The Shadow Woman (44 page)

Bremer had been seen. Halders and Djanali had started by tracking down everyone who had a house or a vacation home around Bremer’s. Mostly, the houses lay south and west of there.

“I’ve seen the old guy drive past a few times. A couple of times with people in the car.” The man was recently divorced and had been allowed to rent the shed for a cheap price, and he had sat there and thought about how grief affects you. He’d had a bit to drink and staggered around in wide circles through the forest in a nervous and hungover state of mind that sharpened his powers of perception. “You can’t see the road from my place, but it’s no more than a few hundred yards away. Once I was up at his house. It must have been his, because I recognized the car parked outside.”

“Did you see anyone else there?”

“No, not then. But a few times I saw the car pass by with people in it. I know that one of the passengers was a child and maybe a woman. Could have been a guy. The hair was pretty long and fair.”

“Do you remember approximately when this was?”

“Last summer, but I don’t know exactly. I’m divorced—bah, fuck it. It was warm anyway. July, August. A ways into August. Before the rains came.”

“Are you still living in the cabin?”

“Sometimes, but not often.”

“Have you seen this man since the summer? Say, after August.”

“Sure.”

“Has he had any people there with him? Any visitors?”

“There have been people in there. Not often, but people have driven there. Cars, motorbikes.”

“Motorbikes too?”

“Well, he owns a motorbike. Right? Seen him driving on one at some point anyway. A couple of times. There have been people up there on motorcycles.”

“Would you recognize any of the riders if you saw them again?”

“Not a chance. I ran off as soon as I saw the gang.”

“How about this child you saw and that person who may have been a woman—when did you last see them?”

“It was a long time ago. Last summer, like I said.”

“When it was hot?”

“When it was hot as hell.”

 

Winter met Vennerhag at a nondescript location. They could see ships and hear the sounds from the bridge above the car they were sitting in.

“Don’t come to my house anymore,” Vennerhag said. “It doesn’t look good.”

“Yeah, what will the neighbors say?”

“The mood out there right now is very tense, and I don’t want to be fingered as a fucking snitch.”

“You are an informant, Benny. And my brother-in-law, almost.”

“Is that how it is now?”

“What do you want?” Winter asked.

“There are rumors floating around that Jakobsson got whacked. He was small fry, so everybody’s surprised. His brother’s been kicking up a real stink about it. He must have been to see you at the station.”

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s what I wanted to say. Jakobsson. But it’s a rumor.”

“Where from?”

“Don’t know. You know how it is with rumors.”

Winter didn’t answer. He wondered briefly if the BMW they were sitting in was stolen, maybe even from another country. The chorus from the bridge overhead rose higher when the streetcar drove over it, toward Hisingen. There were parked cars all around them, and Winter guessed that 10 percent of them were stolen and had been dumped here when the gas had run out or when the junkies had stolen new ones to drive the stretch between the Femman Mall, right next door, and the projects in the northeast. Halders knew.

“The Hells Angels have split again and a new brotherhood has emerged,” Winter said, after a minute’s silence. “Do you know anything about it?”

“I don’t know anything about those psychopaths.” Vennerhag squirmed uncomfortably in his seat and looked at Winter. “Absolutely nothing. You know better than that.”

“No rumors from that quarter? Or about them?”

“I would cover my ears if I heard anything. It’s dangerous. Believe me. The less you know the better, and all that.”

“There aren’t many who do know,” Winter said.

“That’s part of the business plan.”

“Just like they’re part of society, huh?”

“Well, you’re part of society,” Vennerhag said. “Law enforcement is part of society just like the alternate power is part of society.”

“You’re quite the philosopher, Benny.”

“And yet your sister still didn’t want me.”

“You too are part of society, after all.”

“Gee thanks.”

“What for? I wasn’t talking about a very nice society.”

“No. If it was a nice society, there would only be room for cops. But I’ll tell you something, Erik. We’re both just as replaceable. Just as pathetic.”

“You can go to hell.”

“Too close to home for you?”

Winter didn’t want to listen. He saw a radio car drive past, over by the Shell station. Maybe they’d already taken down the plate number of the car he was sitting in.

“If you don’t know anything about the Angels, you have to help me with Georg Bremer.”

“I told you—he’s nothing. If he says he’s been clean since he got out of prison, then that’s the truth. I haven’t heard anything anyway. I hadn’t even heard of him before you mentioned his name.”

“I’m talking about your business contacts. Someone might know something. He doesn’t need to have done anything—petty stuff or whatever it might be. I just want to know where he’s been. If anyone’s seen him. Anywhere. And if he knew Jakobsson.”

PROSECUTOR WÄLLDE DECIDED TO ARREST BREMER IN THE
morning. He could be held in custody at police headquarters for up to four days before charges had to be filed.

“Do your best,” Winter said. What he meant was that Wällde should give the clock a chance to run out, ignore the directive stating that he should “expeditiously determine whether charges shall be filed.”

“It doesn’t feel like there’s probable cause even for an arrest,” Wällde said.

“And yet you did it.”

“That was for your sake, Inspector. And maybe some good will come of it.”

 

“Hand on your heart, Erik. Do you think the girl is still alive?”

Winter looked around, as if someone had snuck into his office and was waiting for his answer.

“No. I think that’s out of the question.” He saw that Ringmar was also convinced. Ringmar’s fifty-year-old face was pale and looked decayed in the dim light that had settled over the cityscape like a prelude to winter. “We can find her body if we get Bremer to talk. Or someone else.”

“Or someone else.”

Winter ran his left palm over his face. He squeezed his eyelids together and turned to Ringmar. “She hid that butt there on purpose,” he said.

“What?”

“I think it’s Helene’s cigarette butt. She knew that something was going to happen. She stuffed it in there as far as it would go—where nobody could find it unless they really went looking for it like Beier and his team.”

“We’ll know if it’s her saliva on it when the NLFS people are done.”

Before Winter pushed through the decision to issue a search warrant, he spoke to Beier. The head of forensics was under pressure and tired of shouting at the lab in Linköping.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Beier said. “Prints after twenty-five years. So you want us to tear off wallpaper and expose God knows how many layers—three maybe, or five—to see if there are any prints left underneath or in between?”

“Yes. There may only be one layer. The top one. Then there’s no problem.”

“Don’t forget that we have to go through the entire house.”

“Yeah, sure. But if. I’m saying
if
. Could there be anything still there? Traces of fingerprints?”

“The wallpaper glue will have destroyed everything, I think. Especially after such a long time. It’s damp and it penetrates the paper.”

“But you can’t swear that that’s the case?”

“I seldom swear.”

“Then I’d like to give it a try. Would you give it a try, Göran?”

“Okay. We’ll give it a try.”

“The Danes are doing the same.”

“What?”

“Haven’t they been in touch with you yet? If not, then they will be at any moment. They’re removing the layers of wallpaper at that summerhouse in Blokhus.”

“What do they want to find exactly?”

“Evidence from back then,” Winter said. “We know Helene was there. What if our Georg Bremer was also? What if we can prove it? What if we can prove that Helene Andersén was in Bremer’s house as a child? Or as an adult?”

“Then we’ll get invited to the FBI in Washington and lecture on it,” Beier said. “That is, I will.”

 

The winds swept in a circle around Ödegård, howling along its walls, which shuddered inside. The sky was black in the middle of the day. Night in the middle of the day, Winter thought, standing in front of the windmill. The vanes were spinning in all directions, aimlessly. The forest had moved in closer since they were last here; it loomed over him and everyone else who had come looking for clues. One of those who stood looking on was Birgersson. He’d come out here together with Wellman, and that was a sensation.

“How did you manage to stop the press from stomping around out here among the technicians?” Wellman asked.

“I thought that was your doing,” Winter said.

Wellman let Winter’s answer fly off with the wind around the lot and glade. He looked around. “One hell of a disturbing place, Ödegård.”

There was the loud crack of snapping floorboards coming from inside the house. A saw was being used. Perhaps shovels.

“Someone’s been digging in the basement,” Birgersson said.

“What did you say?” Wellman asked.

“The dirt in the basement has been dug up recently.” Birgersson looked up at the sky as a plane swooped down over them on its way to landing. “Jesus Christ. Am I dreaming or am I still awake?”

 

“I’ll ride in with you,” Birgersson said, when Winter headed toward the car. Wellman had already returned to the office.

They drove through the forest. Winter could only see it depicted in crayon, naturalistically, as it really was.

“You know we can’t hold this bastard if we don’t find something new,” Birgersson said. Winter kept to the right on the dirt road when they met a radio car on its way out to Ödegård.

“Part of the job of an investigator is also to rule out suspects,” Winter said. “I learned that one from you, Sture.”

“Are you trying to prepare yourself mentally for a failure?”

“That’s a big part of the job.”

“You’re in the process of putting together a very sleek chain of circumstantial evidence, but it’s still thin.”

“That was nicely put.”

“Come on, Erik. For Christ’s sake.”

Winter merged onto the highway, and Birgersson rolled up his window when they reached high speed. As the fog thickened across the fields in toward town, the cars were visible only by their low beams. Winter was overtaken by the airport bus. It careened along past them as if it were straining to take to the skies itself.

“I questioned Bolander yesterday,” Winter said. “The member of the brotherhood who is set to go on trial for the shoot-out at Hising—”

“I know who he is. I am your boss, you know.”

“Of course he didn’t give away anything, but there’s still a connection to the gangs. I’ve tried to focus on that as I’ve read through everything. Several of the names that have come up in this case have had some kind of connection.”

“To what?”

“To those organizations. I say ‘those’ because there are several of them.”

“Yeah?”

“That’s it. We can’t get any further. You’ll get all that in writing later, so you can file it away, Sture. We can see a possible connection but that’s about it. We’ve sent all the files back and forth and searched back in time—well, you know with Brigitta Dellmar and Denmark and the threats against me. The possible threats.”

Birgersson seemed to sink deeper into his seat. As they approached the Delsjö junction, he looked down at the lake and the parking lot beneath them. “The press is starting to lose interest in the girl,” he said. “It’s disturbing. Although it’s always disturbing where the press is concerned. When an investigation begins, it’s like going around with a boil on your ass, having them breathing down your neck all the time, and when the investigation plateaus and they start to lose interest, you realize you may never solve the case.”

“We will solve this case,” Winter said. “And the media interest has picked up again. After Bremer.”

“I’m counting on your being right, Erik.”

 

Winter rang Bremer’s sister’s doorbell unannounced. A streetcar passed by with the sound of water being flung by a powerful force. The fall had rained its way into November. He felt the dampness on his forehead and hands.

He pushed the bell again. No sound came from inside the apartment, so he rang it a third time and something shuffled inside. The lock cylinder turned. The door opened and he saw her face. She looked him over for a few seconds.