'It could be the same person,' Winter said. 'We have no proof, but it's a possibility.'
'You call it a possibility?'
'I'm sorry?'
'I wouldn't have used that word,' said Bielke.
He blinked repeatedly. Winter suddenly had the feeling that Bielke was thinking about something quite different. He seemed lost in memories.
'Can I see Jeanette now?' asked Winter, taking a step to one side.
'She's up in her room.' Her father backed away, as if the path was now clear to walk on. Cleared of mines. 'She didn't want to come down.'
Winter entered the house with Bielke behind him. Bielke pointed up a staircase to the left of the door. Winter could hear the sound of chinking glass and china coming from somewhere inside the house. He saw nobody else as he went up the stairs. The house reminded him of a palace.
Jeanette's door was open. Winter could see the corner of a bed, and a window in the shade of one of the big trees. The uncomfortable feeling he'd had in the car on the way here had grown stronger after the conversation with the girl's father. It crept all over him, inside all his professional thinking. Angela would say that was no bad thing. That it had to be that way, or it was not good, not good at all.
'Come in,' she said when he knocked on the door frame. He still couldn't see her. 'Come on in.'
She was sitting in an armchair. There was a sofa and a table, and a bit further away a desk, next to a door that he could see led into an en-suite bathroom. Old money, or new, or a combination of both.
She was brushing her dark brown hair. A face without make-up, as far as he could see. Jeans, T-shirt, no socks. A fine gold chain round her neck. She continued brushing her hair with long strokes and her face distorted slightly with each one: her eyes narrowed, giving her an almost oriental look.
She gestured towards the sofa. Winter sat down and introduced himself.
'It was a different one before,' said Jeanette.
Winter nodded.
'Is that a sort of tactic?' she asked.
'What do you mean?'
'You send different people to take care of the ... talking. Interrogation, or whatever you call it.'
'Sometimes,' said Winter. 'But not on this occasion.'
'What do you mean by that?'
Winter didn't reply.
'I liked the one who was here before,' said Jeanette, putting down her brush. 'Fredrik ... Inspector Halders.' She looked at Winter. 'Isn't that good? In which case it's a rotten tactic to change that, don't you think?'
OK, thought Winter. I'll tell her. And he explained what had happened to Halders' ex-wife.
'I won't ask anything else,' she said.
'Is it OK if I do?' Winter leaned forward on the sofa. She nodded. A bird flew against the window then flew off without her seeming to notice the dull thump on the pane. 'Is there anything that's ... come to mind since you last spoke to Fredrik? Anything at all?'
She shrugged.
'Such as what?' she asked.
'Anything at all. From that evening. That night.'
'I prefer not to think about it. I told that to ... Fredrik as well.' She started brushing again, and her face changed. 'All I can think about is, am I going to get Aids or something.' She was brushing even more vigorously, and looked at Winter through eyes that were mere slits now. 'Or HIV, rather. I don't know the exact terminology.'
Winter didn't know what to say. He considered getting up and smoking a Corps by the window.
'Do you mind if I stand by the window and smoke?'
'Course not,' she said, and there might even have been the trace of a smile when she added: 'But look out for Dad. Don't let him see you.' She looked away. 'He sees everything. He knows everything.'
'What do you mean?'
'Oh, nothing. But look out.'
'Look down, you mean,' said Winter, standing up and taking the slim white packet from his left breast pocket and removing the cellophane from a cigarillo.
'What did you say?'
'I have to look down from here, to make sure your dad doesn't look up to me.'
'Ha, ha.'
Winter opened the window and lit his cigarillo. The lawn looked about as big as a football pitch between the branches of the trees. He could hear the clink of ice cubes in a glass from down below, and faint voices that he couldn't quite catch. Something was poured into a glass. Half past ten, not time for a lunchtime drink yet. But it was holiday time. He blew smoke out of the window and turned back into the room.
Perhaps their daughter had been infected with HIV.
'What I meant a minute ago when I said I'm not sure about the terminology was that I was supposed to be starting my medical studies this autumn,' she said, 'but I shan't bother now.'
'Why not?'
'Ha, ha again.'
Winter took a drag at his cigarillo and blew the smoke out through the window. He heard a woman saying something in what sounded like an agitated voice and Kurt Bielke came into view as he strode across the lawn and then along a path to a black car standing in the drive. He started the engine and drove away towards the centre of town. Winter remained standing with his back to the room. He heard a lawn-mower, saw a cascade of water coming from a sprinkler, saw the two boys coming back on their skateboards, saw a woman with a pram. Everything was normal out there in paradise.
'Do you dream about what happened in the park?' Winter asked after half a minute, turning to face the room.
'Yes.'
'What do you dream?'
'That I'm running. Always the same. Running, and I can hear steps coming after me.'
'What happens next?'
'I'm not really sure ... it's mainly that ... running ... chasing.'
'You never see anybody?'
'No.'
'No face?'
'Afraid not.' She paused in her brushing and looked at Winter. 'That would be great, wouldn't it? If I saw a face in my dreams that I'd never seen in reality, and it turned out to be him. That it was that particular face.' She put the brush on the table again. 'Would that suffice as proof?'
'Not on its own.'
'Pity.'
'But you haven't seen a face?'
'Not then, and not now. In my dreams.'
'Do you get dragged?'
'What do you mean, dragged?'
'Does anybody drag you in those dreams? Pull you, try to carry you off?' Winter took another puff. 'Drag you.'
'No.'
'What happened in ... reality?'
'I've already answered that. I don't know. I fainted.' She seemed to be thinking about what she'd said. 'I must have done.'
'But when you came round you were in a different place from where you'd been walking? Where you remembered that you'd been walking before you were attacked.'
'Yes, it must have been.'
'When did you come round?'
She brushed and brushed. Winter could see the suffering in those narrow eyes. It was as if she were trying to brush the demons out of her head with vigorous movements flattening her hair against her scalp.
'Sometimes I'm sorry I came round at all,' she said.
Winter heard the noise of a car behind him and saw Bielke park in the middle of the drive and walk briskly into the house. He could hear voices, but no words.
'Please pass on my greetings to him ... the other detective. Fredrik.'
'Of course.'
'Is he at work?'
'Not at the moment.'
'Surely he won't be able to work again after what's happened? Not for a very long time?'
Winter looked at her. If you can live, you can work. He thought of what she'd said about coming round, not coming round.
He heard the sounds of glass and china again from the verandah. Whatever had been said down there hadn't prevented them from having lunch.
'Excuse me,' said Jeanette, going into the bathroom and closing the door behind her.
Winter looked around. The room was tidy, almost neurotically so. Everything was neat; i
n piles, rows. He went to the bookcase. The books were arranged in alphabetical order, by author name.
'Neat and tidy, eh?'
He turned round.
'Since ... it happened I've done nothing but tidy up in here,' she said, nodding in the direction of the books. 'Now I'm wondering whether to arrange them by subjects instead.'
'There are a lot of books,' Winter said.
'But not so many subjects.'
'Mostly fiction, I see.'
'What do you read?'
Winter felt like laughing. Did so. 'I read fewer and fewer real books. Literature. But I'm going to change that. I'll be taking quite a long time off soon. At the moment I read mainly reports connected with preliminary investigations. Witness interviews, stuff like that.'
'Exciting.'
'It can be very exciting,' said Winter. 'And I'm not kidding. But first you have to learn how to interpret the language. Different police officers have different languages. When they write their reports. Sometimes it's a bit like trying to crack a code.'
'What's so exciting about it?'
'When you come across something that's linked to something you've read somewhere else. And when you eventually see something that you've stared at a hundred times before without actually seeing it. It was there all the time, but you hadn't noticed it.'
'What do you mean?'
'You haven't realised the significance. Or you may have interpreted it wrongly. But then the penny drops.' Winter thought about lighting another Corps. But he didn't. He sat down in her armchair.
'I've stolen most of the books in there,' she said.
Winter said nothing, but stood up, walked to the window and lit another cigarillo after all. There was a middle-of-the-day stillness out there now. Everything he'd heard before was silent.
'Did you hear what I said? Stolen!'
'I heard.'
'Aren't you going to do anything about it?'
'I don't believe you.'
'Really?'
'Tell me about the sounds he made.'
'Eh?'
'You said before that he'd made sounds you couldn't understand. Talk about it.'
'I have talked about it, it was exactly as you said. Just a noise. That's what I heard.'
'Have you thought any more about it?'
She shrugged.
'Could you make out any words?'
'No.'
Winter thought for a moment. 'Can you try to show me what it sounded like?'
'Show you what it sounded like? Are you all there?'
'It might be important.'
'So what?'
'What's happened to you could happen to somebody else.' He looked at her. 'Has happened to somebody else.'
'I know.'
Winter nodded. 'Good.'
'It's a bit much, though, asking me to ... to imitate that bastard.'
'Think about it.'
'For Christ's sake, that's exactly what I don't want to do.'
'OK, I understand.'
'It must be difficult.'
'What do you mean?'
'Being forced to ask all these questions when you know the person you're asking wants to be left alone. Ought to be left alone.'
'It is difficult, yes.'
'There you are, you see.'
'I can't avoid it. I'm not here for fun.'
'But you chose to do your job.'
'Yes.'
'Why?'
'Let me think about it,' said Winter with a smile.
'Only until next time,' she said. He couldn't see if she was smiling as well. He could feel a breath of wind through the window. He noticed a cloud in the west. Suddenly it was there.
9
Halders walked through the house. Everything seemed strange now that he no longer lived there. They'd moved in together, then he'd moved out. Margareta had stayed on with the children, and he'd taken a flat in the centre of town. It wasn't cheap, but it was the best solution. The house was still there for the children. And anyway, she earned more than he did.
Had earned more.
Hannes and Magda had stayed at home yesterday, but they were back at school today. He was back in the living room. He'd made the tour. Most of the furniture was from then. Most of it was still there. She wasn't there, but everything else was. Margareta hadn't been seeing anybody else as far as he knew, but he didn't know everything.
He'd asked the children about school, if they'd prefer to stay at home for a few days. Magda had said no at first, and Hannes hadn't replied.
'Can we still live here?' Hannes asked from his bed when Halders went into his room.
Halders sat down on the edge of the bed.
'Can we still live in the house? I want to stay here.'
'If you want to live here, that's where we'll live.'
'Will you live here as well, Dad?'
The boy's question made him feel very cold. It was a horrific question. He suddenly thought about how exposed children are, how vulnerable. In the boy's mind it wasn't patently obvious that Dad would live with them. Come back to them ... full time.
He felt so tremendously sad as he sat there. Endlessly sorrowful.
'Of course we'll live together, Hannes.'
'Magda as well?'
'Magda as well.'
'Shall we live here, then?'
Halders thought about his flat. His shitty little flat. Now it was gone, almost. He no longer owned this house, but it must be possible to solve that problem.
'I reckon that's what we'll do.'
'Do I have to go to school?'
'No. Like I said before.'
'What's Magda going to do? Is she going to school?'
'If she wants to. She decided in the end she did want to.'
The boy sat up. There were posters on the wall over his bed, some heavy metal bands whose name Halders vaguely recognised.
'Won't they have started the first lesson after lunch?'
Never End Page 9