Sun and Shadow

by Ake Edwardson

  He put on the earphones of his Walkman and pressed PLAY. Just a few minutes. He saw Bartram moving his lips and switched the music off again.

  “What?”

  “I can hear it plain as day.”

  “Really.”

  “Sounds awful.”

  Patrik had asked to speak to the short-haired younger policeman, and Winter took the call immediately after he had come back to his office from Mölndal.

  “Hello?”

  “Er ... hello ... Patrik Strömblad here ...”

  Winter hadn’t recognized his voice. There was something gravelly about it.

  “Hello, Patrik.”

  “Well ... that CD. Sacrament.”

  “Yes?”

  “Jimmo has it. My friend Jimmo ...”

  Bergenhem had searched the attic at Desdemona in vain. But in the end they were receiving help from another quarter.

  “He has that exact disc? Daughter of Habu ... whatever.”

  “That exact one, yes,” Patrik said. “He could go straight to it. You can buy it chea ... There are bett ...”

  His voice had become inaudible.

  “What?”

  “You can buy it cheap.”

  Winter couldn’t help giving a little laugh.

  “Okay! Where is it?”

  “I have it here.” Patrik seemed to snort into the receiver. “An ugly cover.” His voice was unclear again, as if he were chewing something.

  “Can you come here with it?” Winter asked. “Now?”

  “Just the cover?”

  “Don’t joke with me, Patrik.”

  “I wasn’t joking.” It didn’t sound as if he was joking.

  “Can you be here in half an hour?” Winter checked the time. ‘Aren’t you at school?“

  “No ...”

  “Can you come here to the police station? Or we can meet in town.”

  “Can’t we do it tomorrow?”

  “Why?”

  “I’m ... I don’t know if I ...”

  “What’s the matter, Patrik?”

  “Er ... all right, I’ll come.”

  Winter put down the phone and looked at the anonymous cassette in one of the pigeonholes on his desk. He put it into the stereo and played the first tune at high volume, took out the photographs again but only looked at the first two. He picked up the phone and rang Beier, but his colleague in forensics was out. Winter examined one of the photographs again, and made a note.

  29

  It was Halders, of all people, who found the connection. He hadn’t said anything at the meeting. He found it later, during the afternoon, and marched in to Winter without even knocking on the door. He was carrying a black book.

  “About that Habakkuk,” he said. “The guy who’s the father of the daughter.”

  “Yes, I know who you mean,” Winter said, looking up from his latest notes.

  “He was a prophet. He has his own book in the Bible.” Halders held up the Bible. “A short one.”

  The Old Testament, Winter thought. The canonical books. Of course. They ought to have thought of that sooner. They were too profane.

  “Well done, Fredrik.”

  “There was something in the back of my mind. When I realized what it was, I dashed down to the library, and there was his name. The prophet Habakkuk, in between Nahum and Zephaniah.” Halders held up the Bible again. “I know what made me think of it. I haven’t managed to dig out the old Bible I got when I was confirmed, but I’m sure the vicar wrote some reference or other on the flyleaf to Habakkuk.”

  “How could you remember that?”

  “And then forget it?”

  “Remember, I said.”

  “I suppose it was the name, because it was so unusual. A friend said it was a misprint for ‘Haveacock,’” Halders looked at the book in his hand. “That was pretty irreverent.” He looked at Winter again. “I must have looked up the text because I was curious. The same as now.”

  Winter took the book from Halders. It was the 1995 version. Winter looked up the Book of Habakkuk and started reading. The clergyman who prepared Halders for confirmation must have been a bit of a prophet himself. The text was about the work of the crime squad. The first chapter went:

  “I am Habakkuk the prophet. And this is the message that the LORD gave me.

  “Our LORD, how long must I beg for your help before you listen? How long before you save us from all this violence?

  “Why do you make me watch such terrible injustice? Why do you allow violence, lawlessness, crime, and cruelty to spread everywhere?

  “Laws cannot be enforced; justice is always the loser; criminals crowd out honest people and twist the laws around.”

  “Therefore the law is paralyzed, and justice never prevails. The wicked hem in the righteous, so that justice is perverted.

  “‘Criminals twist the laws around.’ ‘Why do you make me watch such terrible injustice?”’ Winter read the beginning of the first chapter again. He had spent a lot of time dealing with injustice and evil, but he had started to think differently—or perhaps he’d thought this way from the very beginning: evil was not some kind of creature in the underworld. Evil was people, actions. Evil was injustice. It arose from cruelty. It was caused by violence.

  “‘Laws cannot be enforced.’”

  Like hell they can‘t! He closed the holy book with a bang and put it on his desk. It could be a coincidence, but he didn’t believe in coincidences. If the murderer chose that particular music and a CD with that particular title, there was a reason. They would soon have the disc with its cover, and the Bible, and they would read it all.

  Why? Did the murderer want to tell us that the world is evil? That he had seen the writing on the wall? Did he want to tell us that his world was evil? The murderer’s world? Or Winter’s world? The human world. Were they the same?

  The text. He was waiting for Patrik. More reading to come. The men in black at Desdemona had said that black metal was meaningless without the words, but they were words that nobody could pick up just by listening.

  Halders had left the door open, and Winter saw Patrik outside accompanied by Möllerström, who ushered him into Winter’s office and left. Winter stood up. Patrik came to his desk.

  “What’s happened to you?”

  “What do you mean?” Patrik said. “It’s nothing.”

  “That’s very nasty bruising you’ve got.”

  Patrik felt his cheekbone with his right hand, under his right ear.

  “It’s nothing. I slipped as I was getting off the bus.”

  “Slipped when you were getting off the bus? Don’t talk such crap,” said Winter, walking around his desk and peering at Patrik’s face. “Have you been to the hospital with that?”

  “No.”

  “You might have broken your zygomatic bone.” Winter resisted a temptation to touch the boy’s cheek. “Will you let me feel it?”

  “Are you a doctor as well?”

  “Let me feel it.” He had hardly touched it before Patrik flinched in pain. “Does it hurt as much as that?”

  Patrik said something he couldn’t understand. The boy was hanging his head.

  “What did you say? I couldn’t hear.

  “It was ... the bus.”

  “No,” Winter said. “Somebody’s been hitting you.” Patrik looked up at him. The bruise was beginning to look like an irregular birth-mark. His face seemed to be lopsided. “This happened recently.”

  Patrik didn’t respond. He looked as if he wanted to leave. He had a bag in his left hand.

  “Who was it?” Winter asked. “Somebody at school?”

  Patrik shook his head. Winter could see his shoulders starting to twitch. I shouldn’t scare him. He has tears in his eyes. Now he’s crying. He’s only a kid.

  Patrik looked down and sobbed silently. Winter held his shoulders, which had started to shake. Patrik was standing with his back to the open door and Ringmar appeared in the doorway. Winter signaled with his head and Ringmar
backed out.

  “It’s all right, Patrik, all right.”

  The boy sniffled, then pulled himself away. He looked vulnerable, as if on the run.

  “Sit down, Patrik.”

  He flopped down onto the chair. Winter squatted down a couple of feet away.

  “It happened at home, didn’t it?”

  Patrik didn’t answer, didn’t nod, sniffed, looked anywhere but at Winter.

  “We won’t worry about that now, but you should have this looked at,” Winter said. He went to Ringmar’s office. “Can you arrange for a squad car to get the kid to the hospital?”

  “When?”

  ‘As soon as you can.“

  When Winter went back Patrik was just a little head barely visible over the chair back. Winter sat down at his desk. Patrik’s face was twitching, and Winter could see that it hurt to cry. Winter fetched him a glass of water and Patrik took a sip. He sniffled again, put down the glass, and gestured to the bag he’d put on Winter’s desk.

  “Don’t you want it?”

  “Of course,” Winter said, pulling it toward him and taking out the CD. “You’ve done a great job, Patrik.”

  “Sacrament,” Patrik said, his voice steadier now. He ran his hand over his eyes. “There you have it. The Daughter disc.”

  “What’s the name of your friend?”

  “Jimmo.”

  “How did he get ahold of it?”

  “Secondhand in Haga, I think it was. I can’t remember which shop it was. He—”

  “Never mind, we’ll look into that later. Now let’s ...”

  Winter’s desk phone rang.

  “There are a couple of officers waiting outside,” Ringmar said.

  “Okay, thanks.” Winter looked at Patrik. “I want you to get this looked at. It’s very important, as I think you realize. We’ll give you a lift to the hospital, then we can chat a bit more. All right?”

  “I don’t know ...”

  “You don’t need to say who hit you. I just want you to have it seen to.” Winter stood up. “We need the people working on this case to be in top condition, and you’re one of them. All right?” He held out his hand to Patrik, as if to give him support. “Okay?”

  “Okay,” said Patrik, getting to his feet.

  “I’ll take good care of the disc,” said Winter, putting it in the inside pocket of his jacket. It was wide, Italian. The Italians made voluminous inside pockets in some of their jackets.

  They took the elevator down. It was snowing again by the time they came to the entrance, and the squad car that had been waiting for them drove up. The driver got out and walked around the car. Winter raised his hand in greeting.

  “Hello, Simon.”

  “Hi, Erik.”

  “Haven’t seen you. How are things at Lorensberg?”

  “The usual. We keep an eye on where you live.”

  “I think I saw you there the other day. In Vasagatan.”

  “That’s on our patrol route.”

  Winter looked down. Morelius’s colleague rolled down his window and introduced himself: “Bartram.” Winter nodded.

  “Bartram hasn’t been in Gothenburg long,” Morelius said.

  “I’ve seen him around,” Winter said. “With you, in fact.” He turned to Morelius. “I’d be grateful if you could take this kid to the ER.”

  “Bertil Ringmar told us about it,” said Morelius. He turned to Patrik, who looked as if he were ready to run.

  “Hi, Patrik.”

  “Do you know each other?” Winter asked.

  “Only in passing,” said Bartram “But we’ve never seen him without Maria.” He turned awkwardly in the passenger seat and looked up at Patrik. “Where is she now?”

  “Maria?” Winter asked.

  “Hanne’s daughter. The vicar,” Morelius said.

  “Hanne Ostergaard?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can we go now?” Patrik asked.

  Winter nodded without asking any more questions. The boy needed to see a doctor.

  Patrik got into the back and the car drove off. Winter had his home number. He wondered briefly what must be going on there. Then he thought of Hanne Ostergaard for the first time in ages, and he felt the CD hitting against his rib and he thought about the music.

  Patrik closed his eyes. His cheek and eye were pounding, more now than before. The cops didn’t say a word. It had grown darker, and was nearly black outside. The pair in the front seats became lighter and darker as they passed the streetlights. Lighter. Darker. They seemed to be sitting diagonally opposite one another. What he could see most of was the backs of their heads. They weren’t wearing hats. It got lighter again as they passed Slottsskogen. He dosed his eyes, then looked again. He could still see the profiles of the men in front of him, and still nobody spoke. He closed his eyes, looked. He was back on the stairs that morning. He was here. On the stairs. And here. His cheek started hurting. He was sweating, he felt as if he were running up the stairs, carrying the newspapers. Stopped, looked. Somebody went out through the front door, into the darkness out of the light. The profile.

  Morelius stopped outside the ER and turned around.

  “Here we are, Patrik.”

  The boy said nothing. Didn’t move. Bartram turned around to look at him.

  “Patrik?”

  “He’s dozed off,” Morelius said.

  Winter listened to the CD on his portable Panasonic, which was on the floor in front of the window. First track, second track. He changed to the cassette, then back again. They were the same so far. He listened to the whole thing and compared them. A challenge.

  The text was a fold-out rather than a booklet. The cover itself was brown and black, a clumsy drawing of a brown sea and black cliffs and a horizon that melted into the night and a black sky, with bright, tiny stars. It said “Sacrament” at the bottom, in a Gothic typeface that Winter recognized from the magazines and catalogs he’d leafed through.

  There was also a logo in the top left-hand corner, maybe a silver bat, or a prehistoric bird.

  The leaflet was made up of four pages, three of the pictures depicted men who could be members of the band. Or they could be any metal fan who happened to be passing, he thought. The three people could be Nordberg and Sverker and any of the other staff at Desdemona: black sweaters and trousers, bright yellow patterns, studs like the bright stars in the black sky, black waist-length hair, extremely pale faces. But there were some extra features here: bare tree trunks, weapons such as swords and maces. Every character had a different sky: orange, green or dark blue.

  He couldn’t see any sign of a daughter, nor a prophet. Nor a cross, unless the mace one of the men was holding could be interpreted as a cross together with one of the trees.

  The last page comprised white text on a black background. A lot of text, most of it very small and densely packed. As if it had intentionally been made unreadable, Winter thought.

  But he was going to read it. He had his reading glasses with him. He’d had to face up to that reality this last year.

  The disc was recorded in the Machine Room, Edmonton. The winter of 1995. All the songs had been written by the Masters of Horrid Nuclear Hate-filled Blackness.

  He started reading the piece in the top left, the first song. The narrator was walking through a forest that could have been the one he’d seen on page two of the leaflet.

  He played the first track again, and tried to follow. He listened as he read. Blood trickles to the floor. This woman has broken a sacred bond. The black angel. This woman has deserted me and I must take revenge.

  Winter switched off the music and continued reading. He found himself sinking into a sea of blood. Black galaxies of hatred. Stars that exploded in the underworld and created demons who wandered through demilitarized zones on the hunt for victims. Perhaps it contained some kind of humor, but it was difficult to see that after what had happened in that room.

  30

  Dusk was approaching again. The buildings on the ot
her side of the river were yellow and red in the beams of winter sun. The sun goes away just when it’s at its best, thought Winter, and left his office, walked along empty corridors and staircases to forensics.

  Beier was at his desk, waiting for him. He was wearing a tie and a white shirt. He was generally smartly dressed. Winter sat down.

  “The sperm is Valker‘s,” Beier said.

  Winter nodded. They had found traces of sperm on the sofa the couple had been sitting on.

  “But not exclusively,” said Beier. “There was sperm from two or three other men as well. Two, I think.” He tapped a folder on his desk. “It’s all in here. Several stains from several occasions. From at least five months ago, and at various times later.” He picked up the folder and handed it to Winter. “But the latest is Valker’s own.”

  “Could it have been from the night of the murder?”

  “Yes.”

  “But nothing from anybody else? At that time?”

  “No.”

  “There could have been several people in the apartment on that night,” Winter said.

  “Obviously,” Beier said. “We have about ten fingerprints from various people that are not in any of our registers. But there again, fingerprints are not unusual in an apartment or a house. People come and go.”

  “But not all of them leave sperm behind.”

  “No.” Beier stood up when the coffee arrived. He always gave Winter coffee whenever he visited his office. Beier took the tray from the secretary, put it on his desk, and handed a cup to Winter.

  Winter wondered briefly how Beier could persuade the girl to come in with a tray of coffee. Perhaps they had an agreement. Next time it would be Beier’s turn to go around with the tray. Beier added milk and sugar and looked up. “All the secretions we’ve found were on that sofa. Or adjacent to it.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “What does it mean? That things happened on the sofa and adjacent to it.”

  “Nothing from the woman?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “Hers? And two others?”

  Beier nodded.