Bielke shrugged.
'Why was it there?'
'Where?'
'At your house.'
'Where in my house?'
'We found it in one of the cars in your garage.'
'I've no idea.'
Winter thought. The air in the room already felt too hot and too scarce.
He wanted a confession. Now. Everybody wanted to go home. It was summer outside.
'You have been identified at the scene of a crime.'
Bielke said nothing. He could have said 'What scene, what crime?', but he said nothing.
'Talk to my family,' he said now.
'I beg your pardon?'
'Talk to my family.'
'Why?'
'They know where I've been.'
'I'm asking you.'
Bielke didn't reply to that. There was no answer in his eyes, nothing. His eyes were a blue reminiscent of over-washed jeans, blue going on white and soon destined to fade away altogether.
What happens if the fingerprints and DNA and the whole bloody shooting match don't turn up anything? Winter thought. If we have to let him go?
He asked again, kept on asking. Bielke answered intermittently.
Winter phoned Molina after an hour, and was granted the extension he asked for. It meant that he gained time, a maximum of four days to prepare a charge.
'Be sensible about this, now,' Molina said.
Winter hung up without comment. He felt a degree of relief. As that feeling drifted away with the smoke from his cigarillo out of the window and over the river, he thought again about what Bielke had said.
The family.
The man was mad. Everything he said might well mean something, but only to him.
He called the SOC team. Beier answered.
'Are your boys still at Bielke's house?'
'Not just at the moment. Why?'
'I'm going there.'
'Have you nailed him?'
'I don't know. When will we hear from Linkoping?'
'About the glass, you mean? They're working overtime on it, I can promise you that. But you know how it is.'
They had vacuum cleaned Bielke's shoes and clothes one at a time and found some very small pieces of glass that would be compared with the broken glass they'd found after the Hanssons' house had been broken into. It wouldn't necessarily tell them anything, but they could measure various properties of the shards and establish if it was the same type of glass they'd found in the shoes, or in the breast pocket. It might be a pointer, no more than that. There were an awful lot of panes of glass. But one thing could lead to another, and then to another.
Yet again a hot afternoon with no promise of cooling down as evening drew in. The sun was still strong as it started to sink down to the horizon he was driving towards. All growing things were shrinking in the heat, starting to die and emitting the same dry, acidic smell that permeates old folk's homes as the bodies of ancient inhabitants dry out with the onset of death. The same smell of decay mixed with pungent disinfectant.
Winter turned into the Bielkes' drive.
There was nobody on the verandah. He noticed that Jeanette's window was wide open.
The family.
Bielke's deranged eyes might have indicated something. Jeanette. Was she the key to the riddles? Her relationship with her father was complicated. A bloody silly word, given the context. He was standing at the front door, which was slightly ajar. Was she mad as well? Her mother? Was she normal? He pulled a face at his thoughts, possibly an ironic smile: what's the point, where are we heading, are there really any alternative routes to take, in which world does life weigh heaviest?
He knocked on the door, which opened slightly more as a result. He shouted. No answer. He shouted again, and went inside. On his left he could see the west side of the garden through a window in the room beyond the big, bright entrance hall. The shadows were now at their longest. The gulls were shrieking louder than ever as they hoped to find titbits in the gardens.
Something moved out there. A shadow shorter than the rest, contrasting with the long, recumbent giants that would soon be swallowed up by the ground.
A movement. As if somebody had run over the lawn. Winter charged out of the door and raced along the gravel path that surrounded the house. Tried to look in all directions at the same time. Why on earth am I doing this? Because somebody's been here and it has to do with what's going on inside this house. Has gone on.
The gulls laughed at him as he stood there. No sign of anybody else. The shadows were everywhere now, as if a black blanket had been lowered over the scene. He approached the hedge separating the garden from next door: there were gaps big enough for somebody to scramble through.
What now?
He turned back, towards the house. No sign of movement, no voices, no shouts, no faces, no bodies. There ought to be a reaction. The door open. Winter went back into the house. He couldn't hear a sound from inside, only the birds outside and the faint hum of traffic; no radio, no dishwasher, no extractor fan, no clinking of cutlery on crockery, no mixer, no telly, no voices, no laughter, no weeping, no screaming, no blows.
'Hello? HELLO?'
He stood stock still, but there was no answer.
'HELLO?'
He went upstairs. It was darker on the landing. A half-open door. Jeanette's room.
He could hear a faint humming noise now, a soft buzz that seemed to be creeping over the ceiling, slowly.
'HELLO? JEANETTE?'
Winter strode purposefully across the landing and into Jeanette's room. The window was still wide open and he looked out over the garden and the hedge and the trees and noticed a movement behind one of them and a pale ... object that was there and then not there, a sort of sphere in the twilight, and Winter stayed put, watching movements in the bushes and among the trees, but he couldn't go racing downstairs again until he actually saw something; nothing happened, and he waited, but the face didn't return; it had been a face, or the outline of a face, but he hadn't recognised it, not from this distance.
He came to life again and heard the noise, still faint but louder than before, louder, it sounded like ... sounded like ... and he turned to look at the alcove on the right where the bathroom door was and ... Jesus, he could see a trickle of water stuttering out from under the door and onto the parquet floor that was gleaming in the fairytale light of evening, and he could hear the sound now, a waterfall splashing down inside there and he flung himself at the door which was locked, he rattled the knob, pulled at it, shouted her name, took two paces backwards then kicked at the middle where the resistance would be lowest, three kicks and then a fourth and the bloody thing split open at last and he kicked his way into the bathroom that was overflowing with water and blood and he slipped and fell heavily and felt something give way in his elbow and scrambled to his feet with the pain affecting somebody else and his fancy khaki gear was now soaked in blood and water was still overflowing from the bath where Jeanette was sitting with her eyes closed or maybe open, he couldn't tell which, all he could see was her face and her neck sticking up out of or perhaps sinking down into the red sea and he glided over the ice towards her as if on skates, bent down and lifted her up. LIFTED a body that was heavier than anything else he'd ever lifted and the pain in his elbow was like red-hot needles in a wound.
It was past midnight when he got home with his arm in a sling and a pain that seemed like a caress compared with what he'd had to endure before. Angela gave him a hug, looking even paler than he did. She'd arranged for him to be treated far more quickly than he'd have been able to manage alone – but that was her place of work, after all.
The childminder was hovering in the hall, was duly paid, and looked frightened to death when she saw Winter's face.
'Pour me a whisky,' he said, from his chair in the kitchen.
'It's not a good idea to drink alcohol in your state.'
'Make it a double.'
She poured him a glass from one of the bottles on the wo
rk surface in the kitchen.
'Aaagh!' he said after the first swig.
He felt the alcohol penetrate his body, his head, down as far as his elbow. He took another drink.
'You should have stayed in,' she said. 'They'll have to put you in plaster once the swelling's gone down.'
'She's still alive,' said Winter, holding out his glass: Angela poured him a miserly measure. 'And another.' She filled him up, and he drank. 'She made it. She's still alive.'
'Only just.'
'But she'll make it.'
'It looks like it,' said Angela. 'She'd lost a lot of blood. Too much really, if she'd hoped to survive.'
Winter could still see the floor, the water in the bath. The pain, the pressure. The girl's naked body on the floor as he fumbled for his mobile that he'd dropped in the nasty, foaming water pouring out of the taps. He'd given up, slid into her room and used the telephone by her bed. He'd used his belt and a strip of curtain to bind her wrists. He'd tried her pulse, and maybe just about heard something. He'd given her mouth-to-mouth, but she hadn't responded. He'd checked her wrists, and looked for other possible injuries. Done whatever he could until the ambulance blasted its way to the door.
'Erik?'
'Hmm ... What?'
'Time you were asleep.'
'Eh?'
'Let me help you.'
She leaned over him. She was strong.
She's stronger than I am.
'You saved her life.'
'I was too late.' 'If you hadn't got there, she'd have died.'
'She was more or less dead anyway.'
'Come on, Erik.'
He let her help him. Sank back into the pillow, and fell asleep.
The first thing he knew was the smell of coffee. He heard Elsa asking some question or other, using the new words she'd just learned. Angela answered. He tried to sit up, and felt the pain from his elbow.
Elsa was in her high chair in the kitchen.
'DADDY, DADDY!'
Winter went to see her, and stayed there for ages.
He'd phoned the hospital. Now he was sitting on the blanket in the living room, trying to protect his arm from Elsa. Angela lifted her up, and whizzed her through the air like an aeroplane.
'The crisis is over,' he said. Again.
'Hang on,' she said.
She came back alone.
'She's my baby. Goes to sleep at the drop of a hat.'
'Mind you, she's the boss,' said Winter with a smile.
'Stay at home now,' Angela said.
'She's awake,' he said.
'No she isn't.'
'Jeanette.'
'So you're going there?'
'Bertil and Lars are there already.'
'Is that your answer?'
'Can you help me on with my clothes?'
35
Jeanette Bielke had been drugged into unconsciousness again when Winter arrived at intensive care.
'The risk was too great,' said the doctor.
'When will she come round?'
'When will we bring her round, do you mean?'
Winter shot the doctor a look to concentrate his mind.
'In a few hours.'
'I'll be back exactly two hours from now.' Winter looked at the watch on the wrist that wasn't swathed in bandages and in a sling. 'I only want a couple of pieces of information.'
'I can't promise anything.'
Winter directed the patrol car to the square in Frolunda. The driver was young, and Winter didn't recognise him. The heat haze over the huge car park was reminiscent of a firestorm. The wind was picking up from the south. The thermometer display on the roof of the shopping centre was nailed down on 39. People crouched beneath the canvas sheets over the vegetable stalls, or they retreated into the shopping arcades where sweat made their bodies stiff and the chill set many of them coughing.
Nobody answered when they rang the bell of Mattias' flat.
He hadn't seen Mattias at the hospital. Had anybody phoned him? Did he know? Was it his face he'd seen in the garden? Mattias had been hanging around the Bielkes' house like an abandoned dog. Refused to accept the fact. Had Mattias spoken to Jeanette before she'd made her suicide attempt? Attempt? She might yet have succeeded.
He rang again, heard the sound echoing in the room behind the veneered door. Windows were open on all floors, irrespective of whether people were at home or not. There was a smell of fire in the stairwell, caused by the dry air inside.
It was better outdoors, but only just. The police constable was standing under a tree, contemplating his gaudy patrol car.
'I'm going across the square,' he said. 'Wait here.'
He passed the Arts Centre and continued to the building beyond.
The missing boy's gloomy flat was just as empty and unfurnished as before. They'd soon have to hand it over to the owner. The riddle it contained would be hidden by new furniture, curtains, pictures, colours, voices, signs of life.
The swings outside were moving, but only in the wind. Children would melt if they tried to sit on them, he thought. There was no sound to be heard. The birds had fallen silent. The southerly wind was stronger now, but still soundless, it set the swings swaying back and forth, and soon their ropes would become entangled. Clouds were building up to the south, thanks to the wind. Black clouds that as yet only covered about a fifth of the sky. He stood in the entrance. The wind was audible now, as if somebody had just turned up the volume of the drama being played out. Clouds raced over the sky at the speed of rockets. He retraced his steps. The drunks outside the Arts Centre staggered to and fro in the thundery wind.
Suddenly, it started raining, and stopped just as quickly. The sky turned blue in the south and it spread rapidly. All around children were jumping into puddles of water that would dry out in less than an hour.
He walked back to the square. Bergenhem waved from the unmarked car he'd driven up to where Winter was standing. They took the lift up to the flat where Mattias lived, but still nobody was at home.
'Something nasty could have happened to the lad,' Bergenhem said.
'Anything's possible,' said Winter. 'We'd better seal off this place.' He phoned the Frölunda police station. When their colleagues arrived they went down to the street. Bergenhem drove back to the city centre.
'Take the route past the park,' said Winter.
They parked the car and stood in silence by the pond, under the trees. The hollow was gleaming after the rain.
There was nobody walking up and down with a dog lead in their hand. Only he and Bergenhem had returned to the scene of the crime. I could stand here for a while every day for the rest of this summer and half the autumn, he thought. But I don't need to. We'll soon nail Bielke.
Never End Page 33