Never End (18 page)

“So, not the same bastard,” said Winter. “Beatrice Wägner five years ago and Angelika Hansson now. Five years in between. Same place. Same . . . weapon.” He leaned forward. “You can’t say anything more about the belts? Nothing more concrete?”

“No. They were strangled, but I can’t say precisely what was used.”

“Even so, this is sort of a breakthrough,” said Winter. “If you look at it that way. We eliminate possibilities and block out a few questions.”

“Yes.”

“The next step is the cameras.”

“I checked as soon as you mentioned it. You’re right.”

It was not possible to say what camera had taken the picture of Angelika, not on the basis of the print, and a print was all they had. But there was a small dot on the photograph, and Winter had noticed it, and Beier’s men had studied it more closely, and it was probably due to damage on the lens.

“I compared it with other pictures that may have been taken with Angelika’s camera, but there were no signs of that spot on them.”

“I’m with you.”

“We know that her camera is gone, but we can assume that it wasn’t the one that took the picture in the bar, or wherever it is.”

“So now we know that.”

“We’ve checked with the other girl’s, Jeanette’s, and there’s no sign of damage on her camera lens either.”

Winter nodded.

“So somewhere out there is a camera that took the picture of Angelika, and it has a damaged lens,” Winter said.

“Find that, and you may have found the murderer,” Beier said.

Neither man spoke. Winter could feel the sun on the back of his neck from the window behind him. He was no longer hungry.

“That button, by the way: it’s a standard one you’ll find on any shirt you buy from a chain store,” Beier said.

The button Winter had found in the park was on Beier’s desk with all the other things.

“I don’t buy my shirts from chain stores,” Winter said.

“I didn’t mean you personally.”

“Ah.”

“I meant people who don’t buy only designer shirts from Baldessarini.”

Beier himself was wearing a suit from Oskar Jakobson, white shirt and tie.

“It would have been easier if it had been a Baldessarini button,” said Winter.

“These are just some of the things we found at the scene,” said Beier, pointing at the objects spread out on his desk. “How much of this belonged to the killer?”

“You tell me.”

“Nothing, as far as we know.”

“Hmm.”

“If I can get a decent set of fingerprints, I might be able to help.”

“You’ll have to keep on looking.”

“We are looking, and looking.”

“One other thing,” said Winter. “What do you say about the unidentified party guests?”

“I can’t explain it,” said Beier. “They are in the picture taken at the graduation party. The one Angelika Hansson’s father took. They were there. He might not be able to recognize them, but they were recorded on the film. So they were there.”

“Yes, that’s the assumption we’ve generally worked on,” said Winter. “Living people standing in front of a camera normally end up in the photograph.”

“Which they did,” said Beier.

“But not in Cecilia’s photo of the same scene,” said Winter. “A different angle but more or less the same scene.”

“One explanation is obvious,” Beier said. “When Cecilia took her picture the other three had moved.”

“That had occurred to me,” said Winter.

“I was hoping it had,” said Beier with a smile.

“But when you compare the two photographs it’s hard not to believe that they were taken at more or less the same moment.”

“A lot can happen in a second.”

“I suppose so.”

“How’s the hunt for the bar going?”Beier asked.

“No bites yet.”

“It’s bound to be an unlicensed joint.”

“No doubt.”

“Don’t you know about them all?”

“We don’t know what they all look like inside,” Winter said.

Beier stood up, went over to the window, and pulled up the blinds. The room turned white.

“You should be worried about how difficult it’s been to find out exactly what those girls were doing the hour or so before they were attacked.”

“I am worried,” said Winter. “I think they were at that bar or pub or whatever it is. They were there and they left and somebody else was there and went with them. Or followed them.” He looked at Beier, who was a silhouette: in black against white. “When we find the place I’ll be less worried.”

“Or more,” Beier said.

A MALE WITNESS HAD SAID HE’D HEARD SCREAMS COMING FROM
the park. It had been about 2:00 A.M., or closer to 2:30. Half an hour to an hour after Beatrice had last been seen, entering the park.

Winter read through the Wagner case notes, the same thing over and over again. Winter read the witness’s account, but nothing happened in that story, nothing emerged from it, he could see no subtext; he read it all again and tried to find the secret hidden underneath, but couldn’t see it.

Something had happened, though.

Beatrice’s final hours. He’d started interviewing some of the old witnesses again, her old friends. It was so long ago. They tried to remember, just as he was doing now. They’d gotten older, would be twenty-five soon. He’d spoken to four who’d been part of the group that last night. Two of them had kids now. Finished studying. A new life. One could still have passed for nineteen. One might pass for thirty. Where would Beatrice have been on that scale? What would she have looked like? I miss her, one of the women had said. I really miss her.

Winter compared what they’d said now with what they’d said before.

There was one thing that didn’t match, not quite.

A blurred memory, perhaps, ravaged by time. But perhaps not.

 

 

That last night? Surely there’s nothing else to add? He’d looked hard at Winter. Klas, an old friend of Beatrice’s. Finished his studies. Does he realize he’s a survivor? Does he think about it? Winter had felt for his packet of cigarillos in his breast pocket, a reflex action. He’d felt reflex pain when he groped for the packet: a tumor attached to his chest that had been cut away. He’d been having a sore throat. Felt worse since he’d stopped smoking. A cold spreading all over his body, waiting. Set free when the nicotine no longer protected him. Who had protected Beatrice? That last night. There was something that didn’t add up. Klas remembered it all differently now. Or they’d asked the questions differently then. Beatrice hadn’t been with the rest of them for the whole evening. Yes, they’d met up. But . . . sort of, afterward. Most of them had been out for a meal, but she’d showed up later and then she left again, and it had been a few hours before the rest of them went their different ways home.

Hang on. Winter thought back to what the case notes said. Hadn’t they asked what had happened during the
whole
evening?

“Weren’t you all together for the whole evening?”

“Not as I remember, no.”

“What was she doing when she was not with you, then?”

“Her own thing, I suppose.”

“What was her own thing?”

“I dunno.”

“Oh, come on!”

“I don’t know.”

“What’s the matter with you? Can’t you see this is important?”

“Calm down, Inspector.”

“What was her own thing?”

“There was some place she used to go to, I think.”

“What place?”

“Somebody said something about her going to some place or other. A club. I must have said that when . . . when it happened. When she was murdered.”

“No.”

“I guess I didn’t know for sure. She’d never said anything about it to me personally.”

“And?”

“I wasn’t sure, as I said. I probably didn’t say anything because I didn’t know for sure.”

Winter looked hard at him.

“Who did know?”

“Nobody.”

“But somebody said something.”

“I don’t know who it was. That’s the truth.
The truth!
”

“You deserve a good beating.”

Winter had blurted that out because he felt completely . . . unprotected and on edge. The nicotine that used to act as an inner protection, a barrier, had gone. There were other brands. A good man doesn’t become less good because he changes his habits.

Klas had stared at him.

“I what?”

“I’m sorry. But this is something you ought to have said earlier.”

“But it’s just a little thing. And anyway, it’s your job to . . . map out what she did.”

 

 

That’s the problem. There are gaps. Winter returned to the text in front of him. The male witness. But before starting to read again he stood up and paced up and down the room for a while, trying to subdue his craving for the poison. He turned on the kettle, made himself a cup of coffee, then sat down again.

The witness had heard screams. Winter read through the text for the umpteenth time. He’d been scared and rushed to get help. He’d met a couple about thirty-five years old, wearing white clothes. The couple had just walked through the park and, the woman thought, maybe seen somebody. According to the witness.

The police had never talked to that couple because they hadn’t come forward.

He thought about that again. Why had they not come forward?

A man and a boy had been packing a car next to the park that night, perhaps at the very time that it happened. They had never been tracked down. Why had they not come forward either?

 

 

Winter drove to Lunden with his window down. He passed Halders’s house, but that wasn’t where he was going. Halders wasn’t there. Halders was taking things a day at a time, an hour at a time. There was a hedge outside the house, about one and a half meters high. Winter could hear a dog barking.

He turned right about three blocks after Halders’s house and stopped outside another house with another hedge. There was a brand-new BMW parked in the street outside. The car gleamed in the sun. Winter could feel the sweat under his shirt collar and down his back. He went in through the open gate and turned left, continued down a sloping flagstone path around the house and into the back garden, where the man he always referred to as “the gangster” was reclining on a lounger with a beer in his hand. The sun glittered on the surface of the swimming pool. The gangster watched him approach.

“You’re wearing too many clothes,” he said, raising his beer by way of greeting.

“I’m at work.”

“I’m on vacation myself.”

“On vacation from what?”

“Sit down, Erik.”

Winter sat on the chair next to him.

“Would you like a beer?”

“Yes.”

Benny Vennerhag got up and disappeared into the house through the patio door and returned with a bottle of beer that felt cold in Winter’s hand as he accepted it.

Vennerhag sat down again. Swimming trunks didn’t suit him. He was an old acquaintance, if you could call it that. He’d been married to Winter’s sister, Lotta, at one time. For a very short time.

What the hell had she seen in him?

“I heard about your murders.”

“They’re not mine,” said Winter, taking a swig of beer.

“Not mine either. But I told you that when you called.”

“What about the other thing?”

“Illegal clubs? Not my field.”

“Isn’t it strange how nothing I ever ask you about is your field, Benny?”

“What’s strange about that?”

“How do you make ends meet when nothing is your field?”

“That’s a business secret.”

“We know quite a bit about your secrets, Benny.”

“And nevertheless, here I am in my trunks taking it easy,” said Vennerhag, gesturing toward the pool and the mosaic tiles and the fresh green lawn.

Winter took off his shirt and pants.

“Here we go again,” said Vennerhag, as Winter dove into the pool. It wasn’t the first time he’d been swimming there.

Vennerhag stood up when Winter surfaced, walked to the side of the pool, and handed over the bottle of beer. Water ran down Winter’s face from his hair, which was plastered flat against his scalp.

“Illegal clubs are sensitive things,” Vennerhag said.

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not the type to spill the beans about that kind of thing. I think it’s a legitimate activity that satisfies the needs of nice ordinary people.”

“Bullshit.”

“It would do you good to go to one of those places every now and then, Erik.”

“What would do me good right now is a Corps,” said Winter, squinting up at the sun.

“Shall I get you one from your shirt pocket?”

“There aren’t any there. I quit.”

“That was rash of you.”

“They don’t import them anymore,” Winter said.

“There are other brands.”

“So I’m told.”

“Think about what your job entails.” Vennerhag made as if to protect himself. “You don’t want to be turning violent again and trying to strangle somebody or anything like that.”

It wouldn’t have been the first time.

Winter heaved himself up onto the side of the pool.

“A place that was in business five years ago.”

“Hmm.”

“At least five years ago.”

“Why an illegal club? Have you checked out the rest of the pleasure places in town? The legal ones?”

“We are.”

“Did you bring the photos you were going on about?”

“Yes.”

“Can I see them?”

“All in good time.”

“Oh, yes?”

“What have you got to say, Benny?”

“About unlicensed clubs five years ago?”

“That are still in business.”

“I don’t think there are any.”