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 metres,' 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 the girls had left.
'How about an ice cream?'
Bergenhem emerged from the copse.
'OK.'
They walked round the pond to the ice-cream stall. 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 queuing up at the stall.
'This is on me,' said Winter.
They walked back with their cornets. The ice cream started to melt.
'We should have had a tub 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 lead, perhaps. He had it with him but he didn't strangle her with it. He didn't kill her.'
'You're assuming the 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 on.'
'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 done 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 mum 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 Mum 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 travelled 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 pavement 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 round 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 have 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 rest 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 Mum,' she said, putting her phone 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'll be off now.'
'You've 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 having a cuddle 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 mum'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, processing 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 into the cycle lane heading west. It seemed to be a bit cooler once she'd left the Avenue. The smell of food wafted out of the Grand Hotel.
8
Winter gave shaving a miss. He put on a short-sleeved shirt and a pair of linen trousers. Angela and Elsa were both asleep when he left at 6.30. It was cool on the stairs. There was still a smell of paint after the renovations in early summer. He missed the ancient smell from the walls and the shiny wood in the banisters. They had always been there, ever since he moved into the flat ten years ago. Now it was like starting all over again. Which it was, in fact. Which means that the renovations and the new smell did fit in, he thought as he emerged through the front door and into the balmy morning.
The Public Works Office was busy cleaning up Vasagatan, the brushes under the strange-looking contraptions scraping against the road surface and water trickling away towards the east, the same direction as he was walking. The Avenue was empty, completely empty. He could hear a tram, but couldn't see it.
There was no wind over Heden. The big thermometer on the wall of the building opposite said 24. It was 6.50 a.m. and already 24 degrees. These were tropical conditions. It had been over twenty all night. When the mean temperature over twenty-four hours exceeds 20 degrees, that's tropical.
He took the lift up to his office, which was unlocked. Inside he noted the same smell as always. Nothing new there. He'd left the window ajar all night, but it hadn't made any difference.
The papers were still on his desk. His reading glasses on top. He had one pair here and another pair at home. He was starting to have problems with his long-range vision too. Before long he'd be groping his way along walls, being guided. Pushed in a wheelchair. He was forty-one after all.
A male witness had said that he'd heard a scream from the park. It had been about 2 a.m., maybe closer to 1.30. Half an hour to an hour after Beatrice had disappeared into the trees. The man lived nearby and was on his way home from a private party. He'd been
drinking, but felt 'clear in the head' as he put it, and one of the interviewers had noted that his account seemed reliable.
He'd gone into the park to investigate and passed about fifteen metres from the place where Beatrice's body had been found, but he'd neither seen nor heard anything else. He'd thought he'd heard noises before then, as if somebody was being chased. Yes, chased. A scream, or maybe two. But then nothing more.
Winter remembered the witness. He hadn't interviewed him himself, but he'd met him briefly a few days later. He recalled that the man had still seemed jumpy, or perhaps he was always like that. Jumpy.
He'd run away from the park after investigating that scream and raced to the nearest residential building, and on the pavement outside it he'd stopped a couple 'aged about thirty-five' who had both been 'dressed in white', and had told them what he'd heard. The couple had just walked through the park and the woman thought she might have seen somebody. She'd told the jumpy witness.
She thought she might have seen somebody.
The police had never spoken to her, nor to her companion. Winter remembered how they'd tried to trace that couple 'dressed in white'. Urged them to contact the police.
It was exactly like that business with the man and the boy packing their car in the middle of the night. It was as if they didn't exist. Perhaps the couple ought not to have been together at that time and in that place. Such facts tend to prevent witnesses from coming forward. Private problems. What is a murder compared to such considerations? An illicit affair. The sentence passed by society on illicit affairs is far too harsh, Winter thought. Possible unfaithfulness gets in the way of the police doing their job. Can you pass laws about morals? Something to tone down the condemnation would help, bearing in mind all the investigations that come up against a brick wall because of it.
But the man and the boy ... Five years on, and still not a word from them, even though neither of them could very well have forgotten packing a car in the middle of the night near a park in the centre of Gothenburg.
There was something else as well.
He took off his glasses and rubbed his nose. He looked at his watch: 8.00. In two hours' time he would be seeing Jeanette Bielke at her home. He'd asked her where she'd prefer to talk, and she'd said at home.
He went to the coffee room and made himself a cup. He was the only one there. They'd cancelled today's meeting. He'd have to sum up tomorrow, but everybody knew what they had to do today.
When he got back from his discussion with Jeanette, he would be expecting to know the outcome of the checks on known felons, potential suspects. They were likely to have drawn a blank, but even that was an outcome of sorts. Elimination. This or that person couldn't have done it. Not this time. A convicted rapist had a solid alibi for that particular night. This particular murderer had been in jail. That one had been in bed asleep, with cast-iron proof. The ruthless GBH merchant had been busy beating up somebody else at that moment, but at the other end of town, or the other end of the country. Or somewhere abroad.
And so on and so on.
The tarmac outside looked white in the glow of morning. It was probably 30 degrees by now. Just like Marbella. He thought about his father, buried in a pretty little churchyard on the mountainside overlooking the sea at Puerto Banús, and the house in Nueva Andalucía where his mother had decided to stay put.
Winter had been present when his father died. Had attended the funeral, spent the night in the garden with the three palm trees and eventually managed to think about nothing at all.
He returned to his office. The sun seeped in through the Venetian blinds, creating patterns on the brick walls of the corridors.
Back in his office, he stood in front of the window, smoking. It was his first of the day, after nearly two hours of work, and that was a step forward. Tomorrow he'd work for an extra quarter of an hour before his first Corps.
He sat down again and put on his glasses.
There was another thing. A woman in her twenties had been attacked and raped by a 'slim' and 'quite tall' man three days after the murder of Beatrice. There were similarities – but then, there always were in rape cases. This woman said she thought the man had been talking to himself when he attacked her, 'mumbling', as she described it in the report Winter was holding in his hand.
The house was overlooked by trees that could be a hundred years old. The house itself might also be a hundred years old, Winter thought. A well-preserved centenarian. Old money. Like so much around here, the oldest part of Långedrag. He had grown up only a mile or so closer to town, cycled along these streets occasionally. Welcome to Pleasantville.
Two boys came towards him on skateboards. They were good. He stood to one side then continued over the street and up the drive to the house. A man was sitting on the verandah and stood up when he saw Winter coming up the steps. They shook hands. Jeanette's father. Winter hadn't met him before. Nor had he met Jeanette, it had been Halders. But Halders had different problems today.
'Is this really necessary?' Kurt Bielke asked. He was rather shorter than Winter, but didn't look up when he spoke to him. His tone was not aggressive, more of a troubled sigh.
That was a good question. How many times could one come back to the victim without it getting her back up? That would do more harm than good.
'If you push them too hard you'll get all you want out of them in the end, but is what you get the truth?' Halders had said two days ago when they were sitting in Winter's office. A good point. You can overdo questioning.
'We need to talk a bit more to Jeanette.'
'We?' said Bielke. 'I can only see one of you.'
'I.'
'What do you need to talk about? She's told you a hundred times now what she's been through.'
Winter made no reply. He wondered whether there was any point explaining about all the little details that could slowly find their way into a victim's consciousness, bits of an experience that build up to form something more substantial. Sometimes everything could come out at once. At 2 a.m. in a lonely place, like a sword in the soul. If Jeanette remembered now it would make things easier for her later.
'Things sometimes become clearer after a while,' said Winter. 'After a few days.'
'What kind of things?' Bielke was gazing into the distance behind Winter. He still didn't sound aggressive. His face was tense, stiff, as if moulded out of aluminium. 'Exactly what happened second by second during the rape? How he pulled the noose round her neck or what?'
Winter said nothing.
'What good will it do her to remember all the details?'
'I don't know,' said Winter.
'Why are you here, then?'
'There's been a murder,' said Winter.
Bielke looked at him. He'd moved closer. Winter thought he could smell spirits, but it might have been shaving lotion. Shaving lotion was alcohol after all. Bielke wiped his brow. Winter could see the sweat at his hairline. He was feeling the heat himself, now that they'd been standing still for a while on the verandah under a canopy that seemed to raise the temperature, if anything. The verandah must be like a sauna during the afternoon.
'My God, yes,' mumbled Bielke. 'I should have realised.' He wiped his brow again. 'You think it might be the same ... criminal?'
Never End Page 8
