Never End (10 page)

Perhaps their daughter
had
been infected with HIV.

“What I meant a minute ago when I said I might never be sure about the terminology was that I was supposed to be starting my medical studies this autumn,” she said, “but I’m not going to 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 toward the center 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 baby carriage. 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.”

“Too bad.”

“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.”

“But when you came around 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 around?”

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 around 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 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 around, and not coming around.

 

 

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; in piles, rows. He went to the bookcase. The books were arranged in alphabetical order, by author name.

“Neat and tidy, eh?”

He turned around.

“Since . . . it happened I’ve done nothing but clean 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. He did. “I read fewer and fewer real books. Literature. But I’m going to change that. I’ll be taking 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 realized the significance. Or you may have interpreted it wrongly. But then the other shoe 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.”

“Huh?”

“You said before that he’d made sounds you couldn’t understand. Talk about it.”

“I have talked about it; it was exactly like 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 crazy?”

“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.

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 there with the children, and he’d gotten an apartment in the center 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 too, 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 too?”

“Magda too.”

“Will we live here, then?”

Halders thought about his apartment. His shitty little apartment. Now it was gone, almost. He no longer owned this house, but it must be possible to solve that problem.

“I guess 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 ended up deciding she did want to.”

The boy sat up. There were posters on the wall over his bed, some heavy metal bands whose names Halders vaguely recognized.

“Do you think they’ve started the first lesson after lunch?”

“Not yet.”

“Then I can go.”

 

 

Halders drove the children to school, then went back to the house and did his tour again.

He called Winter.

“Did you see her?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“How did it go?”

“How are you feeling, Fredrik?

“You’re answering a question with a question.”

“I wanted to know how it’s going for you.”

“Great.”

“Stop it, for Christ’s sake.”

“OK, not great. But in the circumstances . . .”

“What are you doing?”

“Walking around the house. Around and around. It looks like I’ll be moving back here. The kids want to stay.”

“Walk around as many times as you like.” Winter could hear Halders breathing. “Jeanette Bielke asked me to say hello.”

“I’m coming in,” said Halders.

“Take a few days off.”

“No.”

“Well, I can’t force you.”

“If I collapse at least it will be while I’m on the front line.”

“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that,” said Winter.

“I’ve got something else you maybe
would
like to hear,” said Halders. “Something occurred to me in connection with the murder of Angelika Hansson. Something we haven’t talked about.”

“Can’t we discuss it now? Over the phone?”

“I’m coming in. It can wait for an hour.”

“It will have to be this afternoon. I’m seeing the Wägners in half an hour.”

“Did they ask for the meeting?”

“No, I did.”

 

 

She had biked home and hung up her damp swimsuit on the line behind the house. Or in front of it, if you go in through the kitchen door. As she had.

It was quiet indoors. She had the evening to herself if she wanted to stay here. She could wander around with a beer or a glass of wine and smell the scents wafting in through the open windows when night fell. There was so much greenery outside that it was a joy to wander around the house, experiencing it.

She took a shower. The answering machine was blinking when she went back to her bedroom. She listened to the message, and immediately returned the call.

“I was in the shower.”

“Hmm.”

“Did you call earlier? Somebody called my mobile and didn’t say anything.”

“No.”

“So . . . what’s happening?”

“Can you come here tonight?”

“I don’t know . . . I don’t have the strength.”

“Do you really mean that?”

“It’s true. I feel really lazy.”

“You can be lazy here too. Relatively lazy.”

“It’s on the other side of town.”

“Take a taxi.”

“Too expensive.”

“I’ll pay.”

“No.”

“I will, I promise.”

“I didn’t mean it like that. I feel like staying in tonight. Taking it easy.”

“OK.”

“You won’t be angry?”

“You’ll regret it.”

“Are you angry?”

“Yes.”

“Really?”

“No.”

“We could meet tomorrow maybe?”

“I can’t, sorry.”

“Oh.”

“I’ll call you.”

IT WAS RAINING WHEN WINTER LEFT THE POLICE STATION. IT WAS
still hot, but the atmosphere was close, and he could feel sweat bead up on his brow, as well as rain in his hair. The grass next to the parking lot had turned greener after just a few minutes, and the air was heavy with the smell of it. This was the first rain for over a month.

Suddenly the sounds coming from the traffic on all sides were different. The swish of tires on wet asphalt. A softer sound.

The colors were clearer than when he’d last driven through the center of town. Not many people were wearing rain gear. Three young men naked from the waist up danced over the Allé when he stopped at a red light. One of them gave Winter a thumbs-up. He nodded through the windshield of his Mercedes.

He drove through the tunnel, then turned off and continued along minor roads until he pulled up outside the house. The rain had stopped by the time he got out of the car. There was no wind. His back felt sweaty despite the air conditioning.

The house looked as melancholy as it always did. It was more than two years since he was last here. They’d kept in touch. Birgersson as well, but the fact was that Winter had felt a . . . stronger need to stay in contact with Beatrice’s parents. Maybe a duty, in addition to his professional reasons. Their daughter’s murderer was still out there somewhere. They were prisoners of that crime for the rest of their lives, bound by the memory and the sorrow. Shut up forever inside the brick house that was so heavy and dark in the mist; the windows were black, the door closed, but it opened as Winter walked along the short path from the gate. Bengt Wägner came out, closing the door behind him, and shook hands with Winter.