“Three men and three women,” Winter said.
“Three couples.”
“We have three couples in the investigation,” Winter said.
“I know.”
“So all we need is more sperm and secretions that we can compare.”
“Good luck,” said Beier.
“Am I letting my imagination run away with me?”
“I don’t know.”
“They know something,” said Winter.
“What do you mean?”
“I spoke to the Martells. Djanali and Halders spoke to the others. The Elfvegrens. There was something behind what they said, something implied but not spelled out. With both couples.”
“It’s called the subtext,” Beier said. “But it doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with what happened at the Valkers’ place.”
“No. I don’t know if the Martells are mixed up in the murder in any way. I don’t think anything. But we need to put more pressure on them. And the Elfvegrens. I’ll drive out to Järnbrott tomorrow.” Winter stood up, folder in hand. “There’s one other thing, by the way. I haven’t seen the complete list of objects in the room.”
“You haven’t? That’s also in the folder, of course.” Beier looked at Winter. “There might be a few other things to add.”
“Were there any newspapers or magazines?”
“You must be joking. The hall was full of old copies of Göteborgs Posten.”
“I mean in addition to those.”
“Not many. Is there anything specific you have in mind?”
“I don’t know,” Winter said.
He was reading Sacrament’s texts. The hero in song number three flew into space imprisoned in his own hatred. There was a lot about hatred, of oneself and others.
This is the most idiotic load of old crap I’ve ever read, thought Winter.
They’re teasing us.
Here is the dream I live with, this is my plan. To kill mankind and destroy the universe.
A big task that others have tried before.
Most of the text was in the first person. Whoever it was rarely stayed on earth. Just a short visit to Manhattan. A voyage on the Red Sea. A voyage on the Black Sea. Otherwise it was alien worlds.
This could keep a dozen psychologists going for years, Winter thought. But it’s not much good to us. I can ask the guys at Desdemona if this is any different from other lyrics in the genre.
He noticed several references to walls, a few in every song. Wall of Hate. Wall of Blood. Wall of Corpses. Wall of Horrors. It became tedious after a while, worn, like flaking wallpaper.
He took off his reading glasses and examined them. The lenses seemed to have been dirtied by the words, covered by a thin layer of translucent soot.
His mobile phone rang in the inside pocket of his jacket. The display showed his mother’s number in Nueva Andalucia. Winter felt a sudden shooting pain in his chest.
“Hello, Mom.”
“Hello, Erik. I can never get used to the idea that the person I’m calling can see my number.”
“Makes you wonder why some people never answer, eh?”
“You always answer, Erik.”
“Of course! How are things?”
“I’m taking it a day at a time, as they say. But it’s going ... quite well. I visit the grave almost every day. It’s a sort of outing. You can see the sea from there.”
“It’s an attractive place for a grave.”
“It’s so lovely with the mountain and the sea. He’s gone to a beautiful place, at least.”
“Yes.”
“And now Christmas is approaching. I suppose serious Christmas shopping is getting under way now?”
“I don’t honestly know. Not for me it isn‘t, at least.”
“I can understand that. Another murder. It’s terrible. And just when you got back home from here.” There was a pause and Winter could hear the sound of ice cubes in a cocktail glass of Tanqueray and tonic.
“I read about it in GP. Awful. And only a few doors away from where you live.”
“Where I live isn’t a crime-free zone, Mother.”
“I was thinking mainly about Angela. She must be wondering what kind of a place she’s landed in.”
“She is.”
“No, that was a silly thing for me to say. How’s she doing?”
“Everything’s fine.”
“Have you felt any kicks yet?”
“Yes.”
“What was it like? Tell me!”
“It was ... fantastic. A very special experience.”
“I remember when you ... when I ...” and Winter heard her voice break and the sound of ice cubes rattling next to the receiver. “I’m sorry, Erik. I was thinking about when you ... and Dad ...” and her voice broke again, more rattling, and then she was back. “It was like you say. A ... very special experience. When we felt Lotta and when we felt your ... kicks.”
“You can feel for yourself when you come.”
“Yes, well ...”
“What’s the matter?”
“Well, er ...”
“Don’t say you’re not coming home.”
“I seem to feel more unsure the closer it gets ...”
“It’s nothing to hesitate about. We’re looking forward to seeing you. Think about Lotta and Bim and Kristina. And Angela. And me. But maybe most of all think about yourself.”
“It might be better for me to stay here. I mean, you have your own life to lead.”
This is really what you might call a role reversal, Winter thought. Before, she was the one urging us to come to Spain, and now it’s us urging her to come to Sweden.
“Everything’s ready,” he said. We’ve bought the Tanqueray, he thought. “You have to come.”
“Yes, well ... I want to.”
“I’m expecting you at the airport on December 23.”
“As long as it’s not snowing.”
“The snows will have thawed or been washed away by rain before then.”
“Give my love to Angela.”
“Of course.”
“To both of them.”
“Naturally”
“Have you got a name? For the baby?”
“Lots of them.”
It was thawing the next morning. The air looked heavy, as if it had been hung up like a curtain as the night drew to a close. Winter stood in his boxer shorts, cup in hand, listening to Angela’s Springsteen while she was in the bathroom. Happy, happy in your arms.
He was seldom at home as late in the morning as this. There was less traffic now than at the time he usually drove to work.
Angela emerged from the bathroom and headed for the hall.
“We have to be there in half an hour,” she shouted.
“I’m ready” Winter said.
“What?”
“I’m nearly ready” he yelled, and took his empty cup to the kitchen before heading for the bathroom.
It wasn’t raining, but the air was just as damp as it had appeared to be from the window.
“Let’s walk,” Angela had said on the way down in the elevator.
“It’s wet.”
“I need a walk.”
It was the first time for him. He felt nervous.
It was only a ten-minute walk to the Social Services Clinic. Thin sheets of ice were floating down the canal. A car passed and splashed slush onto Angela’s coat. Winter memorized the license plate number.
“Do you want us to find the driver?” he asked.
“Yes,” Angela said, who was trying to brush off the dirty liquid. “Put him behind bars.”
They hung up their coats and waited in a room with two other women. Winter was the only man. He leafed through a women’s magazine he’d never heard of before while Angela went off with the nurse to have samples taken. Winter read about why women in Stockholm preferred to stay single. That’s not the case in Gothenburg, he thought. This isn’t a place for singles anymore.
Angela came back.
“What samples did they take?” he asked.
“Blood tests. Hemoglobin, blood group, blood sugar.”
“Couldn’t you have done that yourself? At home?”
“Stop it now.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I. They did HIV and rubella, in the tenth week. When I first registered.”
“What’s rubella?”
“German measles.”
Winter wondered what it had to do with the Germans. The Berlin Wall. The writing on the wall ...
‘Are you nervous, Erik?“
“What do you mean?”
“You sound as if you are.” A woman opened a door and beckoned to them. “It’s our turn now.”
They followed the woman through the door. She ushered them into a smallish room with a desk and two comfortable-looking chairs.
The woman was normally dressed. No white coat, no uniform, Winter thought. He shook the hand she offered him.
“My name’s Elise Bergdorff. I’m a midwife, as I’m sure you know. Welcome! I’m glad you could come.”
Winter introduced himself and sat down.
Angela and the midwife talked about the previous couple of weeks. It only took Winter a few seconds to realize that there was an understanding between the two women. Angela felt secure. He relaxed, listened, made the occasional contribution.
Time for the ultrasound. Angela lay down on a hospital bed, the midwife applied a translucent gel to her stomach, and held up a microphone connected to a machine.
“What’s that?” Winter asked. Does it matter? he wondered. I’m just so used to asking questions.
“It’s a Sonicaid. For measuring ultrasound waves.” She held the microphone against Angela’s blue stomach with its slightly convex mound.
Winter could hear the sound of a heart beating. Actually hear it! It was beating fast, twice the speed of an adult’s. It filled the whole room, all around him. Angela took hold of his hand. He shut every other thought out of his mind, simply listened.
31
Patrik closed the refrigerator door, but it was opened again immediately by one of his father’s friends who had brought with him from the living room an acrid smell of smoke and liquor.
“I had a bottle of Marinella here that should be cold and tasty by now,” he said, looking at Patrik. “Have you stolen it?” He burst out laughing. His eyes were porcelain: frigid, gleaming. Before long they’ll sink back into his skull and he’ll end up on the floor, thought Patrik. Maybe the old man will end up on top of him.
Pelle Plutt slammed the fridge door shut. “WHERE’S MY ‘NELLA?!” he screamed into the living room, where the party was going with a bang. They’d been struggling to get to where they were now, but from here on in it was downhill all the way. Pelle Plutt looked at Patrik. He was only twenty-five, but could have been the old man’s brother. He still had all his hair, but that was all he still had.
“What have you done there?” he said, screwing up his eyes and pointing at Patrik’s face. “That was a king-size wallop if ever I saw one.”
“It’s nothing.”
“You had it seen to?”
“Yes.”
“It’ll go away, but it’ll be black and blue for a while,” said Pelle Plutt, opening the fridge door again and rummaging around inside. A tub of margarine fell out onto the floor. “Here’s the fucking nectar!” He held up the bottle, half full of the yellowish-red liquid.
One of these days I’ll dilute it with piss. Fifty percent piss and he won’t notice a thing. Patrik smiled at Pelle Plutt. Piss, you bastard.
“This looks like your face,” said Pelle Plutt, gaping at the blue label. He looked at Patrik. “Only joking.” He looked at the bottle again, then back at Patrik. “Would you like a drop?”
“No, thanks.” Patrik went into the hall and put on his jacket and his shoes, which were very wet inside. You could put newspaper in them when you took them off, to dry them, but it was a long time since he’d done that. He had a vague memory of it. Maybe it was his mum, when he was very young.
Some woman started singing in the living room. His father laughed, and Patrik closed the door quietly behind him.
Maria was sitting with a cup of hot chocolate on the table in front of her when he arrived at Java.
“It’s getting worse,” she said.
“It’ll get better eventually”
“Was anything broken?”
“No.”
“You ought to turn in that bastard.”
“That’s what the police say as well,” he said, taking off his jacket and hanging it on the back of his chair. “Your mom’s pal, Winter.”
“He’s not exactly her pal.”
“Well, him, anyway” He eyed her cup.
“Would you like one?”
“Chocolate? No, thanks. I had enough at your place.”
“Four cups.” She smiled. “Mom figured you’d get into the Guinness Book of Records.”
“I’ll order a coffee,” he said, getting up.
“You haven’t gotten any further with what you saw on the stairs?” she asked when he came back.
“I’m not sure.”
He said hello to somebody walking past. The cafe was full of young kids smoking and drinking coffee or tea or hot chocolate. There were books everywhere. Patrik himself used to come here with his school-books when he really should have been at school with them on his desk.
“You look half dead,” she said. ‘And it’s not just your swelling.“
“Thanks very much.”
“I’d never be able to start delivering papers at four in the morning.”
“Five. I get up at four.”
“Damn early”
“You get used to it.”
“You can borrow from me if you’re short of cash.”
“From you? Hasn’t your mom cut off the supply?”
“I have a bit.”
“So do I,” he said. “I don’t need anybody to help me.”
Winter had asked Hanne Ostergaard to call in the next time she came to the “police palace” at Ernst Fontell’s Square. That was today. She knocked on his door and went in.
“Hello, Erik.”
“Hi, Hanne. Thanks for coming.”
“I was in the building, after all.”
“Please sit down. Would you like a cup of coffee?”
“No, thank you.” She sat down on the visitor’s chair. Winter was in a short-sleeved shirt and suspenders. He’d draped his tie over his jacket, which was on a coat hanger by the side of the sink. His hair was shorter than when she’d last seen him. He was slimmer. His face was narrower than she remembered it, more sharply outlined. It was softened somewhat by the thin-framed glasses he was wearing. If she knew Erik Winter they wouldn’t be Giorgio Armani spectacles. Nothing as simple as that.
“I see you’re wearing glasses.”
“Reading glasses. We’re all getting older.”
“Nice. They’re not Armani, are they?”
“Er ... no, they’re ...” He took them off and peered at the inside of one of the earpieces. “Air Titanium.” He looked at her. “Is that one of your special interests?”
“Spectacle frames?” She gave a little laugh. “No. I don’t have time for hobbies like that.”
He put his glasses on the desk. She waited for him to say something.
“How are things otherwise?”
“Otherwise? What do you mean? When I’m not in this building?” She crossed her legs. “That’s a good question.”
“Well ...”
“Come to the point. You want to know about me and my daughter.”
“What makes you think that?”
“You know perfectly well.”
“Know what, Hanne?”
“Stop it, Erik. Everybody here in the police station must know that my daughter was taken into custody by some of your colleagues when she was drunk. Drunk and disorderly is what the crime is called, if I’m not mistaken?”
>
“Give it up, Hanne. Yes, I know about it. No, that wasn’t why I wanted to talk to you.”
“You’re welcome to do so.”
“What?”
“You’re welcome to ask me how things are ... after that incident.”
“How are things?”
“Better now,” she said, and smiled. “Maria has been behaving herself since then.” It sounded as if she let out a sigh. “As far as I know, that is.”
“No doubt it taught her a lesson, for want of a better way of putting it.” He put on his glasses again. “It’s only human, after all.”
“Yes. We are poor, sinful humans. That’s what I try to tell the Social Services,” she said.
“Social Services?”
“There’s always an inquiry when something like that happens.”
“Regard it as a formality.”
“You don’t have any children, I can tell that.”
“Not yet.”
“Yes, I’ve heard. Terrific. Congratulations. And pass them on to Angela.”
“Thank you. But you really must regard all that business as a formality.”
‘As long as it doesn’t happen again.“
Winter didn’t know what to say.
“There’s no guarantee that it won’t happen again, is there?” she said.
“Er...”
“It would be me, in that case. I’d be the guarantee. But I’ve obviously failed.”
“That’s a lot of crap, if you’ll pardon the expression, Hanne.” He repeated the comment but not the apology: ‘A lot of crap.“
“I hope so.”
“But there are cases.”
“What do you mean?”
“Maria has a friend by the name of Patrik.”
“Yes ... how do you know that?”
“I was told by my colleagues who met Maria. It’s nothing special. They spend a lot of time wandering around the center of town and all that. But what I’m interested in is Patrik, who we’ve been speaking to because he delivers newspapers in the building where those murders took place. You’ve no doubt read about it in the papers.”
She nodded.
“Was Patrik a witness to something?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“But he was there?”
“He delivered newspapers, yes. But what I wanted to say is that he’s got into a bit of a mess, in a different way. He was here, and he’d clearly been beaten. His cheek was black and blue. I sent him off to the hospital to get it treated.”
Sun and Shadow Page 20