Sun and Shadow (19 page)

“Never seen him before.”

“Hmm.”

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.”

There were a lot of people waiting at bus and tram stops in Vasaplatsen. Their breath came out of their mouths like smoke. Angela could feel the cold through her coat and wished she was wearing a hat. Her ears were freezing cold already. Twenty degrees, and it was still only November. Perhaps it will be up to fifty on Christmas Eve.

“There’s a colleague of yours there,” she said.

“Where?”

“In the police car on the other side.”

“Yes, I can see it.”

“It’s not moving.”

“Well ...”

“Can you see what it is?”

“What do you mean?”

“Where it comes from.”

“The district? I suppose it ought to be from Lorensberg. Why?”

“Noth—”

“Now I remember. We can ...”

The car started moving and passed by them. Winter waved at it.

“Simon Morelius,” he said.

“Was that the driver? Do you know him?”

“Only by sight.”

The tram was full when they eventually got on, and they stood in the middle, holding on to the straps. Angela was standing with her legs apart so as not to lose her balance, and seemed to be protecting her stomach. Not such a bright idea after all, Erik, he thought.

A lot of passengers got off at Kungsportsplatsen and Angela was able to sit down. It was quiet where they were, but somebody was muttering away and occasionally shouting threats at the back. Everybody looked the other way. Several drunks came on board at Brunnsparken. Winter had to move.

After two more stops the seat next to Angela became vacant. There was a smell of smoke and alcohol in the tram, and sweat from the fat man in front. Some teenage girls were staring at Winter. A black man was playing something on his Walkman that was making him jerk his head from side to side. At Järntorget a group of young men got on. They were all wearing black leather jackets covered in names and symbols. A devil, two witches. An ax dripping with blood. There was a clanking noise from the shopping bags full of beer cans when they put them on the floor, which was covered in black slush. A teenage couple three rows ahead of them kept turning around, apparently to look at him, or at Angela. There was something vaguely familiar about the girl. He looked out the window. A police car overtook them as they approached Stigberget. The long arm of the law again, he thought.

Lotta Winter welcomed them in a cloud of garlic and herbs.

“Where are the girls?” asked Winter.

“It’s Friday night. Eight o‘clock. They won’t stay at home anymore, not even for you, Erik. Let me give you both a hug!” She embraced them. “You’re FREEZING!”

“They’ll be back before eleven, won’t they? The girls?”

“Grow up.”

“He’ll find out eventually,” Angela said.

“What can I get you to drink?” Lotta asked.

“I’ll have some wine, please. Angela will just have water.”

“Have you spoken to Mom?”

“Yes.”

“How was she?”

“Still says she’s coming for Christmas.”

“How was she otherwise, did you think?”

“As you said, she seems to be ... strong. Let’s hope she can keep it up.”

Let’s hope she can, for all our sakes, thought Lotta, as she poured the drinks.

Hanne Östergaard was shoveling snow. Her spade scraping over the stone paving, through the snow drifts. The garden was covered in white.

The trees are sticking up like the skeletons they now are, she thought, and could feel the sweat under her woolly hat.

Several neighbors were also out snow-shoveling this Saturday morning, using fancy types of “spade” that still didn’t seem to be much good. Gothenburg isn’t inside the Arctic Circle. Nobody expected the snow to last for very long.

Three houses down the road a man was busy putting winter tires on his car. She looked toward her own garage as the side door opened and Maria appeared in wool sweater and a six-foot scarf, but with no hat or gloves. She was carrying a broom, and now sat astride it and jumped three paces.

“I thought I’d do a bit of flying,” she said.

“Wrong time of year, love.”

“Exactly. Swedish witches appear at Easter. So you believe in witches, do you?”

I believe in everything evil, thought Hanne, but it was only a fleeting reaction.

“I believe in what I see before me,” she said instead. “Sometimes, at least.”

Maria looked put out, for a couple of seconds. Then she looked up again.

“I thought I would give you a hand.” She cleared a strip of the path with one sweep of the broom. “Get rid of the remainder.”

“That’s terrific.”

Maria brushed away. Suddenly, she was a child again. Hanne Ostegaard saw the little girl in her face, and was overcome with love and affection when Maria looked up and smiled. Her attempt to ask for forgiveness. Hanne was determined to swallow it, hook, line, and sinker. She’s only a child.

Patrik appeared and walked along the newly cleared drive sporting a thick and gigantic knitted hat that was big enough to accommodate Maria as well.

“Patrik, hello.” She held out her hand. “Long time no see.”

“Hello! I thought I’d pay you a visit. About time I ventured into the sticks.” He looked around. “Virgin white out here.”

“That’s one way of putting it.”

“Virgin white. Most of it’s already gone in town.”

“What would you say to a cup of hot chocolate?”

“Well, what do you say?” said Maria, looking at Patrik.

“I’d love it. I’m freezing. There was something wrong with the heating in the tram.”

She’d made cheese rolls and two mugs of hot chocolate, with another on the way.

“Do you know what it is yet?” asked Maria, barely audible with her mouth full.

“I was playing it over in my mind last night, but I was so damn ... so tired,” he said, looking at Hanne, the vicar.

“It’s all right.”

“Did you listen to the disc I lent you?” he asked.

“Not on your life. You put it into my bag without my knowing.” She took another bite. “I don’t like that kind of stuff.”

“What don’t you like?” Hanne asked. “I’m curious.”

“Hard rock.”

“Death metal,” Patrik said. “Black metal.”

“Eh?”

“Not Ria’s thing. Too heavy.”

“What is it? A sort of punk?”

Patrik roared with laughter. “Metal punk, in that case,” he said, and Hanne noticed he had finished his chocolate. She went to the stove to heat up some more milk.

“Patrik knows everything about music,” Maria said. ‘And about stuff that doesn’t deserve to be called music as well.“

“And you’re saying that this, er, metal is in that category?”

“It’s not music as far as I’m concerned, Mom.”

“But you can’t just ... sweep it under the carpet,” Patrik said.

“But what does it sound like?” asked Hanne, who had returned to the table with the hot milk. “I’m getting curious again.”

“All right,” Maria said. “Hang on a minute.”

“We’re not going anywhere,” said Patrik.

Maria left the kitchen, and a minute or so later some kind of music could be heard coming from the living room. Hanne looked at Patrik when somebody started hissing like a madman against a background of what sounded like a plane crash.

“Black metal,” Patrik said.

Maria came back.

“The idea is that it should sound like a witch singing,” Patrik said.

“I’ll go and get my broom,” Maria said.

It was Patrik’s fourth mug. They had finally gotten around to telling Hanne about his suspicions about the apartment, and the phone call he’d made to the caretaker.

“Haven’t the police spoken to you as well?” asked Hanne.

“No.”

“That’s odd.”

Patrik put down his mug for the last time. He shrugged.

“Suits me and I don’t suppose it matters. They were informed, after all. I can’t tell them any more than the old guy will have.”

“That’s usually something for the police to decide.”

“Come on, Mom. You’ve spent too much time at the police station.”

“I bet the old guy wants to grab all the credit for himself,” Patrik said. “Maybe he thought he’d get a reward.” He looked at Hanne. “Maybe there was a reward, in fact.” He looked at Maria. “Maybe I made a big mistake.”

“I think you ought to get in touch with whoever it is handling the investigation,” Hanne said. “The crime unit.”

“It’s the man you know,” Maria said. “He works for the crime unit, doesn’t he?”

“Erik? Erik Winter? I don’t know if he’s involved in that particular case, but I suppose he may well be.”

“It was him,” said Maria, looking at Patrik.

“What do you mean?” Hanne Ostergaard looked at her daughter.

“We saw him on the tram last night,” Maria said. “He was with his girlfriend or wife or whatever she is.”

“Angela.”

“They were on the same tram as us. We went to Stigbergstorget.”

“What were you going to do there?” Hanne asked. She was aware that her voice was suddenly suspicious.

“Oh, Mom! It was eight o‘clock, or thereabouts, and Bengans was open late.”

“On a Friday?”

“Yes,” Patrik said. “It was a special release promotion. Ultramario played some tracks from their latest disc.”

“That explains everything then,” said Hanne, and tried to smile. Maria looked angrily out of the window where the sun was glinting on the snow in the back garden.

Neither Patrik nor Maria spoke.

“So you saw Erik Winter? I didn’t know he ever used the tram.”

“It was definitely him,” said Maria. “And we’ve seen the lady going into the building where he lives.”

You two get all over Gothenburg, it seems, Hanne thought, but she kept it to herself.

Patrik had also been looking out the window. The sun was bright now, lighting up the snow. Like a lamp. He thought about the bluish-yellow light on the stairs, the newspapers, that hellish music pounding out when he opened the flap of the mail slot.

But there was something else as well.

There was something else.

The thought had been there in the back of his mind, or rather the memory had. Something he’d seen a few weeks ago, or whenever it was.

It had grown stronger. The memory. It had something to do with when he’d been thinking about what kind of music it was. It couldn’t be more than a guess and presumably not even that. But ... the other thing. He could see it again as he stared out at the sun on the snow, twinkling like stars in a white sky. It was there when he said thank-you for the chocolate and went into Maria’s room. She was already there and had switched off the music, which he was pleased about.

He sat on the bed and looked out at the garden again. There was a greenhouse in the shade. He gazed at it. It seemed to help him sort through what was in his mind. The greenhouse that the sun hadn’t reached. There was something there in his mind. Not quite enough light. It was ...

“Have you seen something?” Maria asked. “Is there something mysterious in the greenhouse?”

He didn’t answer.

“Say something, Patrik. I don’t like it when you’re like this. It’s bad enough as it is.” She looked out, then turned back to Patrik. ‘All the horrible things that have happened.“

“There was somebody there ... then,” he said.

“What, there was somebody in the greenhouse?”

“No, no.” He turned to look at her. “The stairs. The apartment building. When I came with the newspapers one of the mornings.”

“And ... ?”

“People come and go even in the early mornings. But not very often. I haven’t seen many people at that time.”

“I see. It’s all clear now. Clear as mud.”

“Listen, Ria. When I was going to walk up the stairs there was somebody who got on the elevator on an upper floor and started to come down. It must have been a couple of weeks ago, ten days, maybe.”

“You mean those stairs. That building.”

“Yes, obviously. I don’t usually take the elevator but I had a bit of a temperature or something and so I thought I would that day. That’s probably why I can vaguely remember it. But the elevator wasn’t there ... so I started walking up, and then I heard it start moving from two floors up or so. I’ve been thinking, and I reckon it could well have been that floor. Maybe.”

“What makes you think that?”

“I dunno, I suppose you get used to staircases. You listen to things. I stood on the stairs, not far up, and waited for the elevator to come down.”

“And?”

“Somebody got out, then went out of the front door. A man.”

“Did he see you?”

“Nope. I was a few steps up and he didn’t turn around.”

“What did he look like?”

“He didn’t turn around, as I said.”

“But was he old or young, or what?”

“I’m not sure. He didn’t seem to be all that old. But when he went through the front door I think I saw a little bit of his face. His profile.”

“You’re a scream, you really are.”

“It’s not the first time I’ve seen people in the early morning.”

“What made you think about this particular thing? Why now?”

“I don’t know, maybe it’s the time ... no ... it occurred to me that ... it might have been the music. That something was coming from the door.”

“This is awful. Terrible. You might have seen ...”

“Let’s keep it quiet.”

“What Mom said is even more important now, Patrik. You have to go to the police.”

“Eh?”

“You must. You must, you must.” She’d picked up a pillow and was hitting him on the shoulder with it. “You must testify, you must testify!”

“Give it up, Ria.”

She dropped the pillow onto the bed.