Never End

by Ake Edwardson

  'It was only a name,' he said. Vennerhag had mumbled the name of the cottage and the direction. He'd managed to do it twice.

  'One kilometre, maybe a bit less. There's a fork in the road there, then it's another five hundred metres.' Winter dropped the map. 'We'll walk from here.' He opened the door. 'Park the car sideways on so that Lars will understand what's going on when he and the others get here. It'll make a road block as well.' Winter could see that there were deep ditches on either side of the road. He stood up, lost his balance slightly and automatically supported himself on the side of the car with his injured arm. The stab of pain shot all the way up into his scalp.

  'We'd better wait for the others,' Ringmar said.

  That was the only right thing to do, of course. He could see that. But there was something inside him that said there wasn't enough time.

  'There isn't enough time for that,' he said, feeling the intense pain seeping out of his body. 'I'm sure of it.'

  'We're only talking about half an hour, Erik. Max.'

  'It's not only that. There'll be too many of us later. All at once.'

  He set off walking alongside the ditch. Ringmar followed suit. There was a smell of water full of weed, of plants that hadn't yet shrivelled up in the sun. The sun didn't penetrate very far into here, and Winter detected smells that seemed to be hundreds of years old.

  When all this was over he would go walking in the woods with Angela and Elsa, creep under the trees and dig up some moss. Mushrooms in the autumn. Wellington boots through damp undergrowth. He shivered again in the thin, knitted sweater that was irritating his shoulders. His deck shoes were sticking to his feet as if glued.

  They'd gone as far as the fork. Winter pointed right. He crossed over the road and walked through the trees, which were less dense there. He could hear a great northern diver calling in the distance. He knew there was a lake behind the house they were heading for. The bird called again, a lonely cry through the early morning light that was starting to scrape out shapes and contours. The bird sounded close now. Winter could feel the ferns and bracken brushing his shins, and once a sting. His wet shorts clung to his thighs and backside.

  'I can see it,' Ringmar whispered.

  They paused. They could just discern the outline of the house, the pointed roof. They moved closer and paused behind the fir trees. The house was bigger than Winter had expected. There was a car outside, looking as if it had been hurled against one of the walls. An estate car. The house was dark in all its windows.

  So Halders is supposed to be in there, thought Ringmar. Or under. Under the house, in the ground.

  'This is Samic's hideaway,' Winter said.

  'How long had he intended hiding here?'

  'Until we came.'

  'And he has Halders for company?'

  'Where else would they put him?' There are ten thousand burial plots round Gothenburg, Ringmar thought.

  People would soon be up and about. The sky was grey and blue now.

  Halders saw everything, knows everything. Now we're coming so that you can tell us. He knew that Ringmar didn't think for a moment that Halders was still alive. Probably not that he was in there either. But Winter knew Vennerhag. Halders was here all right. He had beaten up Vennerhag because he thought there was still hope for Halders.

  Now, standing in front of the silent house by the lake, hope had faded away like the stars over the forest. There was a red shimmer beyond the lake that could be seen glinting in places on both sides of the house. Why go in there in a couple of seconds when they could wait for the army of police officers that would encircle the place and shoot their way in?

  'Let's go,' said Winter.

  Ringmar nodded and set off. It was nothing to do with loyalty. He's not trigger-happy. Bertil thinks like me. Now's the moment. He hasn't come with me to wait for Lars and Aneta and sunrise.

  They crept between the car and the house. The grass brushed against their knees, but silently. Winter didn't listen for any noise from the grass. A roller blind was pulled down behind the window to the left of the verandah. A hat was hanging on a hook. A pair of boots stood by the door. There was a tool on the bench to the right, a screwdriver.

  And now? Winter tried the door handle, pressed it down and pushed gently and the door slid open a few centimetres without creaking. He looked at Ringmar, who was ready. Winter pushed and the door opened and they walked quickly and quietly inside, finding themselves in a hallway with the outline of a staircase straight ahead and the pale rectangles of two doors. I'm too old for this sort of thing, Ringmar thought.

  There was a dark hole to the right that might be the entrance to a cellar. Winter took another step forward. Another table along one of the walls with some items of clothing on it. Two chairs. There was a mirror over the table and Winter looked at it and saw the eyes staring at him from the side of the room opposite the entrance and he could see the knuckles in front of the face at the end of the outstretched arm, holding something: a gun, a bloody big gun, and he didn't move a muscle, he heard nothing, no barked command, no breathing, nothing from Ringmar who was also motionless and staring at the same thing but not through the mirror. Winter waited for the impact of the bullet that would pass right through him and smash the glass and wipe out the picture of Samic who was pointing the gun at them and waiting for the movement that would come and—

  The shot broke the odious silence, another shot immediately after the first, Winter was still staring at the mirror, which hadn't been shattered, be hadn't been shattered, Ringmar was just as immobile with his eyes fixed on something Winter couldn't see, he couldn't drag his eyes away from the mirror and the world inside it.

  Samic's arm started sinking. Winter could see his eyes, still open. There was no longer a pistol in Samic's hand. It was lying on the floor in front of him. Samic grasped hold of the hand that had held the pistol, but he didn't seem to be injured. He fell, slowly, revealing the woman standing diagonally behind him with a gun in her hand. Possibly Halders' SigSauer. She had shot the gun out of Samic's hand. Samic whimpered. She dropped her own weapon onto his body.

  Winter had seen her face before, in profile and full face.

  'That's enough,' she said. 'That's enough now.'

  Winter finally dragged his eyes away from the mirror. She was wearing a nightdress, angel-white. Winter took a step towards her.

  'Yes,' she said, 'I'm Mattias' mother.'

  Ringmar started moving.

  'He's upstairs,' she said. She knew they knew who she meant. She was looking straight at Winter.

  'Is there anybody else here?' Ringmar asked. 'Apart from ... our colleague?'

  'What do you think?' she said, looking down at her gun lying between Samic's legs.

  Winter rushed up the stairs. All at once he saw a searchlight through an upstairs window. He could hear Ringmar downstairs talking into a mobile telephone. He could hear car engines outside, doors opening, the rattling of a helicopter in the sky.

  There were two doors, both of them closed. He opened the one on the left and saw a double bed, unmade. There were clothes on the floor.

  The door on the other side of the landing creaked as he opened it. There was a bed in there too. The beam from the helicopter was swinging round and round as if at some funfair, sending circles of light into the room. There was a figure in the bed, its head tied down with straps of some kind. Winter bent over it.

  Halders' face was patchily lit up by searchlights, or maybe it was the rising sun. Winter could hear footsteps downstairs now, voices, car doors slamming.

  Halders opened his eyes.

 

 

 
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