Sun and Shadow Page 11

  He went back out into the street. It was just as dark, but there were more passengers in the trams now. He was behind schedule, but that wasn’t surprising. He’d lost interest in his Walkman, left it in his pocket and continued toward Vasaplatsen. He went into the apartment building that he and Maria had been looking at before, the one where that detective lived, with his girlfriend. He ought to know that if anybody did, delivering newspapers every day all week long. He’d told Maria, or reminded her about it.

  It was the same sort of big, black building as the other one. There was the same kind of echo when the elevator clattered its way up.

  The call was passed from the central control to the Lorensberg station, on to the constable who dealt with incoming calls, and from him to the duty officer. He listened, asked a few questions, and made a note.

  It was Friday evening. Another half-hour and it would be eight o‘clock, when the station closed to the general public.

  The duty officer checked his rotation list and went out to the front desk, where the constable was talking to a woman who had just come in from the street. He waited. The woman left, taking a form with her. He had seen her there before. A dog was waiting outside, wrapped up in God only knows what. It barked a welcome as she opened the door. The duty officer turned to his younger colleague.

  “Send Morelius to me as soon as he comes back from the gym. Bartram as well. I need to see them urgently.”

  A quarter of an hour later they were in the car driving west toward Aschebergsgatan. The caretaker was waiting for them outside. He was elderly, gray-haired. His last year in the job, and now this had happened.

  “The third floor,” he said. “The elevator isn’t working, I’m afraid. I’ve phoned the repair—”

  “Was it you who called the police?” asked Morelius, cutting him short.

  “Well, yes. I suppose so.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’d thought of calling sooner ... thought there was something odd going on ... and then I phoned and reported it.” He was breathing heavily. “Here it is, anyway.”

  “Hmm.” Morelius eyed the newspapers piled up on the floor; one was sticking out of the letter box. “Have you rung the bell?”

  “Yes. Several times these last few days.” He gestured toward the door. “But nobody answered.”

  “Who lives here?” Morelius looked at the nameplate. “Valker. Somebody living on their own? A single tenant?”

  “It’s a couple—at least, I think it is. You can never be sure nowadays.... But I’ve seen two people. A man and a woman.”

  Morelius rang the bell. They could hear some sort of music coming from inside the apartment. He rang again, but there was no answer. He looked at Bartram and then bent down and opened the mail slot.

  “Oh, damn!”

  “I’ve smelled it as well,” the caretaker said.

  “What’s wrong?” Bartram wondered.

  “Smell for yourself,” said Morelius, moving out of the way.

  “Just say what it is,” Bartram said.

  “It’s impossible to describe,” said Morelius, looking at the caretaker again.

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “There’s a noise coming from inside. What is it?”

  “I don’t know what it is either. But it’s been going for ages now.”

  “Ages?”

  “Evidently. According to the newspaper boy, at least. And I suppose I’ve heard it myself as well, when I’ve been here wondering ... wondering what’s going on. But one’s reluctant to interfere.”

  “Open the door,” Morelius said.

  “Shouldn’t we wait?” Bartram asked.

  “What for?” Morelius turned to the caretaker. “Come on, open up.”

  Morelius looked at the door. He had no feelings just now. It could be any door at all. Any people at all. The light on the landing was very bright. It didn’t worry him.

  The man fumbled with a bunch of keys, picked one out, put it in the lock and turned.

  Winter had mashed the anchovies and mixed in olive oil and garlic when the telephone rang, piercing Charlie Haden’s bass.

  “I’ll get it,” said Angela, on her way through the hall from the bathroom.

  She came back into the kitchen.

  “It’s for you. I’ll hang up the receiver in the hall.”

  Winter picked up the phone.

  There were two cars parked outside the apartment building. Winter could see them the moment he stepped outside the entrance door of his own building. They were only a few yards away.

  Walking distance from the scene of the crime. You could have mixed feelings about that. He rubbed his chin and could smell garlic and anchovies. It felt as if crime had intruded onto his home ground, his home.

  There was a young constable he didn’t recognize in the entrance hall. Cars braked behind him as he went in through the front door, and he knew there would soon be lots of people in there. Outside as well.

  Welcome home, Chief Inspector.

  He went up the stairs.

  “Hello, Winter.”

  “It’s you, is it, Bartram? Long time no see.”

  “We took the emergency call.”

  “Who’s that?” asked Winter, gesturing toward the elderly man leaning against a wall.

  “The caretaker.”

  “He looks in a bad way. Get him to the station and I’ll have a word with him later.”

  “Okay.”

  “Who’s inside the apartment?”

  “Morelius. Simon Morelius. We were the first. And now you.”

  Winter went in through the open door. He had to step over a pile of mail and newspapers. The hall was dark, long and narrow, not unlike his own. There was no sign of a light on anywhere. He knew that these officers were experienced enough not to touch the walls and switches.

  The stench was awful, but he’d tried to prepare himself for that, and it helped. He breathed it for a couple of seconds, then took out a handkerchief and pressed it over his nose and mouth.

  Music was thundering through all the rooms. He couldn’t be sure where it was coming from. The volume wasn’t all that high, but it was very intrusive even so.

  It sounded like something from another world. He’d never heard anything like it. I’ve lived a sheltered life, he thought.

  The guitar was grinding like a mill wheel, as did the bass, the drums ... Winter was reminded of a concrete mixer. Suddenly: a voice, hardly human, a high falsetto hissing noise. No discernible words. The drummer seemed to be having an epileptic fit.

  The music was coming from a room directly ahead of him. A door at the far end of the hall stood open. Light from the street was coming in through the large windows. A figure was visible in the doorway, outlined against the lighter room behind him, motionless. Winter could see the silhouette of a police officer, his uniform, his weapon. He didn’t seem to have heard Winter approaching, but ought to have done so despite the music.

  He hadn’t seen Morelius for ages. He was younger than Winter, but not all that much.

  The music stopped and Winter approached the room. The outline moved, then turned back toward the room again without speaking. The music surged, louder now, more intense. It seemed to get louder as Winter advanced. When he reached the door, the figure that had now become a man in uniform moved out of the way. Winter nodded. He could smell the stench through his handkerchief now as he stepped into the room.

  The singer wasn’t hissing any longer, he was screeching at top volume. The stereo equipment was on the left, glowing red and yellow. Next to it was a sofa, and on the sofa sat a couple who didn’t appear to be wearing any clothes. Their bodies were crisscrossed with shadows and light and something else. Winter realized what it was.

  Their faces were turned toward the door, toward the police officers who were looking at them. Winter had a sudden feeling of disgust, of wanting to be sick.

  It was always the same. He was violating these people now, when they were defenseles
s.

  He took a step forward. There was a dark wreath around their necks, like a jagged necklace. He took another step forward and looked into their faces and the feeling of sickness was suddenly more than a vague feeling. He turned back to the door.

  “There’s something written on the wall as well,” said the police officer, pointing to the right at the far end of the room.

  18

  The room quickly filled up. Winter had sat alone in his office for ten minutes, watching the snow falling outside. Somebody had put a vase of flowers on the table, but there was no card accompanying it. As he was about to leave for the meeting, there was a knock on the door and Ringmar came in. He’d been home to get some pills to ease his tonsillitis. He had looked far from well when he turned up at the apartment, taken one look at the dead bodies, started coughing, and gone back into the hall.

  “You ought to be in bed,” said Winter.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you have a temperature?”

  “Yes.”

  “Go home.”

  ‘After the meeting.“

  “We can’t risk you infecting all of us, Bertil. The bottom line is that I don’t want you here.”

  “Erik ...”

  “If you really have to work, take the photographs and all the rest of the stuff and do some thinking as you lie in bed, if it’s possible to think with the infection you’ve got.”

  “All right, all right.” Ringmar was in the middle of the office now. “This is a fine welcome-home for you.” He looked at Winter, who had retreated behind his desk. “What a goddam mess!”

  They went to the meeting. Winter started by summarizing what they knew. The photographs were passed around.

  He hasn’t got much of a tan, thought Aneta Djanali. That wasn’t why he went to Spain. Aneta Djanali didn’t have much of a tan herself, although she was very black. She was born in Gothenburg, to parents who had had to leave the troubled African nation of Burkina Faso for political reasons. But “leave” was not quite accurate; they had fled for their lives.

  When Aneta became a police officer, her father had mixed feelings, having had his tough experiences with the police of Ouagadougou. His daughter kept telling him it was different here, though sometimes she wasn’t so sure.

  Fredrik Halders listened to what Winter had to say. He looked at the photograph in his hand. How are we going to approach this? What shall we tell people?

  “What are we going to tell people about this?” he said, holding up the photograph. “How much detail should we ... reveal?”

  “What do you mean?” asked Sara Helander, who was sitting two chairs away from Halders.

  “What’s happened to them,” Halders said. “How much should we say about what they look like?”

  “We have a couple who have been murdered in their apartment, that’s what we’ll say,” said Winter. “There’s no reason why we should give any more information at this stage.”

  “Is there ever?” Djanali said, but Winter ignored the question.

  “Christian and Louise Valker,” said Winter. “Married for four years. He was forty-two, she was thirty-seven. No children. Christian Valker worked as a computer salesman—hardware—and Louise Valker worked part-time as a hairdresser.” He glanced at his notes. “They had been living in the apartment in Aschebergsgatan for two and a half years, roughly. Tenancy rights. High rent.” We might well have seen each other in Vasaplatsen. At the supermarket, in the street, in the garage, perhaps. The garage was big, hundreds of square yards, under all the apartment buildings. We’d better check if they rented a garage space. “They had previously lived in Lunden, two rooms and kitchen, sublet. Before that, Christian lived on his own in an apartment in Kålltorp. Louise moved to Gothenburg seventeen years ago from Kungsbacka and started work at a hair salon in Mölndalsvägen. She lived in Ran nebergen then, on her own. Neither had been married before. No criminal record either. Not in Sweden, at least. We’ll check with Interpol. No relatives in Gothenburg, as far as we know. Christian Valker grew up in Västerås, Louise in Kungsbacka.”

  “He came to Gothenburg to seek his fortune,” muttered Halders to Djanali, who was sitting next to him.

  “Shut up, Fredrik,” she said.

  Winter signaled to the probationer in charge of the slide projector. The lights were turned off. It was dark enough outside not to draw the curtains.

  “You can see for yourselves the wounds on their bodies. Here and here. Any one of the blows could have killed them. They were made with extreme force.”

  “A serrated blade,” Halders said.

  “We don’t know that for certain,” Ringmar croaked.

  “He obviously sawed them,” said Halders. “He must be hellish strong.”

  Helander closed her eyes momentarily. She had never seen anything like it. She heard a familiar noise behind her, and somebody jumped up and ran out of the room. The young officer had knocked some chairs over when he had thrown up. Winter could smell it from where he was standing.

  Ringmar had been standing at the side of the room, watching the bodies glittering on the slides. It made him think of somebody slinking into a cinema showing pornographic films and staring, transfixed. Like a compulsion. But this was worse. These bodies were exposed for all to see. Looking at them seemed obscene.

  The murderer knew we’d be standing here, looking at the fruits of his labor, Ringmar thought as the smell of vomit wafted as far as his corner. All this is a stage setting. It’s a message.

  There was another picture on the screen now. The same scene, but from another angle, closer. Winter had approached the screen and raised his hand toward the bodies, but it seemed to Ringmar that he was hesitating. Winter thinks like me. He also feels a sort of shame.

  Winter said something, but Ringmar couldn’t hear what it was. He felt as if he had cotton wool between his ears, as if his infection had got worse during the time he’d spent in this room. Someone turned the lights on.

  ‘And this is what we heard when we entered the room,“ said Winter, switching on a tape recorder. Music filled the room, louder than Winter had intended and he lowered the volume. It seemed to get louder again of its own accord when the song started. Song? thought Winter. This is something new for me.

  The crime unit officers listened, and looked at each other. Somebody grinned, somebody else put their hands over their ears. Winter could see no sign of recognition; none of the younger officers raised a hand. He switched it off.

  “Damn,” Halders said.

  “You’re saying that’s what they had on?” Djanali asked.

  “Yes. According to the caretaker there’s been music coming from the apartment for some time.”

  “That particular music?” asked Möllerström, the registrar.

  “He says he’s not an expert,” said Winter drily, “but it sounded very like that.”

  “What the hell is it?” asked Halders.

  “I’ve no idea,” said Winter. “That’s why I’m playing it for you now. Does anybody know?”

  Nobody responded. After a few seconds Winter saw a hand go up. One of the younger officers. Setter. Johan Setter.

  “Johan?”

  “Er ... are you asking for the name of the band? The band that’s performing the stuff?”

  “I’m asking what it is. If anybody can tell me what band it is, then bingo. But, well ... I haven’t a clue about this.”

  “Well ... it’s some kind of trash metal,” said Setter. “Not really my thing, but it’s metal all right. Death metal, I’d say. Or black metal.”

  “Death metal?” Winter said, gaping at Setter, who looked unsure of himself. “Death metal?”

  Somebody giggled.

  “An appropriate name,” Halders said.

  “What on earth is death metal?” asked Ringmar.

  “You’ve just heard it,” Halders said. “Quite a beat to it.”

  “Zip it, Fredrik,” muttered Djanali.

  “It’s pretty popular,” Setter said.
“Well ... more popular than you might think.”

  “Popular with whom?” asked Halders. “The Swedish Nazis? The Liberals?”

  “Popular with the Valkers?” Möllerström wondered.

  “We don’t know,” said Winter, looking at Halders. “We haven’t got around to examining the CD collection in the apartment yet.”

  “So it wasn’t a record?” Helander asked.

  “No, an unmarked cassette tape. BASF. CE Two Chrome Extra. Ninety minutes.”

  “Fingerprints?”

  “The forensic boys are busy with that now. What you’ve just heard was a copy we had made.”

  “Did they have a lot of cassettes?” Halders asked.

  “Apparently none at all,” said Winter. “At least, we haven’t found any yet.”

  “Where’s Bergenhem?” asked Halders. “Lars listens to all kinds of peculiar shit.”

  “He’s off sick,” Ringmar said.

  “Send this crap to his place for him to listen to.”

  “Will do,” Ringmar said.

  “It could be a message, then,” said Djanali. “A message to us. Or am I jumping to conclusions?”

  “You could be right,” Winter said. “At least the murderer left the tape running.”

  “For how long?” one of the younger officers asked.

  “How the hell could we know?” Halders said. “If we knew that we’d have won half the battle.”

  “So this is the music the caretaker heard, is that right?” asked Helander.

  “We don’t know,” Winter said. “But I know what you’re getting at. If we can get him to remember when he first heard it, we might be on to something.”

  “How long have they been dead?” Djanali asked. “Have we heard from the pathologist?”

  “Could be fourteen days,” Winter said. “Could be longer.”

  “Oh, hell,” said Halders.

  “Can a tape run for as long as that?” Möllerström asked. “Can it keep going on repeat for two weeks?”

  “Evidently.”

  “It’s called auto-reverse,” Halders said, looking at Möllerström. “When the tape comes to the end it turns around and goes back to the beginning. It keeps going back and forth until it’s switched off. Or the tape breaks.”