Death Angels (30 page)

When he was at home with Martina, he couldn’t understand what he saw in Marianne. When he put his hand on her belly and felt the baby kick, he hated the other person who was also him.

She called herself Angel when she danced. A pair of small wings were attached to her shoulder blades. They were white and glittered like fish scales. Everything—her name and costume, if you could call it that—went perfectly with the sleaziness all around her. He couldn’t think of another way to describe it—everything was sullied, like the world seen through a dirty car window.

The third person in him was the policeman. Somewhere in the dimly lit underground chambers, that person disappeared. So he got together with Marianne elsewhere. That’s what he would say if anyone asked, but nobody asked except him. He had also seen a question mark in Martina’s eyes, as if she knew, and realized that he knew that she knew.

He was on his way to Marianne’s place. She lived on a boat at Gullbergskajen Wharf. He hadn’t believed her at first, but she did.

It was an old fishing vessel that had outlived its usefulness, surrounded by others.

People in Gothenburg called it the Wharf of Dreams. He had heard the name all his life but never made it out there. An odd way to experience it for the first time, he thought.

It was best in the summer, she had said. The boats that still had any life in them put out to Älvsborg Fortress and back, the only time they sailed all year. It was something of a competition.

She had called it the Regatta of Shattered Illusions.

“You haven’t told me much about your life,” Bergenhem said after she had poured the coffee.

“This is unbelievable.”

“What?”

“I can’t figure out why I’m sitting here talking to you.”

He listened for some kind of noise outdoors, like water lapping against the side of the boat, but they were encircled by silence.

“You’re taking advantage of me,” she said.

“That’s not true.”

“Then why are you here?”

“Because I
want
to be here.”

“Everybody takes advantage of someone.”

“Is that what your life has been like?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“How long have you had the boat?”

“Years and years.”

“Do you own it?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know any of the others who live here?”

“What do you think?”

He drank his coffee and heard a motorboat hum out on the river.

“Do you hear your buddies?” she asked.

“What?”

“It’s the marine police making their rounds. You never know what you might happen to find, right?”

“They might happen to find me.”

“What would they say then?”

“They don’t know who I am.”

“Just like me. I don’t know who you are.”

“And I don’t know who you are.”

“Is that why you’re here?”

“Yes.”

“It’s insane.”

“You don’t have any more information about those movies, do you?” he asked hastily, switching to another role.

“No.”

“Nothing about the hidden part of the industry or whatever you call it?”

“No,” she said again, but he heard a hint of something else.

“Are you afraid?”

“What do I have to be afraid of?”

“Is it dangerous to talk about?”

“The dangerous thing is for us to see each other.”

“What do you know?”

She shook her head, like she was tossing his questions overboard. “Do you really think nobody knows you’re seeing me? Someone might even have followed you here to check out what you’re up to.”

“You’re right.”

“Is that what you’re hoping for?”

“I’m not sure.”

“You want to make somebody slip up. And that’s what you’re using me for.”

“That’s not true.”

“Yes it is.”

“I wouldn’t be sitting here if you had told me straight out that you never wanted to see me again.”

“That’s exactly what I said.”

“Not enough times.” He smiled.

She seemed to be thinking about something they had discussed earlier. She chewed on her lower lip—he’d never seen anyone do that before.

She lit a cigarette and opened one of the portholes. Her eyes were dark and fathomless in the dim artificial light when she raised her chin to exhale the smoke. Her hand shook, but that could have been from the damp chill outside.

She inhaled again and her whole body trembled. It’s like she’s sucking on an icicle, Bergenhem thought. Her skin is blue and her hands must be colder than snow.

“I want you to leave,” she said.

She’s afraid, he thought. She knows something horrible has happened and can happen again. She might have a name or an incident, or something somebody said, but that’s all. And that’s what scares her.

How did she find it out? What is it? Who? Is this bringing you any closer to what you’re looking for? Or is it just wishful thinking? Or do you want her to be afraid of something she’s heard so you can justify coming here?

“Give me some time to think about it,” she said.

“What?”

“I need some time to think. Leave me alone now, for Chrissake.”

Bergenhem dialed Bolger’s number and left a message.

Bolger had given him the names of a couple of contacts, both of whom seemed slightly amused when he showed up, as though he were a welcome break from their humdrum lives.

He felt like a derailed train. He thought about Marianne, then Martina. It’s none of her damn business what I do, he thought. This is my job.

He was hoping Bolger could give him some advice. Winter was an old friend of his and seemed to trust him. The occasional sarcastic comment Bolger made about Winter left little doubt that they went way back.

“Mr. Supercop,” Bolger had called him a couple of days before.

“He’s good,” Bergenhem had said.

“He’s always been like that. The world revolves around your boss. He had a friend named Mats who died this winter, and he was my friend too.”

“And?”

“Erik grieves like he’s the only one who ever lost anybody. He claims everything for himself.”

Bergenhem didn’t know what to say. But he sensed he’d been entrusted with a confidence and he relished the feeling.

“That’s just one example,” Bolger had gone on, recounting details about the city when they were growing up.

“Did you live near each other?”

“No.”

“But you hung out together.”

“In our midteens. Earlier, maybe.”

“It’s so hard to keep track of everything,” Bergenhem had said. “It all goes by so fast, and when you try to think back to the way it was, you don’t remember, or else you remember wrong.”

Bolger had said something he didn’t catch.

Bergenhem had asked him to repeat it.

“Skip it,” Bolger had said.

“WE DON’T DO ANYTHlNG FOR BLACK PEOPLE ANYMORE,” ADDAE
Sawyerr said. “All the employment subsidies are gone.”

Sawyerr ran a consulting firm from an office above the Brixton Road Pizza Hut, where Winter had met him. He’d invited Winter upstairs to chat.

“But blacks aren’t the only ones who live here,” Winter said.

“We’re in the majority.” Sawyerr had come to London from Ghana many years earlier. “But whites hang around the street corners too.”

“You mentioned that downstairs.”

“I can see them from this window. Come and look.”

Winter went and stood beside him. Sawyerr was on his toes and Winter had to crouch down.

“There are always a few of them outside Red Records, right across the street,” Sawyerr said. “It’s one of the new places.”

“I’m planning to go there next.”

“They won’t tell you anything in there.”

“Then I’ll just have to listen to some jazz.”

“Nobody reveals anything in Brixton.”

“People are afraid everywhere.”

“Maybe so.”

“Show me somebody who has the guts to tell you what they know,” Winter said.

Sawyerr shrugged. He was talking about his world, in his way. “There’s terrific potential around here, with all the knowledge and skills people have, but little of it ever gets used. This is Europe’s biggest center for black culture. We should be bringing others here to see and experience it.”

Winter said good-bye and walked down the creaky steps. The smell of strong spices and disinfectants was everywhere. Lysol, Winter thought.

Earlier, he had wandered among the arcades in the food market, the largest in Europe for Africans and Caribbeans. The odor of animal flesh filled his nostrils; the floor was greasy and slippery with blood and guts. This is the real soul food, he thought: cow’s feet, goat’s and pig’s intestines, hairy clumps of bull’s testicles, mangoes, okra, chili peppers.

Now he handed a photo of Per Malmström to the clerk at Red Records.

“So many tourists come into this place,” the clerk said.

“He might have been with someone else.”

The clerk looked at the photo and shook his head. “I really couldn’t tell you. We’re the center of the world again. We get customers from all over.”

“Lots of whites?”

“Just look around. What do you see?”

That afternoon, they drove over to talk with the Hilliers. Winter thought he was getting to know the city landscape, but maybe it was just because all the buildings looked so much alike.

“I was supposed to stay home today and catch up on unread reports,” Macdonald said. “But you know how it is.”

“Monotonous,” Winter said.

“Monotonous isn’t the word for it. When you’ve been on a case this long, you end up with a stack of papers a mile high. You can only take in a certain amount of information at a time. After that your instincts start to play tricks on you.”

“Is that what you go on? Your instincts?”

Macdonald gave a short laugh that sounded like someone pushing an ice scraper across the roof of the car. “Isn’t that why you came to London?” He glanced quickly at Winter. “Instinct might be our most important asset. That and intuition, deciphering the subtext of what people say, either right away or later on.”

“Procedure takes us halfway there. After that, we need something more, something else.”

“Sounds profound.”

“But don’t you have to be at the scene of the crime?”

“We have an on-duty system. Eight teams rotate for one week at a time. From Tuesday to Tuesday, starting at seven in the morning.”

“Not ideal.”

“No, but people can’t always be available.”

“You might be in the middle of another investigation too.”

“Absolutely.”

“But if you’re on duty and another team takes over after four or five hours, you’ve spent all that time for nothing.”

“Yeah, that happens occasionally.”