Death Angels
Table of Contents
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Title Page
Copyright Page
JANUARY 1997
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
INTERNATIONAL PRAISE FOR DEATH ANGELS BY ÅKE EDWARDSON
“A crime novel with snappy dialogue, depth and—most important of all—suspense from beginning to end.”
—Morala & Vadstena Tidning (Sweden)
“Edwardson will not be hampered by the constraints of the crime genre . . . with his sharp dialogue . . . and a backdrop of darkness that recalls the early works of James Ellroy, one must proclaim Åke Edwardson a master of the Scandinavian detective novel.”
—Le Monde des Livres (France)
“A read which even on a really warm July day sends cold shivers down my spine . . . Edwardson’s language is vivid and full of nuance.”
—Hufvudstadsbladet (Finland)
“A fast, sleek, hard ballad.”
—Die Welt (Germany)
“Clever, exciting, atmospheric!”
—Der Spiegel (Germany)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ÅKE EDWARDSON has won three Swedish Academy of Crime Writers awards. His ten Erik Winter novels have been translated into more than twenty languages. He lives in Gothenburg, Sweden.
PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. • Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) • Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England • Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) • Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) • Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India • Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) • Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
First published in Penguin Books 2009
Copyright © Åke Edwardson, 1997
Translation copyright © Ken Schubert, 2009
All rights reserved
Originally published in Swedish as Dans med en angel by Norstedts Forlag, Stockholm.
Publisher’s Note
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA
Edwardson, Åke,———.
[Dans med en angel. English]
Death angels : an Inspector Erik Winter novel / Åke Edwardson ; translated from the Swedish by Ken Schubert.
p. cm.
eISBN : 978-1-101-14497-8
1. Detectives—Sweden—Fiction. 2. Sweden—Fiction. I. Title.
PT9876.15.D93D3613 2009
839.73’74—dc22 2009027529
Set in Dante MT with Eras
The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
http://us.penguingroup.com
HE WAS NO LONGER ABLE TO MOVE. HE COULDN’T REMEMBER how long it had been this way. Movement was like a shadow play now.
He knew what was happening to him. He tried to make his way toward the south wall of the room, but the gesture was mostly in his mind, and when he raised his head to see where the sound was coming from . . .
Once more he felt the coldness between his shoulders and down his back, followed by the heat. He slipped and struck his hip as he fell, then slid along the floor.
He heard a voice.
There’s a voice inside me, he thought, and it’s calling to me, and the voice is me. I know what’s happening to me. Now I’ll go over to the wall, and if I stay calm it’s going to be all right.
Mom! Mom!
He heard a whir like when time freezes and the world stops before your eyes. He couldn’t escape it, and he knew what it was.
Get away from me.
Go away.
I know what’s happening to me. I feel the coldness again. I’m looking down at my leg but I can’t tell which one it is. I see it in the bright light. That’s not the way it was at first. But when the coldness began, the light went on and everything turned to night outside the window.
I hear a car, but it’s going the other direction. Nothing stops out there.
Get away from me.
He could still take care of himself, and if he were just left alone, he would be able to move around the room and over to the door. The man had come in, gone back out and gotten his things, then returned, closed the door and made it night outside.
He still heard the music, but it might be coming from somewhere deep inside. They had played Morrissey, and he knew that the name of the album came from an area on this side of the river—not very far away. He knew a lot about that kind of thing. That was one of the reasons he had come here.
He heard the music again, louder now, but not the whir.
The light was as bright as ever. It ought to hurt, penetrate him.
I don’t feel like it’s hurting me, he thought. I’m not tired. I could leave if I were just able to stand up. I’m trying to say something. Time is slipping away. It’s like when you’re falling asleep, and suddenly you give a start, as if you’re climbing out of a deep pit, and that’s all that matters. When it’s over, you’re frightened and you lie there, incapable of moving.
He didn’t think so much after that. The wires and cables in his head had been clipped in two and his thoughts spilled out and careened around his brain and merged with the blood that was running down his back.
I know it’s blood and it’s mine. I know what’s happening to me. I don’t feel the coldness anymore. Maybe it’s over. What’s next?
I’m up on one knee now. I’m staring into the light, and that’s how I’ll drag myself toward the wall and into the shadows.
Something is coming at me from the side, and I’m turning away from it. Maybe I’m going to make it.
/> He tried to move toward the refuge that awaited him somewhere, and the music grew louder. There was activity all around him, coming from different angles. He fell and was caught, and he felt himself being lifted up and to the side. He made out the contours of the walls and ceiling as they closed in on him, and he couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began. Then there was no more music.
The last wires holding his thoughts together snapped, leaving him alone with dreams and fragments of memories that he took with him when it was over and silence had descended.
The sound of footsteps faded into the distance, and his thin body slumped against the chair.
JANUARY 1997
1
lT HAD BEEN THE KIND OF YEAR THAT REFUSES TO LET GO. IT spun every which way and bit its own tail like a rabid dog. Weeks and months seemed to go on forever.
From where Erik Winter sat, the coffin appeared to hover in the air. Daylight poured through a window to his left and lifted it from the bier on the stone floor. Everything merged into a rectangle of sunshine.
He listened to the psalms of death, his lips unmoving. He was surrounded by a circle of silence. It wasn’t the unfamiliar atmosphere that made him feel isolated. Nor was it his grief, but another kind of feeling, akin to loneliness or the void that you stare into when you’re losing your grip.
The warmth of my blood is gone, he thought. It’s as if the path behind me is overgrown with weeds.
Rising with the others, Winter walked out into the light and followed the pallbearers to the grave. Once the farewell handfuls of soil had been thrown, there was nothing more to do. Only after he had stood quietly for a few minutes did he feel the January sun caress his face like a hand dipped in lukewarm water.
He walked slowly westward along the street to the ferry dock. The civil war within a man is over, he thought. An armistice has been signed. Now only the past remains, and my grief is just beginning. If only I could simply do nothing for a long time and then start weeding the paths to the future. He smiled wistfully at the low sky.
He climbed aboard and went up to the car deck. The vehicles on the ferry to Gothenburg were covered with dirty snow. They clattered like hell and he put his left hand over his ear. The sun was still out, lucid and impotent over the water. He had removed his leather gloves as the casket was being lowered into the grave, and now he put them on again. He couldn’t remember a time when it was ever this cold.
He stood alone on deck. The ferry chugged away from the island. As it passed a breakwater, he thought about death and the way life goes on long after it loses all meaning. The gestures still come from force of habit but leave nothing in their wake.
The ferry restaurant was full. The people seated to his right drifted over toward the big windows.
At first he sat hunched over his table without ordering anything to drink. He waited for the psalms to die down inside his head and then asked for a cup of coffee. A man took the seat next to him.
Winter sat up and unfurled his long frame. “Bertil Ringmar, of all people. Would you like some coffee?”
“Thanks.”
Winter motioned to a waitress.
“I think it’s self-serve.”
“No, here she comes.”
The waitress took Winter’s order in silence, her face oddly transparent in the sunlight. Winter couldn’t tell whether she was looking at him or at the church tower of the receding village. He wondered if you could hear the bells chime when you were on the opposite shore, or on the ferry when it was heading toward the island.
His posture is awkward, Ringmar thought. These tables aren’t made for tall people. He looks like he’s in pain, and it isn’t because of the sunlight in his eyes.
“So here we are again,” Winter said.
“It never ends.”
“No.” Winter watched the waitress put the coffee down in front of Ringmar. The rising steam thinned out at Ringmar’s brow and traced a circle around his head. He looks like an angel, Winter thought. “And what are you doing here?” he asked.
“I’m sitting on the ferry drinking coffee.”
“Why do we always have to split hairs with each other?”
Ringmar took a swig of coffee. “Maybe because we’re both so sensitive to shades of meaning.” He lowered his cup.
Winter saw Ringmar’s face reflected in the tabletop, upside down. The lighting suits him, he thought.
“Were you out here to see Mats?” Ringmar asked.
“You might put it that way . . . he’s dead.”
Ringmar grasped his cup. It burned like ice, but he didn’t let go.
“The funeral was quite an event,” Winter said. “I didn’t know he had so many friends. Only one relative, but the church was packed.”
“Hmm.”
“I was thinking it would be mostly men, but there were plenty of women too. More women than men, come to think of it.”
Ringmar was looking out the window behind Winter, who assumed the church tower had caught his attention. “It’s a hell of a disease,” he said, turning back to Winter. “You could have called me.”
“In the middle of your Grand Canary vacation? Mats was a close friend, but I can handle the grief. Or maybe it’s just starting now.”
Their silence gave way to the roar of the engines.
“It’s a bunch of diseases rolled up in one,” Winter said after a while. “What finally got him was a bout of pneumonia.”
“You know what I meant.”
“Of course.”
“He had the damn thing for a long time, didn’t he?” Ringmar asked.
“Yes.”
“Shit.”
“For a while there he thought he was going to beat it,” Winter said.
“Did he tell you that?”
“No, but I could sense what he was thinking. Sometimes the strength of will can save you when everything else is gone. He even had me convinced.”
“I see.”
“Then some kind of misplaced guilt got hold of him,” Winter said, “and it was all downhill after that.”
“Didn’t you mention once that he talked about becoming a policeman when he was younger?”
“Did I say that?”
“That’s how I remember it,” Ringmar said.
Winter reached up and brushed the hair back from his forehead, then left his hand on the thick strands that covered his neck. “Maybe when I started at the police academy. Or was thinking about applying.”
“Could be.”
“It’s been a while.”
“Yes.”
The ferry trembled as if it had fallen asleep in the calm waters and been jolted awake. Passengers wrapped their coats more tightly around themselves.
“He would have been welcome,” Ringmar said.
Winter let go of his hair and placed his palms on the table.
“I read they’re looking for homosexual police in England,” Ringmar said.
“Do they want to take homosexual police and assign them new duties, or train homosexuals to be police?”
“Does it make any difference?”
“Sorry.”
“At least in England they realize that the police force needs to reflect the general population,” Ringmar said.
“That makes sense.”
“Who knows, maybe we’ll have some gay officers here one of these days.”
“Don’t you think we already do?”
“Ones who are willing to admit it, I mean.”
“After what I saw today,” Winter said, “I’m beginning to think that I would admit it if I were gay.”
“Hmm.”
“Maybe even before today. Yeah, I’m pretty sure I would have.”
“You’re probably right.” Ringmar’s face relaxed.
“You shouldn’t have to pretend to be somebody you’re not and carry all that guilt on your own shoulders.”
“I’m up to my ears in guilt.”
The people by the big windows looked like they didn’t know wh
ether they should burst into song or drown their sorrows in drink.
Winter glanced outside as the ferry passed a lighthouse. “What do you say we go out on deck and greet the big city?” he asked.
“It’s cold out there,” Ringmar said.
“I need some fresh air.”
“I understand.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“Don’t try my patience, Erik.”
The day was gray and about to lose its freshness. The car deck had the muted glint of coal, and the cliffs surrounding them now were the same color as the sky. It’s not so easy to tell where one ends and the other begins, Winter thought. Before you know it you’re in the kingdom of heaven. One false step off the cliff and there you are.
By the time the ferry made its way underneath the bridge, the sun had already set. The lights of the city beckoned to them. Christmas was long past, and snowless patches dotted the landscape. The cold wave had frozen the ugliness in place like a photograph.
“I always think that late January is the nastiest time of year,” Ringmar said, “but when it rolls around it’s no worse than anything else.”
“I know what you mean.”
“That must mean that I feel just as shitty all year round or else that I’m always happy as a king.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I wish I was a king.”
“Things aren’t that bad, are they?”
“A long time ago, I thought that I was a crown prince. I was wrong. It turned out to be you. How old are you? Chief inspector at thirty-seven, or thirty-five when you were promoted? It’s unheard of.”
The sounds of the city had grown louder.
“Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy for you,” Ringmar continued. “But if I still had any hope left for myself, the workshop I was just at crushed it.”
“What workshop?”
“You know, the one about taking the next step in your life and that sort of thing.”
“Oh yeah, I’d forgotten all about it.”