The Shadow Woman

by Ake Edwardson

  He sat back down in his chair and opened the envelope. There were five photos. The top one showed the two people level with the house, on their way in. The woman was holding the child by the hand. They were looking straight ahead. You couldn’t see their faces.

  In the second, they had moved closer to the house. The child was turned toward the camera or in that direction. Perhaps she’d seen the photographer. It was Helene. You still couldn’t see the woman’s face.

  The third photograph was taken closer to the two figures. The girl became more distinct. The woman was in profile. He wanted to put a name to that profile, but he wasn’t certain.

  There was something else that made him go cold and still. Between the woman and the door was a window, and in that window he could discern a third figure. Winter shut his eyes and looked again, sharpened his gaze. The contours of the figure were still there, behind a thin curtain: a face and an upper body.

  He studied the contours. Had they picked up on this in Denmark? Of course they had. Winter rummaged through the envelope and found the accompanying letter, a single sheet that had gotten stuck inside. He read it quickly. She had written about the figure in the window. “We don’t know who it is.”

  The fourth photo was taken seconds later, when the woman and the child had reached the door. The figure in the window was gone. Winter saw the backs of the pair outside.

  The fifth showed the house and was the most enlarged of the prints, rough and grainy. It must have been taken about a minute later, maybe, the local photojournalist having taken a break in his coverage of future land partitions. Then he had pressed the shutter release one last time. In the window a man had pulled aside the curtains in order to be able to see more clearly what was going on outside. He did it without thinking, exposing himself.

  The man could have been a young Georg Bremer. He had a mustache, a cap pulled down over his brow.

  The phone rang. It was his mother.

  “Your father’s ill,” she said.

  “I’m sorry to hear that.” He slipped the photos back into the envelope and filed the accompanying letter in a folder inside the desk drawer. “What’s happened?”

  “He was feeling a bit under the weather this afternoon and we asked Magnergår—he’s a doctor who lives in the area—to come over, and he thought that we ought to take him to the clinic in town.”

  Winter tried to imagine Marbella but failed. He had only seen a map of the city on the Internet.

  “What’s the matter with him?”

  “That’s where I’m calling from right now. The doctors have examined him and done an EKG, but it didn’t show anything.”

  “He’s probably just overexerted himself,” Winter said. On the golf course, he thought. He tried to think light thoughts, but the nausea was growing.

  “He hasn’t overexerted himself,” his mother said. “We haven’t done anything out of the ordinary.”

  “No.”

  “I’m worried, Erik. If something happens, you have to come down.”

  He didn’t answer. Someone rapped on the door. He called out, “Just a minute,” and listened again.

  “What is it?” she said.

  “Just somebody at the door.”

  “Are you at the office? Well, I guess you must be since it’s only evening.”

  “Yes.”

  He heard footsteps walk away outside his door. She said something.

  “Sorry, Mother. I didn’t hear what you said.”

  “If something happens, you have to come down.”

  “Nothing’s going to happen. You’ll just have to take it easy for a while, that’s all. No more spur-of-the-moment trips to Gibraltar.”

  “You promise, Erik? You promise you’ll come if he gets worse? I spoke to Lotta, and she also thinks you should come. You both have to come.”

  “I promise,” he said.

  “Now you’ve promised. I’ll call later this evening. You can call too.” She told him the number to the clinic. “I’m going to be here the whole time.”

  “Maybe you’d better come home soon.”

  “I have to go now, Erik.”

  He sat with the cell phone in his hand. There was a rapping at the door again. He called out, “Come in,” and Ringmar appeared in the doorway.

  “His sister lives on Västergatan,” Ringmar said, and sat down. “That’s in Annedal.”

  Winter checked his watch—nearly six o’clock. Georg Bremer had reluctantly mentioned his one relation, his sister, Greta. Nothing about anyone else. They could keep him for the rest of the evening, and shortly after midnight they’d have to let him go. It was pointless to go to the prosecutor now.

  “Seriously, Erik.”

  “Seriously?”

  “We’ve got to let him go.”

  “He can go at midnight. How’s it going with the car?”

  “They’re going at it hammer and tongs.”

  “I don’t want to speak to him anymore right now,” Winter said. “We let him go home, and the day after tomorrow we haul him back in again.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  “No.”

  “Want to know what I’ve been waiting to happen for the past month?”

  “Tell me.”

  “For the girl’s father to get in touch. Christ. His ex is dead and his daughter is missing. We’re searching, and the whole country knows about it. But he doesn’t get in touch.”

  “Maybe he can’t.”

  “I’ve thought about that, but I’m not sure. He may be dead, sure.”

  “Or afraid.”

  “Fear feels like a recurring theme in this investigation.”

  “Or else he doesn’t know that he has a child.”

  Ringmar changed position. “It’s not easy to trace her past,” he said. “It virtually doesn’t exist.”

  “There you have it,” Winter said. He sat up straighter. “That’s what this is all about. Her past hadn’t existed, but then all of a sudden it does exist. It comes to her. It becomes part of what later transpires. It precipitates.” He breathed in deeply.

  Ringmar was still.

  “She comes to this city and her life comes to an end. Her life as an adult. First her understanding of life ended, and then life itself.”

  56

  A FEW MINUTES AFTER MIDNIGHT, BREMER DROVE HIS CAR off into the night. He said nothing, and Winter didn’t accompany him to the garage. Beier came down to homicide in person. He’d remained at the station the whole time.

  “There was a lot of junk in the car,” he said.

  “So it’s impossible?”

  “I didn’t say that. I just said there was a lot of junk in the car. In the trunk, on the floor, in the glove compartment, et cetera, et cetera.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “There were cigarette butts in the ashtrays, and there was also a butt wedged deep underneath the seat struts, and I wonder what it was doing there.”

  “Say that again?”

  “A small cigarette butt was stuck between the carpeting on the floor and the base of the seat strut, and it took some time to find it. You need professionals to find stuff like that.”

  “You mean it was hidden there?”

  “Maybe. It’s mostly filter. You don’t know which brand Helene Andersén smoked, do you?”

  “No. So it could be hers?”

  “I’m just trying to be optimistic here,” Beier said. Anyway, we found it and now it’s on its way over to the National Center for Forensic Science.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Winter said. “It’ll take months for them to do a DNA analysis.”

  “You want to do it yourself ?”

  “We have to get top priority on this one. You’re well respected down in Linköping, Göran.”

  “I’ll do what I can,” Beier said. “I am susceptible to flattery. But as you know, you normally have to wait in line.”

  “We have something to compare it to, for Christ’s sake,” Winter said. “Tell them that. This isn’t
a blind analysis. We don’t need to sit and wait for a prosecutor to issue a warrant for a DNA sample.”

  We’ve got a body, he thought. We’ve had it for a long time now.

  Winter went back to his room, sat down. Another thought in his head had grown apace with his fatigue that evening. Lately he hadn’t had much time to wonder why Helene had been left where they’d found her. Why in the ditch next to the lake? The dump site was far away from Helene’s apartment. It also lay far away from Bremer’s house. And now Bremer was a suspect. Winter closed his eyes and thought about the dump site, far away from Helene’s house and far from Brem—

  He opened his eyes, got up, and left the room. Down the corridor in the situation room, he stood in front of the big map of Greater Gothenburg on the wall. He used a sticker to mark the approximate location of Helene’s apartment in North Biskopsgården. Then he looked eastward on the map and found Ödegård—Bremer’s house. He marked it.

  He tagged the dump site by Big Delsjö Lake.

  He measured the distance from Biskopsgården to the dump site. He then measured the distance from Ödegård to the same place.

  As the crow flies, the distances were exactly the same.

  Winter yielded to the streetcar on Västergatan and walked south between buildings that obscured each other. It was nine o’clock. At the front entrance he punched in the code he’d been given yesterday. The heavy door clicked, and he walked into the stairwell and up to the second floor. The mail slot said “Greta Bremer.” He rang the bell and waited. Steps sounded from inside, and the door was opened cautiously. All he saw was a shadow.

  “Yes?”

  “My name is Erik Winter. Inspector with the Gothenburg Police Department. Homicide squad. I called yesterday.”

  “It’s him,” a voice said inside. “The one who was supposed to be coming.”

  The door opened. The woman may have been fifty or somewhat younger. She was wearing an apron. Her hair was hidden beneath a scarf, and in her hand she was holding a little brush that might have been intended for clothes.

  She backed up, and Winter stepped through the doorway. Three yards in sat a woman in a wheelchair. In the half darkness Winter couldn’t make out the features of her face. Her hair seemed long. The apartment smelled of the street outside. They’ve just aired it out, Winter thought hastily.

  “Well, come in, then,” the voice in the wheelchair said. The woman gripped the wheels with an experienced hand and rolled backward.

  Winter followed her into a living room, where the plant detritus on the floor attested to the fact that the room had indeed just been aired out. The windows opened inward. The woman who had opened the door for Winter excused herself.

  “That’s my home helper,” Greta Bremer said. “When you can barely move, you can’t manage without a home helper.”

  Winter could see her face now, or parts of it. She wore dark glasses that were more brown than black. He could just make out her eyes, but that was it. Her hair was gray and a little tousled. Her skin was thin and delicate, as if made up of cracks that had healed irregularly over a long period of time. Winter guessed that she was seventy, maybe older, but the illness she suffered from may have added many extra years to her face. He still didn’t know her age.

  “So you’re here about my brother,” she said without looking at Winter. “Have a seat first.” She hadn’t yet turned her face toward him. She behaved as if she were blind, and Winter wondered if maybe she was. He didn’t want to ask. She would tell him. “You want to ask me questions about my brother. I doubt I can answer a single one of them.”

  “I would like—”

  “We haven’t seen each other in many years.”

  “Why not?”

  “Why not?” She turned her face toward Winter, but he still couldn’t see her eyes. “How should I put it? We have nothing to say to each other. It’s best not to meet up when you have nothing to say.”

  Her voice was impassive, which made it even more awful, Winter thought. There was no bitterness, only a voice that could just as well have come from the wall as from a living person.

  “What happened?”

  “Do I have to tell you that? It has nothing to do with what you’ve come here for.” Her profile was lit up by the window. “Why are you here, Inspector?”

  “I mentioned a bit about it on the telephone.”

  He explained a little more now—told her about the few leads they had and felt how tenuous it all sounded.

  “I have nothing to say about all that,” she said. “I know nothing about him.”

  “When did you last see each other?”

  She was silent, but Winter couldn’t tell whether she was considering his question.

  He repeated it.

  “I don’t know,” she answered.

  “Is it more than ten years ago?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Winter glanced toward the entrance hall, where the home helper wasn’t quick enough pulling her head back into the shadows. She’s curious, thought Winter. I would likely have done the same.

  “He’s been in prison,” Greta Bremer said. “But of course you know that.”

  Winter nodded.

  “Must you come here asking questions I can’t answer? Aren’t there any computer lists you can ask today? Don’t you have files?”

  “We have files,” Winter said. This conversation is becoming increasingly bizarre, he thought to himself. She doesn’t want to say anything more, or else she can’t.

  “I haven’t seen him in many years and I thank God for that,” she now said. She hadn’t moved.

  “Have you visited his house?” Winter asked.

  “Yes. But, like I said, that was a very long time ago.”

  “When was it?”

  “There’s no point in your asking. Ask the archives.”

  Winter got up and walked closer, but Greta Bremer remained in the same position. He touched the wheelchair cautiously. “Is this one of the newer models?”

  “What difference does it make?”

  “I noticed that you had no trouble maneuvering it on your own.”

  “It’s easier than having someone else push it. Try it out yourself and you’ll see how heavy it is to walk behind.”

  Winter stood behind the chair and released a brake. Her hair moved below him. There were strands of it on the fabric and on the thin, broad pillow she had to support her back.

  “Try pushing it around a little,” she said.

  Winter rolled it back and then two yards forward into the room.

  “Heavy, isn’t it?”

  “Very,” he said.

  “You can put me in the hall,” she said. “I assume you’re going to leave now.”

  When he left, he saw the woman from the home-help service standing in the kitchen with her back to him, bent over the sink.

  Busy on the phone, Ringmar waved to the chair in front of his desk. Winter waited, and the conversation came to a close.

  “As far as we’ve been able to determine, they are brother and sister,” Ringmar said. “The documentation checks out. She’s sixty-six years old. Too old to be a suspect.”

  “Sibling love,” Winter said.

  “What? Yeah, well. There are many fates,” Ringmar said. “Must have been an odd conversation you had.”

  “She seemed very distant.” Winter held up the copy of the slip of paper they’d found in the dress in Helene’s basement storage room. “But this is what I came in for. If I’ve read correctly, this was found on Helene when she was brought into Sahlgrenska Hospital?”

  “Yes. Meticulous beyond the call of duty, they took it and put it in an envelope with her other possessions, which consisted of little more than a pair of pants, a shirt, and a dress.”

  “And she’s had it with her throughout her life.”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “I don’t know. But I can’t let go of it, as you can see. I have it with me, here in my hand. And there’s something els
e.”

  “Yes?”

  “I’ve been thinking about this code—but let’s leave that for a moment. I’ve also looked at these lines that might just be some kind of map.” Winter leaned forward and showed Ringmar.

  “After we drove out to Bremer’s, I studied the big map in the situation room and compared it to the lines here on this one. You see? If you turn off at Landvetter township and drive parallel to the highway—on the old road—and turn left where we turned left, and assuming that the crossroads in the forest looked the same back then as they do now, then I’ll be damned if it doesn’t match up with Bremer’s house. It’s even marked, there in the upper-left corner, after the last cross.”

  “And you’ve compared it to the map?”

  “Carefully. I’ll show you later so you can see for yourself.”

  “Well. I don’t know what to say.”

  “You’d like to say that I have an active imagination. But that comes in handy sometimes.”

  Winter considered the slip of paper again. “I don’t know what to say either. But it all tallies up. The L would stand for Landvetter and the H for Härryda.”

  “And the C for cabin,” Ringmar said.

  “Maybe.”

  “A place to meet up again? Wouldn’t verbal instructions have sufficed?”

  “If you speak the same language,” Winter said. “This was probably meant to be destroyed afterward.”

  “But it didn’t turn out that way.”

  “No. Helene’s fingerprints as a child are on it. That’s conclusive.”

  “Jesus Christ.” Ringmar looked at the letters and the numbers.

  “But what about the rest?”

  “I don’t know. It could be the number of people, sums, dep—”

  “What is it?” Ringmar asked.

  “I was thinking—that 23 followed by a question mark. Could that be a departure time? The departure time for a ferry, for example?”

  “They couldn’t have been stupid enough to think they could just drive onto the ferry after committing one of Denmark’s biggest bank heists ever?”