Frozen Tracks (25 page)

The 'Wanted' message sent out in connection with Aryan
Kaite attracted a big response, but none of the tips led
them to him, nor him to them.

'Anything new from the African clubs?' asked Fredrik
Halders as they drove up through the hilly eastern
suburbs to his house.

'No,' said Aneta Djanali. 'He's not a member. They
know who he is, of course, but he's not on the membership
rolls.'

'Are you a member?'

'Am I a member of what, exactly?'

'The Ougadougou Club.'

'What about if I were to take you to Ougadougou,
Fredrik? I sometimes think you dream about
Ougadougou. You're always talking about the place.'

'Isn't everybody?' asked Halders.

Aneta Djanali was born in the Eastern General
Hospital in Gothenburg of African parents, immigrants
from Burkina Faso who had left their homeland when
it was still called Upper Volta. Her father had trained
in Sweden as an engineer, and had returned home when
Aneta was about to become an adult. She had chosen
to stay in Sweden. Of course. Her father now lived alone
in a little house in the capital, and his house was the
same bleached colour as the sand surrounding the city.
Everything there was hot, biting air (or blue frozen air),
and people always cherished the same dreams about
water that never came. Aneta had been back, if that
was the right expression. It was a foreign country as
far as she was concerned. She had immediately felt at
home, but no more than that – as if the expression East,
west, home's best had lost its meaning. She knew that
she would never be able to live there: but nevertheless,
it would always be home.

She parked outside Halders' house, where Advent
candles were illuminating one of the windows.

'If you like I could collect Hannes and Magda,' she
said as he got out of the car.

'I thought you had lots to do?'

'That can wait.' She gave a laugh. 'It was mainly
tapioca roots and dried bananas, and I've got enough
to last me anyway.'

'But what if your club's going to throw a party
tonight?'

'But what if people start taking your racist jokes seriously,
Fredrik?'

'I daren't even think about that,' he said.

'Would you like me to collect them, then?'

'Yes please. I can make dinner for you.' He turned
round with the door half-open. 'I've got sand cakes.'

'Yes, OK,' said Djanali, and drove off.

Winter was in Birgersson's office. His boss was smoking
in the semi-darkness.

The pillars holding up Ullevi Stadium were splayed
out behind him, against a clear evening sky. Winter
could see a star.

'What are you going to do at Christmas, Erik?'

'Spain. Costa del Sol. If I can get away.'

'I hope you can't.'

'I know what you're saying, but even so I don't understand.'

Birgersson grunted and tapped the ash off his cigarette.

'When are you going to start interviewing the children?'
he asked.

'Tomorrow.'

'It's going to be hard.'

Winter didn't answer. He leaned forward and lit a
Corps with a match, which he let burn for a few seconds.
Birgersson smiled.

'Thank you for the Christmas atmosphere,' he said.

'They speak pretty well,' said Winter, letting the smoke
float up. 'More or less like adults.'

Birgersson grunted again.

'We've got quite a lot to go on,' said Winter.

'In the old days, which were not so long ago, we'd
have said that a child was burnt out after one interview,'
said Birgersson. 'It wouldn't be possible to extract
any more information after that.' He studied the smoke
from Winter's cigarillo. 'But let's allow the memories to
mature. The images.'

'Mmm.'

'Let's assume for the moment that all this actually
occurred,' said Birgersson. 'That what the children say
is true. That these incidents did happen as described.'

'Simon Waggoner hasn't said anything,' said Winter.

'But in his case, we know,' said Birgersson. 'There's
no doubt about it.'

Winter thought.

'He has something that entices them,' he said.

'Is it just one thing? The same thing every time?'

'Let's assume that for the time being,' said Winter.

'Go on.'

'And they have something that he wants.'

'What do you mean by that?'

'He's out to get something from these children. A
thing. A souvenir he can take with him.'

'He wants them for himself, is that it? He wants . . .
the children.'

'Let's leave that for the moment,' said Winter. He
drew at his cigarillo again. He could still see the star,
and another one. It was as if he could see more clearly
when he thought as he was thinking now. 'He takes
something from them. He wants to take it home with
him. Or to have it in his possession.'

'Why?' asked Birgersson.

'It's got something to do with . . . with himself. With
the person he once was.'

'The person he once was?'

'When he was like they are now. When he was a
child.'

'We know what he's taken,' said Birgersson. 'A watch,
a ball and some kind of jewellery.'

'And perhaps also something from the Skarin boy.
Most probably.'

'Are they trophies, Erik?'

'I don't know. No. Not in that way.'

'Are the things he's taken similar to things he has
himself?' said Birgersson, putting down the cigarette and
rocking backwards and forwards in his swivel chair,
which emitted a whining sound.

'That's a very good question,' said Winter.

'That somebody could answer, if only we could find
a somebody,' said Birgersson.

'There are the children.'

'True. But I was thinking of other grown-ups. Grownup
witnesses.' He contemplated Winter, Winter's Corps,
Winter's shirt unbuttoned at the neck, and his tie that
looked like a noose. 'Are we dealing with a grown-up
here, Erik?'

'That's a very good question.'

'A child in a grown-up body,' said Birgersson.

'It's not as easy as that,' said Winter.

'Who said it was easy? It's damned complicated,' said
Birgersson. He suddenly turned round, as if he'd been
impaled by the beams of light aimed at the back of his
neck from the two stars that seemed to be nailed to
poles towering up over Lunden behind Ullevi Stadium.
He turned back again.

'This is a . . . a bit of a bloody tangle,' he said. 'You
know I think such expressions are unprofessional and
I don't like them, but I'm going to use it in this context
even so.' He lit another cigarette and pointed it at Winter.
'Nail the bastard before something even more horrendous
happens.'

Angela rang as Winter was leaving Birgersson's office.
He saw his own home number on the display.

'Yes?'

'Erik, the day nursery manager has just phoned. Our
day nursery, that is.'

'Is Elsa at home?'

'Yes, yes, thank God.'

'What did she want?'

'They had seen some mysterious person or other.'

'OK, have you got her phone number handy?'

He rang immediately on his mobile, still only halfway
to his office.

He was sitting in her office, which was decorated with
children's Christmas drawings. It wasn't the first time
he'd been in this room, but the first time on business
like this. The only people moving in the nursery were
the cleaning staff. The silence was strange, not to say
unnatural, in rooms that were normally echoing with
children's voices. He'd been here before in the evening,
for parents' meetings: but then the quietness had been
different, a grown-up murmur.

'Somebody filming them,' Winter said.

'Yes. A delayed reaction, you might say. Lisbeth
started to think about it when one of the fathers
collecting his kid started taking video footage,' said the
manager, whose name was Lena Meyer.

'Where exactly was it?'

'As they were crossing the football pitch. Or at least,
as they got to the other side.'

'Where was he standing?'

He heard a timid knock on the door behind him.

'I think this is the lady herself. Come in!'

Lisbeth Augustsson opened the door. She nodded to
Winter – she'd spoken to him many times, but they'd
only exchanged a few words. She was about twenty-two,
possibly twenty-five, hair in thick brown plaits,
red ribbons. She sat down on the chair beside Winter.

'Where exactly was he standing when he was filming?'
Winter asked.

She tried to describe the spot.

'He followed us as well,' she said.

'Still filming?'

'Yes, it seemed so.'

'Did you recognise him?'

'No.'

'How can you be sure?'

'Well, I can't be certain, obviously. I didn't see him
for all that long either. And he had a camera in front
of his face.' She smiled.

'Nobody you'd seen before?'

'No.'

'What made you report this to Lena?' Winter asked.

'Well, there was this business about the girl who said
she'd, er, spoken to somebody. Ellen Sköld. That makes
you a bit suspicious.' She looked at Lena Meyer. 'We're
always careful, of course.'

She knew nothing about the other children. Not much
about Simon Waggoner, not yet. Winter and his colleagues
wouldn't be able to keep that secret for much longer.

'Have you ever seen anyone filming you before?'
Winter asked. 'When you were out on an excursion
somewhere? Or here at the nursery?'

'No, I can't say I have. It was just today.'

'Please tell me exactly what happened, as accurately
as you can,' said Winter.

'There's not a lot to say. I looked up once and saw
him but didn't really think about it. I mean, you often
see people with video cameras nowadays, don't you?
But then I looked again, and he was still there, filming
– apparently filming us.' She raised her arms. 'And when
he seemed to notice that I'd seen him, that I was looking
at his camera, he turned it away and pretended to be
filming the buildings on the other side of the street, or
whatever.'

'Maybe he was,' said Winter.

'Was what?'

'Filming the buildings. Maybe he wasn't pretending.'

'It looked like he was.'

'What happened next?' Winter asked. 'Did you
continue watching him?'

'Yes. I watched for a bit longer, but we had the children
to think about. And he turned away after only a
few seconds and walked off.'

'In which direction?'

'Back towards Linnéplatsen.'

'Did you see him from the side? Or from behind?'

'From behind, I think. I didn't watch very long. Forgot
about it, or whatever you might say. I mean, we had
other things to think about. But then I remembered it
again, later.'

'Can you describe what he looked like?' Winter asked.

'Well . . . he was sort of normal. The camera was in
the way so you couldn't see his face. His jacket was
blue, I think, and trousers I assume.' She gave a laugh.
'He wasn't wearing a skirt, I'd have remembered that,
and, well – that's about it.' She was still thinking. Winter
had sat thousands of times with witnesses trying to
remember. Everything they said could be accurate, but
it could also be totally misleading. Colours that were
definitely green could be yellow, six-foot men could be
dwarfs, women could be men, men women, trousers
could be . . . skirts. Cars could be mopeds and one
hundred per cent certainly dogs could turn out to be
camels. No. No camels had cropped up in any of his
cases, not yet.

Children could be children. Cease to be children,
disappear. Cease to exist. Or never be children again,
never be whole persons again.

'He had a cap!' she said suddenly.

'You said before he had a camera in front of his head.'

'In front of his face. I said in front of his face. And
not all the time I was watching him. I remember now
that you could see the cap over the top of the camera.
And I saw it as well when he turned to film the buildings
on the other side, if that's what he was doing.'

'What kind of a cap?'

'Well, it wasn't a Nike cap. Not one of those baseball
things.'

Winter thought about Fredrik Halders: he often wore
a baseball cap over his shaven skull. Nike, or Kangol.

'I reckon it was an old man's cap,' she said.

'An old man's cap?' said Winter.

'Yes. One of those grey or beige things old blokes
always seem to wear.'

Winter nodded.

'Yes, one of them,' she said. 'Grey, I think, but I'm
not sure. A sort of grey pattern.'

'Was he an elderly man?' Winter pointed to himself.
'Like me?'

She smiled again, big teeth, perfectly shaped, white;
Scandinavian, perhaps you could call them.

'I really couldn't say,' she said. 'But he could well
have been about your age. Despite the cap. He walked
normally, he wasn't a fatty or anything like that, he
didn't seem old. He wasn't an old man.'

'Would you recognise him if you saw him again?'

'I don't know. But if he was wearing the same clothes,
and carrying a video camera – well, I might do.'

'Have you spoken to anybody else about this?' Winter
asked. 'Apart from Lena.' He nodded in the direction
of Lena Meyer.

'No.'

'How many staff were out this afternoon with the
children?'

'Er, three, including me.'

'And none of the others noticed anything?'

'I don't know. As I said, I sort of forgot all about it.
Until now.'

Winter stood up. Thought. He could see the group
in his mind's eye. Staff first, in the middle, and at the
back. He'd seen a set-up like that lots of times. What
did they do? Pause, fuss around, carry on. It was
December now. Not long to go before the holidays.
Everybody was in the mood. Something to celebrate
coming up. Everybody on holiday. In a way, the holiday
had already started. What do you do when there's a
holiday mood in the air? You sing. Dance. Have fun.
Perhaps you might want to record these moments,
or this mood. Record it. Watch it again later. Record
it. Keep it.

He looked at Lisbeth Augustsson.

'Did any of you have a video camera with you when
you went out on this excursion?'

'Er . . . no.'

'An ordinary camera, perhaps?'

'Er . . .'

He could see that she was thinking hard.

'Did any of you have a camera with you when you
went out on this excursion?'

Lisbeth Augustsson looked at Winter and her face
was a picture.

'Good Lord! Anette had her camera with her! An
ordinary Instamatic, or something of the sort. She might
have taken a few pictures when we were crossing the
football pitch. She said she was going to, but I was
looking in the other direction.' Lisbeth Augustsson
looked at her boss and at Winter again. 'She might have
a picture of him!'

'Could well be,' said Winter.

'What on earth made you think of that?' she said.

'We'd have found out anyway when we spoke to the
others,' Winter said. 'Where can I get hold of Anette?'

Ringmar was waiting for Gustav Smedsberg. He could
hear voices in the corridor, somebody trying to sing a
Christmas carol. The echo was not to anybody's advantage.
A peal of laughter, a woman's voice. Detectives
winding down for the holiday.

But here we are not winding down, we're winding
up, up, up.

He phoned home but there was no reply. Birgitta
ought to be at home by now. He needed to ask her what
she wanted him to buy from the covered market.

He tried Moa's mobile. 'The number you have called
cannot be reached at this time . . .'

He would have liked to ring Martin, if he'd known
what to say. But that problem was academic, as it were.

The phone call came from the duty officer. Smedsberg
was waiting downstairs in the cosy foyer, 'the charm
suite' as Halders called the reception rooms. The first
stimulating contact the general public had with the police
authorities, step one on the way to the ombudsman.

Gustav Smedsberg looked thin standing on the other
side of the security door. He seemed underdressed,
wearing a cap that appeared to be more of an adornment
than anything else. If you could regard it as such.
Denim jacket, a thin T-shirt underneath. Open neck.
The boy's face was expressionless; he might have been
bored stiff. Ringmar beckoned to him.

'This way,' he said.

Smedsberg was shivering in the lift up.

'It's cold out there,' said Ringmar.

'Started yesterday,' said Smedsberg. 'A bastard of a
wind.'

'You haven't got round to digging out your winter
clothes, I gather?'

'These are my winter clothes,' said Smedsberg, scrutinising
the buttons in the lift. He shivered again, and
again, like sudden tics.

'I thought you were used to chilly winds where you
come from,' said Ringmar. 'And how to cope with them.'

Smedsberg didn't respond.

They left the lift. The tiles on the wall were a big
help to anybody who wanted to suppress the Christmas
atmosphere. The thought had occurred to Ringmar that
morning. Or perhaps in his case he had lost the
Christmas spirit already. Birgitta had said nothing when
he got up. He knew she was awake, she always was.
Silent. He'd said a few words, but she'd just rolled over
on to her other side.

'Please come in,' he said, ushering Smedsberg into
his office.

Smedsberg paused in the doorway. Ringmar could
see his profile, a nose curved like that of his father.
Perhaps there was something in his bearing reminiscent
of the old man as well. And in his accent, although the
boy's was less pronounced.

'Please sit down.'

Smedsberg sat down, hesitantly, as if he were ready
to leave at any moment.

'Will this take long?' he asked.

'No.'

'What's it about, then?'

'The same as we've talked about before,' said
Ringmar.

'I don't know any more about that than I did then,'
said Smedsberg. 'He stirred things up about Josefin, and
that's about it.'

'What do you mean? Who's "he"?'

'Aryan, of course. Isn't he the one we've been talking
about all the time?'

'There are others involved as well,' said Ringmar.

'I don't know them, like I said.'

'Jakob Stillman lived in the same building as you.'

'So did a hundred others. A thousand.'

'You said before that you didn't know Aryan Kaite.'

'Yes, yes.' Smedsberg shook his head dismissively.

'What does that mean?'

'What does what mean?'

'Yes, yes. What do you mean by that?'

'I don't know.'

'GET A GRIP OF YOURSELF,' said Ringmar, sternly.

'What's the matter?' said Smedsberg, more alert now,
but still with a remote, bored expression that he evidently
didn't find easy to shake off.

'We are investigating serious violent crimes, and we
need help,' said Ringmar. 'People who lie to us are not
being helpful.'

'Have I committed a crime?' Smedsberg asked.

'Why did you tell us you didn't know Aryan Kaite?'

'I didn't think it was significant.' He looked at
Ringmar, who could see a sort of cold intelligence in
his eyes.

'What do you think now, then?' asked Ringmar.

Smedsberg shrugged.

'Why didn't you want to admit that you knew somebody
who'd been assaulted in a way that you yourself
were very nearly attacked?'

'I didn't think it was all that important. And I still
think it was just coincidence.'

'Really?'

'The row I had with Aryan had nothing to do with
anything . . . anything like this.'

'What
did
it have to do with?'

'Like I said before. He'd misunderstood something.'

'What had he misunderstood?'

'Look, mate, why should I answer that question?'

'What had he misunderstood?' said Ringmar again.

'Er, that he had something going with Josefin.' Gustav
Smedsberg seemed to smile, or at least give a little grin.
'But he hadn't asked her.'

'Where do you fit in, then?'

'She wanted to be with me.'

'And what did you want?'

'I wanted to be free.'

'So why did you have a row with Kaite, then?'
Ringmar asked.

'No idea. You'd better ask him.'

'We can't do that, can we? He's disappeared.'

'Oh yes, that's true.'

'The girl has vanished as well. Josefin Stenvång.'

'Yes, that's odd.'

'You don't seem to be particularly worried.'

Smedsberg didn't answer. His face gave nothing away.
Ringmar could hear a voice outside in the hall, a voice
he didn't recognise.