Death Angels (36 page)

Un vin blanc
. She opened the refrigerator and took out an open bottle. The sides of the glass misted over when she poured it. She took a sip. It was too cold. She put the glass down and left the bottle on the counter.

It was Thursday night. The outdoor thermometer showed twenty-six degrees. Last week the crocuses had been out and now they were iced over. The question was how the summer lilac was faring.

She heard the sirens again on Korsvägen Street. It’s like a training camp down there, she thought.

Maria would be at handball camp all weekend, and Östergaard was looking forward to having some time for herself—a rare treat for a minister. She would go to a movie, read a book, make some fish soup, put on three layers of clothing, take the long hike around Lake Delsjön and come home with a warm glow on her face that would last all evening long.

“Did you mend my track suit?” Maria shouted from the living room.

“Yes,” she shouted back.

“How about my white jersey, did you wash it?”

“Yes, and if you want anything else, you’ll have to come in here.”

“What?”

“If you want anything else, you’ll have to come in here.”

She heard Maria giggle, once more engrossed in the movie.

The week had exhausted her. She hadn’t been able to set her own priorities or break away from all those sessions with the officers.

A traffic accident on Tuesday, conversations afterward that could have sent a younger woman home in despair.

Was it really a job for a woman? That was just like asking whether it was a job for a man. It wasn’t a question of muscles or how big you were. It was a question of humanity. Sometimes she wondered if it was a job for anyone.

She got up and went into the living room. “I’m going to take a bath,” she said to Maria. “If anyone calls, tell them I’ll call back later.”

Maria nodded with her eyes on the TV. Östergaard glanced at the screen. Four people were talking at the same time. Everybody looked upset. A family.

She took the glass of wine into the bathroom and plugged the tub, adjusting the temperature of the water until it was the way she liked it. Throwing her clothes into the laundry basket, she drank some wine, then set the glass on the edge of the bathtub. She turned around and looked in the mirror on the door of the medicine cabinet.

She inspected herself. You’re not thirty-five yet and this is your body, she thought, cupping her breasts. They were taut in her hands. She ran her fingers over her stomach—she still had a waistline but had gotten a little heavier. Heavier than when? she wondered and turned sideways. Her butt looked a little flabby, but that was only the angle.

The roar of the water died down as the bathtub filled up. She turned the faucet off and lowered one foot in. It was delightfully hot.

She lay there for a long time. The skin on the front of her fingers and the bottom of her feet turned into rolling sand dunes. The French beach flashed through her mind again. She finished the wine and closed her eyes, her forehead perspiring.

The most painful experience had been visiting Christian’s mother. A mailbox that looked like a birdhouse stood outside their door. Her husband had flown to London immediately after getting the news.

They had adopted Christian. Did that make any difference? For a second it had felt that way. She asked Winter in the car afterward, but he was unwilling or unable to answer. He drove silently with his eyes fixed on the road. The only sound was the swish of the windshield wipers, battling something wet that was neither rain nor snow. The buildings of the Old City were colorless in the northern haze.

“This was the beginning of the end,” Winter had said suddenly.

“What do you mean?”

“Now is when it all comes together,” he said, putting some jazz in the tape deck. “Get ready.”

Winter took the ferry to Asperö Island as the sun was setting. He got off at Albert’s Pier and walked up the hill. Taking the path to the right, he continued to the top. Bolger sat outside his cottage. “Goddam beautiful, isn’t it?” he shouted, waving as Winter approached.

The archipelago lay below them, beyond the pine forest. They could see the docked ferry through the glow over Styrsö and Donsö islands. Winter caught sight of another ferry—Stena Line—winding its way between the rocks on Dana Fjord.

“And it’s all mine,” Bolger said. “My kingdom come.”

“Has it really been a whole year?”

“Weren’t you here last summer?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“I wanted you to see how lovely it was.”

“Very.”

“When I first invited you, I mean. It’s most beautiful in late March.”

“In what way?”

“No green haze to block the view. Only water and cliffs and sky.”

“No sailboats either?”

“Above all, no sailboats.”

“I heard that you were worried about Bergenhem’s safety again,” Winter said.

“Just relax and enjoy the view.”

“Has he stumbled across something big, Johan?”

“Nothing bigger than all this.” Bolger stretched out his arms.

The sea wind filled Winter’s nostrils, and the bushes in front of the cottage bowed under a sudden squall.

“Do you come out here a lot?” Winter asked.

“More and more.”

“And you spend the night?”

“Sometimes, if I don’t feel like starting the motorboat.”

The boat, open at the top and made of the same timber as the cottage, was floating in the shadow of the pier.

“He’s going out with a stripper,” Bolger said. “She’s among the most popular ones.”

“I’m sure he’s got his reasons, and you told me all that before. When I was in London.”

“Okay—he’s your man,” Bolger said.

“Who is she?”

“A stripper, that’s all.”

“Is that why you wanted me to come out here?”

“Weren’t you the one who said you needed a little fresh air to clear your head?”

“Who is she?” Winter insisted.

“This chick has been a junkie, and they’re capable of imagining anything.”

“Do you know her well?”

“No.”

“But you’re worried.”

“This kind of thing is never safe, Erik.”

“What do you think I should do?”

“Find out what he’s up to.”

“I know what he’s up to.”

“I forgot. You know everything.”

“What?”

“Where is . . .”

“What did you say?”

“Mats is . . .”

“What are you mumbling about, Johan? What about Mats?”

Bolger looked up at Winter. “Never mind.”

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing, I told you.” Bolger got up. “Come on in and we’ll have something to drink.”

Winter watched the evening descend over the water and glimpsed the lights of two boats out on the fjord. They approached each other and merged for a second like a powerful lamp.

They drank coffee and schnapps. The only light came from the fireplace.

“What time does the ferry go back?” Bolger asked.

“Eight o’clock.”

“You can sleep over if you like.”

“I appreciate the offer, but I don’t have the time.”

“Something has been going round and round in my head,” Bolger said.

Winter drank his coffee and felt the sting of the locally brewed schnapps. He took a bite out of a sugar cube.

“Now that I’ve thought about it a little,” Bolger continued, “I wouldn’t be surprised if one or two of the victims had been at my bar.”

“And you waited all this time to tell me?”

“I never actually saw them, but most kids their age show up once or twice a month. It’s become something of a meeting place on Thursday nights.”

“I see.”

“It could be worth checking out.”

“Good idea.”

“I might even have served one of them. It never occurred to me before.”

“Hmm.”

“Let me see their photos again.”

Bolger lit an outdoor brick fireplace that he had recently built on the rocks. He had insisted that Winter join him. The evening was a vault above them. The logs caught fire and Winter saw them shift from orange to crimson. Bolger’s features faded in and out. The flames rose with the smoke. For a moment Winter thought he saw something move in the fire, shadowy figures or writhing bodies.

WlNTER READ THE TWO LETTERS THAT THE BURGLAR HAD WRlT
ten. The way he described the bloody clothes and the phone call he had heard from under the bed took on a new and ominous significance in light of a couple of the most recent developments. Bloodstains had turned up in Vikingsson’s Gothenburg apartment, and Macdonald had found more in the Stanley Gardens flat.

Blood drips no matter how careful you are, Winter thought.

The stains in Gothenburg were composed of both human and animal blood. It could have been the same mix as on the clothes the burglar had seen, but who knew? The blood in London hadn’t even been analyzed yet.

What a strange conversation the burglar had overheard. Vikingsson had used the word “celluloid”—what was that all about?

They had traced all the calls Vikingsson had made from his cell phone. He never phoned London. He didn’t call anyone in Gothenburg very often either. He had dialed a downtown pay phone the day the burglar was there.

This was all assuming there was some truth to the burglar’s claims and he wasn’t just another lunatic. He seemed sane enough, but you never could tell.

Vikingsson had come back, and they had convinced the D.A. to issue a detention order, which gave the investigators a chance to proceed more deliberately.

They tried to postpone the hearings for an arrest warrant as long as possible. The judge could rule at any time, but Winter hoped he would wait the four-day limit. We’ll never get him arrested on the evidence we have right now, Winter thought, putting the copy of the letter back on his desk.

Four days max.

They would place Vikingsson in a lineup. Beckman, the streetcar driver, would stand on the other side of the glass wall. They would find out how good a memory for faces he actually had.

Winter had read a lot about the cognitive neuroscience of memory. A lineup could either make or break the prosecution’s case.

Police screwups always resulted from clumsiness or ignorance. The human psyche was specially equipped to distinguish between different faces, no matter how similar, and the brain employed a separate system for storing and processing facial information.

He dialed Ringmar’s extension. “Could you come in for a minute, Bertil?”

Ringmar arrived, a flush of excitement in his face.

“You’re looking frisky,” Winter said.

“This might be the light at the end of the tunnel.”

“What tunnel?”

“The one at the beginning of the light.”

“I’ve read through Beckman’s interrogation, and I think he’d be willing to tell us more now,” Winter said.

“Could be, but he’s not much of a witness. He didn’t actually see a crime being committed.”

“We’ll question him again, and take a more cognitive approach.”

“You took the words right out of my mouth,” Ringmar said sarcastically. There were certain expressions that always perturbed him. Winter didn’t understand why.

They would ask Beckman new, more open-ended questions. Leave more pauses for him to fill in. The purpose of the cognitive method was to impose various memory-improving techniques on the witness. They would get Beckman to describe each detail, to relate everything he had seen in a different order and from different points of view.

“We can’t afford to slip up,” Winter said.

“You’re starting to repeat yourself.”

“I want seven decoys in the lineup.”

“You got it.”

Just enough people to fill the first couple of rows of a streetcar, Winter thought.