There were no dates on the photos, but they all seemed to have been taken during the last year. It was a guess, but became more than that when he checked the dates on the envelopes. There were nearly 300 pictures. It was like an open diary of her last year. Summer, autumn, winter, spring, summer again. Her last summer, or half summer, he thought, and turned to a series of photographs taken at her graduation party. Flowers, balloons, all the traditional things, a one-year-old Angelika enlarged eighteen times on a poster hanging above their heads.
There were a lot of people standing around, in a wide semicircle, a lot of faces. Winter recognised her parents, but nobody else. Angelika was wearing her white cap and laughing at the camera.
That was six weeks ago.
Winter continued sorting the photos into different piles. Why am I doing this? Is it a sort of private therapy because this case is so bloody distressing? A sort of patience game? Patience. It was all a matter of patience.
The birds were singing outside the window. After a break, the rain was now pattering against the panes once again. Winter had been sitting with a photograph of Angelika in some kind of room with an exposed brick wall behind her. The brick was ... well, brick coloured. She was looking straight at the camera, but not smiling. Her face was actually expressionless, it seemed to him. There were a glass and some bottles on a table in front of her. A few empty plates with what could be some food leftovers. There was a shadow of something in the top left-hand corner of the picture. A lamp shade, perhaps, or something hanging on the wall.
It was definitely indoors, the light was coming from all directions and he could see no suggestion of daylight. Maybe there was a faint, shadowy outline of the photographer.
He put the picture down and picked up another one with Angelika in half-profile at the same table in front of the same wall, but with no shadow in the top left-hand corner. It was taken from a different angle.
A restaurant perhaps, Winter thought. A pub.
The photos had been in the same envelope as the winter pictures. Maybe they had been taken around the same time. He hadn't found any negatives with them.
Perhaps it was a place she often went to. Maybe one of her regular haunts. Did they have any information about the places she used to go to in her free time? Yes. There were some. Was this brick wall in any of them?
There were no other photographs of places of entertainment or restaurants or pubs among the 300 pictures Winter had sifted through and laid out in about a dozen piles on the table. Not ones taken indoors. There were a few of pavement cafés. There was a waiter pulling a face in one of them.
He stood up, left the room and went to look for Lars-Olof Hansson, who was sitting by himself in the dining room, watching the rain trickle down the win-dowpane.
'There's something I'd like you to take a look at,' said Winter. 'If you've got a minute.'
'Only one,' said Hansson. 'I'm waiting for the rain to run down this windowpane.' He pointed. 'It can't make up its mind.'
Winter nodded, as if he understood.
'What is it?' Hansson asked.
'Some photos,' said Winter. 'I'd like you to have a look at them.' He gestured towards the hall. 'In Angelika's room.'
'I'm not going in there.' Hansson tore his eyes away from the windowpane. There was a smell of both heat and dampness in the room, like the air outside. The wind was making the trees sway. It was like dusk both inside the room and in the garden the other side of the glass, which was streaked with rain. 'I never go in there since it happened.'
'I'll bring them here,' said Winter, going out and returning with the photographs. He handed them to Hansson. The man looked at them, but didn't seem to take them in.
'What's this?' he asked.
'I don't really know,' said Winter. 'Some kind of a pub. A restaurant, maybe. Don't you recognise it?'
'Recognise what?' asked Hansson, looking at Winter.
'The place. The wall in the background. Or anything else. Angelika's sitting there after all, and I wondered if you knew where it is.'
Hansson took another look at the photo he was holding in his hand.
'No,' he said. 'I've never been there.'
'Angelika was there,' said Winter. 'There were a few pictures in her desk drawer taken there.'
'I've no idea where it is,' said Hansson. 'And ... does it make the slightest difference?'
'I don't know,' said Winter.
'I mean, she used to go to several different places, the way young people do. I never kept a check on them.' He looked at the picture again. 'Why should it be important to know where that bloody brick wall is?'
'It depends on who else was there,' Winter said.
'Angelika was obviously there,' said Hansson. 'Maybe she was on her own.'
'Somebody must have been holding the camera,' said Winter.
'Timer,' said Hansson, producing a series of coughlike chuckles. It sounded like an explosion in the enclosed room. 'Sorry,' he said when he finished.
'She was there not long ago,' Winter said.
Hansson seemed too tired and far too desperate to ask how Winter could know that.
'Other people might have seen her,' said Winter. And seen other people as well, he thought.
He had another idea. He went back to Angelika's room and fetched the pictures of the graduation party, handing them to Hansson who reached out a hand in a way that seemed almost apathetic.
'It's her graduation party,' Hansson said.
Winter nodded. 'Could you help me by identifying the people in the picture?'
Hansson studied the photograph.
'Even the ones with their backs to the camera?'
'If you can.'
Hansson pointed at the photograph.
'That fatty over there on the left,' he looked up at Winter, 'that's Uncle Bengt. My brother, that is. He's looking the other way and chewing at a turkey leg or something.' He held up his hand to his mouth. 'Compulsive eater.'
'Who else do you recognise?' Winter asked.
Hansson named them one after the other, sticking his index finger into their faces.
When he'd finished, there were still four left.
'Never seen them before,' he said.
'Are you sure?'
'Why the hell shouldn't I be?'
Winter looked at their faces. Three men and a woman. Two of the men looked about forty. One was dark and the other blond, with a beard and glasses. There was something vaguely familiar about him. The third was a boy of around Angelika's age. The woman looked around forty too, maybe a bit younger. She was on the outside, as if about to step out of the picture. She was looking away, in another direction. One of the men was standing next to the boy. The man looked like the boy, or maybe it was the other way round. Southern European appearance, dark and yet pale, pale faces. The man with glasses and a beard was holding a balloon and laughing just as Angelika was laughing. Winter tried to think where he might have seen him before. He didn't recognise the face. Maybe it was his bearing, leaning forward slightly.
'Never seen them before,' Hansson repeated.
Winter felt his flesh creep. Something was happening just now, just there. Something happening. He looked at the four people with the unknown faces. It was as if the others standing round the girl were known to him, now that Hansson had identified them. But these four were strangers. They could have been sent from some unknown place. Something was happening.
'Isn't that a bit odd?' he asked.
Hansson shrugged. 'There were quite a lot of people at the school hall, you can see that yourself.' He pointed at one of the pictures. 'I expect these people I don't know got in this photo by mistake.'
'Is that likely?' Winter nodded towards the picture. 'They look as though they're ... part of it. As if they know Angelika.'
'Well I don't know them in any case.'
'You didn't speak to them?'
'I've just said I don't know who they are, for Christ's sake.'
'OK.'
Neither
of them spoke. Winter could no longer hear any rain pattering against the windows. He could hear a car driving past, the sound of the tyres on wet tarmac.
'What the hell were they doing there?' said Hansson suddenly, looking again at the photo. 'I hadn't invited them.' He looked at Winter again. His expression had changed. 'I didn't notice them at the time. I suppose I ought to have done?'
'There were lots of people there, as you said yourself.'
'They can't have been there,' said Hansson.
'What do you mean?'
'They turned up ... afterwards.' He looked at the photo again, then up at Winter, who could smell his sweat and the odour of fear and despair. 'Don't you understand? They turned up later! They'd been sent to that bloody party but nobody could see them!' He stared into Winter's eyes like a blind man. 'Nobody saw them. Angelika didn't either. But they came with a message. A message from Hell!'
He continued staring right through Winter's head like a blind man.
'And now they've gone back!' he shouted.
He needs counselling, thought Winter. Or he may be right, but in a way I don't understand.
Hansson's expression changed again. He shook his head and stared at the photograph in his hand. 'You'll never find this gang,' he said.
'Do you think they belong together, then? Like a ... gang?'
'It doesn't matter,' said Hansson. 'They don't exist.'
14
Halders had chosen to play Led Zeppelin at the funeral, towards the end. Aneta Djanali recognised the tune, of course. It was something new for Winter, who was sitting in the third row with Angela and Elsa. The music sounded big in the little church.
Hanne Östergaard conducted the service. She had been working part-time as a vicar for the police for several years. Somebody to talk to after disturbing experiences.
I must admit that she's been a rock since Margareta died, Halders thought.
'Led Zep was her favourite band,' Halders had told Djanali an hour before the funeral. 'She has memories associated with that tune, as do I.' Then he'd said: 'That's something we share. Memories.' He'd looked at her. 'Do you think it's inappropriate? The choice of music?'
'No. People often choose their own music at funerals nowadays.'
'I haven't been to one for ages.'
'Led Zeppelin is good,' she said.
'It's only a song, after all.'
Halders stood beside his children as the soil was scattered over the coffin. No cremation. It was raining, but would probably ease off during the day.
He spoke to people afterwards, but didn't register what they said. The children stayed close to him.
'Is Mummy in heaven now?' Magda asked.
'Yes,' he said.
Magda looked up and the clouds seemed to part in all directions. There was blue in the middle.
'Look, a hole!' she shouted, pointing upwards. 'Mummy can pass through that hole!'
He tried to look at the sky, but all he could see through the tears was a blur.
'Can you see the hole in the sky, Hannes?' Magda turned to look at her brother.
'There isn't a hole,' he said. 'It's just space.' He looked down at the ground, which was wet.
'Oh yes there is,' she said, taking down her hand and grasping tightly hold of her father's hand. 'Oh yes there is.'
They were driving to the rocks south of Gothenburg. It was twice as hot now, after the rainy days. Angela was driving. Elsa was in the child seat in the front. Winter was in the back, looking out over the fields glistening in the sunshine. He asked Angela to switch off the air conditioning and wound down the window so that he could appreciate the smells.
They parked the car. He carried Elsa on his shoulders as they walked over the paddock. They paused to look at a foal, resting in the grass. The mother was standing by its side, nuzzling her offspring.
There was nobody else in their little inlet. Winter changed rapidly, walked down to the water's edge with Elsa, and kept dipping her into the sea. Angela took over, and he swam out. It was calm. He lay on his back and watched Angela and Elsa on their blanket on the rocks.
The oppressive feeling he'd experienced earlier sunk down through his body and under the surface of the water. There was not much of it left when he turned over and swam even further out. He lay on his back again, and gazed at his family, who had become smaller.
Halders had looked as if he were sinking after the funeral. Winter didn't know when he'd come back to work. Tomorrow, or never. Impossible to say.
During the funeral Winter had felt like stone. It had been hard to raise his heavy body from the pew. Earlier memories came back to him, from recently, when Angela had been so close ... when Elsa ... when what was Elsa ... when he'd stood outside that door as if frozen fast to the floor, as heavy as stone. He'd felt his own life falling, faster and faster, down into the bottomless depths.
He closed his eyes and felt the sun on his face. A boat passed by, a hundred yards out into the creek, but he kept his eyes closed. Gulls cried. A voice came floating over the water. There was a smell of petrol, wafted towards him from the boat by the slight breeze.
'You almost turned into a dinghy out there,' said Angela when he walked up, wetter than he'd ever been. 'Firmly moored.'
'I didn't know I was that good at floating.'
'I know the reason,' she said, poking him in the stomach, which was just a little bit rounded. He couldn't see any sign of a pot belly when he looked down. Elsa poked him as well, several times. She almost hurt him.
'All that needs is just one fifteen-k jog,' he said. 'Come to think of it, I could run back home.' He had his trainers in the car boot. It was rather more than fifteen kilometres to the centre of town. Perhaps too much more? No.
'Do you dare to eat that?' she said, nodding in the direction of the baguette with chicken salad he had just picked up.
'Yes,' he said, and Angela suddenly burst into tears. She wiped her eyes. Winter put down his sandwich and leaned over the blanket to hug her. Then Elsa started crying. He included her in his embrace as well.
Elsa built a hut between them and crept out. Angela wiped her face again and gazed out into the bay where boats of various sizes were sailing.
'I was so sad when I saw Fredrik and the children,' she said.
'Yes. I took it pretty hard as well.'
'I hope it turns out all right.'
'He's going to try to keep going.' Winter fumbled for his packet of cigarillos. 'He doesn't want to take time off. Not much, at least.'
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