Never End (37 page)

The park was the city’s lung, and masses of people were wandering down the bike paths or over the fields.

“Pull over outside,” said Winter.

Bergenhem found a space in one of the little side streets. They entered the park from the north.

“I’ve been here every day, almost,” said Bergenhem. “Discreetly.”

“Hmm.”

“I expect the same applies to y—”

“Shh.”

They were standing by the pond. A group was picnicking quietly to their right. Some one-legged flamingos were viewing the scene. Winter could smell grilled meat from the café behind them, heard a single peal of laughter gliding over the water. The shadows had lain down now, as if the trees in the park had been taken down for the night but would be put up again the next day.

“Let’s go a bit closer.”

“I’ll stay here,” said Bergenhem.

Winter took three strides to the next tree. It was ten meters to the hollow near the big rock, opening up like a black cave. The vegetation around about was swaying gently, a final rustle before settling down for the night.

Winter heard a loud engine noise from somewhere and a souped-up moped with a madly grinning teenager onboard came racing over the grass. Winter turned and saw Bergenhem shaking his head. The moped made a U-turn on the other side of the pond, came back making the same racket, and disappeared into the road a hundred meters away. All was quiet again, quieter than ever before now that the commotion had subsided. Winter stood still, as if he knew, really
knew,
that so much had led up to these seconds and that everything might come to an end here, not absolutely everything, but a lot would come to an end if he stayed here now, or if he came back tomorrow, or the day after and the day after that, and did all the other things one always did when looking for the answer to a riddle.

There was a rustling in the branches over there. Nobody emerged or walked by. No movement in the corner of his eye.

He stood still. Bergenhem would soon start moving, and they’d return to the police station.

Something moved inside the hollow, in the darkness. A shadow deeper than the other shadows. Winter stayed put. It was now. Now. A figure moved, still a shadow. Moved again, made its way toward the exit. Winter could see the outline of a head, a body. Suddenly a face, only a blurred oval in the deceptive twilight. A pale impression of a face he’d seen through Jeanette’s window.

Mattias emerged from the bushes and onto the grass. He was moving his head backward and forward, like a dog sniffing the wind for traces of people or other animals. He wore shorts and a shirt that was still black from the black light behind him. He took two more paces forward. His shirt suddenly turned white and flapped slightly in the breeze, unbuttoned at the bottom. The same shirt. A button was missing, and it’s in Beier’s office, Winter thought. The shirt flapped again, as if the breeze had suddenly grown stronger, but there was no breeze where Winter was standing.

He walked away from the tree trunk. Mattias gave a start and turned to face Winter. Winter took two paces. Mattias didn’t move; his head was up, as if he were still sniffing the air. Winter could see his eyes now, Mattias’s eyes; there was no sign of recognition in those eyes, no longer, and Winter approached as if invisible and Mattias’s head started moving again, backward and forward. His right hand was moving, as if following a rhythm, Winter was so close now that he could smell the acrid aroma coming from the boy, who was swinging his arm higher and higher, and the dog leash he was holding glittered in the light like silver and gold.

 

 

When Winter had found the report he was looking for he’d read it and looked for the words. It was Halders’s last conversation with Mattias. He could hear the voice behind the words as he read:

“Jeanette hasn’t said anything, has she?”

“Why don’t you let her go, Mattias?”

“What do you mean, let her go?”

“You know what I mean.”

“I did that ages ago. Let . . . everything go.”

Then Mattias had fallen silent when Halders showed him the picture of Angelika’s boyfriend.

“Do you recognize him?” Halders had asked.

The conversation continued. Then Mattias said it:

“It’ll . . . never be like it used to be.” Mattias had repeated it, something different. A normal thing to say, but not now, not anymore. And not what came next, after a short pause. “It was different before. I’ve told you. I’ve told you before.” He repeated it again soon afterward. Halders asked a few follow-up questions, and that was all Mattias had said, but it was enough. It was enough now.

Winter had finished reading, called Bergenhem, and they had driven to the park. There had been no other place to go to.

IN THE BACKSEAT, MATTIAS SAID NOTHING. WINTER COULD SEE
the glow from the neon lights passing over his face without him blinking a single time. The glittering dog leash had been exchanged for handcuffs that gleamed in similar fashion.

They took him through the back entrance and up the stairs to a cell, then everyone assembled in Winter’s office. Winter felt too nervous to move to a bigger conference room. He was smoking, drumming his fingers; he looked at everybody’s face and noted that Djanali’s displayed the most worry.

This was not a moment to open the champagne.

“We’d better get going on the kid,” said Cohen, who rarely attended such meetings. The chief interrogation officer generally moved in his own circles.

“What are we going to do with Bielke?” wondered Johan Setter. He looked at Winter. “Assuming it’s the boy. Mattias.”

“It is him,” said Winter. “But it’s not only him.”

“In both cases?” asked Setter.

“No, he was too young when the first murder was committed,” said Djanali.

“He was sixteen or seventeen,” said Setter, “and already about six foot, so we’re told.”

“Bielke killed Beatrice,” said Winter. “He hasn’t admitted it yet, but it’s written between the lines of the letter to his wife, and if we ask him again he’ll tell us.” He puffed at his cigarillo, then looked around the room again. “He’ll tell us now. Once he’s heard what happened tonight.”

“Why?” asked Setter, playing the role of interrogator, trying to find out how and why. “And how?”

“We know that Bielke took part in the . . . activities at the house. We haven’t found anybody there, but we know. We’ve seen.” He thought about Halders again, could see that Djanali was thinking about Halders. Halders must have seen. “We know that Beatrice was there. We don’t know why, but we can guess. More than guess. Beatrice was there five years ago, shortly before she died.”

“But why did Bielke kill her?” Setter asked again.

For Christ’s sake! thought Djanali. Tell us why people kill one another so that we know once and for all and the world becomes a paradise. Bielke killed her because he’s an evil person, or a sick person, perhaps there’s a link. It wasn’t enough to see her behind a pane of glass. He wanted more than that.

She heard Winter answering Setter’s question.

“Maybe that wasn’t his intention. Maybe one thing led to another. The man’s sick.”

Like his son, if it is his son, Djanali thought. Like father, like son.

But the most important thing was Fredrik.

“As far as I can see, there’s only one reason why we’re all sitting here now, and that’s finding Fredrik,” she said. “So: what is there about what has happened now that can help us find him?”

“That
is
what we’re talking about,” said Setter.

“Oh, yeah?”

“It’s all interlinked, surely? What did Halders see in that house that was so compromising that he had to disappear?”

“And Samic,” said Bergenhem. “Why did he disappear?”

“There’s another big question,” said Winter, with a glance at Djanali, possibly slightly apologetic. “Did Bielke rape his own daughter? Or did Mattias do it?”

“Raped his own sister?” said Sara Helander. “Or half sister.”

“He might not have known at the time,” Ringmar said. “Presuming that
is
what happened.”

“If Mattias murdered Angelika and Anne, he could well have done something like that,” said Setter. “But I say it again: why?”

A punishment, Winter thought. Mattias was punishing them for something. For something they’d done. What had they done? Danced, perhaps. Possibly more. How did Mattias know about that? Had somebody told him? Why should Mattias bother about it? Had he been there himself ?
Had he been there himself ?
Had he seen Kurt Bielke? Had he seen . . . his daughter? Had she been there? No. Or . . . been there without her father knowing? Had Bielke done something that resulted in his daughter being raped? Somebody who was punishing
him?
Via his daughter? Somebody who had a . . . hold on him. Who knew what he’d done.

Beatrice five years ago. Beatrice who’d been there. Others who’d been there. Samic had been there. Samic. Where else had Samic been? With whom? There was a woman involved. Was
she
Mattias’s mother?

Mattias had suffered in various ways. He was seeking attention and . . . he was seeking the ones who were involved . . . in the sinister game. The girls were involved in the game. Perhaps he thought they were responsible for what had happened to Jeanette and what had happened between the two of them. The girls . . . but also Kurt Bielke. Did Mattias know what had happened to Beatrice? He hadn’t murdered her, couldn’t have.

Mattias put the camera in Bielke’s car. Mattias broke into the Hanssons’ house, looking for something that could expose Bielke. No. Somebody else. Samic? Had Samic already known about the photographs of the bar?

Mattias could have killed Angelika’s boyfriend because he might have known Mattias and started to suspect something.

When they searched Mattias’s apartment they would find the camera that had taken the pictures of the girls sitting in the bar, a camera with a damaged lens. They’d also find Anne Nöjd’s mobile phone.

All this flashed through his mind in the space of a few seconds.

Mattias might give them all the answers, or just add a few more questions. Bielke would talk, maybe too much.

Somebody said, “Samic.”

“What was that?”

“If we can find Samic, we’ll find Fredrik as well,” Djanali said. Samic, Samic. Samic. Winter thought, thought, like everybody else.

 

 

It hadn’t been possible to talk to Mattias. He was in a silent world of his own that Winter had not been able to break into.

Bielke had not yet confessed, but he would. He did talk, however. Asked about his daughter, never about his wife. His madness came and went in his eyes. Cohen and Winter tried to concentrate on what had happened in the house on the other side of the river during the hour after Halders had entered it.

“I know nothing about that.”

“You were there,” said Winter.

Bielke suddenly looked him in the eye, and held his gaze. Bielke’s forehead was throbbing, as if his thoughts were about to burst out of it and spurt all over the table. Winter waited.

“You were there,” he said again, as calmly as he could.

“Yes,” said Bielke. “Yes.”

That was the first time he’d admitted it.

“Where were you?” Winter asked.

“I was in the house.”

“Where in the house?”

“I was in the basement.”

Bielke’s eyes had glazed over, or were in the process of doing so. He stumbled over syllables in a monotone. Weariness was setting in now that it was all over.

“Who else was in the basement?”

“Eh?”

“Who else was in the basement?”

“Her.”

“Who’s her?”

“I dunno.”

“What’s her name?”

“Dunno. A girl.”

“What did she do?”

“Eh?”

“What did she do?”

“Dan . . . danced.”

“What did she dance?”

Bielke didn’t understand. That was the only dance as far as he was concerned, and he didn’t think of it as a dance, anyway. It was just a name, an expression.

“What kind of a dance was it?” asked Winter.

“Dunno.”

“Was she dancing alone?”

“Alone.”

“Who else was there?”

Bielke didn’t answer. He seemed to be looking for somebody who wasn’t there. There was only Winter and Cohen and a tape recorder and a video camera.

“Where’s the boy?” asked Bielke out of the blue, raising his head.

“What boy?”

“The boy.”

“Mattias? Was Mattias there?” Winter asked.

“He’s my boy,” he said.

“We know.”

Bielke nodded.

“Was he there?” asked Winter.

“I don’t know.”

“Who else was there?”

Bielke said something that Winter couldn’t hear.

“What did you say?”

Bielke muttered again.

“Can you repeat what you just said?”

“She was there as well.”

“Who’s she?”

“She’s been with
him
for ages. She took the boy with her. I didn’t know at first.”

“Was Mattias in the house?”

“He used to help a bit. I saw him sometimes.” Bielke stared at the wall behind Winter. “He didn’t know then. Yet. About me. Who I was.”

“Did he see you?”

“Eh?”

“Did he see you?”

“No. I don’t think so.”

You think wrong, Winter thought.

Bielke said something under his breath.

“Can you repeat what you just said?”

“Drove off with him,” said Bielke in a voice that once again sounded monotonous, flat.

“Drove off ?” asked Winter. “Drove off with whom?”

Bielke mumbled something, but seemed to be thinking as well.

“Drove off with whom?” Winter repeated.