“A drink. Now!”
Fredrik Halders was sitting on a sofa he didn’t recall seeing the last time he’d been inside. He looked around him like a stranger. The house was more foreign to him than ever.
He’d begun to feel unreal in the house immediately afterward. Immediately after the divorce. He’d seem to be wandering around in a dream. Everything was familiar, but he no longer recognized it. Couldn’t touch anything. He was an outsider. That’s how it had seemed. He’d been standing outside his own life. That’s how it had felt. The divorce had made him stand outside his own life, and things hadn’t improved much since.
Maybe that was why he’d been so
angry
these past few years. In a rage. He’d woken up in a rage and gone to bed in a rage and been in even more of a rage in between. Just living had been a pain, you might say.
But that had been nothing. Nothing at all compared to this.
Hannes and Magda were asleep. Magda had sobbed herself to sleep. Hannes had stared at the wall. He’d tried to talk to them about . . . about . . . What had he tried to talk to them about? He’d forgotten.
It was past midnight. The patio door was open, letting in scents from the garden he didn’t remember. He could see Aneta Djanali’s face in the doorway, which was lit up by the lamp on a shelf to the left.
“Don’t you want to come outside?”
He shook his head.
“It’s lovely out here.”
“I’ll go and get a beer,” he said, getting up and going to the kitchen.
“It’ll start getting light soon,” Djanali said when he’d come out and sat down on the bench next to the house.
He took a swig and looked up at the sky. It was already light enough for him. If he could stop the passage of time, now would be the moment. Let there be darkness. Forever darkness, and rest. No children to wake up in the morning and remember. With the rest of their lives ahead of them. Sometimes I feel like a motherless child, he suddenly thought. Then he thought of Margareta.
He took another swig and looked directly over the patio at his colleague. And friend.
“Shouldn’t you go home now, Aneta?” He could make out her silhouette, but no more. At any other time he’d have joked about it, as he usually did; her black skin was not much of a contrast to the night. Not now.
“I don’t mind staying.”
“I’ll manage.”
“I know that.”
“So, why not go home and rest? You’re on duty tomorrow morning, aren’t you?”
He couldn’t see if she’d nodded.
“Will you have to get up early?” he asked.
“Yes. But I’ve never needed much sleep.”
“Me neither.” He emptied the bottle and put it down on the table. “In that case, we can sit here a little bit longer.”
“Yes.”
She saw that he’d put a hand over his face. She heard a muffled sound. She went and sat on the bench beside him, and she put her arm around him, or as far around as she could. He was shaking ever so slightly.
“I need to work.”
They were still sitting on the bench. It was morning now, a few minutes past three. The light had come back. The shadows in Halders’s face were like bays of a sea, formed in the last few hours. Djanali could hear the shrieks of seagulls. A car passed by on the road behind the hedge. Some small birds flew up out of a bush, perhaps disturbed by the car. She didn’t feel tired. That would come later, that afternoon, in the car patrolling up and down in the heat.
“Do you understand what I mean?” Halders turned to look at her. A blood vessel had burst in his left eye. “It’s not because I want . . . to get away. Not in that sense.” He rubbed his face, under the base of his nose. “But I think it’s best . . . for everybody . . . if I go to work.”
“If you feel up to it, OK.”
“Why shouldn’t I feel up to it?
She shrugged.
“Do you think I don’t understand myself?”
“No.”
“Do you think I’m not taking the children into consideration?”
“Certainly not.”
Halders stroked his face again. He could hear the rasping from his stubble, which now seemed longer and thicker than his crew cut.
“We have to get back to normal just as soon as possible,” he said, looking as if he were seeking support in the far distance. “The important thing is that we all try to get back to normal as soon as we possibly can.”
But first have a breakdown, thought Aneta Djanali. It’s imminent.
Winter was still searching through the two sets of case notes, one thick, the other thin.
He’d asked Bergenhem to read them as well. Lars Bergenhem was a young and talented detective who’d just come back to work after being off sick with severe headaches and listlessness, but Winter knew what was really wrong. Even police officers were affected by depression at times.
I sometimes wonder if I am at risk myself. It could be the heat, or this case that is so difficult to wash off with a dip in the sea after work.
They drove to the park. The air conditioning was on in Winter’s Mercedes. The streets were almost deserted.
“I sometimes come here,” Winter said when they’d walked to the spot. The trees were still. You could hardly see the rock. The area was still cordoned off. Anybody who didn’t look closely might think there was some new gardening project underway, thought Bergenhem. There is a new project, but not of that kind.
He could see children swimming in the pond. The flamingos were standing on one leg, studying the splashing.
“I’ve come here several times over the past few years,” Winter said. He looked around. “Do you understand what I mean?”
“Yes.”
“What do I mean?”
“They always return to the scene of the crime.”
Winter nodded, and watched two young girls walk past, who glanced at him and Bergenhem as they stood in front of the police tape.
“He’s been here at least as many times as I have,” said Winter. “That’s the way it goes. He’s been here alright.”
“Maybe at the same time,” Bergenhem said.
“No.” Winter looked at his colleague. “I would have known.”
All we can do is keep at it, he thought. That’s the way it goes.
He’d been here spring, summer, autumn, and winter after the murder of Beatrice Wägner. Not every day, of course, but he made it his business to pass here on weekends and in the evening, sometimes at night.
Late one evening he’d seen a shadowy figure standing by the rock and had gone to investigate, his heart beating a bit faster, and found himself face-to-face with Birgersson when the shadow turned around.
And he knew that Halders sometimes came here too.
He didn’t think they’d scared anybody off. They didn’t walk into the park hips swinging, with guns drawn, silhouetted against the sunset.
“The girl’s our best bet,” Bergenhem said. “Jeanette. The one who got away.”
“Maybe that was the intention,” said Winter.
“What do you mean? That she got away?”
Winter shrugged. “Could be.”
“If it
is
him, she’s seen him, touched him. Heard him.”
“Yes.”
“Those sounds. Some sort of mantra.”
“Hmm.”
“She said he repeated something she couldn’t understand. The same thing. She thought he’d said the same thing maybe three times.”
“Yes.”
“While he was raping her.”
“Yes,” said Winter, watching the two girls who’d passed a couple of minutes before walking back again, each holding an ice cream cone. They looked curiously at the tape. “While he was raping her.”
“Maybe there’s more,” Bergenhem said.
Winter looked at the girls. An ice cream was just the thing. In weather like this, what you needed was ice cream and a cold drink.
“Maybe she’ll remember a lot more now,” said Bergenhem.
“I’m seeing her tomorrow,” said Winter. “Ten o’clock.”
Bergenhem went up to the trees and peered inside. When he spoke again his voice was muffled by the enclosed space.
“How far do you think he had to drag them?” Bergenhem said.
“Ten meters,” Winter said.
“Were there drag marks after Beatrice Wägner as well?”
“Yes.”
“What about Jeanette? Was she also dragged in there?”
“We’ll talk about that tomorrow. So far all she’s said is that she can’t remember. She fainted.”
Winter looked over his shoulder, and saw that the girls had left.
“How about an ice cream?”
Bergenhem emerged from the copse.
“OK.”
They walked around the pond to the ice cream stand. The noise from the children swimming was not as loud here. A couple about the same age as Winter whizzed past on Rollerblades. A man was selling balloons in the middle of the lawn. Three people were lining up at the stand.
“This is on me,” said Winter.
They walked back with their cones. The ice cream started to melt.
“We should have gotten cups instead,” said Bergenhem.
They sat down on the grass. It smelled dry and brittle. There were patches of yellow in the light green.
“Why did he try to strangle Jeanette?” said Winter after a while.
“What do you mean?” Bergenhem asked.
“She wasn’t wearing a belt that he could use . . . as he did with the other two, Beatrice and Angelika, but even so he’d had something with him . . . a dog leash, perhaps. He had it with him but he didn’t strangle her with it. He didn’t kill her.”
“You’re assuming this same rapist also killed Beatrice and Angelika.”
“Yes. I am. For the moment, at least.” Winter could feel the cold ice cream on his fingers. It felt good.
“The same person,” said Bergenhem. “Five years later.”
“Yes.”
“Did Angelika have a belt?”
“According to Beier she’d been wearing a belt with her shorts. I checked with her parents later, and that was correct.”
“But now it’s gone.”
“Yes.”
“Just as with Beatrice Wägner.”
“Precisely.”
Anne had one last swim. Andy too. The rest of the crowd sang a song for sunset, or maybe it was about the sunset. She felt a bit dizzy after the two glasses of wine, and it was as if she became sharp and focused again thanks to the water, which felt cooler now than it had an hour ago, or maybe it was two.
The whole crowd would go out tonight, and she was looking forward to it. It hadn’t always been like that; several times she’d stayed at home. She wasn’t sure her mom approved. She’d said it was nice to have her at home in the evening, but she wasn’t sure she’d really meant it. But now that she’d finished school it was as if Mom wanted her to be out having fun as much as possible. As if this were the last summer. The last summer. Wasn’t there a film called that?
Several times she’d gone straight home from
there.
Two more times, and then she could stop.
She should never have done it. If anybody had asked her, she wouldn’t have been able to explain why.
But it didn’t matter.
She dried herself quickly—it felt almost chilly now that the sun was merely red.
There was no wind as they traveled back home, but even so, there seemed to be a sort of chill over the fields.
Back in town it still felt hot in among all the buildings. Like going inside a house after cycling home through the fields by the sea. They stopped in the Avenue, locked their bikes, and sat at one of the sidewalk cafés. Same as usual.
“A large beer for everybody,” said Andy when the waitress appeared.
“We really ought to go home and take a shower first,” she said. “It feels better sitting here, though.” Their beers arrived. There were five of them around the table. “It’s like finishing work for the day.”
“It’s hard work, lying flat out by the sea all day long,” said Andy, taking a swig of his beer. “But this way you get a double whammy.” He smiled, a very white smile. “We relax with a beer, then you go home and take a shower and freshen up, and then we meet here again.”
Somebody laughed.
Her mobile phone rang. It was her mother. Yes. She’d be home shortly. In half an hour. Yes. Going out tonight. She rolled her eyes so the others could see. Andy gestured to the waitress, who was teetering past with a tray full of beer for another table. Andy would probably stay there all evening. He didn’t need to freshen up. He never looked as if he were in need of freshening up.
“That was Mom,” she said, putting her mobile back in her handbag.
“Really?”
“I live on my own now, but she always feels the need to keep an eye on me.” She eyed Andy’s beer. “I suppose you’ll be staying here?” she said.
“Skål,”
Andy said.
“Right, I’m going.”
“You turned your phone off, I hope?”
“What do you mean?”
“No more unwanted interruptions, if you don’t mind.” Andy took a drink and smiled, white, white.
No more unwanted interruptions. A few days ago she and Andy had been cuddling and might have gone further than that, but she, or maybe he, must have knocked the speed dial on her phone, and as they lay there suddenly they heard a voice, and . . . well, it had connected to her mom’s answering machine.
Not nice.
“Thanks for reminding me! I hope that never happens again.” Anne said.
She emptied her own glass, waved, went to her bike, unlocked it, and set out along the Avenue. There were more and more people, walking up and down in droves. It seemed to have grown warmer again. She was longing for a shower.
Her mobile rang, the display said “incoming call.” But nobody spoke when she answered. She hung up, and put the phone back into her bag.
She turned onto the bike lane heading west. It seemed to be a little cooler once she’d left the Avenue. The smell of food wafted out of the Grand Hotel.