'He's where she is.'
'What ... what did you say?'
'He's done what she did. He's done the same as my little Jeanette diiid ...' She screamed, sobbed, her head on her knees, bared as her skirt worked its way up.
'Do you KNOW that?' Winter asked, leaning over her, trying to help, holding her shoulders.
'What else could he have done? How could he li ... live with that ...?'
'Jeanette isn't dead,' said Winter.
She said nothing. Then mumbled something he couldn't hear.
'I couldn't hear what you said.'
'My little girl,' she said.
'I have to ask you,' said Winter, 'if you know what your husband has done.'
'What has he done?'
'Don't you know?'
'I can't believe it,' she said. 'I don't want to live with that man any more, never again, but I can't believe that. That he's killed anybody. He might have gone to some porno club or whatever it was, but not the rest.' She shook her head. 'But it's enough for me even so.' She shook her head again. 'Jeanette and I are going to move.'
'May I read the letter?' Winter asked.
'It's there.'
He picked it up and read it, handwriting that flew over the page like black seagulls. It said no more than she'd told him.
Could it all be lunatic fantasies?
'Who's the mother?' he asked.
She didn't answer. Winter repeated the question.
'I've told you, he hasn't told me anything.' She looked up. 'He kept that secret between him and her all these years and I don't know who she is. I DON'T WANT TO KNOW. I could ... I could ...' But she let it drop without explaining what she could do to the woman who had shared her husband all those years ago.
Winter needed to get back to the police station, to Kurt Bielke before he sank into eternal silence.
He took out the photograph from Angelika's graduation party. Irma Bielke looked away.
'You must look,' said Winter.
She looked at the woman's profile. Winter could see the relief in her face. Note how important it has been over the whole span of our evolutionary history to be able to recognise other individuals and to read intentions and emotions in their faces, he thought.
'I've never seen her before,' said Irma Bielke, turning to Winter. 'I don't know her. Who is she?'
'I don't know. So far, it's just a face we've got. We don't yet know where it fits in.'
'There's something I've forgotten all about,' she said suddenly. 'Good Lord. That was really why.'
'Why what?'
'Why I wanted to talk to you. Or why I wanted to meet you.'
Is there more? he thought. The floodgates are evidently not yet completely open.
'Thank you,' she said.
'I beg your pardon?'
'Thank you. You saved her life. OK, I know she's not yet out of danger; but she's still alive and she's going to live. I'll make sure that she lives.'
Winter didn't know what to say. She reached out and put her hand on his right shoulder. He gave a start.
'You're a good man.'
A good man in the right place. He could feel the pain in his elbow. It had started again, at this very moment. Time for another Voltaren.
She dried her eyes, blew her nose, stood up. Something was over. Over and out, but there was hope there. He could see it. There would be something else after hell, something cooler and stronger.
'You must have something to drink before you go. And your police officer waiting outside as well.'
His mobile rang on the way back. His elbow was aching something awful, even though he used his other hand to answer the phone.
'I've managed to produce a few more words,' said Yngvesson. 'The same voice, more words.'
'What words?' Winter asked.
'You'll have to come here and listen. I've got about as far as I can go.'
'I'm on my way.'
He hung up and found himself having to squint as the sun suddenly shone straight into his eyes. One more hour, maybe two. One day. He could see Halders' damned face in his mind's eye. There was no other face. I'll be seeing you.
37
The APB on Samic had gone out several days ago. The headlines on the news placards filled all the available space, black on yellow, like dark clouds obscuring the sun. There were reporters everywhere. Winter tried to ignore the media attention as something that didn't affect him, had nothing to do with him, with his world. He wanted to think his way into a world that was bright and full of summer, evenings spent in pavement cafés where the buzz of activity increased then declined as darkness set in. Playful dips in the sea with salt left in your eyebrows afterwards on the rocks when the water had dried on your body. All that kind of thing.
A group of reporters was waiting in the newly renovated foyer. Notebooks and pens and large and small cameras. Winter walked straight past them, staring fixedly ahead. It was like a film, only worse.
Yngvesson's tape was spinning round like the course of time. Winter remained standing. There was a scraping noise in the loudspeakers. Yngvesson had added an extra pair to amplify the roaring. He looked tired, or worse.
'Here it comes,' he said.
Winter was now able to make out words from what had previously been an atonal cacophony:
'I XKXKBL BEFORE! BEFORE! XBLBSFF HAVE TOGLCXBL BEFORE! BEFORE! AAIII!'
Yngvesson stopped the tape.
'Is that all?' asked Winter. He could feel something in the back of his head. Something inside.
'All? It's quite a lot, I'd have thought.'
'I didn't mean it like that,' said Winter. 'I was just asking if there's any more.'
'No.'
'Play it again.'
Winter listened. 'BEFORE! BEFORE! AAIII!'
'Before,' said Yngvesson. 'He's said something to her before.'
'Or to somebody else.'
'Or done something before.'
'Sounds like an old codger,' Yngvesson said.
'What did you say?' Winter asked.
'It sounds like an elderly man.'
Winter had heard it before. Before. Jesus, he'd heard it before. No, READ it before. It was in the cold case files.
He went to his office and phoned Möllerström, the invaluable officer in charge of computer files. Everything was on the hard disk. Run a word search. Möllerström had gone home early for once. Children's party.
'Get him on the phone.'
Sorry about that, Mölli.
Bergenhem was still around. Winter filled him in. Bergenhem didn't recognise the words.
'What are you doing at the moment?' Winter asked.
'Setter and I have started that check on Sarnic's business interests. Names. Old business contacts.'
'Addresses?'
'Masses. But we can't go checking to see if he's with every one of his old contacts, Erik. We have made a start nevertheless.'
'Bielke?'
'Well ... his name's there as well. Some property deals. Co-ownership of some third-rate diner. But we knew that already. And at least we know where he is at the moment. And also where he lives.'
Not for much longer, thought Winter, and he could picture Irma Bielke, crushed and yet unbroken at the same time, on her way to the estate agent's.
She wasn't mad.
He'd offered to go with her. He could help her to move into a hotel. Or to a relative's, or a friend's. She'd declined. She was already on her way to somewhere else, somewhere better.
Bergenhem stood up.
'If that's all ...'
Winter thought about Halders. About Angela and Elsa, and how he ought to stand in the window and have a smoke and turn up the sound of Brecker's Time is of the Essence that was spinning round in the Panasonic, in its usual place on the floor.
He thought about the paternity claim. As far as he was concerned it was just a claim, there could be hidden intentions behind it. Bielke hadn't made any such confession to him.
He stood by the window. Long shad
ows again, black spears floating along the river on the other side of the park lying silently below his office. The park, park, park, park, park, park ...
He put his cigarillo in the ashtray, returned to his desk and dialled Mattias' number. No reply. The boy might have hanged himself from a tree or be at the bottom of a river after all. Or he might be wandering around the baking-hot houses.
Winter stood up, went to Möllerström's computer and started the search. The telephone rang, but he let it ring. As he was searching he remembered, suddenly remembered. It wasn't just the word. It was the voice as well.
Bergenhem drove. They had to weave their way cautiously through the mass of pedestrians and the pavement cafés. Everybody was in the streets, which were glowing in the heat: children, teenagers, the middle aged, senior citizens, gigolos, tourists, newly-weds, divorcees, families with children, whores, pimps, drunks, police, junkies, the Salvation Army, lunatics, all on their way from nothing to nowhere.
The park was the city's lung, and masses of people were wandering down the cycle tracks or over the lawns.
'Pull over outside,' said Winter.
Bergenhem found a space in one of the little side-streets. They entered the park from the north.
'I've been here every day, almost,' said Bergenhem. 'Discreetly.'
'Hmm.'
'I expect the same applies to y—'
'Shh.'
They were standing by the pond. A group was picnicking quietly to their right. Some one-legged flamingos were viewing the scene. Winter could smell grilled meat from the pavement café behind them, heard a single peal of laughter gliding over the water. The shadows had lain down now, as if the trees in the park had been taken down for the night but would be put up again the next day.
'Let's go a bit closer.'
'I'll stay here,' said Bergenhem.
Winter took three strides to the next tree. It was ten metres to the hollow near the big rock, opening up like a black cave. The vegetation round about was swaying gently, a final rustle before settling down for the night.
Winter heard a loud engine noise from somewhere and a souped-up moped with a madly grinning teenager on board came racing over the grass. Winter turned and saw Bergenhem shaking his head. The moped made a U-turn on the other side of the pond, came back making the same racket and disappeared along the road a hundred metres away. All was quiet again, quieter than ever before now that the commotion had subsided. Winter stood still as if he knew, really knew that so much had led up to these seconds and that everything might come to an end here, not absolutely everything, but a lot would come to an end if he stayed here now, or if he came back tomorrow, or the day after and the day after that, and did all the other things one always did when looking for the answer to a riddle.
There was a rustling in the branches over there. Nobody emerged or walked past. No movement in the corner of his eye.
He stood still. Bergenhem would soon start moving and they'd return to the police station.
Something moved inside the hollow, in the darkness. A shadow deeper than the other shadows. Winter stayed put. It was now. Now. A figure moved, still a shadow. Moved again, made its way towards the exit. Winter could see the outline of a head, a body. Suddenly a face, only a blurred oval in the deceptive twilight. A pale impression of a face he'd seen through Jeanette's window.
Mattias emerged from the bushes and onto the grass. He was moving his head backwards and forwards, like a dog sniffing the wind for traces of people or other animals. He wore shorts and a shirt that was still black from the black light behind him. He took two more paces forward. His shirt suddenly turned white and flapped slightly in the breeze, unbuttoned at the bottom. The same shirt. A button was missing, and it's in Beier's office, Winter thought. The shirt flapped again, as if the breeze had suddenly grown stronger, but there was no breeze where Winter was standing.
He walked away from the tree trunk. Mattias gave a start and turned to face Winter. Winter took two paces. Mattias didn't move, his head up, as if he were still sniffing the air. Winter could see his eyes now, Mattias' eyes, there was no sign of recognition in those eyes, no longer, and Winter approached as if invisible and Mattias' head started moving again, backwards and forwards. His right hand was moving, as if following a rhythm. Winter was so close now that he could smell the acrid aroma coming from the boy who was swinging his arm higher and higher, and the dog lead he was holding glittered in the light like silver and gold.
When Winter had found the report he was looking for he'd read it and looked for the words. It was Halders' last conversation with Mattias. He could hear the voice behind the words as he read.
'Jeanette hasn't said anything, has she?'
'Why don't you let her go, Mattias?'
'What do you mean, let her go?'
'You know what I mean.'
'I did that ages ago. Let ... everything go.'
Then Mattias had fallen silent when Halders showed him the picture of Angelika's boyfriend.
'Do you recognise him?' Halders had asked.
The conversation continued. Then Mattias said it: 'It'll ... never be like it used to be.' Mattias had repeated it, something different. A normal thing to say, but not now, not any more. And not what came next, after a short pause. 'It was different before. I've told you. I've told you before.' He repeated it again soon afterwards. Halders asked a few follow-up questions and that was all Mattias said, but it was enough. It was enough now.
Winter had finished reading, phoned Bergenhem and they had driven to the park. There had been no other place to go to.
38
In the back seat, Mattias said nothing. Winter could see the glow from the neon lights passing over his face without him blinking a single time. The glittering dog lead had been exchanged for handcuffs that gleamed in similar fashion.
They took him through the back entrance and up the stairs to a cell, then everyone assembled in Winter's office. Winter felt too nervous to move to a bigger conference room. He was smoking, drumming his fingers; he looked at each face and noted that Djanali's displayed the most worry.
This was not a moment to open the champagne.
'We'd better get going on the lad,' said Cohen, who rarely attended such meetings. The chief interrogation officer generally moved in his own circles.
'What are we going to do with Bielke?' wondered Johan Steer. He looked at Winter. 'Assuming it's the boy. Mattias.'
'It is him,' said Winter. 'But it's not only him.'
'In both cases?' asked Setter.
'No, he was too young when the first murder was committed,' said Djanali.
'He was sixteen or seventeen,' said Setter, 'and already about six foot, so we're told.'
Never End Page 35
