The Shadow Woman Read online

  The heat was so thick that the square at Vasaplatsen rippled before him like the dazzle of glass filament. A handful of people were standing in the shade of the streetcar shelter, their bodies black silhouettes from across the park.

  He fetched his bicycle from the basement and rode along Vasagatan, up past Skanstorget. His shirt was wet before he reached Linnéplatsen, and that was a nice feeling. He decided to keep heading south instead of biking to Långedrag and pedaled in the stark light all the way out to the beach at Askimsbadet. There he took a break and drank a can of soda water and after that continued past the golf course at Hovås and down past Järkholmen, parking among the other bicycles along the path. Then he climbed down to the little beach and plunged into the water as quickly as he could.

  He lay in the sun and read, and when it got to be too hot, he went back into the water. It was his vacation.

  2

  ANETA DJANALI HAD HER JAW SMASHED IN THE MINUTES JUST after midnight. She’d been walking southward on Östra Hamngatan, and there were people all around her. She wasn’t on duty, but even if she had been it wouldn’t have made any difference, since homicide detectives didn’t wear a uniform on the job.

  She’d been accompanied by a girlfriend, and the two women had caught sight of an assault in progress a ways down on the darker Kyrkogatan: three men punching and kicking someone lying on the ground. The men looked up when Djanali called out and took a few steps into the side street. Seconds later one of them hit her in the face as he passed, a single blow; she felt no pain at first and then suddenly it filled her entire head and spread down toward her chest. The men persisted as she lay on the ground, the one who first hit her shouting something about the color of her skin. This was the first time she’d been subjected to violence because of it.

  She never lost consciousness. She tried to say something to her friend but nothing came out. Lis looks paler than I’ve ever seen her before, she thought to herself. Maybe it’s a bigger shock for her than for me.

  The Gothenburg Party continued around them, people wandering back and forth between the various beer tents and stages. The hot evening was thick with the smell of charcoal grills and people—the streets stinking of booze, and bodies of sweat. The voices were loud, all mixed together, and somewhere in the cacophony of cries Lis had disappeared. This was the third time they’d strolled past that spot this evening. Third time lucky, Djanali thought, aware of the rough asphalt against her cheek. Her head didn’t hurt so much anymore. She saw many bare legs and sandals and boating shoes, and then she was lifted up and carried into a vehicle, which she understood to be an ambulance. She felt someone touch her gently, and then she passed out.

  Fredrik Halders received the news when he arrived at the police station at seven thirty the following morning. He was a buzz-cut police detective who busted chops whenever he got the chance, preferably with Aneta Djanali and preferably about her skin color and background. He sometimes came across as unintelligent and was called a racist and a sexist, but he let it run off his scalp.

  Alone following a divorce three years before, he was forty-four and always pissed off—a violent man with a hell of a lot of festering, unresolved issues, though he’d rather jerk off in public than see a shrink. The nervous energy surging through his body could lead him into a very dark place—he knew that already—and this only intensified when he heard what had happened to Djanali.

  “No witnesses?” he shouted.

  “Yeah, they—,” Lars Bergenhem said.

  “Where are they?”

  “The girlfr—”

  “Let me at ’em! Nah, fuck it.” He made for the door.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Where the hell do you think?”

  “She’s sedated. Or at least she was when they were setting her jaw.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I just got off the phone with Sahlgrenska Hospital.”

  “Why didn’t they call me? When have you ever been on assignment with her?”

  “They don’t know that,” Bergenhem said quietly.

  “What about the witnesses?”

  “I’ve been trying to tell you that Aneta’s girlfriend should be coming up here in,” he checked his watch, “about fifteen minutes.”

  “Was she there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Nobody else?”

  “You know there’s a party going on there. There were masses of people, which, of course, means nobody saw a thing.”

  “Christ al-fucking-mighty.”

  Bergenhem didn’t answer.

  “You like this city?” Halders asked. He’d sat down, stood up, and sat down again.

  “It’s a modern city. Entering a new, more nuanced age.”

  “More nuan—What the hell does that mean?”

  “There are good things and bad things,” Bergenhem said, instantly aware that he’d let a worn-out phrase slip from his tongue. “You can’t tell a whole city to go to hell.”

  “Two people go for a walk along Hamngatan. Some bastard comes up and smashes one of their heads in. There’s your nuanced city for you.”

  Bergenhem said nothing. How many violent provocations had they had over the past month? Fifteen? It was like gearing up for war. A guerrilla war between all the tribes of Gothenburg. And yesterday there was a melee.

  “Who’s gonna talk to the girl?” Halders’s voice sounded far away. “The girlfriend?”

  “I am and you can too, if you want.”

  “You do it,” Halders said. “I’ll get over to the hospital. How’d it go for that other poor bastard, by the way?”

  “He’s alive.”

  Halders drove impatiently, didn’t even notice that the air coming through the AC vent was hotter than the air in the car.

  Aneta Djanali was sitting up in bed when he came in, or rather she was propped up with pillows. Her face was covered in bandages.

  She’s just woken up and I shouldn’t be here, he thought, pulling a chair to the bed and sitting. “We’re gonna get them,” he said.

  She didn’t move. Then she closed her eyes, and Halders wasn’t sure if she had fallen asleep.

  “By the time you wake up we’ll have cuffed those bastards,” he said. “Even the black citizens of this city deserve to be able to walk the streets safely after dark.”

  She didn’t respond to that either. The mountain of pillows behind her looked uncomfortable.

  “In a situation like this you gotta think it would have been better if you’d stayed back in Ouagadougou.” It was an old joke between them. Djanali was born at Östra Hospital in Gothenburg. “Ouagadougou.”

  As if the word would calm her nerves.

  “This is actually a unique opportunity,” he said after a few minutes of silence. “For once, I can say important things without you butting in and getting all superior. I can voice my opinions. I can explain to you what it’s all about.”

  Djanali opened her eyes and peered at Halders with a look he recognized. She’s injured all right, but that injury is limited to the lower part of her skull, he thought. This is the only chance I’ll ever have to get a word in.

  “It’s all about keeping your cool,” he said. “When we catch those bastards, we’re going to keep our cool for as long as we can, and then we’re going to make one or two mistakes that prove we’re human too. I mean, cops are also human beings.” Halders paused for a moment before continuing. “They say Winter went a little loopy after last spring. He’s been walking around all summer in a pair of cutoff jeans and a T-shirt that says ‘London Calling’ on it. Rumor has it he’s been up to the department to pick up some papers and has a beard and long hair.”

  Aneta Djanali closed her eyes again.

  “I miss you,” he said.

  Winter broke off his vacation almost the moment Bertil Ringmar called with the quick rundown. It wasn’t out of duty, more the opposite. It was a selfish act, maybe therapeutic.

  “You’re not needed here yet,” Ring
mar said.

  “I’ve gotten enough dirt between my toes,” Winter answered.

  In the afternoon he stepped into his office and angled the blinds upward. It smelled of dust and work, though the surface of the desk was clear. An ideal state, he thought. Maybe I can be like the chief—keep investigations off my desk by shoving them in drawers.

  Sture Birgersson was the head of the homicide department, and he had the good sense to hand over all real responsibility to his deputy. That meant Winter was in command of thirty homicide detectives who worked to control the violence in society.

  “Close the door,” Winter said to Ringmar, who had just stepped across the threshold. “What’s going on?”

  “We’re going through all the known troublemakers, but they could have come from out of town,” Ringmar said.

  “You think so?”

  “That’s what we’re hearing,” Ringmar said. “But the situation out there is pretty confused right now. I don’t know how much you know, but I guess you watched the news.”

  “The demonstrations?”

  “Yeah, but it doesn’t stop there. The city is in a state of unrest, or whatever you wanna call it. Over the last few weeks we’ve had about a dozen gang showdowns, or close to that. Yeah, and a lot of brawls too. Who knows how many ethnicities have been involved, Scandinavians included. It’s really nasty, Erik. Maybe there are some bastards trying to fan the flames from on high. Steering it, in certain areas anyway. There’s something . . . I don’t know what it is. Hate? Something that’s causing people to get violent or, so far, mostly to threaten violence. But still. We’re trying to do what we can.”

  Ringmar was the homicide department’s third inspector and head of the department’s surveillance unit: ten officers, with tentacles reaching down into the criminal underworld, assigned the task of keeping tabs on the city’s worst troublemakers and professional criminals.

  “Aneta isn’t exactly unknown in this town,” Ringmar said. “I think they’d think twice about hurting one of ours unless it’s a case of extreme self-defense.”

  “Maybe that’s just what it was,” Winter said.

  “What?”

  “Since we think they know that we know that they know that we think they would never do anything like that, maybe that’s just what happened,” Winter said.

  Ringmar didn’t answer.

  “What do you say?”

  “Well, that’s a classic dilemma, isn’t it? If I’ve understood you correctly.”

  “It takes you back to square one in that case, doesn’t it?”

  “Appreciate the insight.”

  Winter stared down at his desktop. It had been polished till it shone, as if the office cleaner had made an emergency visit when it was clear he was coming back early. His hair looked, in the veneer, like a thick circle of thorns around his face. He grasped at the packet of cigarillos in his breast pocket and lit up a Corps; then he dropped the match and it singed him on the thigh. Ringmar had noticed his shorts but not said anything.

  “If they’re from around here, we’ll find them,” Ringmar continued.

  “You believe in the good guys? Our informants?”

  “I believe that the good guys among the bad guys are going to lead us to the bad guys.”

  “The worse guys,” Winter said, “to the worst guys.”

  “Aneta’s friend thinks she would recognize one of those three scumbags,” Ringmar said.

  “Did they brandish any Nazi symbols or other fascist crap?”

  “Nope. Just good ol’ regular guys.”

  Winter tapped his cigarillo into the palm of his hand. The ashtray had apparently been stolen while he was away.

  “Other witnesses?”

  “A thousand or more, but only a few of them have gotten in touch since we issued our request for information. And they’re not sure what the guys looked like.”

  “Somebody will call, just when you least expect it,” Winter said, and then the telephone rang. He lifted the receiver from its usual spot on the right side of the desk and mumbled his name to the desk sergeant.

  Ringmar saw how he listened, brow furrowed and shoulders hunched forward, as he said a few short words and hung up.

  “A guy who followed them is on his way over,” Winter said.

  “No shit. Why hasn’t he been in touch before?”

  “Something about having to take his kid to the ER in the middle of the night.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Like I said, on his way. Speaking of which, I was up at Sahlgrenska Hospital to look in on Aneta. I met Fredrik on his way out of her room. His eyes were all red.”

  “Good,” Ringmar said.

  3

  THE BACK OF THE CHAIR HAD LEFT A DAMP IMPRESSION ON Winter’s back, and he gave a shiver as he stood beneath the air conditioner at the window. The patches of cold inside made the summer look cold and gray through the windows that couldn’t be opened. Since the sky seemed undecided, the grass at Old Ullevi Stadium was under fire from water cannons.

  He thought about Aneta Djanali and clenched his right hand. Whenever he considered what had happened to her, he felt . . . violent. The violence became part of him, a sudden sensation. A primitive urge for revenge, perhaps, and a little beyond that. He had returned to his violent world abruptly.

  Ringmar was still seated, looking at him without speaking. He’s fifteen years older than I am, and he’s started waiting for a better world, Winter thought. When his last day here is finished, he may take the boat out to his cabin on Vrångö, never to return.

  “What’s that supposed to mean, the thing on your shirt?” Ringmar asked. “ ‘London Calling.’ ”

  “It’s the name of a record by a rock band. Macdonald sent it to me.”

  “Rock? You don’t know anything about rock, do you?”

  “I’ve listened to one rock band. The Clash. Macdonald sent me the album together with the T-shirt.”

  “The Clash? What is that?”

  “It’s an English word meaning violent confrontation.”

  “I mean the band. Can you tell the difference between hard rock and pop?”

  “No. But I like this.”

  “I don’t think so. Coltrane is your man.”

  “I like it,” Winter repeated. “It was recorded back when I was nineteen or something, and yet it’s timeless.”

  “Hard rock, you mean,” Ringmar said.

  The witness arrived.

  The man gave his account. The skin of his face was taut and looked brittle after a night without sleep. His little girl had suffered a severe allergic reaction that had nearly ended tragically.

  Winter said something.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you. My mind blanked out there for a second.”

  “You said that you were walking behind the men.”

  “Yes.”

  “How many were there?”

  “Three, like I said.”

  “Are you sure they were together?”

  “Two of them waited while the third—the guy who hit her—they waited for him before moving on together.” The witness ran his hand across his eyes. “I remember that the guy doing the hitting was smaller.”

  “He was shorter?”

  “It looked that way.”

  “And you followed them?”

  “As far as I could. Everything happened so damn fast—afterward. I sort of went into shock, couldn’t move. Then I thought, ‘This is heinous. ’ And I followed after them to see where they went, but there were so many people on the square, and then my cell phone rang and my wife started screaming that Astrid couldn’t breathe. That’s our little girl.”

  “Yes,” Winter said, and looked at Ringmar, who had children. Winter didn’t have children, but he had a woman who said she didn’t want to wait any longer for him to become mature enough to take responsibility for a child. Angela said that yesterday, before going home to her mother’s to fine-tune her biological clock. When she gets back, Winter had mused as she w
as leaving, I guess she’ll tell me what time it is.

  “It all turned out all right,” the man said, mostly to himself. “Astrid’s going to be okay.”

  Winter and Ringmar waited. The air in the room flowed back and forth, past a man dressed in the same shorts and tennis shirt he’d worn the night before. His chin had a thin shading of stubble and his eyes were craters sunken into his skull.

  “We appreciate you coming by right after the accident,” Winter said. “From the hospital.”

  The witness shrugged his shoulders. “There are so many people who do nothing,” he said. “Going around beating people up. It really makes me angry.”

  Winter and Ringmar waited for him to continue.

  “It’s like at work, with all that damn talk about immigrants, as if it’s become politically correct to talk about how there are too many immigrants and refugees and blacks in the country.”

  “Where exactly did you lose sight of these three men?” Ringmar asked.

  “What?”

  “The ones who assaulted our colleague. Where exactly did they disappear?”

  “When we reached the indoor market, the one sort of facing Kungsportsplatsen. Before you enter the square.”

  “Did you hear them say anything?”

  “Not a word.”

  “You didn’t get any sense of where they were from?”

  “Somewhere south of hell as far as I’m concerned.”

  “Nothing more precise.”

  “No. But they were Swedes, real Swedes you might say.”

  They asked him to describe the men’s appearance, which he did.

  Once the witness left the office, Winter lit up another cigarillo and dropped ash onto his naked thighs. “Did you notice that Aneta was a refugee in this guy’s eyes?” he said.

  “How do you mean?” asked Ringmar.

  “People are always going to be looked upon differently for one reason or another, generation after generation. Regardless of where they were born.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Space refugees.”