The Shadow Woman (17 page)

“But you feel strongly about this?”

“It is a good idea, admit it.” Winter looked up from the lists that lay in shallow piles on his desk.

“It could be worse,” Ringmar said. “We could be looking for one of the most common models of Volvo.”

“It could be a lot better too,” Winter said. “A Cadillac Eldorado.”

“Why not a Trabant?”

“Fine by me.”

“We can put two guys on it,” Ringmar said after a pause. Two police officers could go into the vehicle registration database and pull up every single owner. “And we’ll start with all the ones currently on the road.”

“Who steals a Ford Escort nowadays?”

“We could always ask Fredrik. His specialty is stolen cars.”

“We can take the rentals first.”

“And the company cars.”

“A Ford Escort? You gotta be kidding me.”

“Small businesses,” Ringmar said, and Winter smiled. “Sole proprietor.”

“And after that, the private individuals,” Winter said.

“Of course, there are some you can discount right from the start.”

“We’ll assign two investigators,” Winter said. “Okay. Let them get started.”

 

Winter was thinking of nothing when he knocked gently and stepped inside the office of the district chief.

The asphalt in front of Ullevi Stadium was empty, a sea of black glittering from all the bits of trash that had been chucked from the cars along Skånegatan.

“I just thought I’d find out how things are going,” Wellman said. “Or how things are, rather.”

“We’re doing everything in our power,” Winter said, and considered whether he should mention the search through the vehicle registration database.

“Have you read this?” Wellman reached for the newspaper before him. “ ‘Police have no leads,’ it says.”

“You know how it is, Henrik.”

“You—We do have some leads, don’t we?”

Winter saw a big bus drive across the sea of asphalt and come to a stop. No one got out. He couldn’t tell whether the engine was turned off. “Absolutely,” he said. “Surely I don’t have to submit a report on that, do I? To you.”

“No no. But there’s a press conference this afternoon.”

“As if I didn’t know.”

“And of course it’s really all bullshit,” Wellman said. “All this damn commotion.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t like it when we don’t have a name. When we have a name, it’s a hell of a lot easier to manage everything. Like a straightforward drug deal or an aggravated assault or a hit-and-run driver.”

“You much prefer that kind of thing?”

“You know what I mean.”

“If we have more answers from the start, it’s easier to come up with leads.”

“W—What?”

“You mean that it’s easier if everything is easier from the start.”

“Now you’re parsing words, Erik.”

“Was there anything else, Henrik?”

“No. You know your business.”

“As long as I don’t get disturbed all the time,” Winter said.

Still no one had emerged from the bus. Winter saw a woman walk up to it and stop next to the driver’s window. It looked as if she was speaking to the driver. He saw how she suddenly took a few steps backward and then turned around and started running away, out toward Skånegatan and across the parking lot toward the police station—straight for the building in which he was standing—and he saw how her features became more distinct. She disappeared beneath him. She had looked horrified.

“Excuse me,” Winter said, and left the room and took the elevator down to the lobby.

THE WOMAN WINTER HAD SEEN RUN ACROSS SKÅNEGATAN WAS
hanging halfway through the glass window in reception. Winter could see the precinct commander, with a contingent of five or six men around him, on his way forward. A couple of homicide detectives were loafing next to them. Otherwise the hall and waiting room were filled with the usual mix of bicycle messengers, uniformed patrol officers, reception staff, lawyers, and their clients—a mixture of high and low: junkies on their way up or down, whores, car thieves, shoplifters from all social classes, half-drunken petty criminals, deputy directors who’d been tossed out of bars and returned later with a crowbar, hungover female executives who in frustration had violently resisted the police. Then there were the ones who’d just come by to fill out a form, who were applying for a passport and had lost their way, who’d been missing someone long enough, or who’d just wandered in there, God knows why.

The woman pointed at the bus outside Ullevi. Winter moved closer. He wasn’t doing anything just then anyway.

She explained that there was a man sitting in the bus with a little boy and that he was threatening to shoot the child and himself and at the same time blow up the bus. He had shown her the weapon and a string or something that he said he could pull and then the bus would explode.

“Cordon off the area,” the PC said to a uniformed woman standing next to him.

Winter could see the order getting passed on, the movement intensifying in the cramped space next to the reception desk, and the police officers preparing to go outside and join up with their colleagues who had been called back from elsewhere in the city. He saw the bus, now from a different perspective. It looked smaller, as if the sun had shrunk it as it stood unprotected out there in the empty square.

“Contact Bertelsen at immigration,” Winter heard the PC shout to someone who was already heading off into the bustle. He had now heard enough to know that sitting in the bus was a desperate man who’d finally made a choice, when he no longer had any choice. He guessed it was yet another man who wasn’t welcome in Sweden, about to be sent out into orbit around the world, if he survived that long. Yet another space refugee, a stateless human being circling the planet in rusting hulks that never put into port—or in cattle cars that clattered through all the marshlands and deserts of the earth without ever stopping at any its oases. He might shoot himself and the boy, Winter thought. It wouldn’t be the first time.

Skånegatan was quickly cordoned off and the traffic redirected. The curious were congregating, as if the tragedy had already been beamed out by the fastest media. And maybe it had. The police station’s tasteful lobby was teeming with reporters.

Winter walked out. Onlookers came from all directions and had to be forcibly removed since the police officers hadn’t yet managed to get all the cordon tape put up. The Gothenburg Party has been replaced by a new spectacle, and I’m no better than all the other bystanders, he thought, and walked back inside and rode the elevator up to his office, which faced the canal.

He glanced out the window and saw people coming across the grass, a sudden accretion of matter where there had previously been nothing but wind and heat. It was like someone crumbling a loaf of bread in the middle of the empty sea and thousands of seagulls suddenly shrieking down from the sky.

The phone on Winter’s desk rang.

“Yes?”

“Bertil here. There are some people shooting at each other over at Vårväderstorget.”

“What?”

“The witness who called three minutes ago said that it’s like an all-out gang war, and now we have a car out there confirming that shots have been fired.”

“Busy day today.”

“Did I miss something else?”

“There’s a hostage situation out front, or whatever you want to call it.”

“I’ve been on the phone the whol—Are you serious? A hostage situation?”

“A bus. But never mind that now. Have you had a chance to send someone to—Where did you say it was again?”

“Vårväderstorget square. In His—”

“I know where it is.”

“Like I said, there’s a radio car on the scene, but no one from the department. I don’t have a single fucking officer—”

“Let’s go,” Winter said. “Do you have a car ready?”

“Yes.”

 

They drove out via Smålandsgatan. Winter heard the megaphones and thought about the boy sitting with the man on the bus. Maybe they were father and son. He felt a sudden rage, a nausea that punched at his chest.

“What’s going on?” Ringmar was looking in the rearview mirror.

“I don’t know much more than you do. Except that there’s a man sitting in a bus intent on killing himself and the boy he has with him. There may be other people there too.”

Ringmar sounded like he let out a sigh.

“He may also have an explosive device,” Winter said.

“And here we are on our way to another corner of the event center,” Ringmar said.

Winter looked at him askance just as the radio crackled to life with an update about Vårväderstorget. Four shots had been fired from the roofs of the buildings surrounding the square. And it seemed that two men had been shooting at each other but had disappeared. The police were now searching along the rooftops and on the ground.

“What the fu—Now somebody’s shooting again!” the voice was heard to say, and then the radio cut out.

“What the hell.” Ringmar pounded on the radio. It crackled but there was nothing intelligible. “That sounded like Jonne Stålnacke.”

They drove across the bridge and continued down Hjalmar Brantingsgatan. As they neared Vårväderstorget, Winter made out two patrol cars and people lying on the ground. When they got closer, he realized they were people who had taken cover, but he saw no blood around the cars or the people.

They stopped the car and ran, hunched over, to the two police officers who’d crawled down behind their car. One was holding a walkie-talkie and nodded when he recognized Ringmar and Winter. It was Sverker. A few days ago they’d seen him investigating an accident on Korsvägen. Winter thought about Sverker’s cancer and his return to the job.

“Fucking gangsters,” Sverker said.

“What happened?” Winter asked.

“Somebody started shooting—that’s what happened,” the police sergeant said, and suddenly a shot rang out close by.

“It’s a fucking war,” Sverker said.

Someone started screaming somewhere up ahead. The voice went silent and soon started up again, more softly and drawn out.

“What is that?” Ringmar asked.

Winter stood with his knees bent and slowly lifted his face and peered through the windows of the car. Thirty yards ahead, on the asphalt, lay a uniformed police officer, and he was the one who was screaming—more like shouting now. He’s probably been shot, Winter thought, since he seems unable to move. Unless he has chosen to lie still. But he was shouting. Winter saw no blood, but the man was lying at a strange angle with his leg pointing straight out. Now he moved an arm, in a kind of wave. He fell silent.

“Good God, it’s Jonne,” Sverker said, also looking through the windows. “He moved forward when it seemed like they’d stopped shooting. It’s Jonne Stålnacke.”

“Do you have a megaphone?” Winter asked.

“In the car. I’ll get it.” Sverker cautiously opened the door. “We’ve still got this one from a traffic accident the other day. It ought to be standard equipment.”

Winter took the megaphone and called out, “THIS IS THE POLICE. WE HAVE A WOUNDED OFFICER WHO NEEDS IMMEDIATE MEDICAL ATTENTION. THERE MAY BE OTHER INJURED PEOPLE HERE. PUT DOWN YOUR WEAP—”

And then there was another explosion, and Winter dived headlong onto the street and scraped the hand that was holding the device. Someone fired again, from above. The shot seemed farther away, like the one he’d heard before. Maybe they’re pulling back, Winter thought. The enemy is retreating. Or was that just one of them? They had been shooting at each other, after all.

He raised the megaphone again and saw that he was bleeding from the knuckles and fingers of his right hand.

“THIS IS THE POLICE. PUT DOWN YOUR WEAPONS IMMEDIATELY. THERE ARE PEOPLE INJURED HERE. THIS IS THE POLICE. PUT DOWN YOUR WEAPONS AT ONCE. WE HAVE INJURED PEOPLE IN DESPERATE NEED OF EMERGENCY MEDICAL ATTENTION. PUT DOWN YOUR WEAPONS IMMEDIATELY.”

On the road behind him, an ambulance whined its way closer. Two ambulances. He turned around. The cars had stopped twenty yards away. People were standing along the other side of the road, by the thousands it looked like. Around him lay police officers and civilians who’d happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or the right place but the wrong ti—

Another shot, but now in the distance like a New Year’s firecracker in another neighborhood. The injured police officer mumbled something. He’s in shock, Winter thought. He could die.

“We have to go get Jonne,” Sverker said. “There could be more people lying out there.”

“THIS IS THE POLICE. PUT AWAY YOUR WEAPONS. WE ARE GOING TO STAND UP NOW AND MOVE OUT ONTO THE SQUARE. WE’RE GETTING UP NOW. THIS IS THE POLICE. PUT DOWN YOUR WEAPONS. THERE ARE A LOT OF PEOPLE HERE. WE HAVE TO BRING UP AN AMBULANCE. THERE ARE INJURED PEOPLE HERE.”

The ambulances behind Winter honked their horns, backing up his words. People all around gazed at him and at the long and narrow square, the roofs, the shop signs. Sverker held his service weapon in his hand.

“Put that away,” Winter said.

Jonne cried out again. No one was shooting anymore. Winter tried to see if there was anyone on the rooftops, but the sun stung his eyes and made the buildings look like they were being corroded by a chalk white light.

“THIS IS THE POLICE. WE’RE GOING TO MOVE OUT ONTO THE SQUARE AND THEN AN AMBULANCE IS GOING TO FOLLOW. WE’RE MOVING FORWARD NOW.”

He stood up and, holding the megaphone, slowly walked around the car. Clever idiot. He took a few steps forward, as if walking on thin ice, and continued over toward the injured police officer. Jonne Stålnacke lay still, but Winter could hear a low murmur, as if he were talking to himself.

Winter bent down over Jonne, dropped to his knees. Jonne’s face was white like the sky around the sun. His lips were invisible. His groin area was soaked in blood—they hadn’t been able to see this when they were crouching behind the car. Winter thought about how clean Jonne’s socks and shoes were. The leather shone like a mirror. Sverker jolted up and waved vigorously to the ambulance, which popped the clutch and screeched toward them. It was like a signal to everyone else who was lying down. People stood, but many of them were shaking so badly they had to sit right back down again. Winter heard crying. An entire square in shock. He caught a whiff of excrement from a man who tried to walk toward the street. More ambulances arrived on the scene. A streetcar passed by, as if it had emerged from another world. Uniformed police officers took care of people and looked to see if there were any more injured along with the paramedics and doctors. Stålnacke was carried into the ambulance and driven off. Winter suddenly felt terribly thirsty.