you can go around harassing people like me just as you please, huh? I’ve behaved myself ever since I got out. Ask anyone, you’ll see. Is it Svensk? He hasn’t done anything. Is it that shoot-out? Is that why you’re here?”
“We’d like you to come with us,” Winter said.
Bremer looked at Halders and Aneta Djanali as if they had the authority to reverse Winter’s decision. He took another step and stopped. It’s as if his body is shrinking, Winter thought. His skin is sinking inward.
“For how long?” Bremer asked, suddenly resigned to it.
Maybe he was resigned to it all along, thought Djanali.
Winter didn’t answer.
“Six hours,” Bremer said, but not to anyone in particular.
Six plus six, Djanali thought. If not more.
Ringmar was waiting. He entered Winter’s office when they’d left Bremer alone for a moment.
Winter held up his hands. “I’m just exercising my legal authority.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“The car’s still at the house, along with Aneta. I want you to send someone out there straightaway to pick it up and pull it apart.”
“I won’t ask if you think they rode in that car.”
“Now let’s look at the tape.” Winter inserted the cassette with the footage of the traffic on Boråsleden.
The car drove past and then
came back. There and back.
“If that is him, then he shouldn’t be driving toward town but toward his house,” Ringmar said.
“He was visiting someone,” Winter said. “No. He drove to her apartment.”
“Whoever it is,” Ringmar said. “After all, they weren’t Bremer’s prints we found in her apartment.”
“It won’t be that easy,” Winter said. He froze the frame. He pressed play again and froze it again. “There’s still a guy sitting in there and it’s still a Ford.”
“Now we have a car to compare it to,” Ringmar said. “That could give us something. We’ll have to take apart this film as thoroughly as we’re taking apart the car.”
“I want everything on Svensk,” Winter said. “Everything.”
“I want everything about the biker brotherhoods,” Ringmar said. “Everything.”
“I want to know where Jakobsson is,” Winter said.
“Do you want us to search Bremer’s house?”
Winter shook his head.
“Too early?”
“We’ll wait. I want a search warrant first, and then we’ll tear the place apart.”
Michaela had been quick, as quick as the photographer and the copyist. The photos were flown to Copenhagen and on to Landvetter.
Winter closed his eyes, wanting to put off opening the envelope for half a minute. He took a drag and stubbed it out. Maybe for good. There was no room for smokers in a modern world.
He lit a fresh cigarillo before he stood and went over to the wall where the drawings hung.
Landvetter. As they were leaving Bremer’s, a Boeing jet had roared through the space barrier above Bremer’s house. Bremer hadn’t shown the slightest reaction.
He’d seen it in one of Jennie’s drawings—in her diary. It wasn’t hanging on the wall. He went to the desk where the drawings lay sorted into piles, and in the third one from the left, the one containing all kinds of vehicles, there were two drawings with a long cylindrical object floating above the forest and the house. It was a good drawing. Winter could almost hear the roar as the airplane cut through the rain and sunshine.
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