Never End

by Ake Edwardson

  Nevertheless, something inside him raised doubts.

  'I think of Fredrik all the time,' said Bergenhem as they resumed their drive to the city centre. Winter could feel the pain growing in his arm. He tried raising it, but that only made it worse. Perhaps it needed putting in plaster. But not now.

  Jeanette's face had more colour than the pillow, but not much. He could see that she had difficulty in turning her gaze towards him when he entered.

  'I won't stay long,' he said.

  She closed her eyes.

  'How do you feel?'

  'It hurts.'

  Winter sat in his office. He was forced to make time to read up again now. The pile of documentation was as high as a house. Night was setting in outside.

  They had left Bielke for the time being.

  His daughter's face had sunk deeper into the pillow as they talked. No, as Winter talked. He had asked her questions but she hadn't answered. There was a band of silence surrounding everybody he'd been in contact with. A dog lead, a belt.

  He needed to go back to the paperwork. It was all there. It always was. It was there all right.

  He read until his eyes gave up.

  He was back a few hours later. He hadn't had enough sleep, but he was thinking more clearly. I shan't sleep any more until this case is solved.

  Their priorities had changed, he could sense that in everyone. The most important thing was to get Halders back. The most important. No, just as important. One led naturally to the other.

  Winter had phoned Vennerhag and Vennerhag had promised to put all his fellow gangsters on the case. Your most important task so far, Winter had told him.

  The phone rang.

  'I've got something interesting for you,' said Möllerström.

  Winter waited for the call to be put through.

  'Hello ...?' 'Detective Chief Inspector Winter here.'

  'Er ... we've seen those articles in the newspaper ...'

  The man and his son arrived an hour later. They were five years older now, and Winter guessed that could be seen most in the son, who would have been no more than ten at the time.

  Winter had read about them again three days before, in the cold case notes, and then again only a few hours ago. They'd been standing there for ever, always packing their car next to the park, never again to be seen or heard. Until now.

  'It's been a long time,' said the man. 'But here we are. Whatever it is you want us for.'

  'How's your memory?'

  The man smiled, or tried to. The son looked as if he wondered what the hell he was doing there.

  'Why didn't you ever contact us before?' Winter asked.

  'Well ... we were going on holiday when it happened ... and it was a very long trip that lasted well into the school term,' said the man. He looked at his son. 'I was given permission to educate him myself while we were away.' Perhaps that was a mistake, his eyes suggested. 'Anyway ... we eventually came back home and there was nothing about that ... murder that I would have linked with ... us, as it were. Do you follow me?'

  'But now there is,' said Winter.

  'Well ... the articles about that murder five years ago seemed to be appealing directly to us.'

  'But I don't remember a thing,' said the boy, speaking for the first time. 'Except that it was hot that night. And I was tired.'

  'It was late,' said the man. He looked round. 'Anyway ... what can we try to help you with?'

  We'll see, Winter thought. Several studies of the psychology of memory suggested that people are especially good at remembering faces. Even after a long time. There is a separate system inside the brain for storing faces, for working on faces. Winter had often thought about that. It fitted in naturally with the way humans had developed: it was important to recognise other people and their faces if you were going to survive. You had to be able to read emotions in other people's faces.

  It had been of help to him, a part of his work.

  Children learn to recognise faces at an early age. It has nothing to do with language. I can talk to the man and his son until the cows come home, but it won't do any good, he thought. What he wanted from them was a specific memory, an identification memory.

  Five years had passed. He'd like them to confront Kurt Bielke in an identity parade, but it would be difficult to identify him conclusively, perhaps impossible. The passage of years was a big obstacle, now they'd be confronted with a face in a different light, at a different angle, with a different haircut. A different setting. Besides, had they even seen anybody that night?

  'Did you see anybody?' Winter asked.

  'Well ...' said the man, 'I've been thinking about that, obviously. It's not easy. But that was a memorable night ... I remember it because I had a devil of a toothache and we were going to have to start our holiday, later that same morning in fact, by looking for a dentist in Skåne.'

  Winter waited.

  'Anyway ... it makes it easier to remember, if you follow me. I do actually remember somebody coming out of the park because I'd put down a suitcase and thought maybe I ought to go into the trees and look for a lump of resin to chew, because my grandma always used to say that was good for toothache, and I was sort of looking right at the trees and somebody came walking out.' He looked at Winter. 'I don't know what time it was.'

  'We do,' said Winter.

  36

  They had the line-up ready by three o'clock: a classic identity parade with the witnesses behind a one-way mirror and the suspected murderer on the other side together with various odd bods who had been wandering round the police station with nothing important to do.

  Bielke looks normal, but he's tired, thought Winter. Bertil looks chirpier. Chirpier and more dangerous. Ringmar was staring straight at the mirror, two places to the left of Bielke. There were eight of them on the podium.

  The man and his son were standing next to Winter. The boy looked as if he thought he was in a movie.

  Winter knew his forensic psychology: a witness who's seen the murderer should have it made as easy as possible for him to recognise the individual in the identity parade, but at the same time it should be impossible for a witness who has never seen the suspect to work out who it is.

  'Take your time,' he said.

  'Er ...' said the man.

  Bergenhem and Djanali were standing next to Winter.

  'Er ...' said the man again, 'the light was sort of different then.'

  It was sort of a different time, thought Aneta Djanali. How many times had she seen Fredrik standing on that podium? Nine times out of ten, witnesses who were unsure would, after a brief pause, pick him out as the criminal. Witnesses who were sure would pick him out with no hesitation.

  Winter gave a signal for the light to be dimmed. Let's imagine a warm summer night in a park in the centre of a big city. Somebody emerges from the bushes. Dries his hands after committing murder. Returns home and goes to bed.

  'It's something to do with his hair,' the man said.

  'I beg your pardon?'

  'His hair was standing up a bit just as he passed under the street light.'

  'Who?' said Winter. 'Who was under the street light?'

  'Er ... he had his head bowed towards his chest, if you follow me, and that meant you could see his hair more, sort of.'

  'Who are you talking about?' Winter asked.

  'Him over there,' said the man, nodding towards the mirror as if his eyes were emitting a beam of light. 'The bloke who looks as if he isn't enjoying it very much.'

  Ringmar, thought Winter. He's playing his role too well. 'The third from the left?'

  The man hesitated.

  'Er ... no, not him. I mean the one on the other side. The third from the right.'

  'The third from the right?' Winter checked to make sure.

  'Er ...'

  'Take all the time you need.'

  'I can't be a hundred ...' The man looked at his son, at Winter, at Bergenhem, then back at the podium. At Bielke. He looked at Bielke. Bielke looked at
Winter through his own reflection.

  The witness nodded, as if to emphasise what he'd said.

  It was a small step forward, useful for tomorrow morning when the application for the remand order was made in the cramped little court room over the corridor. Remanded in custody, of course. Fourteen days in which to bring charges, with the possibility of an extension.

  'I remember now,' said the boy, whose voice seemed unnaturally deep for one so young.

  The man turned to his son. They were the same height. Winter waited and felt his pulse racing.

  'I remember what happened now,' said the boy. He was still looking through the two-way mirror. 'Funny, ain't it? I mean, it's funny. You shouldn't do something like that, should you?'

  'Er ...' said his father.

  'What?' asked Winter. 'What do you remember?'

  'What happened. And that it could be the same bloke as my dad said. Third from the right.'

  Maybe he just wants to show his father what a good boy he is, Winter thought.

  'Anything special?' asked Winter, gently.

  The boy didn't answer, couldn't take his eyes off Bielke.

  'Is there anything special about him that you recognise?' Winter asked.

  'What he hasn't got,' said the boy.

  'What he hasn't got.' Winter echoed him, still speaking gently.

  'I remember it clear as day now, in fact,' said the boy.

  Winter smiled encouragingly.

  'The dog lead.'

  Winter's heart skipped a beat.

  'He had a dog lead, but he dropped it as he walked away, or ran, or whatever. I remember it sort of rattling on the gravel, and then he picked it up. I remember clearly standing there, thinking it was odd that no dog appeared.' The boy turned to Winter. 'I thought it was a pity the dog didn't come. Where was his dog? Yep, I remember thinking that before. Afterwards, I mean. Where was his dog?'

  Winter was driven to the Bielkes' house because Irma Bielke had asked to see him – only him, nobody else would do. It was just as hot as before the thunderstorm. He played Halders' Julie Miller CD, just slotted it in, smelled the sea air after two kilometres, a scratchy but clear voice, like low-grade sandpaper.

  She was waiting on the familiar verandah. Winter held out his left hand for her to shake in greeting.

  'What's happened?' she asked, and broke down before he had chance to answer.

  'How long's this going to go on for?' she asked ten minutes later. They were sitting on the tropical-looking furniture at the far end of the verandah.

  What? Winter thought. Tell me what.

  She looked at him. There were lots of tears still to come.

  'I went ... I went to see Jeanette today.' Tears burst forth. 'For God's sake.' She looked at Winter. 'Why wasn't I here?'

  'Where were you?'

  'Out ... driving around.' She blew her nose and put the handkerchief in a pocket in her calf-length skirt. 'I've been out driving around rather a lot recently.'

  Winter allowed it to seep away, down through the garden that would never be the same again for this family.

  'We're getting divorced,' she said out of the blue.

  Winter waited. More was to come.

  'I've spoken to an estate agent. About the house.' She turned to Winter. 'Would you want to stay on here?'

  'What does your husband say?'

  'Huh.' She said it in a neutral tone, no exclamation mark.

  'You visited him yesterday, didn't you?'

  'That's why I wanted to ... to talk to you.' She took out her handkerchief again and carefully blew her nose. Winter didn't move and she looked at him as if she couldn't see him sitting on the bamboo chair with the flowery cushions. 'What should I do?' she said. 'It's so hopeless. So awful. What should I do?'

  'Tell me about it.'

  She said nothing, seemed to have forgotten.

  'Fru Bielke? Irma?'

  'Mattias is Kurt's son,' she said, staring straight ahead.

  'I beg your pardon?'

  'Mattias. Jeanette's boyfriend. Or ex. He's Kurt's son from another relationship.'

  Winter's mind was racing. Was Irma Bielke just as sick as her husband?

  'You're telling me that Mattias is Kurt Bielke's son?' Winter asked.

  'Everybody knew apart from me,' she said.

  'Everybody knew?'

  'He told Mattias when he found out that ... that he and Jeanette were seeing each other. They were seeing each other ... long before we knew anything about it. And then ... then he told her. Jeanette.'

  'When?'

  She shrugged.

  'Just before she told him. It must have been,' she said.

  'She? Who's she} The "she" who told Kurt. Mattias' mother. Who's she?'

  'No, I mean that Jeanette told Mattias.'

  'But surely your husband had told him?'

  She looked Winter in the eye.

  'Neither of them believed it,' she said.

  'What's the situation now, then?' he asked.

  'Evidently he could prove it,' she said.

  'How?'

  'I don't know.' She looked Winter in the eye again. 'You'd better ask him.'

  Winter heard a lawnmower starting up. He heard a helicopter and looked up to see it flying westwards, out to sea. He tried to catch her eye again.

  'When did he tell you?'

  'He hasn't told me,' she said, lifting up a book lying on the table. Underneath it was a handwritten letter that had been folded then smoothed out again thousands of times.

  'Hasn't told you?' said Winter, looking at the letter.

  'I took this with me from your police station yesterday,' she said. 'It's from Kurt, and I smuggled it out.' She looked at Winter. 'He said I shouldn't show it to anybody.'

  'Go on.'

  'He knew full well that I would.'

  'Why ... now?' Winter leaned forward. 'Why tell you now?'

  'Haven't you noticed what he's been like since he heard about ... about Jeanette? When he heard about her attempted suicide?'

  We've been trying to exploit it, Winter thought. Now we've succeeded, it seems, just a little bit. Everything's collapsing for the Bielke family, and we're exploiting it.

  'Do you know where Mattias is now?' Winter asked. She didn't reply, seemed to be gazing into other worlds that could mitigate the disaster her life was turning out to be. 'Irma. Where's Mattias? It's extremely important that we find him.'