Sun and Shadow (45 page)

It was a long street, but he didn’t get tired. There were yellow buildings to look at after all. They were different from the building he lived in, which was red brick.

Two workmen came out of the building with advertisements on the gable end. They were carrying a bathtub that was long past its expiration date. Bartram never took a bath. Didn’t have time.

Three children were running around in the playground as he went past. The Dumpsters were blue like yesterday’s sky. The wind was making the birch trees sway. Now he could hear the traffic on Göteborgsvä gen. The entrance door lock still wasn’t working. The walls in the stairwell were the same blue as the sky the day before yesterday. The apartment door was the same brown as this morning’s shit. He unlocked it, went in, and shouted that he was home. One of these days somebody might respond.

He sat down at the computer without taking off his jacket and had soon entered the right files. He was following the investigation. Everything was there, he knew all about it, and smiled.

Hanne Östergaard phoned Winter.

“How is he?”

“He’s had a nasty bang on the head.”

“Does he need to go to the hospital again?”

“I don’t know, Erik.”

“That bastard. I’ll send a car around to the apartment and we’ll throw the swine in a cell.”

“What will we do with Patrik?”

“What do you think?”

“He’s having a rest here. I think somebody has to have a look at him.”

“Should I send an ambulance?”

“No, I’ll take him in the car.”

“All right.”

“There’s ...”

“Yes?”

“There was something I was going to ask ...” she said. “But it can wait. I’ll take Patrik to the hospital.”

 

Morelius and Ivarsson went to get Patrik’s father. The man was unconscious when they got there. The woman opened the door, then ran away down the stairs with no shoes on. She’d been red under the eyes, blue. There’d been blood on her shirt or whatever it was. Blouse.

They carried him down. Ivarsson put a plastic sheet over the backseat.

The man was still more or less unconscious when they locked him up. “Was that necessary?” Ivarsson wondered. “Yes,” Morelius said.

“Was it you who phoned their apartment a week ago?” Winter asked, who was also there. They were walking along the corridor, which smelled old.

“What do you mean?”

“Have you been trying to contact Patrik for some reason?”

“No.”

“Somebody from the police phoned. In addition to me, that is.”

“It wasn’t me.”

“You know him pretty well, don’t you?”

“You get to know people when you’re patrolling the streets all the time.”

“Has he calmed down a bit?”

“He’s always been pretty calm,” Morelius said. “It’s ... her ... er, the vicar’s daughter who’s been a bit wild, rather than him.”

“Yes, evidently.”

“But she seems to have calmed down now as well.”

 

Winter’s colleague called from Stockholm.

“We’ve been up there.”

“Well done, Jonas.”

“An interesting place.”

“Did you find any completed ad coupons?”

“The shredding business hadn’t worked as it should have done for the Valkers. Too many advertisements. Too many people trying to make contact. They’ve got thousands of bloody advertisements in that office. And that’s only one of these so-called men’s magazines.”

“Well?”

“We have the coupon from the Valkers, duly filled in. And we have the coupon from the Martells.”

“Just what I was hoping for.”

“And they only use letters,” DCI Jonas Sjöland said. “No telephone responses. And your hopes were also fulfilled when it came to the replies to the Martells’ ad. They’d already sent out the replies to the Valkers, but they still had the ones for the Martells. Hadn’t got around to sending them.”

“How many answers have you got there, to the Martells?”

“I haven’t counted them yet ...” Winter listened to the pause. “Have you got authorization for this, Erik?”

“Don’t worry about that.”

“You’ve got the Code of Judicial Procedure there on your bookshelf, what does it have to say? Are you a hundred percent sure of what you’re doing?”

“Don’t worry, I said.”

“I looked it up, in fact,” Sjoland said. “Chapter twenty-seven, paragraph three. Interesting.”

“Especially as it’s never been tested,” Winter said.

“Who’s your prosecutor?”

“Molina. Do you know him?”

“Only by name.”

Winter had decided to inform the prosecution service immediately after the first murder. Peter Molina had been following the investigation closely all the time so that he would be able to make decisions fast.

“So you are creating new practices, are you? Setting precedents, in fact,” Sjöland said. “Sensitive stuff, this. Opening other people’s letters.”

“If you study the paragraph carefully, you’ll see there is scope for the officer in charge of the investigation to make a decision in a criminal case as serious as this.”

“Well, I suppose you could interpret it like that.”

“But I’ve asked permission from the public prosecutor, and got it. Positive.” In the end it was positive anyway, Winter thought. He owed Molina.

“All right. I give in.”

“I’d like the letters by tonight if possible. You can fax me the completed ad coupons.”

“We’ll fix that.” Sjöland paused again. “Has it occurred to you that if you hadn’t been so damn quick off the mark, the pile of letters would have turned up at the Martells’ place. By post. They gave their home address, no dodgy box number. The girl at the office said they would probably have sent off the pile in a week or so. Just imagine, that would have been interesting.... A possible solution suddenly drops in through the mail slot.”

“I’ve been anything but quick off the mark,” Winter said.

 

Winter’s reasoning presupposed that somebody who replied to the Martells had also replied to the Valkers.

He was sorry not to have the replies to the Valkers. He needed them more. But somebody who had made contact with the Valkers through the advertisement might also have gotten to know the Martells. Erika Elfvegren had told them about Louise Valker’s “man.” Had the Martells also heard about this man? Had they also met him?

Or had he heard about them? Even before their ad was published? Or in the meantime? Would he prefer to answer an ad rather than simply telephone? Would that have been too indiscreet? Did he want to go about it as he had the previous time?

Be that as it may. They would shortly have names and addresses. They had started interviewing the film extras. More names and addresses. He was waiting for the transcripts.

 

Winter phoned Åke Killdén in Fuengirola. No reply. When he put the receiver down the picture inside his head changed. From small whitewashed houses on a roasting-hot slope to glass and steel monsters shooting up through the clouds from a Manhattan he once had a good view of from a twenty-seater airplane as it circled on hold, waiting to land at La Guardia on the other side of the river.

Perhaps they were on the wrong track altogether. No. It was no coincidence that there had been a shop called Manhattan Livs and that it was still there: 150 yards from the seven-story apartment building where the Martells had lived. Not a skyscraper, but the highest building within a mile or so. Three or four miles from the Gothia skyscraper in the center of Gothenburg. Mölndal’s Manhattan: the apartment buildings with their attractive entrances.

There was a key somewhere. But where?

The phone rang.

“It’s Matilda Josefsson,” Mollerstrom said. “She used to work in the minimarket.”

Winter waited for her to be put through. Here she came.

“Er, hello?”

“Detective Chief Inspector Erik Winter here.”

“Yes ... I’ve had a message saying that I should get in touch ...”

“Good. Can you come to see me?”

“I’ve just this minute gotten home.... Will tomorrow do?”

“No, I’m afraid not. I can come around to your place if you’d prefer that.”

“I don’t know ...”

“I’ll have my ID on prominent display,” Winter said.

He heard a giggle.

“What’s it about?” she asked.

“We’re investigating some very serious crimes, and we’d like to speak to you about when you worked in a minimarket in Mölndal.”

“Krokens Livs? What’s happened to the old shit-heap?”

“Can I come around in about half an hour?”

“Er ... all right. You’ve got my address.”

 

Winter drove over the bridge. The huge oil tanks glinted, as they always do when the sun is shining. There was a clear view to the west, to far beyond Vinga. The sea was calm, like blue oil.

She lived behind Backaplan. Winter drove past roses growing through the asphalt as he pulled up. He closed his eyes and let his memory of the catastrophe linger there.

Matilda Josefsson was brown-haired and blue-eyed, and about twenty-five. Her apartment was full of heaps of clothes. There was a set of golf clubs in the hall, and a smell of sea and sand in all the rooms. Winter recognized the smell immediately.

“Golf on the Costa del Sol,” she said, without his needing to ask. “I work now and then as a golfing instructor. The high season down there is coming to an end now.”

“Do you know Åke Killdén?” Winter asked, who had sat down on a chair in the kitchen.

“Who?”

“Åke Killdén. He lives down there. Fuengirola. He used to own the shop you worked in. Man—Krokens Livs.”

“I don’t know him. The owner who employed me was called An dersson.”

“Andréasson.”

“If you say so. What did you say your name was? Winter?”

“Yes.”

“There was a Winter who used to play on the golf course I worked for. Las Brisas. That was last season. I remember a Winter. Tall. Elderly gentleman. Bengt Winter. A Swede, of course.”

Winter nodded.

“A relative of yours? Winter isn’t that common a name.”

“He was my father.”

“Really? It’s a small world sometimes.” Then she looked as if she was thinking about what Winter had just said. He was my father.

“When did you finish working at Krokens Livs?”

She was watching him as she replied. She’d noted the rapid change of subject.

“I take any job that’s going when I’m at home,” she said. “As you can tell—I mean, Krokens Livs!”

Winter explained some of the background to why he was there. Asked a few questions.

She’d seen the photograph of Manhattan Livs. But the only thing she could remember clearly as being of any interest at all was when the policeman caught the shoplifter.

“I beg your pardon?”

“There was a police officer in the shop, in uniform, and he caught a shoplifter who was on his way out with a handful of videos. He said he’d forgotten to pay, and, of course, you always believe that!”

“But he was a petty thief?”

“I think he’d stolen a few things before. I recognized him, or at least I think I did.”

“What happened?”

“The police officer asked me if I wanted to make a formal complaint, as he put it. But he looked so wretched ... I said no.”

“So you didn’t report him?”

“The officer said he would see to it. The thief had produced his ID card, I saw that.”

“Then what happened?”

“He just showed his ID, sort of.” She held up her hand as a demonstration. “The officer made some notes and then they left and that’s all I know.”

“So you didn’t make a formal complaint?”

“No, like I said. He was going to see to it.”

“Why was he there? This police officer?”

“I can’t remember. I suppose he was buying something. Or renting a video. He’d done that before.”

“So you recognized the police officer?”

“Yes ... he’d been in a few times. Sometimes in uniform and sometimes in civvies.”

“Did you talk to him?”

“I did when that shoplif—”

“Any other time, I mean?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“You don’t know his name?”

“No. Is it important?”

I don’t know, Winter thought. It could be extremely important, or just an everyday occurrence.

“Is it so important?” she asked again.

“Would you recognize this police officer if you saw him again?”

“I don’t know. I’m not very good at faces.”

“You recognized the shoplifter.”

“Yes ... because that was different. It was sort of ... a crime. I looked at him more than I did the policeman.”

“Did you see the shoplifter again?”

“Not in the shop.”

“But somewhere else?”

“In the street on one occasion, when I was either coming to work or leaving. I suppose he lived nearby. He looked the other way when he saw me.”

“You don’t remember his name?”

“I never heard what it was. The policeman wrote it down.”

“Was there a squad car outside? Did the police officer have a patrol car outside the shop?”

“Good question. No, I can’t remember. But I didn’t look out of the window just then.” She looked Winter in the eye. “Police officers are all the same anyway. Tall, fair-haired. It’s hard to distinguish between them.”

 

Morelius was on his way to see his mother. The road was very icy.

The traffic got worse as he came to Söderleden, and came to a standstill at the golf club. Idiots in thick anoraks and woolly hats were waiting to tee off and hit balls into thirty-foot snowdrifts.

“This is a surprise,” his mother said.

“I felt like getting away.”

“You’ve lost weight, Simon.”