Sun and Shadow

by Ake Edwardson

  “What was it like inside there?” Bartram said.

  “Eh?” Morelius turned right after the hotel and found himself behind a bus in Engelbrektsgatan. “Inside where?”

  “What was it like inside the apartment? Aschebergsgatan. The double murder.”

  “You’re asking me now?” They’d hardly spoken about it at all since it happened. It was like that sometimes. He hadn’t said anything. Bartram had stayed outside on the landing. “What do you want to know?”

  “What did it look like?”

  “What do you mean, look like?” He glanced toward Bartram on his right, but Bartram didn’t turn to look at him. They’d gone as far as the Scandinavium. No calls were coming over the radio. A gang of ice-hockey supporters were parading around with banners before that night’s match. “What did they look like, do you mean?”

  Bartram nodded without looking at him. Morelius didn’t say any more. They were negotiating the roundabout at Korsvägen. I’ve been around this thing eighteen million times, he thought. Over there I was in another squad car once. I lugged teenage drunks from the Liseberg pleasure gardens, and then their friends hauled them back again. I’ve bought newspapers and Snickers bars at the newsstand over there. Now we’re driving up Eklandabacken. I’m at the wheel. The car’s going straight ahead like it’s on rails.

  “What’s the matter, Simon?” Bartram had turned to look at him, then looked ahead again. “Look out, for CHRIST’S SAKE!” They were about to ram a taxi outside Panorama. Morelius stamped on the brakes. They stopped a few inches short. The cabdriver stared at them. His passenger, who’d been getting out, did the same. “Did you fall asleep?”

  Morelius reversed, overtook the taxi, and continued. Everything was the same as before. The street was still there. The car was going straight ahead. Bartram looked at him. Morelius turned down toward Mossen. The radio crackled into life, but the call was not for them.

  “The heads had been exchanged,” said Morelius.

  “What?”

  “Their heads had been exchanged. Didn’t you know that? It’s not public knowledge, but surely every cop in town knows about it.”

  “Not me. Nobody’s told me.”

  “He had her head, and she, his.”

  “Jesus.”

  “They were holding hands.”

  Morelius came to another roundabout. He checked carefully this time before proceeding.

  Patrik acknowledged that he would have to do something. He’d phoned the police and been put through to somebody called Möller, or something. He’d been asked for his own name.

  “It’s about that ... murder,” he said.

  “I thought we’d spoken to all the newspaper boys,” Möller said when he’d explained who he was.

  Now Patrik was sitting in front of a large, short-haired police officer who didn’t seem all that old, and another who did. He felt a bit like a celebrity. Important. But it wasn’t fun. When he’d arrived, the younger man had looked at him as if he were made of glass, all the way through.

  This was the guy Ria had been going on about. The one he’d seen on the tram. The skirt he was with was a babe. He seemed to be a hard case. Expensive shirt. He looked like somebody from a gangster film. They’d rented L.A. Confidential because Ria liked the cover, and he could easily have been in that. The right style.

  “So you saw somebody leaving the elevator?” Winter asked.

  “Yes.”

  “A man?”

  “Definitely”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “I caught a glimpse of him from the side as he left the building. His profile.”

  “How much of the profile?”

  “Er ... at an angle from behind. But enough to see that it was a guy.”

  “How old, would you say?” Ringmar asked.

  “Well, about your age,” said Patrik, looking at Winter.

  “All right. What happened? Start from when you entered the building.”

  Patrik told them his story. It was the same as he’d told Maria.

  They asked about dates, days, times.

  “What about his clothes?” asked Winter. “The overcoat. Long, short?”

  “Longer than short. Er ...”

  “Below the knee?”

  “I think so.”

  “What else?”

  “Eh?”

  “What else did you see besides the overcoat?”

  “That’s just it. There was something else ... but I can’t remember. I’ve been thinking about it a lot. Something else.”

  “What do you mean, something else?”

  “Not connected with the overcoat.”

  “His hair?”

  “I can’t say anything about his hair, as I said before. When I sort of got to his hair he was, like, in the shadow in the entrance hall. I can’t say anything about his hair. Not the color or anything.”

  “Would you have noticed if it had been long?” Winter asked.

  “Hmm ... maybe.” He scratched his cheek. “Yes, I think I would.”

  “Was he tall?”

  “Normal.”

  “Normal?”

  “Like, he wasn’t a dwarf. Not a seven-footer either. But I was a few steps up, and the light was bad.” He looked up at the ceiling. It had been a different ceiling. He could see the lamp in front of him. It was weak... “That’s a point! The light wasn’t as bright as usual. I noticed it at the time, and I remember now. There must be several bulbs in it and one must have been a dud, because when I came the next day it was good again.”

  “Good again? You mean the light was brighter?”

  “Yes. The caretaker guy must have replaced the bulb. Fixed it.”

  “When can he have done that?” Ringmar asked.

  “That day. The same day. I’m quite sure that the light was crappy on only one morning.”

  “You’re quite sure?”

  “Yes. Quite sure. Sort of sure.”

  “Okay.”

  “You’d better talk with the caretaker guy,” Patrik said.

  “We’ll do that,” Winter said. He could see a trace of a smile on Ringmar’s face. “Thank you. But let’s get back to the clothes. If it wasn’t the overcoat, was it his trousers? Was there something about his trousers that you recognized?”

  “I can’t remember what it was now. It was, sort of, something I reacted to. I don’t really know how to put it.”

  “Take your time, Patrik.”

  “I don’t think I’m going to remember right now.”

  “You can keep on thinking about it when you get home as well, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  “Where do you live, Patrik?” Winter asked.

  “Eh?”

  “If you deliver newspapers in the Vasaplatsen area, you must live near there as well.”

  “Kastellgatan. I live with my dad in Kastellgatan. That’s on the other side of Haga.”

  ‘All right. Do you think you’d recognize this man if you saw him again?“

  Patrik shrugged. “I mean, the light was a bit odd. And I saw him from behind. I’m not sure.”

  “But it wasn’t somebody you’d seen before?”

  “What do you mean? Somebody I’d seen before. On the stairs?”

  “We can start with that. Somebody you’ve seen on the stairs when you’ve been delivering papers.”

  “Not that I can remember. Thing is, I hardly ever see anyone there.”

  “Hmm. Maybe we’ll ask you to help us to check everybody who lives there. So that we’ll know if it was one of them.”

  ‘All right ...“

  “Then there is the question of whether you might have seen him before,” Winter said. “Somewhere else, that is. Not in the building or on the stairs. Some other place, some other occasion.”

  “Yes, I’m with you.”

  “Think about that.”

  Patrik was already thinking. Thinking, thinking. He looked at the police officers who were asking all the questions. The older
one seemed as if he were asleep, but he’d suddenly turn his head and look out of the window at the bare branches and blue sky outside. The guy had a profile ... holy ... was it the pro—

  “It might be the profile,” Patrik said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The profile. That business about something being familiar. It might have been the profile that I might have recognized. That I’d seen before. The head.”

  “You’re making progress all the time, Patrik.” The younger cop smiled. “You’ve remembered quite a few things while we’ve been sitting here.”

  “Brick wall time now, though, I think.”

  “Maybe for now,” said Winter. “But keep thinking when you get home, as we discussed.”

  “Of course.”

  “One more thing,” Ringmar said. “Didn’t you hear the music coming from the apartment when you pushed the newspaper through the letter box?”

  “Of course. As I told the caretaker.”

  “Say that again?!” Winter said.

  “It was me who told him about it. About the metal.”

  Winter looked at Ringmar, who made a resigned gesture. They hadn’t had a report about that. Hadn’t anybody checked with the newspaper boy?

  “Had you been hearing it for a long time?” asked Winter. “When you were delivering the papers?”

  “A few days. I can’t remember exactly how many.” He turned to Winter. “I’ll have to think about that.”

  “Did you recognize it?” asked Winter. “The music?”

  “Not really. I mean, it sounds a bit different when it’s been traveling through the hall and the mail slot and all that shit. Sort of.”

  “You said ‘Not really’ What do you mean by that?”

  “Well, it’s obviously death metal, or black. But it’s not my thing.”

  “We think it might be a Canadian group called Sacrament,” Winter said. “Are you familiar with them?”

  “Sacrament? Never heard of ‘em.”

  “Daughter of Habakkuk. That’s what the disc is called. Does that sound familiar?”

  “No. But I have a few friends who are, like, metal nerds. Or were, at junior school. Last year. They go to another school now and, well ...”

  “But this is their ... thing?”

  “Could be. I don’t know about this particular disc, but black metal is what they do. One of them plays, in fact. Drums.” For the first time Patrik took a sip of water from the glass in front of him. He suddenly felt extremely thirsty. He was talking too much. Didn’t understand why. It was as if he had to. “Should I check with them? What did you say the band was called? Sacrament?”

  26

  “Why would the caretaker keep quiet about that?” Winter said.

  “Is it true?” Ringmar said.

  “That the kid heard the music first? I think so.”

  “Some people like to claim all the glory. Perhaps the caretaker thought there would be a reward.”

  “Is there anything else he’s seen that he hasn’t mentioned?”

  “You mean that he’s keeping something from us?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s a good point.”

  “We’d better talk to him again.”

  “The kid seems sharp,” Ringmar said.

  “He knows something important.”

  “You think so?”

  “I’m sure of it. When he remembers what it is it will be a real help to us.” Winter lit a Corps and squinted at the smoke. He took another drag, exhaled, and squinted again. “I’ve been thinking about the writing on the wall,” he said. ‘And about the expression, ’The writing’s on the wall.‘ Meaning something like, you can’t avoid seeing what is obvious, that it’s there for anybody to understand. The writing’s on the wall. Is this some kind of double message we’ve been sent? Or a sort of subtext? Is the writing trying to tell us that we might have the answer under our very noses? Part of the answer, at least? I don’t know. But maybe the word ’wall’ is just that: it’s saying that the writing’s on the wall. That the word in itself isn’t significant. More like an arrow pointing in another direction. Do you follow me, Bertil?“

  “I’m not sure. Go on.”

  “In other words, that we don’t need to worry about the message itself, but rather the fact that it’s there.”

  “That the solution is closer to hand than we think?”

  “Yes. That there’s something close at hand that we can’t see.”

  Ringmar rubbed his eyes and ran his hand over his forehead. He pictured the wall in the flat, red letters on a white background. Like a headline. A rubric.

  “I’ve been thinking of it as a sort of rubric as well,” he said, putting his hand down again. “Rubric in the sense of a heading. So the most important thing is, what follows?”

  “Hmm.”

  “Did you know that the word ‘rubric’ comes originally from the Latin ’rubrica,‘ meaning red?”

  “No. Is that so?”

  “Jonas told me that over the weekend. He asked me if I knew what a rubric actually was, and he explained it to me.”

  “He’s studying journalism, isn’t he?”

  “In his first term at the College of Journalism,” Ringmar said, sounding almost proud of his son.

  “Not exactly a chip off the old block, eh?” said Winter. “What else did he say about the origin of the word?”

  “Rubrica, you mean? Decisions made by the Roman senate started being publicized in 59 B.C. by messages on plaster tablets being nailed up in public places,” said Ringmar, as if delivering a lecture. “The tablets were called Acta Senatus and had rubrics in red.”

  “Are you suggesting there might be a connection?”

  Ringmar threw out his arms.

  “It was just a thought.”

  “So the murderer knows about Latin rubrics? Should we go looking for him at the College of Journalism? Or is he in fact a journalist? That’s all right with me.”

  “It was just a thought, as I said.”

  “Interesting,” Winter said. He took another drag at his Corps, studied the smoke again. Maybe this was one of his last cigarillos. There was every reason for him to give up now, before the first of April, and get the blissful but strong aromas out of the apartment and his clothes. “But we’re getting nowhere with this. Yet. And, of course, it could be that it means nothing at all.”

  “What?”

  “That he just wrote whatever came into his head. The first thing he thought of. Just to confuse us.”

  “Intentional misinformation? Yes, that would be the worst possible answer. There’d be nothing at all to go on then. That could mean we were dealing with somebody who enjoyed doing it.”

  “Could be. Rather than someone looking for help.”

  “Do you believe that as well?”

  “That the message is a cry for help? Yes. Otherwise we’re lost.”

  “We’re not going to clear this up on our own,” Ringmar said.

  “When did we ever?” said Winter.

  “Will it happen again?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “This isn’t a serial murderer. He might be a psychopath, but I doubt that. Presumably not a psychopath. Crazy in a different way. And not a serial murderer.”

  “So it’s something personal.”

  “I don’t know, of course. But I suspect the answer is somewhere in the victims’ past. In the past of both, or hers, or his. Yes. Personal in that sense.”

  Ringmar sighed audibly.

  “We can’t go through every bit of paper, every memory, in Västerås and Kungsbacka.”

  “We’re not on our own. We have colleagues.”

  “It takes years to trace a person’s past. All the relationships he’s had since birth. Any one could be crucial. Any single person he’s come up against could be the one we’re looking for. Anybody at all.”

  “We’ll have to start eliminating.”

  “That work has already starte
d,” Ringmar said without a smile.

  “Perhaps it’s personal in the sense that the two victims are representatives for somebody else,” Winter said. “Symbols. Possibly stand-ins. They stand for something. A lifestyle. Or something as banal as their appearance. Both of them, or just him or her.”

  “Are you thinking of the heads?”

  “No, not in this context. But, of course, that is also an outrageous message. Perhaps. A symbol of something. I don’t dare speculate about that. We need help, as I said.”

  Patrik was sitting in his room with earphones on and didn’t hear his father come in behind him to pull them off. The music was hissing out of the earphones like a snake, wriggling its way over the floor among the cables.

  “I’ve been calling you for hours!”

  “I didn’t hear you.”

  “Well of course you didn‘t, when you’re listening to that crap.”

  Patrik could smell the alcohol, and saw his father stumble as he stepped back from the bed, then sit down awkwardly.

  “What do you want?” said Patrik, trying to reach the earphones from the bed. They were too far away. He stood up and was about to pick them up when his father grabbed him by the arm.

  “Leave them where they are. I want to talk to you.”

  “What about?”

  “Just a minute, there’s something I have to do.”

  His father got up and left the room. Patrik could hear him unscrewing the bottle top. He came back. The smell of liquor was even stronger than before. He sat down on the bed.

  “She’s moving in,” he said.

  “Eh?”

  His father looked at him. Several blood vessels had burst in one of his eyes. You could see it clearly when he looked to one side.

  “Ulla. You know. Her I’ve been ... keeping company with for a while.”

  Patrik knew who Ulla was. He’d seen her twice, and that was two times too many. The first time his father had dragged her in over the threshold, and the second time it was the other way around, although it wasn’t easy to see who was dragging whom. Ulla. She had leaned over him when she was there the second time, when the old man was snoring like a pig on the living room sofa where she’d dumped him, and he thought he was going to be sick when she bent down. She’d mumbled something, but he’d wriggled out from underneath her and she’d collapsed into his bed.