Never End

by Ake Edwardson

  'Yes, yes,' he said into the mouthpiece. 'Yes.'

  He phoned Halders. 'I want you to come with me.'

  'I'm as good as there,' said Halders.

  Winter drove through the morning light. It had nuances of milk and spinach.

  They met at the car park. Halders looked tense, a mirror image of himself. They could have made their way blindfolded to the scene of the incident. There was no other place.

  It was lit up now, by a pale electric light that would soon be unnecessary. Forensic officers were crawling all over the place. More than ever. He could see more uniforms than ever. More onlookers than ever. People were still out and about and were loitering now on the edge of the park. Winter walked to the trees and the rock and the passage between and saw the girl's legs like two sticks and then he saw the rest of her body, all of it except her head, which was still in the shadows.

  He could have stopped there and then, gone back to his gloomy office at the police station, opened the old files and read about what had happened five years ago. He knew that's how it was, and so it proved, later, when the post mortem was completed and he had all the facts currently available.

  It was still early morning. He saw the doctor, a new one whose name he didn't know. He looked young. Came over to speak to Winter. Made a few comments that he took on board.

  She had stopped breathing because somebody had tightened a noose around her neck. Other things had been done to her body, not yet clear what. Her purse was still in the handbag that Winter could see lying on the ground, not far from her hand.

  Go on, stretch out your hand and grab the handbag, he thought. You can do it. You can still do it.

  She was eighteen or nineteen or so. He could look if he wanted to, but he wasn't to touch anything yet. She-had-been-eighteen. That's what it was destined to be. I'll stop there. Eighteen was as far as she was going, nineteen maximum. No adult life, no family, no breastfeeding, no pram, no colic, no divorce.

  Halders was standing beside him. He said something to one of the forensics officers in a low voice. A night-bird uttered a cry that reminded Winter of something. It wasn't the situation. That was familiar without the aid of sound effects.

  Torches were shone into the hollow. He could see a face on the ground. Oddly enough it still seemed to be in the shadows.

  He could hear a tune inside his head from the pavement café that same night. Had she walked past? Had she walked past that very place with her friends?

  4

  The girl's name was Angelika Hansson. She could be identified from documents in her handbag.

  She had dark hair, and her clothes were in a mess. There had been leaves and strands of grass in her hair. She had been lying with her head on a sort of pillow of grass. It was almost as if somebody had made a pillow for her. This was the image he had in his head when he turned up at the post mortem. Pia Fröberg, the forensic pathologist, was busy with Angelika Hansson's body. He was pretty used to it by now. The body, under the spotlights. The doctor's white coat, picked out by the dazzling ceiling lights. Naked body parts. No sign of life.

  How many times had he been in this situation? Not many, but more than enough even so.

  He knew she'd been strangled. Some kind of strap round her neck that she hadn't been able to remove, that couldn't be untied. Pia confirmed this: it could be some kind of collar, a dog lead, a noose. It might well have been a rope. Not a bootlace.

  It happened only a few hours before the alarm was raised. What had he being doing at that time? The thought came into his mind. What exactly had he been doing then? What had she been doing during the hour before it happened? What had Angelika Hansson been doing? She'd been drinking, perhaps too much. She might have been holding somebody's hand.

  She was nineteen. He thought about what Halders had said regarding Jeanette Bielke. She too was nineteen; passed her final school exams just over a month ago. Halders said Jeanette Bielke had the white cap Swedish students wear at their graduation parties, singing songs about their happy schooldays. Used to be compulsory, but not any more. Had Angelika had a student cap? Had she known Jeanette? Did they have any mutual friends?

  'She was pregnant,' said Pia Fröberg, walking over to him.

  Winter nodded without answering.

  'Did you hear what I said, Erik?'

  He nodded again.

  'I must say you get quieter and quieter by the year.'

  By the month, he thought. Quieter by the month.

  'How far gone?' he asked.

  'I can't say for certain,' she said, 'but not many weeks.' She looked back at the girl's body. 'I wonder if she even knew herself.'

  'But you're sure, about the pregnancy?'

  'Of course.'

  Winter took two steps towards the dead body. They knew nothing about her as yet, apart from what was in her handbag, and that was with Chief Inspector Beier in the forensic department.

  He'd soon go round to her home. He had the address. Her parents were in another room only a few metres away, harshly lit. Two faces, pale with shock. He hadn't noticed a boyfriend with them, nobody who might be a boyfriend. Nobody with the parents, who could be no more than a few years younger than he was himself. People had kids when they were twenty-two. Angelika Hansson would have been one of those. A pregnant daughter. Did they know?

  'What?' The man's face had turned ashen. Lars-Olof Hansson, Angelika's father. His wife was standing next to him, the girl's mother, Ann. Eyes shrunken with sorrow and desperation. 'What the hell are you saying?'

  Winter repeated what he had told them.

  'She hasn't had a boyfriend for two years,' the father said. He turned to his wife. 'Have you heard anything about a boyfriend, Ann?'

  She shook her head.

  'It can't be true,' he said, turning back to Winter. 'It's not possible.'

  'She's never ... spoken to me about that,' the mother said. She looked at Winter. Her eyes had grown bigger. 'She would have said something about it.' She was looking at her husband now. 'We spoke about everything. We did, Lasse. You know we did.'

  'Yes.'

  'Absolutely everything,' she repeated.

  She didn't know, thought Winter. I don't think she knew. He hadn't had all the details from Pia yet. There was somebody else who might not have known. It needn't be a boyfriend. A casual partner, maybe. How many of those had she had? He looked at her parents. He'd be forced to ask all those questions, at the worst possible time. But there again, the best, when everything was ... fresh. He pictured the girl's body on the metal table in the neighbouring room.

  'We need to know everything about her friends,' he said. 'Everything you can remember, about all of them.'

  'This business of her ... pregnancy. Has that anything to do with the murder?' asked the father, fixing Winter with piercing eyes.

  'I don't know,' he said.

  'Then why the hell are you asking so much about it?'

  'Lasse,' his wife said.

  He turned to look at her.

  'He's only doing his job,' she said, and Winter suddenly had the impression she looked stronger. 'We want to know, after all.'

  I'm only doing my job, Winter thought.

  Halders drove back to the Bielkes' house. He was on his own, and had phoned ahead. He parked the car and crunched over the gravel. Jeanette was on the verandah. Halders wondered what she was thinking about. She glanced up and saw him approaching. Looked as if she were about to throw up. Halders had reached her by then.

  'Let's get out of here,' he said.

  She didn't move.

  'Would you like to nip out to Saltholmen?'

  She shrugged. Irma Bielke came onto the verandah and looked at her daughter.

  'We're going out for a little drive,' said Halders, but she didn't seem to hear him. They're all still in a state of shock, he thought. The idyll has been blown away and reality has taken its place, even in this posh neighbourhood.

  Jeanette got into the car, which had warmed up in the sun. Halders started
the engine. As he changed gear he accidentally brushed her left knee, and she jerked away. He pretended not to notice, headed down the drive and out into the road.

  'Have you got a favourite spot out here?' he asked as they approached the rocks and jetties.

  'Yes ...'

  'Shall we go and sit there?'

  She shrugged.

  There were cars everywhere. Halders parked illegally opposite the ice-cream stall and stuck his police pass on the windscreen. Lots of people were streaming past, either going down to the boats or coming back from them. A child was screaming, being dragged along by its parents. Two girls about the same age as Jeanette smiled, maybe at him, maybe at her.

  'You'll have to show me the way,' he said. 'How about an ice cream, by the way?'

  She shrugged.

  'Every time you shrug I'll interpret it as a "yes",' Halders said.

  She smiled.

  'Old-fashioned vanilla,' she said. 'And tutti-frutti.'

  The ice cream had started running down Halders' fingers as they walked to the rocks. He licked at his cornet as quickly as he could. She had taken a tub.

  They climbed up to the top of the slope and down the other side. There was a clear view of the sea. Sails everywhere. The wind carried a strong smell of hot salt. There were fewer people on the rocks than he'd expected. Nobody was lying in her favourite spot.

  'Here it is,' she said.

  They sat down. She looked out over a narrow channel leading to the harbour. A boy was diving on the other side.

  'I was here the same day,' she said.

  Halders nodded.

  'It's unreal,' she said, looking at Halders. 'It's like ... another time, sort of. A different country, or something.' She turned back to look at the water. 'It's as if it had never happened. Like a dream, you know?' She looked at Halders again.

  What is dream and what is reality? he wondered.

  'I couldn't tell you what's a dream and what's reality,' she said. 'I wish I knew what was what ... which of the two what happened to me is ... but that's not the way things are of course.' Halders noticed her benumbed expression, full of worry. There was something closed in that face of hers. She's been extinguished, he thought. Something has been extinguished. I could kill that bastard. I really could. No. That's not the answer. They wouldn't be able to rehabilitate him into society if I did that.

  'So you don't know Angelika Hansson?'

  'No, I've already told you.'

  'Met her, maybe?'

  She had seen photos of Angelika. Halders had one in his breast pocket, but he didn't get it out.

  'She'd just passed her final exams as well,' he said.

  'Are you saying that means we must know each other?'

  'Don't you have a communal party?'

  'Are you serious? Do you know how many people in Gothenburg finish school every year?'

  'No.'

  'Neither do I. But way too many for there to be just one party.' She was looking at Halders now. 'It's called a ball, incidentally. Graduation ball.'

  Somebody dived into the water on the other side of the channel again. Several people tramped past on the rocks above them.

  'What happened between you and your boyfriend?'

  'That has nothing to do with this.'

  'Tell me, even so.'

  'What if I don't want to?'

  Halders shrugged. It was his turn now.

  He watched a boat moving along the channel, towards the sea. A man on board waved, but she didn't wave back.

  'We finished, simple as that,' she said.

  Halders noticed that the man on the boat was still waving, and waved back to put a stop to it.

  'He didn't think so though, did he?' he asked.

  'I'm not with you.'

  'He wouldn't accept that it was all over, would he?'

  'Who told you that?'

  Halders didn't reply.

  'Don't believe them,' she said.

  'Believe who?'

  'Mum and Dad, of course. They're the ones who told you, aren't they? They said there was a row, I suppose. That was it, wasn't it?'

  Halders said nothing.

  'They've never liked him,' she said.

  'But it's all over now?'

  'Yes.'

  'Really?'

  'It's finished, for Christ's sake. FOR CHRIST'S SAKE!' She looked him straight in the eye. 'Has it never happened to you?'

  'Yes.'

  'Have you had to explain how? And why and where? And to a detective?'

  'No.'

  'Well, then.'

  'You know why I'm asking,' he said. He could feel the sun on his bald patch. He'd have to buy a cap, an ordinary cap. Not one of those bloody baseball caps. 'He turned up at your house a few times and wanted to come in, didn't he?'

  'Maybe the odd time. The odd evening.'

  'He was a bit ... noisy. Wanted to come in and talk to you.'

  'He was drunk,' she said.

  'Why?'

  'Oh, for God's sake!'

  'Why?' Halders insisted.

  She heaved a sigh.

  'He was upset,' she said.

  'Because it was over?'

  She shrugged. A yes.

  'But you wanted it to be over?'

  She nodded.

  There's something she doesn't want to tell me. Something important. What is it?

  'And he couldn't understand that,' Halders said. 'That you wanted to finish.'

  'Can't we stop talking about Mattias now? Why are we talking about him all the time?'

  'Have you seen him ... since?'

  'Since I was raped?'

  'Yes.'

  'Say it then. Raped. RAPED!'

  Halders could see a woman on the next rock stumble.

  'Since you were raped,' Halders said.

  'No, I haven't. Have you?'

  'No.'

  'You should do. I mean, you talk about him all the time.'

  'I am going to meet Mattias. Tomorrow.'

  'A waste of time,' she said. 'It wasn't him, if that's what you think.'

  Winter read the files. Had it started again with Jeanette Bielke? Continued with Angelika Hansson? Would it keep on going?

  He had the familiar feeling of impotence. Speculations about crimes that had been committed. About crimes waiting to be committed. Waiting to be committed.