Frozen Tracks (6 page)

You're so soft, Uncle had said. You're so soft to touch.

He'd been sitting on the train. A lady had asked him
where he was going. He'd laughed.

Mum!

Mum!

She'd been waiting for him at the station, and the
town was very big. Where he lived with his dad wasn't
a town at all, but this one was big. Enormous.

Mum!

My little boy, Mum had said.

You can call this man Uncle, she'd said.

Uncle had taken him by the hand, and touched his
head.

My little boy, Uncle had said.

Uncle lives here with me, Mum had said.

Or you with me, Uncle had said, and they'd laughed
and he laughed as well.

They'd had a marvellous dinner.

This is where you can sleep, Mum had said.

The next morning she'd gone to work in town, a
long, long way away.

Do you want to go for a little walk? Uncle had asked.

They'd gone for an enormous walk in one direction,
and just as far back again.

I can feel that you're cold, Uncle had said when they
got back home.

Come here, my boy, and I'll warm you up. You're
so soft. You're so soft to touch.

This was how he recounted what had happened. His
tone was almost exhilarated.

He couldn't remember why he decided to cut across
the football pitch when that meant he would actually
have further to walk back to the halls of residence where
he lived; but perhaps he'd noticed a forgotten football
lit up by the street lights and suddenly felt a strong
desire to shoot the damn thing into the back of the net
and show some of those morons in the national side
how it ought to be done. Let the world know that he'd
packed it in too soon, given up before his career had
really taken off.

That could have been it. But it might just have been
that he'd been to a party. In any case, he'd walked over
the sports ground at Mossen on the way home and it
had been well into the night, or rather the morning.
Half past four. He'd noticed a poor newspaper delivery
boy trudging around, back bent, among the high-rise
apartment blocks soaring heavenwards behind him. Poor
sod. Lugging newspapers up to the fortieth floor.
Morning after morning, no thanks. Good for keeping
fit, no doubt, but you should work out at a sensible
time of day. Newspaper boys are the bottom of the
heap, he'd thought, and grinned as he tried to adjust
his footsteps, which were tending to lead him off course
to the left when he didn't look where he was going
maybe, to his halls that were lying in wait for him over
there, gloomy and cheerless, dormant until the murky
grey light of dawn signalled time for more swotting and
more hassle. But not for him, no thank you very much.
He would be fast asleep the whoooole day long. No
swotting, no hassle, no rain down his collar, no crap
lunch, no long-winded lectures, no slushy corridors, no
aggressive women throwing their weight around.

That's what was going through his head when he staggered
to his left again and heard something
swiiiishing
past his head that had been in a different position a
quarter of a second before, and something thudded into
the ground in front of him and seemed to be
stuck
there,
and he turned his head and saw the guy tugging and
heaving at something with a long handle.

'What the hell . . .' he had managed to mutter in a
shaky voice, and the other person was still tugging at
the handle or whatever it was, and it had dawned on
him now, he'd been slow on the uptake but now the
penny had dropped, this wasn't some old bloke digging
up potatoes two months late, and in a rather strange
place at that. The guy had jerked whatever it was out
of the ground and then presumably looked at him, but
he wouldn't have seen much, as his intended victim had
fled over the football pitch at a pace that would have
forced Maurice Greene and Ato Boldon and all the other
wooden-legged Olympic sprinters to give up. All the
potato man would have seen was his back and his legs,
on the way to anywhere that would provide protection.
He hadn't heard any footsteps following him, but he
hadn't listened for any either. He had raced across the
road and in among the little houses and over the street
on the other side of the block and down the hill, eventually
slowing because otherwise his rib cage would have
burst.

His name was Gustav Smedsberg and he was sitting in
front of a police officer in a thick woollen sweater who
had introduced himself as Bertil Ringsomething.

'You did the right thing, getting in touch with us,
Gustav.'

'I remembered reading something about some guy
going around bashing people on the head.'

Ringmar nodded.

'Was it him?'

'We don't know. It depends what you remember.'

'What I remember is more or less what I told the guy
I spoke to on the phone. The duty officer or whatever
you call it.'

'Let's run through it once again,' said Ringmar, and
they did so.

'Odd that I didn't hear him,' said Smedsberg.

'Were there any other noises at the time?'

'No.'

'No traffic in the street?'

'No. Only a newspaper delivery boy.'

'Somebody was delivering newspapers at that time?'

'Yes. Or just before. As I was crossing the street
before you get to the sports ground. Gibraltargatan.'

'Did you see this delivery boy?'

'Yes.'

'How do you know?'

'Know what?'

'That it was a newspaper delivery boy?'

'Somebody carrying a pile of newspapers early in the
morning,' said Smedsberg. 'That's what I call a newspaper
delivery boy.'

'Just the one? Or two? Three?'

'Just the one. I didn't see any others. He was just
going into one of the apartment blocks as I went past.'
Smedsberg looked at Ringmar. 'A tough job, that. So
early in the morning.'

'Did you speak to him? To the newspaper boy?'

'No, no.'

'Did you see him again?'

'No.'

'Are you sure?'

'Yes, of co—' Smedsberg looked up at Ringmar again,
and sat up straighter on the chair, which creaked.

'Do you think that—'

'Think what?' said Ringmar.

'Do you think it was the newspaper boy who tried
to kill me?'

'I don't think anything,' said Ringmar.

'Why are you asking so much about him, then?'

'Describe how he was dressed,' said Ringmar.

'Who? The newspaper boy?'

'Yes.'

'I've no idea. No idea at all. It was dark. It was
raining a bit and I was sort of looking down.'

'Did he have anything on his head?'

'Er, yes, I think so.'

'What exactly?'

'A woolly hat, maybe. I'd have remembered if it was
a baseball cap, I think, a Nike cap or something like
that.' He looked out of the window, then back again at
Ringmar. 'I'm pretty sure it was a woolly hat.'

'The person who attacked you. Did he have anything
on his head?'

No answer. Smedsberg was thinking. Ringmar waited.

'I really don't remember,' said Smedsberg eventually.
'Not at the moment, at least.' He ran his hand over his
forehead, as if trying to help his memory along. 'Isn't
that the kind of thing I ought to remember?'

'It depends on the circumstances,' said Ringmar.
'Maybe you'll remember before long. Tomorrow,
perhaps, the day after. It's important that you get in
touch with us the moment you remember anything.
Anything at all.'

'Anything at all? Shouldn't it have something to do
with the case?'

'You know what I mean.'

'OK, OK. I feel a bit, well, a bit tired just now.' He
was thinking about his bed, and his plans for today,
which weren't exactly ambitious.

'I think it might have been an iron,' said Gustav, after
they'd had a short break.

'An iron?'

'A branding iron. The thing you mark cattle with.'

'Would you recognise a thing like that?'

'I grew up on a farm.'

'Did you have branding irons there?'

He didn't answer. Ringmar wasn't certain he'd heard
the question, and repeated it. The lad seemed to be
thinking about his answer, or perhaps about the question.

It was a simple question.

'Er, yes, of course. They're old things, been around
for a long time.'

'Is it usual?' Ringmar asked.

'What do you mean, usual?'

'To brand animals in that way?'

'It happens. But it's not like in Montana or Wyoming,'
Smedsberg said. He looked at Ringmar. 'American prairies.'

'I know.'

'I've been there.'

'Really?'

'Cody. Terrific place.'

'Were you a cowboy?'

'No. But maybe one day. When I've graduated from
Chalmers.'

'The cowpokin' engineer.'

Smedsberg smiled.

'There are jobs to be had there. Engineering jobs, I
mean.'

'How were you able to see that it was a branding
iron?' Ringmar asked, abandoning Montana for Mossen.

'I didn't say it was, definitely. But I think so. There
again, I didn't hang about, if you see what I mean.'

'Was it the handle that looked familiar?'

'I suppose it must have been.'

'What did it look like?'

'I can try to draw it for you. Or you can visit some
farm or other and see one for yourself.'

'Do they all look the same, then?'

'I know what they looked like at home. This one was
similar to them. But I didn't see the branding bit itself.'

Ringmar stood up.

'I'd like you to take a look at some photographs,' he
said.

He walked over to a cabinet, took out one of the
folders and produced the pictures.

'Oh shit,' said Smedsberg when he saw the first photograph.
'Is he dead?'

'None of these pictures are of dead people,' Ringmar
said. 'But they could easily have been.'

Smedsberg was shown several pictures from various
angles of the three young men who had been attacked
with what seemed to be the same weapon.

'And I was supposed to be the fourth victim, is that
it?' Smedsberg said.

'Assuming it's the same attacker, yes.'

'What kind of a bloody madman is this?' Smedsberg
looked up at Ringmar, then back down at the photograph
of the back of Jakob Stillman's head. 'What is he
trying to do?' He looked again at the photograph.
Ringmar observed him closely. 'Although he's a madman,
it doesn't look like he wants to do anything but knock
somebody about.' Smedsberg looked up again. 'Anybody
at all.'

'Do you know any of these lads?' Ringmar asked.

'No.'

'Take your time.'

'I don't know any of them.'

'What can you say about the wounds, then?' Ringmar
pointed to the photographs.

Smedsberg scrutinised them again, held some of them
up to the light.

'Well, I suppose he could have been trying to mark
them.'

'Mark them? What do you mean by that?'

'Like I said before. It could be a marking iron. A
branding iron.'

'Are you sure?'

'No. The problem is that you often brand farm
animals with some characterising mark on their skin.
But these are not that kind of wound, as far as I can
see.'

'There's something I don't understand,' Ringmar said.
'A branding iron is used for branding cattle. But in this
case it's been used as a club. Would there still have been
a brand mark?'

'I really don't know.'

'OK. But an ordinary branding iron must be pretty
heavy, you need to be on the strong side to use one, is
that right?'

'Yes, I would say so.'

'You'd need an awful lot of strength, in fact?'

'Yes.'

'The man who attacked you – did you get the impression
that he was big?'

'Not particularly. Normal.'

'OK. Let's assume he's determined to club you on the
back of the head with a branding iron. He creeps up
behind you. You don't hear him and ha—'

'Why didn't I hear him? I should have done, surely?'

'Let's not worry about that for the moment,' Ringmar
said. 'He's behind you. He attacks you. At that very
moment you veer to one side.'

'Stagger to one side, I'd say. I wasn't stone-cold sober,
to be honest.'

'Stagger. You stagger to one side. He attacks you.
But all he can hit is thin air. He hits thin air. His weapon
thuds down into the ground and gets stuck. He tugs at
it, but it doesn't come loose. You see him standing there,
and then you leg it.'

'Yes.'

'Why did this weapon, whatever it was, get stuck in
the ground?' Ringmar wondered. 'It wouldn't have done
if he'd jabbed at you in a straight line.'

'So he didn't do that, I suppose,' said Smedsberg.

'Really?'

'He took a swing at me with the branding iron.'

'If that's what it is,' Ringmar said.

'Whatever it is, you'd better catch him damn fast,'
Smedsberg said. 'He might come after me again, right?'

Ringmar made no comment. Smedsberg looked away.
He seemed to be thinking something over.

'Maybe he's trying to brand people, really brand
them.' He was looking at Ringmar now. 'Maybe he
wants to show that he owns them, these people he's
branded?'

Ringmar listened. Smedsberg looked as if he were
concentrating, as if he'd already accepted a job as a CID
officer and was now on duty.

'Maybe he didn't want to kill us. The victims. Maybe
he just wanted to show that, er, that he owned us,' said
Gustav Smedsberg.

'Fascinating,' said Halders. 'We'd better give him a job
here. Start at the bottom and work his way up to the
top.'

'And where's the top?' asked Aneta Djanali.

'I'll show you when we get there,' said Halders. 'We'll
make it one of these fine days.'

'It's a fine day today,' said Djanali.

She was right. The sun had returned after a prolonged
exile. The light outside made your eyes hurt, and Djanali
had turned up at the police station in black sunglasses
that made her look like a soul queen on tour in
Scandinavia. At least that's what Halders had told her
when they met outside the entrance.

They were in Winter's office now. Winter was sitting
on his desk chair, and Ringmar was perched on the edge
of his desk.

'Shall we consult the farmers' union – what do they
call themselves, the Federation of Swedish Farmers, is
it? FSF?'

Winter wasn't quite sure if Halders was joking.

'Good idea, Fredrik,' he said. 'You can start with the
whole of Götaland.'

'Certainly not,' said Halders, looking at the others.
'I was only joking.' He turned to Winter again. 'What
if it is a bumpkin, then? What do we do? How will we
be able to pinpoint every clodhopper in the area?'

'PC Plod in search of a clod,' said Winter.

'They're a dying breed,' said Ringmar.

'PC Plods?' said Djanali.

'Farmers,' said Ringmar. 'Soon there won't be any
Swedish farmers left. The EU will see to that.'

'There'll always be tough little Portuguese olivegrowers,
though,' said Halders. 'The Swedish national
dish will become olives, whether you want the bloody
things or not.'