Never End

by Ake Edwardson

  Winter said nothing.

  'Do you know him then?' asked Bergenhem. 'The one who might be his father, the older man? Or anybody else in the picture?'

  'Er ... I don't know.' She was still looking. 'I really don't know. Some faces are pretty familiar ... and I've known some of them for ages. But I don't remember those two.'

  'What about her?' asked Winter, pointing to the woman on the edge of the frame, as if about to leave it.

  'No.'

  'This fair-haired man, then? With the beard.'

  'No, 'fraid not.'

  They were strangers to Cecilia, just as they had been to Angelika's father.

  They turned up afterwards, Lars-Olof Hansson had said. Don't you understand? They turned up later! Nobody saw them ... But they came with a message. A message from Hell!

  Good God.

  'But I do recognise the boy,' Cecilia said.

  'It was him both times? At the café and when you were on the tram?'

  'Yes. Definitely him.'

  'And you spoke to him?'

  'We only said hi.' Nothing else?'

  'No. She looked again at the photo. 'This is awful,' she said. 'He was at the party.' She nodded at the photo. 'Why didn't I see him?'

  'What did Angelika say about him?'

  'I've already said to him over there that she didn't want to talk about it,' she said, indicating Bergenhem.

  'She must have said something.'

  'Only that she had no desire to talk about it.' She turned to Winter again. 'But I still don't understand why I didn't see him there, at the party.'

  'But you'd seen them together before the party,' Winter said.

  'Yes ... at least, I think so.'

  'You said a moment ago that you ought to have recognised him at the party. In that case you must have seen him beforehand, surely?'

  'Yes ... that's true.'

  'Tell us again when it might have been. At the café and from the tram.'

  She thought again. Yes. It must have been beforehand. In the spring. Late spring, May. May both times. That was what she'd told him over there.

  Winter thought. He tried to picture this girl at the graduation party. What might she have done there? Apart from watching and celebrating with her friends?

  'Have you any pictures of your own from that day?' he asked, nodding at the photo.

  'Er ... yes, I do actually.'

  'Can you fetch them?'

  'What, now?'

  'Yes.'

  'I don't know ...'

  'You'll be taken home by car to get them.' Winter had stood up. 'We'd really appreciate it.'

  An hour later Cecilia was back with a brightly coloured envelope. He noticed she'd got changed and done something to her hair.

  Winter took out the photos taken at the graduation party and laid them on his desk, which was only just big enough.

  It was the same occasion. Possibly also the same time. But a different angle. Whereas Lars-Olof Hansson had taken his pictures from straight in front of his daughter, Cecilia had taken them from the side. From Lars-Olof Hansson's left.

  There were several people in the way.

  He couldn't see the boy, nor the man who might have been the boy's father. Nor could he see the man with the beard and glasses.

  But he could see the woman. The woman who was on her way out of the picture. Winter produced Hansson's photo and looked at the woman standing on the left of the frame, then at Cecilia's picture, and there she was, taken from in front. As if she'd left one photograph and walked into the other.

  He showed Cecilia. 'There's the woman, in your picture.'

  'God, you're right. I don't remember her. Not taking a picture of her.' She looked at Angelika's pictures, and then at her own. Winter and Bergenhem waited. She looked up. 'But ... shouldn't we be able to see at least a little bit of ... the others, in my photos as well?'

  'If the pictures were taken at the same time,' Winter said.

  'But she's in the shot. So it must be the same time. The same minute, surely?'

  Winter said nothing.

  'This is spooky,' said Cecilia. 'It's like ... ghosts.'

  They turned up later!

  'But the boy's real,' said Winter. 'You've seen him in town twice, with Angelika.'

  'But not here. Why didn't I notice him here?'

  Winter didn't reply, nor did Bergenhem. There was no answer they could give at the moment. Winter felt his flesh creep again.

  'There's something else I want to show you,' he said.

  Cecilia looked hard at the brick wall.

  'No, I don't recognise the place.'

  'Take your time.'

  'That wall is quite unusual. I think I'd have noticed if it was in a bar I'd been to.'

  'But you recognise her?'

  'Are you kidding? That's Angelika.'

  'Do you recognise anything she's wearing?'

  Cecilia studied the picture of her friend.

  'Those are winter clothes,' she said. 'I mean, she's wearing the kind of clothes you wear indoors in winter.'

  Winter nodded.

  'I think I bought her that cardigan last year.'

  'When exactly?'

  'Last winter.'

  'When, exactly?'

  'I think it was after New Year. Yes. After New Year.'

  'This year, in other words?'

  'Eh? Yes, it must have been, then.'

  Bergenhem was making notes.

  'How often did you go out together?' Winter asked. 'You and Angelika?'

  'Quite a lot.'

  'What does that mean? In terms of frequency?'

  'I don't kn ... Why are you asking me that?'

  'How close were you?'

  She paused to think before answering. She looked again at the picture of Angelika at the table in front of the brick wall.

  'Angelika was a bit ... private that way. She never said very much about what she got up to ... on her own.'

  Winter waited.

  'Like with that guy. She just refused to talk about it.'

  'What about this place?' Winter gestured towards the photo she was still holding.

  'I don't know.' She looked at Winter. 'I mean, if she went somewhere when I wasn't with her she's hardly likely to come and describe the decor to me afterwards! It doesn't have to be a secret just because she didn't tell me about it.'

  'Who said anything about it being a secret?'

  'It seems like that. Like all this is about secrets.'

  'But isn't it normal to chat to one another about places you've been to?'

  'I suppose so ... Yes.'

  'Why didn't she say anything about this place, then?'

  'Well, she might have done,' said Cecilia. 'That's what I mean. She wouldn't necessarily say there was a brick wall there though, or anything like that.' She looked at the picture again. 'Who knows, I might have been there myself. Maybe in a different room.'

  'Would you be able to make a list of all the places in Gothenburg you and Angelika went to, and others that you knew about?'

  'All you need to do is read the Gothenburg Entertainment Guide.'

  'Did you go out that much?'

  'No, no. But all the places we went to would be in there.'

  'So you should be able to point them out for us now then.'

  Bergenhem had left. Winter reached for his packet of Corps on the shelf next to the washbasin, and found that it was empty. He needed a smoke. An excellent excuse to leave, buy some more, and then go home before Elsa went to bed.

  It was a pleasant evening. He walked by the water. There wasn't much traffic near the railway station. A lot of people were sitting outside Eggers. A group with suitcases came out of the hotel and walked towards the station. Winter thought he could see the envy in their eyes as they glanced furtively at the pavement café. Travelling on a night like this when they could be sitting out there. He waved to some colleagues who were getting into a police van outside Femman. They drove off, with a flash of the headlights.


  Gone. He had some of the photographs in his inside pocket, and pictured them in his mind's eye, saw the faces of the four people that nobody had recognised, who were there but not there. Gone. Apart from the woman. She had been there in both versions.

  The boy had been there, at least in Angelika's pictures. They'd made an appeal for him to come forward immediately after they'd first spoken to Cecilia. But now they had a picture of him, his face would soon be displayed everywhere. Bergenhem had gone to take care of that.

  Winter walked across Brunnsparken and came to his tobacconist's in the arcade.

  'I'm sorry,' the woman in the shop said. 'I did warn you, but I didn't know myself that the time had come.'

  'The time had come?'

  'They're not importing Corps any more. We can't get them at all.'

  'What!' Winter felt his mouth go dry. A tingling in his chin. He swallowed. He felt bad. 'You can't get them at all?'

  'I was just about to put aside the last packet yesterday but a customer came in and, as I had it in my hand, I couldn't very well claim I hadn't any and hide it under the counter for you.'

  'I suppose not.'

  'Well, I couldn't, could I?'

  'No, of course not,' said Winter. 'Thanks for the thought anyway.'

  'You could take it up with Swedish Match.'

  Winter tried to smile.

  'I phoned around the other tobacconists in town, but nobody has any left,' she said. 'Haven't had any for ages, they said. We were the only ones still selling them, and you were the only customer who still asked for them. Apart from that man yesterday.'

  Another victim, Winter thought. He felt he'd been taken by surprise, more than that. Mustn't panic.

  He'd been thinking about giving up. This was his opportunity. Divine intervention. A favour. Fate had done him a favour. The tobacco distributor. Everybody was working together to safeguard his health. His family needed him, his child needed him. Now was the moment to choose a life free of poison.

  He suddenly felt desperate for a smoke, absolutely bloody desperate.

  'There are other brands, you know, Inspector,' said the woman, turning to the well-stocked shelves behind her.

  'I've been smoking Corps for fifteen years,' said Winter. 'No other brand.' He hoped he didn't sound as if he were about to burst into tears.

  'But there are others.'

  'Not for me,' said Winter, and bade her farewell. Now he needed to concentrate on getting home in one piece and discussing what to do next with Angela. She was a doctor. He needed some of those nicotine patches. Nicotine gum. Morphine.

  The sun was behind a cloud. It was shining from a clear sky for everybody else, but everything was black for him.

  There were other things. Corps weren't everything. He could give up. He was weak, but other weak people had managed to give up.

  As he walked across the market square he felt a pain in his chest. He had just lost a friend.

  16

  Anne arrived at the club three minutes after midnight. She recognised a few faces in the bar, all of them looking somewhere else – possibly towards the brick wall in the other room. You could see it from one side of the bar counter.

  The music surged through the room, like hawking, she thought, something nasty forcing its way up through your throat. Not something to lie back and enjoy, but the punters who come here didn't think like that. Their faces were white and green and violet in the glow from the ceiling lights.

  He came out of the office near the bar.

  'We wondered where you'd got to,' he said.

  'I'm here now.'

  'You haven't really got fed up, have you?'

  'Yes.'

  She waited before saying it. Waited. Said it.

  'Why don't you say anything about Angelika?'

  'What do you mean?'

  'You haven't said a word about Angelika since ... it happened.'

  'What am I supposed to say?'

  'Surely it would be natural to say something?'

  'I let other people do the talking.'

  'But this is your place, isn't it?'

  'What are you getting at, Anne?'

  'Don't you understand?'

  'I assume you know I had nothing to do with it.'

  'If you had I wouldn't be here now. If I thought you had.'

  'But that doesn't mean that I don't care.'

  'Mourn?'

  'Yes. Mourn. Of course. She was one of us.'

  'One of us?'

  'You're on. Go.'

  She could see that the door next to the stage was ajar. The stage, oh yes. He nodded in that direction. She turned round. One of the faces at the bar seemed familiar.

  'Oh no. Not him again.'

  'Does it matter?'

  'All you think about is your regular "customers", or whatever I'm supposed to call them.'

  'Well. He's been coming here for a long time.'

  'You're not the one performing in there. You don't know what it feels like.'

  'You don't need to be afraid you know.'

  'It's easy for you to say that. But anyway, that's not it.'

  'What is it, then?'

  'I can't explain it.'

  'Just close your eyes.'

  She might have laughed as she walked towards the door. The face seemed to move from the bar, big and white and horrible. She entered the dressing room before the face came too near. She got herself ready and went out into the cage, closed her eyes and moved in time with the music from the loudspeaker. It was a different tune now.

  It was raining. Ringmar had shut the window, but after five minutes it was too hot. He opened it again, and there was soon a little pool on the floor under the window. Winter could feel a bit of a breeze. Nice. He was chewing some awful-tasting nicotine gum. His headache had started half an hour after breakfast, exactly as Angela had predicted.