The Shadow Woman (16 page)

“Sverker,” Winter said.

“We did a lot of shifts together,” Ringmar said. “Sweet youth in uniform.”

“I haven’t seen him for a while.”

“He was sick. Cancer in one of his legs, I think.”

“I may have heard something about that,” Winter said, and drove up the hill at Eklandabacken.

Winter scanned the facades along the street, once they’d passed the church, and pulled up in an empty parking spot opposite Andrea Maltzer’s address. The building was tall and the street was in shade. The entryway was broad and austere, the air inside cool from stone and marble. A statue at the foot of the steps depicted a naked woman pointing upward with one finger.

“Looks even nicer than your lobby,” Ringmar said.

The locksmith was waiting for them in a rattan armchair by the front door and stood to say hello.

“Second floor,” Winter said. “Let’s take the stairs.”

The polished tropical hardwood and the lush plants on pedestals made him feel like he was wandering through a managed jungle.

The locksmith got everything ready.

“I’ll ring the doorbell first,” Winter said.

He rang again and heard footsteps and thought they were coming from somewhere else. The doors were massive—impossible to hack your way through with an axe. You’d need a chainsaw and battering ram, with Fredrik at the front.

There was a rattling inside, and the door was opened by a woman who could be the same age as Angela.

She’s calm, Winter thought. This is a surprise for her. She’s simply exercised her right to have a private life and disappeared for a few days.

“Yes?” the woman asked.

“Andrea Maltzer?”

“What’s this about? Who are you?”

“The police,” Winter said, and produced his ID card. She studied it. The locksmith eyed Winter, who gave him a nod, then disappeared down the stairs.

“What do you want?” Andrea Maltzer repeated.

“Could we come in for a moment?”

“Are you also a police officer?” she asked Ringmar.

“Sorry,” Ringmar said, and showed her his ID.

She gave his badge a quick glance and looked at Winter again. She had a face sprinkled with freckles that had grown in number this summer, he guessed. She looks young and fresh, more or less like Peter von Holten when he’s not throwing up all over my desk. Can’t she find someone who isn’t already married? She looks tired, but not worn out.

“Would it be all right?” Winter nodded toward the apartment.

“It’s all right,” she said, and they stepped into the foyer. She lead the way into a living room that resembled one Winter lived in for a period in his life, white stucco and windows that opened out onto a balcony, which already looked searing hot in the morning sun. The balcony door stood open, and Winter saw an empty cast-iron table beneath an umbrella.

She was wearing a tank top and a pair of shorts that were wide and long and looked comfortable. Summer wear, even though it was almost September.

Tomorrow I’ll wear shorts again, Winter noted. There’s no way to cloak yourself anyway. He thought about his sister, who’d called yesterday and invited him over again. He didn’t know why. He’d call her back when he had the time.

“I suppose I ought to offer you coffee or something, but I’d like to know what this is about first,” Andrea Maltzer said.

They asked her what she had been doing at Delsjö Lake. When do you mean? They were as specific as they dared be. Then? She had wandered off awhile after Peter left. Why? She needed to think, and Winter heard Angela’s voice.

Andrea Maltzer had needed to think over why she was seeing a married man “on the sly,” as she put it. Taking his car would have been “compromising.” That was the word she used. She sat in it for a while and then went over to the café and waited for the cab she’d called on her cell phone. They took down all the details, and she shook her head when they asked if she had a receipt—which would have been off the books anyway, if she’d had it. They could check up on that phone call. Winter believed her. People did strange things and perfectly natural things all at the same time. Scratch von Holten, maybe. Fine by me. Winter asked if she’d noticed anything whatsoever while she was sitting there.

“When I was alone? After Peter was gone?”

“Yes.” He could then ask about what they had done together, if they had paid much attention to their surroundings. “It’s important that you think about it. Anything at all could be of help.”

“I can put on some coffee while I think about it.”

“Before you do that,” Ringmar cut in, “could you tell us where you’ve been for the last few days?”

“Here,” she said. “And one other place, but mostly here, I think.”

“We’ve been trying to reach you,” Ringmar said.

“I didn’t want anyone to reach me,” she said. “I unplugged the answering machine and switched that off.” She nodded at the cell phone on the living room table. “And I haven’t read the paper or listened to the radio. Or watched TV.”

“What for?”

“I thought I explained that.”

“Didn’t you hear the doorbell?”

“No. I must have been out then.”

“You didn’t get any messages from anyone?”

“Peter came by and slid an envelope under the door, but I threw it away.”

“What did he write?”

“I don’t know. I threw it away unopened.”

“When?”

“Yesterday. It went out with the trash, in case you’re wondering.”

Winter nodded. It wasn’t hard for someone to stay out of sight if they wanted to. It was even their right.

“I had a few vacation days left.”

Winter nodded again. He wanted to leave, but they weren’t done yet.

“Anything else you’d like to know?” she asked when neither Winter nor Ringmar spoke.

“What you saw, if you saw anything,” Winter said.

“I was going to think about that in the kitchen,” she said.

“That’s right,” Winter said.

He looked around after she left the room. Two framed photographs stood on a paint-stripped cabinet. No picture of Peter von Holten. One of them was of a wedding couple, possibly her parents—the picture looked like it had been taken thirty years ago. Classic matrimonial attire though. No sign of flirting with that era’s flower power.

The other photo was a black-and-white outdoor scene with no people in it—a house somewhere in the archipelago. The house might have been red and it was situated a short distance above a rocky shoreline. He could make out portions of an out-of-focus jetty in the foreground. There were no clouds behind the house. To the left was a sign warning of an underwater cable. There was a stonework stairway, as if carved from the rock, leading from the jetty up to the house.

He recognized it. He had seen this cabin himself, from the sea. You could sail around the promontory to the left and into an inlet three hundred yards farther on and hike up a hill lined with wind-battered juniper trees. Just behind the hill, on the lee side, was another house, which had belonged to his parents when he was a kid. He was twelve when they sold it, and he had sailed past it a few times since then but rarely gone ashore. He missed it now.

Andrea Maltzer had returned to the room and saw him in front of the photo. She said the name of the island.

“I thought it looked familiar,” Winter said. “My parents had a house there, but that was a long time ago.”

“My parents bought the place a few years back.”

“I guess that explains why I didn’t recognize you,” Winter said, and turned around. A tray stood on the table, and she had sat down and was eyeing him strangely. “I mean, there were no little kids there back then.”

She smiled but said nothing. Winter sat opposite her. She gestured toward the tray and Ringmar did the honors. Winter suddenly felt impatient, even more restless than usual. The photograph from the island had affected him. There was no room in his head for personal memories right now. Something had led him here too. He didn’t believe in coincidences, never had. Many crimes were solved by chance, or what might be referred to as coincidences, but Winter didn’t believe in them. There was a purpose. Chance had a purpose.

“That’s my refuge,” she said. “That’s where I am when I’m not here. Like yesterday.”

“Do you remember anything from the night we’re talking about?” Ringmar asked.

“I remember that I saw a boat,” she said. “Out on the lake.”

“A boat,” Ringmar repeated.

“A white boat or beige. Plastic, I assume.”

“Was it far out?”

“It was a ways out on the lake. I saw it when I climbed out of the car—when I decided that I’d borrowed Peter’s car for the last time.”

“Describe exactly what you saw,” Winter said. “As best you can.”

“Like I said. A boat out on the water that appeared to be lying pretty still. I didn’t hear anything. No motor.”

“Did you see an outboard motor on it?”

“No. But if there had been an outboard, I wouldn’t have seen it in the dark anyway.” She put down her cup.

“No sound of rowing? You heard nothing?”

“No. But I could see that there was someone sitting in the boat.”

“Some
one
? One person, on their own?”

“It looked that way.”

“You’re not sure?”

“It was too dark to be sure.”

“Would you recognize the boat if you saw it again?”

“Well, I don’t know. But I remember the shape of it, the size more or less.”

“What did you do then?”

“What do you mean?”

“How long did you stand there?”

“Five minutes maybe. I guess I didn’t think much about it; people go out fishing at night too, don’t they?”

“I don’t know,” Ringmar said. “I don’t fish.”

“And the boat stayed out there while you were standing by the car?” Winter asked.

“It seemed to be lying there completely still.”

“Can we just go over the times again, as precisely as possible?” Winter said.

THE PUBLIC APPEAL BORE FRUIT. PEOPLE CALLED IN AND JANNE
Möllerström was one of the ones who took the calls. Many had seen something, but no one had been in the vicinity. That’s just how it was. “There’s somebody out there somewhere,” as Möllerström expressed it. Winter liked that kind of optimism. It was in line with his spirit.

Winter had drawn up the text, and they’d printed posters that would hang in the residential neighborhoods until they were ripped down. No photograph. The caption read, “Police seeking information!” The copy explained that a murdered woman had been found on Thursday, August 18, at 4:00 a.m., in the vicinity of Big Delsjö Lake and Black Marshes. It gave a description of her and the standard, “The police are interested in speaking to anyone who . . . ,” et cetera; and a little farther down, “If you have any further information, please call the telephone number listed below.” And farther down still: “Let the police determine what may be of interest.” A strange sentence, if taken out of context, but Winter left it there. He signed it, “District CID, homicide department,” in order to avoid any misunderstanding, and at the bottom added, “Grateful for any tips!” The prose had an exuberant quality to it, which he disliked. But maybe that meant the poster would have an effect.

 

“Find anything in the boat?” Halders asked.

“Beier says it’s the same kind of paint,” Erik Börjesson said. “And it could have been daubed there at approximately the same time.”

“Anything else?” Winter asked.

“No footprints in the bilge water, but a hell of a lot of fingerprints, which it’s going to take time to go through. And that’s putting it mildly, as Beier expressed it.”

“Prints from many hands?”

“Seems the boys were only too happy to lend out their boat. Or rent it out, but they’re not telling.”

“I’ll talk to them again,” Winter said.

“There were a lot of fish scales too,” Halders said. “Seems there are fish in that lake.”

“They haven’t found any footprints up along the gunwale of the boat?”

“What’s that?” Börjesson looked at Winter.

“When you jump ashore, you step off the edge or gunwale. Sometimes anyway.”

“I’m sure Beier has checked that.”

“Speaking of checking,” Halders said. “Stockholm hasn’t been in touch? From missing persons?”

“Nothing from Stockholm,” Ringmar said. “No report that fits the description.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Halders said. “There ought to be loads of them right now. Thirty-year-old housewives who’ve had enough.”

“Had enough?” Sara Helander said.

“Who’ve left the stove,” Halders said. “Who’ve gone off to find the meaning of life.”

Winter and Ringmar had been sitting in Winter’s office, talking cars, and they returned to this when their colleagues left. Ford Escort 1.8i CLX three-door hatchback, a ’92 or ’93. Or possibly a ’94. Or a ’91, a 1.6i. The Road Administration had done a plate search via the National Police Board’s central office, beginning with the letters
HEL
or
HEI
. It took twenty-four hours. They’d received lists of all Ford Escorts with those letter combinations, as well as the earlier models, the primitive, flatter ones that were revamped and made more bulbous after ’91. They’d also requested a search of all Escort models that didn’t have those letter combinations. Beier wasn’t certain about the letters—he’d spoken of a possible “optical illusion.” No one was certain, not even the kennel guy as it turned out.

If they limited the Gothenburg area to Greater Gothenburg plus Kungsbacka to the south, Kungälv to the north, and Hindås to the east, there were 214 Escorts from between ’91 and ’94; that is to say, cars that closely resembled each other. That was a lot of cars.

“As always, it’s an issue of priorities,” Ringmar said.

“You mean this isn’t the top priority? Thanks, I know.”