Frozen Tracks Page 10

  'I didn't hear that.'

  'Like all great thoughts.'

  'Hear, hear,' said Birgersson.

  'The gay theory might give us a motive,' said Winter.

  'Have you managed to interview any of the victims again? With this idea in mind?'

  'No, we've only just thought of it,' said Winter.

  Birgersson didn't respond, which meant that the discussion was over for the time being. Winter picked up his packet of Corps and removed the cellophane from one of the slim cigarillos.

  Birgersson held out his lighter.

  'You'd given up too,' he said.

  'It hurt too much,' said Winter. 'Now I feel better again.'

  Halders stood in the middle of Doktor Fries Torg. Time had stood still here, in this square, which had been built during the period when the Social Democrats always formed the government, when Sweden's welfare state was strong, when everybody was cared for from the cradle to the grave and looked into the future with confidence, anticipating the fulfilment of their dreams. In this square I'm a little boy again, Halders thought. Everything here is genuine, this is what it looked like then.

  Flags, stone, concrete. But everything was lovely then, dammit. Concrete soaring high over the ground. Not bad, not bad at all.

  A few people were wandering around between the library, the community centre and the dental surgery that Halders knew Winter attended. There was a pizza place, of course. A closed-down bank, of course. A newsagent's, post office (but not for much longer). A selfservice store – a name that fitted the square's appearance and age. For me this shop will always be a self-service store. That's a 1960s term.

  Halders sat down on one of the benches outside Forum and drew a map in his notebook.

  Stillman had passed by here, after climbing the steps that led up from the city centre. He'd walked through the woods, which must have been pitch black. There were other routes he could have taken. This had been the most awkward one. Perhaps the lad was a bit of an adventurer. Halders drew a line where Stillman must have walked, from where he was sitting to the point where the attacker clubbed him down.

  Almost the dead centre of the square. He looked in that direction. Somebody might have been standing in the covered passageway in front of the self-service store. Or by the tobacconist's. Or the delicatessen on the other side. Crept forward with his club. A seven iron. Or a different iron. Or swished up on a bicycle. Or run like the devil on silent soles, and the young man who was tired and tipsy hadn't heard a thing. A pity the victim didn't have a walkman with Motörhead filling his brain at full volume. That would have explained a lot.

  Perhaps they weren't the only ones there. Halders kept thinking that when he made this follow-up visit to the various locations. Maybe they were with somebody but didn't want to say who, even though whoever it was had tried to kill them. Could that be the case? Were they protecting their own attacker? Huh, Halders had learnt a lot in this job. It was a mistake to believe that people would behave rationally. The human psyche was an interesting piece of reality in that respect. Or frightening, rather. You had to take things as they came.

  Not alone. Shielding somebody. Or ashamed of something? He looked down at his sketch again. Drew a dotted line to the bus and tram stop. Stillman had been on his way there, he'd said.

  From where? He still hadn't been able to explain what he'd been doing here. Halders didn't buy all that stuff about just strolling around, going nowhere in particular. It was a long way from here to his room in Olofshöjd. It was true that it was possible to go there from Slottskogen via Änggården and Guldheden, just as it was theoretically possible to stroll in an easterly direction from Gothenburg to Shanghai.

  Had he been visiting somebody round here? In which case, why the hell didn't he say so? Did they go for a moonlit walk? We'll have to have another chat with him. And with the other students . . . a student from Uppsala-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la-la. Halders hummed the tune as he got up from the bench and made his way to the delicatessen to buy lunch.

  Winter stayed in the grounds after delivering Elsa to the day nursery and waving to her through the window. She had turned away immediately and vanished, and it dawned on him that he and Angela were no longer the only ones in her life.

  A lot of children were running around the grounds. Two supervisors, as far as he could see. There was a lot of traffic passing by – the second stage of the morning rush hour. I'll be joining it shortly.

  A little chap was making his way through the bushes. Maybe the same one as last time, hoping to escape to freedom outside the fence.

  Winter watched him disappear into the undergrowth. He'd soon be out again. Perhaps he had a secret den among the bushes that he went to every day.

  Winter walked down to the gate and looked to the right, expecting to see the boy on the other side of the bushes and inside the fence. But there was nobody in sight. He walked towards the bushes, but still could see nothing, hear nothing. He moved even closer, noticed a loose bit of the thick steel wire, pulled at it, and felt the whole length open like a swing door.

  He turned round, but there was no little chap in a brown jumpsuit and blue cap standing in the bushes, waving.

  What the hell . . .

  The opening was too small for him to clamber through. He jogged quickly to the gate and out into the street, but he still couldn't see the boy anywhere.

  He walked the ten or so metres to the crossroads, which was partially hidden by the evergreen bushes surrounding the day nursery, turned right, and saw the boy some twenty metres ahead of him, marching purposefully away.

  By the time Winter got back to the day nursery with the boy, they had already called the register.

  'We were going to have a snack,' said the deputy manager, who was standing at the gate, looking worried.

  'There's a hole in the fence,' said Winter, putting down the boy, who had allowed himself to be carried back without protesting.

  'Good Lord,' she said, squatting down in front of the boy. 'Have you been out for a walk, August?'

  The boy nodded.

  'But you mustn't go outside the fence,' she said.

  The boy nodded again.

  She looked up at Winter.

  'I've never seen anything like this before.' She looked in the direction of the juniper bushes. 'How on earth can the fence have broken?'

  'I don't know,' said Winter. 'I haven't had time to examine it. But you'd better have it mended right away.'

  'I'll phone this very minute,' she said, standing up. 'We'll keep the children indoors in the mean time.'

  Winter went back to the fence and secured the loose strand of wire. Another length came loose when a few rusty staples gave way. He was stronger than August, but nonetheless, the boy had managed to open up the gap, even if it was rusty to start with. Not encouraging. Winter thought of Elsa. Had she ever been to this hole in the fence with August? Never go with strange men.

  The whole group was playing some kind of hide and seek, the children were laughing and looked delightful. He'd have loved to run forward and stand against the wall and count to a hundred, then shout 'Time's up!' and 'Coming!' and then start looking and see somebody emerge from their hiding place and make a dash for it, but he would be faster and touch base first and then they'd do it all over again with the same result and everybody would say that he was the fastest and the best and then, when it was his turn to hide, nobody would find him and he would dash out and touch base and win again. He would win every time.

  He was crying now.

  It was raining, he could see drops on the windscreen.

  The same voice on the radio again, always the same voice when he was out driving, when he felt as he felt now. When he wanted to be where the children were. Talk to the children, that was what he wanted to do. That was all.

  The same voice, the same time, the same programme, the same light in the sky. The same feeling. Would any of the children want to go with him, a bit further? Go home with him? How woul
d he be able to turn them down? Even if he wanted to?

  The voices out there sounded like a swishing noise, just like the rain. He liked both sounds, the way in which they blended so softly and gently that made him want to sit there for ever and ever and listen to them.

  Then came that feeling that was an extra feeling, and he knew that it made him feel frightened and he tried to shake his head so that it would sink back down inside him like it had done before, but it didn't. It made him stretch and open the car door and step out on to the ground covered in rotting leaves that smelled more strongly than they had done the previous time, and now he was standing at the side of the car and the feeling was getting even stronger and it was like a band of steel across his chest. He could hear his own breathing and it was so loud that everybody else ought to be able to hear it as well. But nobody heard. Everybody ran. Everybody laughed. Everybody was happy and he didn't want to think about when he was as little as that and maybe had run and laughed just like they were doing. With Mum. Mum had always held his hand and the ground had been covered in leaves of many colours.

  There was a little girl, running.

  A good hiding place.

  He followed her.

  Here's a better one.

  Yes. I'm playing with them as well. Now they're looking this way! What if they see you! Here, here.

  This is a better hiding place.

  In here.

  He'd seen this passage before, a sort of corridor between the big stone and the trees where he'd left the car. Behind the small hill. He'd almost been surprised by how easy it was to drive there from the car park.

  This is the best place, over here. Nobody will find you here.

  He felt the rain on his tongue and he realised it had been sticking out.

  He'd thought the police would want to talk to him again, but why should they? He hadn't done anything. It was the other one. Everybody had understood that. They'd understood that at work. Have a rest for a few weeks, and we'll take a good look into what happened.

  I don't need a few weeks. I need my work. That was what he'd told them. He'd answered their questions about what had happened, he'd told them everything.

  Have you never had anybody like that in your tram? Somebody like that! Gothenburg is full of them, in the trams, in the buses. It was dangerous for the public, and dangerous for the drivers. Just look at this mess! Isn't this proof of what can happen? What caused the accident?

  Yes, this is my car. Who'll be able to find you in here? This is the best place.

  9

  Janne Alinder stretched his arm in an attempt to ease the pain in his elbow. He raised it to an angle of about forty-five degrees, palm down, and it occurred to him that if anybody were to come into his office now it might look a little odd.

  Johan Minnonen came in and stood behind him.

  'Don't worry, I won't tell anybody,' said Minnonen.

  'Tennis elbow,' said Alinder.

  'Unusually straight for that.'

  'You can believe whatever you like.'

  'My dad fought on their side.'

  'Whose side?'

  'The Germans, of course. Against the Russians.'

  'Not all Germans were Nazis,' said Alinder.

  'Don't ask me.' Minnonen's expression became more sombre. 'I was too little. And Dad never came back home.'

  'I'm sorry to hear that,' said Alinder.

  'Neither did I, come to that. Come home again, that is. I'd been sent to Sweden, and I stayed here.' Minnonen hadn't sat down. 'A war child, as they called us. My real name was Juha, but the Swedes called me Johan.'

  'What about your mother?'

  'Oh yes, we met again after the war; but there were a lot of us brothers and sisters. Ah well . . .'

  Alinder knew that was as much as Minnonen was going to let on. He had never been as forthcoming as this before.

  Oh my God, he realised that he still had his arm raised.

  The telephone rang. He lowered his right arm and picked up the receiver. Minnonen clicked his heels and saluted, then left and made his way towards the police cars.

  'Police, Majorna-Linnéstaden, Alinder.'

  'Er, yes, hello. My name is Lena Sköld. I rang a few days ago about my daughter, Ellen.'

  Sköld, Sköld, Alinder thought. Daughter. He had some vague recollection.

  'It was about Ellen. She said she'd been with, er, with some stranger or other.'

  'I remember now. How is she?'

  'She's fine. Everything's as normal.'

  'Good.'

  'Anyway, you said I should get in touch again if I thought that . . . that something was missing. I think that's what you said?'

  If you say so, Alinder thought. Hang on a minute, yes, I remember now.

  'Yes, I remember saying that.'

  'Well, she always has a good-luck charm in a pocket in her jumpsuit, but it's missing,' said Lena Sköld.

  'A good-luck charm?'

  'Yes, you know, one of those—'

  'Yes, I know what it is. I mean . . .' What the hell do I mean? 'A charm, you say?'

  'An old good-luck charm, the one I used to have myself when I was a kid. It's a sort of superstition thing . . . from me. It's supposed to bring you good luck.'

  Silence.

  'And?'

  'She always has it in the left-hand chest pocket of her jumpsuit. A special extra pocket. I can't understand how . . .'

  Silence again.

  'And?'

  He waited for whatever she was going to say next.

  'I can't understand how it could have fallen out,' said Lena Sköld.

  'Could Ellen have taken it out herself?'

  'No, I don't think so.'

  'And this is the first time?'

  'What do you mean?'

  'The first time it's been lost?' Alinder asked. A daft question, but what am I supposed to do? This is the type of conversation I don't really have time for.

  'Yes, of course.'

  'What do you think happened?'

  'Well, if what Ellen says is true, then it could be that the man in the car took it.'

  'Have you asked Ellen about him again?'

  'Yes.'

  'And?'

  'She says more or less the same as before. Odd that she should remember, don't you think?'

  I have a file with notes of what was said before, to check against what she's saying now, Alinder thought. I might as well add a few sentences.

  'Can you describe that charm for me,' he said, picking up his pen.

  'It's a little bird, in silver,' she replied.

  * * *

  Just a little thing. A souvenir. He'd be able to take it out and look at it, and that would be enough.

  For now at least. No. No! That would be enough. Enough!