Sun and Shadow (31 page)

“You dress as—”

“Uniform,” Winter said. ‘A uniform. What’s the easiest way of telling that someone has power or authority?“

‘A uniform,“ Veitz said.

Winter sat back down. Rubbed his eyes, put on his reading glasses, then took them off again. He could feel a film of sweat on his brow. It felt warm in his office, almost hot.

“Let’s take it easy now,” he said. “Uniform. How did we get there?”

“You’d better listen to the tape,” she said. Winter lifted it up carefully. The tape was still running.

“What is this?” he said. ‘Are we looking for a man in uniform?“ He looked at her, as if expecting her to nod in agreement. But she didn’t respond.

“What do you think?” he asked.

“We said at the start that we’d have a good think about this, from various angles. That’s what we’ve done, and one such angle is this one.” She breathed in audibly. “But when you listen to the tape you’ll hear what it is—hypotheses, rambling thoughts. We’ve touched on this and that. A man in uniform? Well, yes, if we still think we’re looking for a lonely man who’s trying to impose some sort of order and status on his external life. But we don’t know if that’s true.”

“But I’ve got all the words on record,” Winter said, tapping the tape recorder. “Brainstorming is never wrong. Nor are words.”

“You mean you call this conversation brainstorming?”

Winter didn’t reply. He was looking at the photographs, which had acquired the same nuances as his desktop, now that the sun was on its way to somewhere else.

A word can say more than a thousand pictures.

Winter went to the coffee room, stood by the window, and smoked a Corps. The snow lay undisturbed on the other side of the car park. Police officers in uniform were talking to one another down below, their breath forming speech balloons between them.

Visitors came and went. He could see his own bicycle in the stand outside the main entrance. Eight inches of snow on the handlebars, frame, and saddle, like icing on a gingerbread bike.

A laugh floated up from one of the speech balloons. One of the policemen had put on a Santa hat.

He poured out some coffee and took it back to his office, two cups. Lareda Veitz looked up from her notepad.

“Could it be that he wants to look for new challenges?” Winter asked as he gave her the cup. “Take it by the handle. It’s hot.”

“Thank you. Challenges? Well, what do you think yourself?”

“I thought of that while I was getting the coffee. That he might be growing. Feels that he’s growing. This business of it possibly happening again.”

“But the desire to be found out is always there,” she said, taking a sip of coffee. She started to say something, then stopped.

“What were you going to say?” Winter asked.

“Power. We spoke about power before, and dominance. I don’t quite know how to put it ...”

“You’ve done pretty well so far,” Winter said, taking a drink from his own cup, which had cooled down a little.

“It’s not all that unusual in cases like this for the murderer to try and get power over the person who exposes him. His unmasker.”

“His unmasker? But there is no unmasker. Has he already defined his unmasker?”

“His
future
unmasker. He’s left messages, hasn’t he? They’re aimed at somebody.”

‘At whom?“ Winter asked, but he knew the answer already.

“At you, Erik.” She was sitting in the shadow and her spectacles were black again. “You are the hunter. The detective. The one who will presumably unmask him.”

“So he wants to dominate me? Erik Winter?”

“You in your role as hunter. Detective Chief Inspector Erik Winter.”

“It’s nothing personal, then,” Winter said, but he wasn’t smiling. Nor was Veitz. He looked at her. “Can it
become
personal?”

“How do you mean?”

“That he actually focuses on ... me? Me personally because I’m the hunter?”

“No.”

‘Are you sure?“

“No.”

“He has something I don’t have in this case. He knows why it happened. And who did it. That gives him the upper hand, doesn’t it?”

“In a way, yes. Go on.”

“In that way he already has power over me.” He stood up again, thought, took two steps. “Is there more, Lareda? Is that enough, or not?”

She stood up as well, went to the window, and looked out with her arms folded. She turned around.

“I don’t know if we’re getting anywhere, continuing along these lines. But all right ... It could be that you have something that he doesn’t. In order to dominate you, he must get some of it for himself. In order to have power over you.”

“What do I have?”

“Compared with him? Everything. You have everything.”

“What, for instance?”

“A proper life. His life is ruined, may have been in ruins for a very long time. You have a life.”

Winter breathed out. It was still very hot in the room. No empty speech balloons. He didn’t want to go any further in the direction the conversation had taken. Later, but not now.

He went to the Panasonic and switched on the music. Lareda had listened to it at home, and her husband had gone to the cinema to avoid it.

“I prefer Carreras,” she said when the song started.

“For me the borderline comes with The Clash,” Winter said.

“You’re familiar with The Clash?”

“I’m an expert on them.” He motioned with his head toward the CD player on the floor. “But how can anybody analyze this stuff? Has it given you any ideas?”

“Well, speculation mostly ... All right. I won’t go on about the ‘intensity’ of the music. You can be misled by that, perhaps look in the wrong direction.”

“The tempo’s not the important thing, is that what you mean?”

“Yes. It can be misleading. Everything gets so much more ghastly with this in both the foreground and the background. Do you follow me? If you come to the scene of a murder and find Carreras singing, the impression you get is different.”

“But, Lareda, we try to be professional here. Carreras, Sacrament ... Mysto’s Hot Lips... Tom Jones... it’s not important in that way. I’m not influenced by the music when I’m standing there.”

“You can say whatever you like, but you’re missing the point. I’m saying that the ghastliness of it all is made more intense by the choice of music, and that must influence you when you are searching for answers.”

“How does it influence us?”

“Let me ask you a counterquestion. Do you see a particular type of person when you envisage somebody listening to this? Listening by choice, that is.”

“I try to avoid doing that.”

“That wasn’t what I asked you.”

“I take your point,” Winter said.

“There’s something in the music that might conjure up what has happened. It’s latent. This isn’t background music. This doesn’t invite you to relax with smooth classics at seven.”

“Who does listen to it, then?”

“It could be somebody who’s always listened to this kind of music, but I don’t think so.”

“Why choose it now, then?”

“That’s another good question.”

“I don’t think either that the murderer is necessarily an out-and-out metal type, with long hair and black leather. We’re not setting out to put away the types who dig black metal.”

“Maybe he doesn’t listen at all,” Veitz said.

“That had occurred to me as well.”

“The message—if it really is a message—might be in the words. Maybe we should concentrate on the words. When you lent me the cassette, you said that this music is impossible without the words. Without the booklet with the lyrics that comes with the CD. Didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I’ve tried to think about the words. And the cover. The pictures. We can’t forget them. In other words, all the things that are not the music itself, or whatever we should call it. I haven’t got a word for it,” she said, gesturing toward the CD player. The room was still filled with Sacrament, but Winter turned the volume down now. ‘Apart from the words describing the genre, that is. Black metal.“

Winter agreed. He didn’t have a word for it either. It was more physics than music.

“There are lots of symbols here, but the pattern indicates just one thing,” she said. “The choice of title, the words, even the pictures. It’s all about a sort of tug-of-war between good and evil. Represented by heaven and hell.”

“I’m with you so far.”

“But their relative strengths are not spelled out, as it were. Who will win? Where is the power based?”

“The words don’t provide an answer to that, is that what you mean?”

“They express a wish, rather, but against a background of darkness. Hopelessness. And that’s the world that is part of the key to all this. Perhaps.”

“The world? What world?”

“The world that predominates.” She looked up at him, and he noticed that her facial color had changed slightly. She was getting excited. She was thinking aloud, thinking clearly. “That could be the key question. And the paradox. There’s an enormous difference between committing sin in a world ruled by God, and in a world ruled by the Devil.”

“There’s no hope in a world ruled over by the Devil? A world made up exclusively of evil can offer no hope. Is that what you mean?” Winter said.

“Yes. And that could be the way he sees things. He’s a part of the evil world. But he might still have some idea of the other world.”

“He wants to go there again? Go back to it?”

“He wants to get away from everything he’s having to put up with,” she said. ‘And he wants to make up for a deficiency by committing a crime: castration. A deficiency and a longing. The crime takes him back to his experience of humiliation, and he also wants to show us that ’
This
is where I fall short.‘ He wants to tell us.“

“He wants to be found out?”

“He wants to be helped. And this is where we find the biggest paradox of all. He’s longing to be helped, and he’s saying that his crime shows you where his deficiency is, and that it is a cry for help.” She looked at Winter, stared hard at him. “In that way he demonstrates that there is still hope.”

“So there is still some hope? Both for him and for me?”

“And all the time there is a longing,” she said. “His dreams are an imagined world that he has now made real.” She looked at the CD player. ‘And, so, we’re more or less back where we started, don’t you think?“

A dream, Winter thought, gazing out the window again at the snow that was starting to glisten in blue. A dream in a winter land.

 

It was quiet in the apartment. Patrik could hear his father snoring in the bedroom. He was trying to read, but his mind was elsewhere. He had bought a Christmas present, but he hadn’t decided on anything for Ulla. He didn’t want to buy her a Christmas present.

Maybe they’d be spending Christmas Eve somewhere else. And Ria had said that he didn’t need to be at home anyway. He could be with her family at Orgryte. That would be wicked. Celebrate Christmas in a posh house. Wicked.

His father was up now. The whole room seemed to be grunting. Ulla was out buying booze, and he knew that his father wasn’t feeling too well at the moment.

“Patrik!”

His father stood in the doorway, rubbing his eyes. He could smell him even at this distance. The same as usual—but not really, because he always used to be in his own room, where he could be at peace.

“Was it you what woke me up?”

“No.”

“Something did,” his father said, rubbing his eyes again. He went through the living room and into the kitchen. There was a bang and something fell down and broke. Glass. “For fuck—” yelled his father, coming back into the living room. “There’s glass on the floor. Pick it up, will you, I haven’t got the strength.”

“I’m going out.”

“What did you say?”

“I’m on my way out.”

“I told you to clear up that glass out there. Ulla will be back soon and she doesn’t know about the glass on the floor.”

“Yes, all right. I’ll do it.”

He went into the kitchen and tried to clear up the biggest pieces first. He ought to have put something on his feet, but he didn’t cut himself. Then he swept up the rest of the shards, wrapped them in a plastic bag, and put the bag into the trash under the sink. Ulla came back, he could hear her in the hall.

“What are you doing?” she asked when she came into the kitchen.

“Nothing.”

She put her shopping bag on the table. His father appeared and took down some new glasses.

Patrik went into the hall and put on his coat and shoes. It was dark outside now, but light everywhere. People were carrying Christmas trees wherever you looked. They cost 150 kronor, but he didn’t want one.

There was no sign of his mom’s things anyway. Some colorful baubles. They’d disappeared, just like her.

There was a police car parked at the newsstand when he passed. He thought he recognized the two officers. Then it drove off. The sign over the newsstand was reflected in the car’s polished side. He thought about something he’d seen on the stairs. That reflection made him think about it. Was there some connection?

“I’ve read the door-to-door reports and what is striking is that nobody pays any attention to anybody else,” Winter said. “‘Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil.’”

“What’s it like in your building, then?” Ringmar was trying to straighten out a paper clip. “What kind of a check do you have on your neighbors?”

Winter thought of Mrs. Malmer. Angela had made insinuations about Mrs. Malmer’s midnight masses. But Angela didn’t make insinuations anymore. Angela wasn’t even there. No, it wasn’t as bad as that. Angela doesn’t live here anymore. It wasn’t as bad as that. He had told the truth and nothing but the truth that had any significance for them both and their future.