It won’t be so hard. It’s better than ever, right? I’m here more than ever, aren’t I? I’m there but also here, and I’m starting to find a balance. Yes, balance. It’s thanks to her. And her. Both of them.
Does everyone think like I do?
One of them said something.
“Uh …?” said Winter.
“Elsa made dessert,” said Angela.
“Mmmm,” he said.
“It’s chocolate mereeengue puffs,” said Elsa.
“My favorite,” he said.
“Yes!” said Elsa.
“Effective against weight loss,” he said, and looked at Angela.
“Do you ever long for your origins?” he said over espresso.
“Why do you ask?”
“I don’t know, do you?”
“Longing … what would you call it … I guess I just wonder sometimes what would have happened if I had been there. Stayed there. Been born there.”
“Yes, that’s definitely a point of departure,” he said.
“If I had been born in Leipzig, it would have been a bewildering life, at the very least,” she said. “So much has happened to the people there.”
“It still was a bewildering life for the Hoffman family,” said Winter.
“Not for me, not like that. I was born here.”
“Indirectly bewildering for you.”
“Maybe.”
They heard Elsa in her room. She built something that she then knocked over, built and knocked over, built and knocked over, and yet she had grown up enough to laugh at it. Build and knock over. Well. That wasn’t unusual. Things that were built got knocked down.
“I think I would have become a doctor in Germany, too,” she said.
“Günther wouldn’t have allowed anything different?”
“He would have. But I would have become one anyway.”
“Why?”
“There are so many people who need help and care.”
“Like who?”
“You, for example.”
“Yes.”
She circled her fingers around the cup. The saucer made a noise, like faint music.
“When can they start building, do you think?”
“When we say it’s time,” he said.
“When is it time, then?”
“When we say so.”
“And when will we say so?”
He thought about what he’d just thought. Who was waiting for whom, for whose decision.
“When you want to,” he said.
Angela and Elsa followed him down in the elevator, to Vasaplatsen.
He led his bike up to the kiosk. Angela and Elsa were on their way to Kapellplatsen and the bookstore.
“Don’t you think we should take a trip soon?” said Winter. “Soon. To celebrate. Celebrate the decision.”
“We’re going to bike to the sea on Saturday.”
“Some other sea. Somewhere else.”
“When?”
“Soon.”
“Sounds good to me. I’ve banked time off. Weeks.”
“Good.”
“But you don’t have any, do you?”
“Why do you think I’ve been working nights and weekends, away from our family?” said Winter.
“Ha ha ha.”
“Now it’s time for the payoff.”
“Marbella?” asked Angela.
“Why not.”
“Will you call Siv?”
He waved a “yes” and wobbled off onto Vasagatan in the middle of the intersection, and an angry driver laid on the horn.
The black V40 arrived as Halders and Aneta were walking back to the car. It drove fast and then parked two cars away. A woman got out and slammed the door after her. Aneta recognized her.
“I saw her with Forsblad,” she said. “In the court.”
“In the court?”
“He works in the district court. She was with him.”
“The license number matches,” said Halders.
“Excuse me,” said Aneta to the woman, who was about to walk by them. She looked at them, but she didn’t seem to register that Aneta was talking to her. She was blond, but her hair was darker at the roots; she had sharp and rather small features, which didn’t really suit her height. She was tall, wearing a dress that was elegant and simple and maybe expensive, and a coat that seemed light and comfortable, but its color didn’t match the dress. Shoes that seemed uncomfortable. She was in a hurry.
“Excuse me for a sec—,” repeated Aneta, but Halders had already moved into her path and taken out his ID, and the woman stopped. She looked at him, and at Aneta, but she didn’t seem to recognize her.
“Susanne Marke?” asked Halders.
“Sorry?”
“Nothing to apologize for,” he said. “Are you Susanne Marke?”
“Uh … yes.” She looked at Aneta again, as though she still didn’t recognize her.
She ought to recognize me. A black woman in the courthouse. Maybe she’s color-blind. Her clothes seem to indicate that she is.
“What is this about?” asked Susanne.
“We’re looking for Hans Forsblad,” said Halders. “Do you know where he is?”
“Hans Fors … why would I know that?”
“He lives with you.”
“What do you mean, he lives with me?”
“Do you live there?” asked Halders, nodding toward the fancy building behind her. He said the address for the sake of clarity.
“I live here,” she said.
“Hans Forsblad has given this as his address,” said Aneta.
Susanne didn’t answer, but it looked like she was silently cursing him.
“This is not his address,” she answered.
“But he could live here anyway, couldn’t he?” said Halders.
She didn’t answer. She suddenly looked out over the water, as though trying to find different answers. As though she were trying to make eye contact with the Seaman’s Wife. A ferry passed again, this time on the way in. There were people on the quarterdeck, little heads that stuck up over the railing. Aneta thought of how Forsblad lived at addresses that weren’t his. Was that the point? Was there some idea behind it?
“Do you have problems answering a simple question from the police?” said Halders.
“I want to know what this is about,” she said, trying to look more confident than her voice indicated.
Halders sighed so she could hear. He looked at Aneta, who nodded. Seabirds started to cry out nearby. They could hear the sound of a hammer or a sledgehammer striking. Maybe Forsblad has some other woman in there, in the flat, thought Aneta. Here we go again.
“We have received a report that involves Hans Forsblad,” said Halders. “We want to speak to him, and I really hope that you will help us. I really hope you will.”
Said the broken record, thought Aneta, unable to help herself.
“Re … report? What is it about?”
“We would like to discuss it with Hans Forsblad,” said Halders. “Listen, do you want to answer the question or not?”
“What was the question?”
Halders sighed again. But he remained calm. Aneta saw that the vein in his forehead was pulsing, but Susanne didn’t notice.
We have to stay in character. She does, too. It’s a question of who is best at staying in character.
“He stayed with me for a couple of days,” she said, looking around to indicate the direction. “But he isn’t here anymore.”
“When was that?” asked Halders.
“When was wh—”
“WHEN DID HE STAY with you?” asked Halders, smiling as he lowered his voice in the middle of the sentence.
“Uh … last week. Over the weekend.”
“What were you doing up in Krokslätt an hour and a half ago?” asked Halders.
“I don’t know—”
“What-were-you-doing-up-in-Krokslätt-an-hour-and-a-half-ago?” Halders asked again, a clearer question.
&nbs
p; “I wasn’t there,” she said.
We know, we know, thought Aneta. Then you would have seen us, and you couldn’t have hidden that if you’re not an absolute psychopath, or a terminal Alzheimer’s patient.
“Your car was there,” said Halders.
“How … how do you know that?” she asked, looking surprised, but Aneta could also see that she knew something more.
“We were standing on a street in the peaceful neighborhood of Krokslätt, and your car slowly went by, a few yards from us, back and forth,” said Halders, holding out the notebook so she could see her own license plate number. She knows he wouldn’t have had time to write it down now, thought Aneta.
“I … was taking a drive,” she said.
“Careful!” said Halders.
“Uh … what …”
“Be careful what you say. Just tell it like it was.” He looked her in the eyes. “Like it is.”
She looked out at the water again. What the hell is this? thought Aneta. What have we landed in? Why is she protecting that jerk? Has he threatened her, too?
She tried to look for injuries to Susanne’s face, but she didn’t see any. She only saw an expression in her eyes that could have been fear, but mostly of Fredrik, or no, more like of his words, of the truth. She knows that you shouldn’t lie to the police; that’s never good. It’s hard to maintain lies, to keep to them. As hard as it is to keep promises.
“I loaned out the car,” she said, with her eyes fastened on one of the churches in Masthugget.
“To whom?”
She looked at Halders as though she were waiting for him to scream “Careful!” before she even opened her mouth.
“Hans needed to borrow the car to run an errand,” she said. “May I go in now?” She moved. “I’m actually in a bit of a hurry.” She started to look in her purse, as if for a key.
“Of course,” said Halders, stepping to the side as though he had been blocking all escape routes until just then. Which of course he had been. “Thanks for your help.”
They watched her walk to the building, which looked like a fortress, but a modern, pleasant one. There were boats in its moat.
“I love this job,” said Halders, and there was no irony in his voice.
They held the meeting in Ringmar’s office for a change of scenery. There was a dead plant in the window. Ringmar didn’t know what it was called.
“Time to bury that,” said Halders, pointing with his whole hand.
“Done,” said Ringmar. “It’s in dirt, isn’t it?”
“Funny, Bertil, funny.”
“So what do you want to do?” said Winter.
“Bring him in for questioning,” said Aneta.
“Fredrik?”
Halders ran his hand over his crew cut. He thought he looked younger now. His hair had started to thin out, and there was only one thing to do. He looked more dangerous; the whole department could probably agree on that. It was perfect for Halders. Younger and more dangerous.
“Well, I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting Franz Flattenführer,” he said.
“Does that mean that you would like to?” said Winter.
“I don’t know,” said Halders. “It certainly seems to be impossible to meet his wife, Agneta, and hear what she says.”
“Anette,” said Aneta.
“What Anette actually has to say,” Halders corrected himself. “I don’t know Hans Fritz, but I know the type. If he’s the type I know, questioning could make him really dangerous.”
“For whom?” asked Ringmar.
“For her, of course.”
“Her name is Lindsten,” said Aneta. “She never changed her name to any of the ones you give Forsblad.”
“Why do you do that, Fredrik?” asked Ringmar. “Why do you always do that?”
“What?”
“The names, like you got them out of a war novel by Sven Hassel.”
“Because this is a free job,” said Halders. “And I like Svein.”
Ringmar looked at Aneta.
“Let it go,” he said. “Let it go for a little while.”
“No,” said Aneta.
“What is your reasoning on this, Aneta?” asked Winter. He looks more curious than surprised, she thought.
“We ought to talk to him. I’m tired of all the damn cases where the men are left alone until it’s almost too late. And sometimes it is too late.”
“I want you to have a conversation with the woman,” said Winter. “Anette.”
“What do you think I’ve been trying to do for the last few days?” said Aneta.
“I’ve tried, too,” said Halders.
“Well, apparently she doesn’t want to talk to us,” said Ringmar.
“Have you tried, too?” said Halders.
“I meant ‘us’ in the sense of the police,” said Ringmar.
“She was inside that house, but she didn’t want anything to do with the police,” said Halders.
“It could have been the mother,” said Winter.
“No,” said Halders. “It was a younger woman.”
“Okay,” said Winter, “if you want to bring him in, be my guest.”
“Can’t you issue a restraining order while you’re at it?” asked Aneta.
“He can’t get near her anyway,” said Halders. “No one will answer the door.”
“What about the cabin by the sea?” said Aneta.
“Question him,” said Winter. “After that, maybe we won’t have a problem anymore.”
Winter went to his office and called Nueva Andalucía. He could see the white stone house before him while he waited for his mother to put down her shaker and pick up the phone. No, that was unfair. She had cut back since Dad died. Either that or the abyss, at the bottom of one last bottle of Lariós’s local gin.
He’d been down there when his father died, not in the abyss but at Hospital Costa del Sol, with Sierra Blanca outside, and above, and with his father, who took one last breath a day or two after the last conversation they’d had together in their lives; that last little while, which had been the first in many years.
The hours afterward had been the most difficult of his life up to then; the hardest, the sharpest, the meanest, the heaviest, heavy like blocks of stone.
His father lay in the mountain earth. From there you could see across the sea, all the way to Africa, which was a desert there on the other side.
He had thought that he would lose himself during the flight back home, fall, as though from the plane.
He had no nice memories of his flights to Costa del Sol, neither from the way home nor the way there.
His mother answered at last.
20
I’m melting,” said Siv Winter. “It’s ninety-three degrees here right now. It was over one hundred last week.”
“I know it’s trying and difficult,” said Erik Winter.
“Eh, I didn’t mean it like that, Erik.”
He smiled to himself. His mother had many merits, but she didn’t understand sarcasm. Maybe that’s a good quality, he thought. Too many people go about spreading sarcasm around for others to interpret. Oh, you didn’t mean it like that? Oh, no. Okay, I guess I’m not smart. I should have understood that you meant it the other way around.
In his branch, people often meant things the other way around. But they weren’t being sarcastic. They were just lying.
He lived in a world filled with lies. That was his world.
His job was to interpret lies. How do you end up, then? When you assume that everyone is lying all the time? With whom do you find secure trust, and truth?
“How do the weather reports look for the future?” he asked his mother.
“Eh, it’s probably going to be like this for a few more weeks. Maybe a little cooler in a few weeks.”
“No rain on the way?”
“No, unfortunately.”
“That’s good.”
“What do you mean, Erik?”
“We’re thinking of coming
down for a few days.”
“Did you say we? All of you?”
“Yes.”
“That would be so nice. Oh, how nice!”
“We think so, too.”
“What does Elsa think?”
“She doesn’t know yet. I wanted to check with you first.”
“But, Erik, you know very well that you’re all always welcome. And you haven’t been here since … since …”
She didn’t finish her sentence, and she didn’t need to. He had come down the day after Christmas last year, and he had drunk seven bottles of whisky—of course, they were those ridiculous little airplane bottles, but still—and beer on top of that, and it had taken half the ground personnel at the airport in Málaga to get him out and to the car. The police had been there, but only to help. Ringmar had called the police commissioner when Winter had boarded the plane: Here’s what you can expect in Málaga. Ringmar had understood, and their Spanish colleague understood.
Muy borracho. Sí. Comprendo.
Winter had not understood, not when he left after the Christmastime events in Gothenburg. Who could have understood? Really understood everything? He wanted to understand, soon. It was possible to understand. Nothing bad happened without a reason. It came from somewhere. From people. That made the bad into something comprehensible, but it became simultaneously more terrible.
Ringmar had had to do the terrible finishing up last Christmas. Bertil had been strong, stronger than him. Bertil had had his own private hell, but he was a great person, a real person. Without Bertil there was nothing, he had thought then, and he thought so sometimes afterward. I am weak but he is strong. I become weaker and he becomes stronger. Will it be like that for me, too? Will it change? Do I want it to? Do I want to become stronger?
“I’ll let you know the details,” he said to his mother.
“Will it be soon?”
“I hope so.”
“I presume you’re having bad weather as usual at home.”
He looked out at the Indian summer sun, sharp as a knife.
“Yes,” he lied.
Aneta Djanali drove south and turned off toward Krokslätt. Everything felt like it was a few decades ago here: the houses, the streets, the signs, the stores; stucco houses where the plaster had fallen and been stuck on again, cafés with two tables and five chairs.
She wasn’t alone on the streets. She was tailing a black V40 that was one hundred yards ahead, and she wasn’t driving her usual Saab. This was another one of the unmarked cars from the garage under the Police Palace, as it was called, on Ernst Fontells Plats.
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