Frozen Tracks (7 page)

'Olives are good for you,' said Djanali. 'Unlike baked
pig's trotters.'

'For Christ's sake!' screamed Halders. 'Why did you
mention pig's trotters? You've made my feet hurt.'

At last the banter is getting back to normal, Winter
thought. About time too.

'Perhaps he wants to brand pigs,' said Halders. He
sounded serious now. 'Our attacker. Branding people he
regards as swine.'

'
If
it is a marking iron, or whatever it's called,' said
Winter.

'We'd better start making comparisons,' Ringmar
said. 'We'll have to get hold of a branding iron.'

'Who's going to volunteer to have their head bashed
in so that we can make comparisons?' Halders wondered.

Everybody stared at him.

'Oh no, no, not me. I've already had a bash on the
head, that's enough for this life.'

'Maybe it wasn't enough, though?' said Djanali.

Have I gone too far? she thought. But Fredrik asks
for it.

Halders turned to Winter.

'The answer could be in the victims. Maybe there is
a link between them after all. They don't have to be
random choices.'

'Hmm.'

'If we can find a common denominator we'll have
made a start. We haven't checked up on the first two in
detail yet. Not enough detail, at least,' Halders continued.

'Well . . .' said Ringmar.

'Well what? I can think of ten questions they weren't
asked. But I must say I think this last bloke's story is a
bit odd. Gustav. The farmer's boy.'

'What do you mean, odd?' asked Djanali.

'Confused, muddled.'

'Perhaps that makes it more credible,' said Winter.

'Or incredible,' said Halders. 'How can you fail to
notice somebody creeping up on you in the middle of
a football pitch?'

'But the same thing applies to the others as well,'
said Djanali. 'Are you seriously suggesting that they're
all in it together? That the victims allowed themselves
to be injured? Or at least knew what was going to
happen to them?'

'Maybe there's something important he's trying to tell
us but doesn't dare,' said Ringmar.

Everybody understood what Ringmar was getting at.
People often told lies, and usually because they were
scared.

'We'll have to ask him again,' said Djanali.

'Nothing surprises me any more,' said Halders. 'OK,
maybe they weren't all aware of what was going to
happen to them. But maybe they were, to some extent
at least. This Gustav, though, he might have other
reasons for telling us this story.'

Nobody spoke. Winter contemplated the sunlight
blazing in through the window. We need some light,
he'd thought as he raised the blinds shortly before the
others arrived. Let there be light.

The trees in the park outside had been pointing at
him, black fingers glinting in the sun. The sky was as
blue as it was possible to be in late November.

'He also said something about a newspaper delivery
boy. We'd better check up on that,' Winter said, still
staring into the heavens. 'Bergenhem can look into it
when he gets back from lunch. Somebody was working
there that morning and might have seen something.'

'Or done something,' said Ringmar.

'All the better if that's the case. We'll have solved it.'

'What about the other attacks?' asked Djanali. 'Were
there news paper boys around then as well?'

Winter looked at Ringmar.

'Er, we don't actually know yet,' Ringmar said.

'Is that code for we haven't looked into it yet?' asked
Halders.

'Now we have a time pattern that is becoming clearer,'
said Winter, getting to his feet. 'All the attacks took
place at about the same time – in the small hours before
dawn.'

'In the wee small hours of the morning,' said
Halders.

'We're trying to interview everybody who might have
been around the areas where the incidents took place,
and now it's the newspaper delivery boys' turn,' said
Winter.

'That's hard work,' said Halders.

'Interviewing newspaper boys?' said Djanali.

'I've worked as a newspaper boy,' said Halders,
ignoring her.

'Good,' said Winter. 'You can give Bergenhem a hand,
then.'

'I'll take another look at the locations first,' said
Halders.

He was at Kapellplatsen, standing on the edge of the
square. The high-rise buildings concealed the sun
that would remain up in the northern sky a bit longer
yet.

Halders turned his head, and felt how stiff it was.
He couldn't swivel his head round any more. The blow
to the vertebrae at the back of his neck had left behind
this physical reminder. He could just about manage to
turn his head to the right; to the left was worse. He'd
had to learn to turn his body instead.

Other memories were worse. He had once run all
the way across this very square with Margareta when
they were very young and very hard up and very happy.
The number seven tram had already set off and he had
stood in the way and nearly been mangled. But it had
stopped. And Margareta had nearly died laughing once
she'd got over the shock. And now she really had died,
not just nearly died – been mangled by a drunk driver,
and it was debatable whether or not he'd got over the
shock, or ever would do. God only knows. They'd
been divorced when it had happened, but that didn't
mean a thing. Their children were still there, as a
reminder of everything that life stood for. That's the
way it was. If there was a meaning at all, that was it.
Magda's face when lit up by the sun at the breakfast
table. The spontaneous joy in the little girl's eyes, which
turned into diamonds in that flash of light. The feeling
inside himself. At that moment. Happiness, just for
one second.

Still, despite everything, he was on the way back to
some kind of normality. The banter that morning had
been a positive sign. He was glad about that. Therapy?
Could be.

He was glad that Aneta had caught on, and played
along.

Perhaps the pair of them were going somewhere together.
No, not perhaps. We are going somewhere together. Very
slowly, very carefully.

He turned round, slowly, carefully. The student had
come up the steps from Karl Gustavsgatan. Maybe he'd
been tired out. Certainly a bit pissed. Beer. Aryan Kaite,
as black as could be, like Aneta; and what a name!
Aryan. Perhaps a plea from his parents, it had struck
Halders when he talked to the lad after he'd come round.
An Aryan black man. Weren't they the first humans?
Africans?

This one was reading medicine.

A horrible wound to the head. Could have killed him.
The same applied to the others. He thought about that
as he stood by the steps looking down at the paving
stones sparkling in the sunlight. All of them could have
been killed, but nobody had died. Why? Was it a coincidence,
a stroke of luck? Was it the intention? Was
that a possibility? Were they meant to survive?

This was where the blow had been delivered, in the
square, Kapellplatsen. Then darkness.

* * *

Linnéplatsen was surrounded by tall buildings that were
new but meant to look old, or at least in time blend in
with the hundred-year-old patrician mansions.

Jens Book had been clubbed down outside Marilyn's,
the video store. Halders was standing there now. There
were five film posters in the windows, and all of them
depicted people brandishing guns or other weapons. Die
Fast! Die Hard III! Die and Let Die! Die!

But not this time either. Jens Book was the first victim.
Studying journalism. The Aryan, Kaite, was the second.
Jakob Stillman the third. In the same department as
Bertil's daughter, Halders remembered, and moved to
one side to avoid a cyclist who came racing up from
Sveaplan. Gustav Smedsberg was the fourth, the yokel
studying at the university of technology, Chalmers.
Branding iron. Halders smiled. Branding iron my arse.

Book was the one with the worst injuries, if it was
possible to grade them like that. The blow had affected
nerves and other things, paralysing him on his right side
– and it was not clear if he would recover mobility.
Maybe he wasn't as lucky as I was, Halders thought,
as he backed out of the way of a cyclist evidently determined
to ride straight ahead. Halders very nearly fell
through the door of the video store.

He thought about the blows again. First the one he'd
received. Then the ones that had injured the young men.

It had all happened so quickly. Wham, no warning.
Nobody noticed anything in advance. No footsteps. Just
wham. No chance of defence, of protecting themselves.

No footsteps, he thought again.

He watched the cyclist ignoring a red light and riding
straight over the crossroads, displaying a splendid
contempt for death. Die? Pfuh!

The cyclist.

Have we asked about a possible cyclist? Have we
thought about that?

He had interviewed Aryan Kaite himself, but there
had been no mention of a bicycle.

Had the attacker been riding a bike?

Halders stared down at the tarmac, as if there might
still be some visible sign of cycle tracks.

Lars Bergenhem had some news before lunch. Winter
was smoking a Corps. The window overlooking the
river was open a couple of centimetres, letting in air he
thought smelled more distinctly than his ciga rillo smoke
did. The Panasonic on the floor was playing
Lush Life
.
Only Coltrane today, and in recent weeks. Winter had
unfastened two buttons of his Zegna jacket. Anybody
coming into his office now who didn't know any better
would think he wasn't working. Bergenhem came in.

'There was no newspaper delivery boy there.'

Winter stood up, put his cigarillo down on the ashtray,
turned down the music and closed the window.

'But the student saw him,' he said as he was doing
this. 'Smedsberg.'

'He says he saw somebody with newspapers,' said
Bergenhem, 'but it wasn't a newspaper delivery boy.'

Winter nodded and waited.

'I checked with the
Göteborgs Posten
delivery office,
and on that particular morning, the day before yesterday
in other words, their usual employee for that round
phoned in sick just before it was time to start delivering,
and it took them at least three hours before they
could mobilise a replacement. So that would have been
at least two hours after Smedsberg was attacked.'

'He could have been there even so,' Winter said.

'Eh?'

'He could have called in sick but turned up even so,'
Winter said again. 'He might have started to feel better.'

'She,' said Bergenhem. 'It's a she.'

'A she?'

'I've spoken to her. There's no doubt. She has an
awful cold, and a husband and three children who were
all at home that morning and give her an alibi.'

'But people received their morning papers?'

'No. Not until her replacement turned up. According
to
GP
, in any case.'

'Have you checked with the subscribers?'

'I haven't had time yet. But the girl at
GP
says they
had lots of complaints that morning. As usual, according
to her.'

'But Smedsberg says he saw somebody carrying newspapers,'
Winter said.

'Did he really say he'd seen the actual newspapers?'
Bergenhem wondered.

Winter sorted through the pile of papers in one of
the baskets on his desk and read the report on the interviews
Ringmar had submitted.

Ringmar had asked: How do you know it was a
newspaper boy?

Because he was carrying a bundle of newspapers and
went into one of the blocks of flats, and then I saw him
come out again and go into the next one, Smedsberg
had replied.

Was there a trolley outside with more newspapers?
Ringmar had asked.

Good, Winter thought. A good question.

No. I didn't see a trolley. There could . . . No, I didn't
see one. But he was certainly carrying newspapers, that
was obvious, Smedsberg had answered.

'Yes,' said Winter, looking at Bergenhem. 'He said
that this person was carrying newspapers and went in
and out of blocks of flats in Gibraltargatan.'

'OK.'

'But there was no trolley – don't they usually have
one?' Winter said.

'I'll check,' said Bergenhem.

'Check who the replacement was as well.'

'Of course.'

Winter lit his cigarillo again and exhaled smoke.

'So, we might have a false newspaper boy here,
hanging around the area at the time of the attack,' he
said.

'Yes.'

'That's interesting. The question is: is it our man?
And if it isn't, what was he doing there?'

'A loony?' Bergenhem suggested.

'A loony playing at being a newspaper boy? Well,
why not?'

'A mild form of loony.'

'But if he is our man, surely he must have planned
it. A bundle of newspapers et cetera. On the spot at
that particular time.'

Bergenhem nodded.

'Did he know that Smedsberg would go that way?
Or did he know that somebody or other would come
past? That students often stagger over Mossen in the
early hours? In which case it could have been anybody.'

'Why go to the trouble of lugging newspapers
around?' Bergenhem said. 'Wouldn't it have been enough
simply to hide?'

'Unless he was using that disguise, or whatever we
should call it, that
role
, to establish some kind of security,'
Winter said. 'Melt into the background. Create an
atmosphere of normality. What could be more normal
at that time in the morning than a hardworking newspaper
boy?'

'Maybe he even made contact,' Bergenhem said.

Winter drew on his cigarillo again and watched it
growing murkier outside. The sun had wandered off
again.

'That had occurred to me as well,' he said, looking
at Bergenhem.

'Can't I ever have a thought of my own?' Bergenhem
wondered.

'Well, you said it first,' said Winter with a smile.

Bergenhem sat down and leaned forward.

'Perhaps they spoke to each other. It's pretty harmless
to exchange a few words with a newspaper boy.'

Winter nodded, and waited.

'Perhaps they did make some sort of contact.'

'Why didn't Smedsberg say anything about that?'
Winter asked.

'Why do you think?'

'Well, it's possible. Everything's possible. They
exchanged a few words. The lad continued on his way.
The newspaper boy carried on delivering.'

'Come on, Erik. That can't have been what happened.
Smedsberg would have told us about it if it was.'

'Give me another theory, then.'

'I don't know. But
if
they made contact and exchanged
more than a few words, Smedsberg must be concealing
something from us.'

'What would he be concealing from us if that's the
case?'

'Well . . .'

'Does he want to hide the fact that he spoke to a
stranger? No. He's an adult, and we are not his parents.
Does he want to hide the fact that he was a bit drunk
and doesn't want us to remind him and others of that
fact? No.'

'No.' Bergenhem repeated Winter's word, knowing
where he was heading.

'If this hypothetical reasoning leads us to wonder
what he wanted to hide, it might have to do with his
orientation,' Winter said.

'Yes,' Bergenhem agreed.

'So what is he trying to hide from us?' Winter inhaled
again and looked at Bergenhem.

'That he's gay,' said Bergenhem. 'He made some kind
of contact, this false newspaper boy responded positively,
maybe they were heading for Smedsberg's room,
and all hell was let loose on the way there.'

'But we're living in the twentieth century in an enlightened
society,' Winter said. 'Or in the twenty-first, to be
precise. And isn't it a bit odd for a young man to want
to conceal his orientation to the extent of shielding a
person who tried to murder him?'

Bergenhem shrugged.

'Well, isn't it?' asked Winter again.

'We'll have to ask him,' said Bergenhem.

'We shall. Why not? It would explain a great deal.'

'One other thing,' Bergenhem said.

'Yes?'

'It's connected.' Bergenhem looked at Winter. 'Where
are the newspapers?'

'Yes.'

'He was carrying a bundle of papers, but not a single
subscriber received one and we haven't found any.'

'We haven't looked,' Winter said. 'We've assumed
that the papers were delivered.'

'That's true, of course.'

'They might be around there somewhere. A pile of
them. It would be useful if we could find them, wouldn't
it?'

'Yes.'

'But when we spoke to the newspaper delivery people,
we'd taken Smedsberg's word for it that he'd seen a
newspaper boy at that particular time.' Winter scratched
his nose. 'Why do we believe that if we've had reservations
about other parts of his story?'

'So we need to find other witnesses who saw a fake
newspaper boy at that place and at that time,' said
Bergenhem.

'Yes, and we've already started on that.'

Bergenhem stroked his hand across his forehead, from
left to right. His four-year-old daughter had already
acquired the same habit.

'This line of reasoning could throw new light on the
other attacks,' he said.

'Or cast a shadow over them,' Winter said. 'Maybe
we should soft-pedal a bit, not get ahead of ourselves.'

Pedal, he thought the moment he'd said it. A bicycle.
Perhaps the attacker had ridden up on a bike. That
would explain the speed, the surprise. A silent bike. Soft
tyres.

'But just think,' Bergenhem continued, 'four attacks,
no witnesses to the actual violence, no trace of the
attacker. The victims didn't see or hear anything, or not
much at least.'

'Go on,' Winter said.

'Well, maybe they
all
made contact with the person
who clubbed them down.'

'How? Did he pose as a newspaper boy every time?'

'I don't know. Perhaps he posed as something else,
somebody else, so as not to scare them.'

'Yes.'

'Have we checked this newspaper boy business in
connection with the other cases?' Bergenhem asked.