The Shadow Woman (3 page)

“It’s all about keeping your cool,” he said. “When we catch those bastards, we’re going to keep our cool for as long as we can, and then we’re going to make one or two mistakes that prove we’re human too. I mean, cops are also human beings.” Halders paused for a moment before continuing. “They say Winter went a little loopy after last spring. He’s been walking around all summer in a pair of cutoff jeans and a T-shirt that says ‘London Calling’ on it. Rumor has it he’s been up to the department to pick up some papers and has a beard and long hair.”

Aneta Djanali closed her eyes again.

“I miss you,” he said.

 

Winter broke off his vacation almost the moment Bertil Ringmar called with the quick rundown. It wasn’t out of duty, more the opposite. It was a selfish act, maybe therapeutic.

“You’re not needed here yet,” Ringmar said.

“I’ve gotten enough dirt between my toes,” Winter answered.

In the afternoon he stepped into his office and angled the blinds upward. It smelled of dust and work, though the surface of the desk was clear. An ideal state, he thought. Maybe I can be like the chief—keep investigations off my desk by shoving them in drawers.

Sture Birgersson was the head of the homicide department, and he had the good sense to hand over all real responsibility to his deputy. That meant Winter was in command of thirty homicide detectives who worked to control the violence in society.

“Close the door,” Winter said to Ringmar, who had just stepped across the threshold. “What’s going on?”

“We’re going through all the known troublemakers, but they could have come from out of town,” Ringmar said.

“You think so?”

“That’s what we’re hearing,” Ringmar said. “But the situation out there is pretty confused right now. I don’t know how much you know, but I guess you watched the news.”

“The demonstrations?”

“Yeah, but it doesn’t stop there. The city is in a state of unrest, or whatever you wanna call it. Over the last few weeks we’ve had about a dozen gang showdowns, or close to that. Yeah, and a lot of brawls too. Who knows how many ethnicities have been involved, Scandinavians included. It’s really nasty, Erik. Maybe there are some bastards trying to fan the flames from on high. Steering it, in certain areas anyway. There’s something . . . I don’t know what it is. Hate? Something that’s causing people to get violent or, so far, mostly to threaten violence. But still. We’re trying to do what we can.”

Ringmar was the homicide department’s third inspector and head of the department’s surveillance unit: ten officers, with tentacles reaching down into the criminal underworld, assigned the task of keeping tabs on the city’s worst troublemakers and professional criminals.

“Aneta isn’t exactly unknown in this town,” Ringmar said. “I think they’d think twice about hurting one of ours unless it’s a case of extreme self-defense.”

“Maybe that’s just what it was,” Winter said.

“What?”

“Since we think they know that we know that they know that we think they would never do anything like that, maybe that’s just what happened,” Winter said.

Ringmar didn’t answer.

“What do you say?”

“Well, that’s a classic dilemma, isn’t it? If I’ve understood you correctly.”

“It takes you back to square one in that case, doesn’t it?”

“Appreciate the insight.”

Winter stared down at his desktop. It had been polished till it shone, as if the office cleaner had made an emergency visit when it was clear he was coming back early. His hair looked, in the veneer, like a thick circle of thorns around his face. He grasped at the packet of cigarillos in his breast pocket and lit up a Corps; then he dropped the match and it singed him on the thigh. Ringmar had noticed his shorts but not said anything.

“If they’re from around here, we’ll find them,” Ringmar continued.

“You believe in the good guys? Our informants?”

“I believe that the good guys among the bad guys are going to lead us to the bad guys.”

“The worse guys,” Winter said, “to the worst guys.”

“Aneta’s friend thinks she would recognize one of those three scumbags,” Ringmar said.

“Did they brandish any Nazi symbols or other fascist crap?”

“Nope. Just good ol’ regular guys.”

Winter tapped his cigarillo into the palm of his hand. The ashtray had apparently been stolen while he was away.

“Other witnesses?”

“A thousand or more, but only a few of them have gotten in touch since we issued our request for information. And they’re not sure what the guys looked like.”

“Somebody will call, just when you least expect it,” Winter said, and then the telephone rang. He lifted the receiver from its usual spot on the right side of the desk and mumbled his name to the desk sergeant.

Ringmar saw how he listened, brow furrowed and shoulders hunched forward, as he said a few short words and hung up.

“A guy who followed them is on his way over,” Winter said.

“No shit. Why hasn’t he been in touch before?”

“Something about having to take his kid to the ER in the middle of the night.”

“Where is he?”

“Like I said, on his way. Speaking of which, I was up at Sahlgrenska Hospital to look in on Aneta. I met Fredrik on his way out of her room. His eyes were all red.”

“Good,” Ringmar said.

THE BACK OF THE CHAIR HAD LEFT A DAMP IMPRESSION ON
Winter’s back, and he gave a shiver as he stood beneath the air conditioner at the window. The patches of cold inside made the summer look cold and gray through the windows that couldn’t be opened. Since the sky seemed undecided, the grass at Old Ullevi Stadium was under fire from water cannons.

He thought about Aneta Djanali and clenched his right hand. Whenever he considered what had happened to her, he felt . . . violent. The violence became part of him, a sudden sensation. A primitive urge for revenge, perhaps, and a little beyond that. He had returned to his violent world abruptly.

Ringmar was still seated, looking at him without speaking. He’s fifteen years older than I am, and he’s started waiting for a better world, Winter thought. When his last day here is finished, he may take the boat out to his cabin on Vrångö, never to return.

“What’s that supposed to mean, the thing on your shirt?” Ringmar asked. “ ‘London Calling.’ ”

“It’s the name of a record by a rock band. Macdonald sent it to me.”

“Rock? You don’t know anything about rock, do you?”

“I’ve listened to one rock band. The Clash. Macdonald sent me the album together with the T-shirt.”

“The Clash? What is that?”

“It’s an English word meaning violent confrontation.”

“I mean the band. Can you tell the difference between hard rock and pop?”

“No. But I like this.”

“I don’t think so. Coltrane is your man.”

“I like it,” Winter repeated. “It was recorded back when I was nineteen or something, and yet it’s timeless.”

“Hard rock, you mean,” Ringmar said.

The witness arrived.

 

The man gave his account. The skin of his face was taut and looked brittle after a night without sleep. His little girl had suffered a severe allergic reaction that had nearly ended tragically.

Winter said something.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you. My mind blanked out there for a second.”

“You said that you were walking behind the men.”

“Yes.”

“How many were there?”

“Three, like I said.”

“Are you sure they were together?”

“Two of them waited while the third—the guy who hit her—they waited for him before moving on together.” The witness ran his hand across his eyes. “I remember that the guy doing the hitting was smaller.”

“He was shorter?”

“It looked that way.”

“And you followed them?”

“As far as I could. Everything happened so damn fast—afterward. I sort of went into shock, couldn’t move. Then I thought, ‘This is heinous. ’ And I followed after them to see where they went, but there were so many people on the square, and then my cell phone rang and my wife started screaming that Astrid couldn’t breathe. That’s our little girl.”

“Yes,” Winter said, and looked at Ringmar, who had children. Winter didn’t have children, but he had a woman who said she didn’t want to wait any longer for him to become mature enough to take responsibility for a child. Angela said that yesterday, before going home to her mother’s to fine-tune her biological clock. When she gets back, Winter had mused as she was leaving, I guess she’ll tell me what time it is.

“It all turned out all right,” the man said, mostly to himself. “Astrid’s going to be okay.”

Winter and Ringmar waited. The air in the room flowed back and forth, past a man dressed in the same shorts and tennis shirt he’d worn the night before. His chin had a thin shading of stubble and his eyes were craters sunken into his skull.

“We appreciate you coming by right after the accident,” Winter said. “From the hospital.”

The witness shrugged his shoulders. “There are so many people who do nothing,” he said. “Going around beating people up. It really makes me angry.”

Winter and Ringmar waited for him to continue.

“It’s like at work, with all that damn talk about immigrants, as if it’s become politically correct to talk about how there are too many immigrants and refugees and blacks in the country.”

“Where exactly did you lose sight of these three men?” Ringmar asked.

“What?”

“The ones who assaulted our colleague. Where exactly did they disappear?”

“When we reached the indoor market, the one sort of facing Kungsportsplatsen. Before you enter the square.”

“Did you hear them say anything?”

“Not a word.”

“You didn’t get any sense of where they were from?”

“Somewhere south of hell as far as I’m concerned.”

“Nothing more precise.”

“No. But they were Swedes, real Swedes you might say.”

They asked him to describe the men’s appearance, which he did.

Once the witness left the office, Winter lit up another cigarillo and dropped ash onto his naked thighs. “Did you notice that Aneta was a refugee in this guy’s eyes?” he said.

“How do you mean?” asked Ringmar.

“People are always going to be looked upon differently for one reason or another, generation after generation. Regardless of where they were born.”

“Yeah.”

“Space refugees.”

“What?”

“There’s an expression for those who journey from country to country without ever being allowed into any of the paradises. They’re known as space refugees.”

“That’s a nice expression,” Ringmar said. “Sort of romantic. But that’s not true of Aneta.”

“No, but once you’ve made it into paradise? What happens then?” He killed his cigarillo in the ashtray he’d suddenly spied behind the curtain.

 

The sun was high, the blaze heavy out on the square in front of the district police headquarters. Winter had misread the shade from the trees, and the heat in the front seat was nearly unbearable. He adjusted the air-conditioning.

He drove eastward past New Ullevi Stadium and pulled over next to a big house in Lunden. A dog barked like crazy from next door, rattling its running chain.

The entrance to the house was in the shade. Winter rang the doorbell and waited, then pressed it again. But no one opened the door. He headed back down the front steps and turned left and started walking along the stucco wall.

Round the back of the house, the sun glittered in a swimming pool. Winter took in the smell of chlorine and tanning oil. At the pool’s edge was a deck chair with a naked man sitting in it. His body was heavy and evenly tanned, a vivid color that shimmered mutedly against the Turkish towel protecting the chair from sweat and oil. Winter coughed gently, and the naked man opened his eyes.

“I thought I heard something,” he said.

“Then why didn’t you come to the door?” Winter asked.

“You came in anyway.”

“I could have been somebody else.”

“That would’ve been nice.” The man remained lying there in the same position.

His penis lay shriveled up against a muscular thigh.

“Get dressed and offer me something to drink, Benny.”

“In that order? Have you become homophobic, Erik?”

“It’s a question of aesthetics.” Winter looked around for a chair.

The man, whose name was Benny Vennerhag, got up and grabbed a white robe from the footstool and gestured at the water.

“Why don’t you take a dip while you’re waiting?” He sauntered off toward the house and turned around on the veranda. “I’ll bring out a couple of beers. You’ll find swimming trunks in the drawer of the footstool. Nice T-shirt. But who wants to go to London?”

Winter took off his shirt and shorts and dove into the water. It felt cool against his skin, and he swam along the bottom of the pool until he reached the other end. He got out, dove in again, and turned over on the bottom and looked up at the sky, the surface of the water like a ceiling of floating glass. There was a crackling down there from the tiled walls, unless the sound was coming from his eardrums. He stayed under the water for a long time before gliding back up to the surface. He saw a face flicker into view above him.

“Trying to break some kind of record?” Vennerhag asked, and held a beer out over the water.

Winter stroked his hair back over the top of his head and took the bottle. It was cool in his hand. “You live a comfortable life,” he said, and drank.

“I deserve to.”

“Like hell you do.”

“No need to be bitter, Inspector.”

Winter heaved himself up and sat down on the edge of the pool.