The Shadow Woman (22 page)

“Leather jackets are hot when it’s ninety degrees out.”

“Hells Angels show up in suits these days.” Ringmar glanced out of the corner of his eye at Winter’s graphite-colored Corneliani suit and the Oscar Jacobson coat that lay in his lap.

“If they show up at all,” Winter said. “They’re like British football hooligans.”

“How so?”

“You never see them anymore. But they’re still there.”

“We’ve got a close eye on our Angels,” Ringmar said. “At least we thought we did.”

They turned up onto Flygvädersgatan and found their bearings from a sign that said “North Biskopsgården.” Off to the right, Winter could see the enormous tenement blocks, the top floors of which disappeared into the low sky. The buildings were so tall they seemed to move away from him.

The satellite dishes on the building sides were like uncovered eyes looking toward outer space, or ears that had been turned into steel to home in on voices and movements in countries that the people here dreamed their dreams about, or open mouths that called out for answers, thought Winter.

 

Karin Sohlberg was waiting outside the office in a raincoat. Winter was surprised by her Asian features, since on the phone she sounded like she’d grown up in Gråberget or Lindholmen. And maybe she had. He thought briefly about Aneta and why he’d been surprised just now.

Inside, she invited them to sit, but Ringmar remained standing. She did too, with her raincoat unbuttoned. Winter had sat down in a chair in front of the desk but stood up again when no one else sat down.

“So the September rent for this woman’s apartment has been paid,” he said. One might well ask what we’re doing here, then, he thought. “That was on the first, you said?”

“Yes. Right after the weekend.”

“So no reminder was sent out?”

“No, but that’s not my depart—No, it takes longer than that. First they check the account. The reminder gets sent out after five or six days.”

“And you haven’t seen Helene Andersén and her daughter for a while?”

“No. But I’m honestly not sure if I remember them. I haven’t been here for very long.”

“What was the daughter’s name?” Ringmar asked.

“Jennie.”

“How do you know that?”

Sohlberg mentioned the tenant lists she had, and indicated with her hand that they were lying on her desk.

“And this old lady lives there too?” Winter asked.

“Yes. Ester Bergman.”

“Then let’s go,” Winter said. “Is there a locksmith nearby?”

Sohlberg nodded.

The entrance was longer than Winter had expected, which must mean the apartments were long and narrow.

It was a large courtyard—impossible to see across to the other side in the fog. Maybe this is how it always is for Ester, Karin Sohlberg thought. Right now I’m seeing what she sees.

A few children were playing on a tangle of monkey bars in the middle of the courtyard. A child shouted something, but Winter couldn’t hear what. The shout didn’t reach very far, perhaps because of all the buildings.

They turned left into a second doorway. Winter read the names on the board just inside: Sabror, Ali, Khajavi, Gülmer, Sanchez, and Bergman. Two apartments per floor. They walked up the first half flight, and Karin Sohlberg pressed the bell. Winter noticed Ringmar’s grave expression. We feel the same way, he thought. Damn it! I said I’d come alone. But then the old lady opened the door as if she’d been standing just inside waiting for the ringer to sound.

They drank a cup of boiled coffee that clutched at the gut. Winter accepted the offer of a refill and caught a look from Karin Sohlberg. It smelled dusty and sweet in the apartment, as it did in old people’s homes.

“So you haven’t seen Helene and her daughter for some time, Mrs. Bergman?” He was trying to sound gentle.

“I didn’t know what her name was.”

“The girl’s name is Jennie,” Winter said.

“She had red hair,” Ester Bergman said.

“Yes.”

“What’s happened to them?”

“We don’t know,” Winter said, leaning forward. “That’s why we’re here.”

“Well, surely something must have happened—otherwise you wouldn’t be here.”

“We received your letter, Mrs. Bergman, and that’s why we’re here.”

“Are you really a police officer?” Ester Bergman squinted her eyes at Winter.

Winter set down his cup. “Yes.”

“You’re so young,” Ester Bergman said. Still wet behind the ears, not that you can see them. He could do with a haircut. Aren’t policemen supposed to have short hair? The other one has short hair and he’s older. But he’s not saying anything. “You can’t be much older than her.”

“Than whom?” Winter asked.

“Than her. The mother with the fair hair.”

“So they haven’t been here since it turned . . . Since the weather changed? Since the hot weather ended?”

“They weren’t here then either,” Ester Bergman said. “It was hot and I sat here at this window and didn’t see them.”

 

The stairwell smelled of liquid cleanser. Like in the other entrances, the walls at the bottom were of rough-hewn brick that gave way to yellow plaster. Winter read the list of names: Perez, Al Abtah, Wong, Andersén, Shafai, Gustavsson.

The second floor. Andersén. His temples were throbbing and he saw that Bertil noticed this. What Bertil didn’t know was that he had christened the dead woman Helene a long time ago. But he understood. And hadn’t asked why. Bertil was also clutching at straws in this investigation, as if he could feel them in his hands.

He nodded to the locksmith. They climbed the stairs and stopped in front of a door where a child’s drawing hung a few inches above the nameplate inscribed “H. Andersén.” Winter bent down a little. The drawing was of a ship on water. The sky was divided in two. It was raining to the right of the ship and to the left the sun was shining. The ship had round windows and in one of them you could see two eyes, a nose, and a mouth. The mouth was a straight line. A bit farther down, in the water, the girl had written “jeni.”

Winter straightened and rang the doorbell, the noise so piercing he gave a start. Or else it only sounded that loud inside his head.

He pressed it again and heard the chime disappear, as if into the fog at the other end of the apartment. Ringmar stooped and lifted the hatch to the letter slot with a gloved hand and tried to peer inside. He saw colors from all the junk mail and the corners of envelopes.

Winter rang the doorbell a third time. It was the same sound, and he suddenly wished himself away from there. He closed his eyes and swallowed, and the pounding in his head subsided again. He nodded to the locksmith, and the man turned the key he had ready in the cylinder. There was no deadbolt above.

The door opened outward. They saw the little pile of papers on the carpet inside and the darkness of the hallway. A window was visible in the far room like a dim rectangle of light. Winter asked the others to wait and then stepped into the apartment after putting on the plastic shoe covers he’d removed from his coat pocket. In the silence he heard a humming from the refrigerator that he could now see to his left through the kitchen doorway. It smelled of silence in there and of dust that had collected in the stagnant air. He continued on. To the right was a door that was closed, while straight ahead lay what had to be the living room. Winter’s concentration was like an iron hand clenched tightly around his brain. His gun was chaffing in his armpit more palpably than ever, and he felt a powerful urge to draw his weapon. He looked at the closed door, then moved cautiously through the open doorway and into the living room. He saw a couch and table and armchairs. A small glass cabinet and a TV. A chest of drawers. Dead plants on two narrow shelves beneath the windows. A carpet on the floor. A painting of an Indian woman on the wall above the couch. Winter backed up and drew his weapon. He stood in front of the shut door and pressed down the handle and opened it with a jerk, in the same moment pressing back up against the wall in the hallway. He leaned in toward the room. It was long and narrow, with two beds at either end, the smaller one against the far wall. Along the short wall next to him were wardrobes, one with the doors open. The wall above the little bed was stapled with drawings. The window was closed and the room was hot—summer had remained trapped inside here. The sun still shone in several spots above the girl’s bed. It was raining in a few of the drawings. In others there was both rain and sunshine. I wonder what that means, Winter thought. He turned his gaze toward the larger bed. Next to it stood a little bedside table that held a telephone and an empty glass. There was a newspaper lying there too and a framed color photograph of a fair-haired mother with her red-haired little girl. Winter moved closer. The woman in the photo was smiling a little smile that barely showed any teeth, and that was Helene. He thought, as he stood there in front of the little frame, that death hadn’t done all that much to her face. Helene was Helene. They’d finally made progress in the hunt for her killer, but he felt as yet no satisfaction as a hunter. It was only now that it really began—this investigation that had been in the process of closing. Helene had been given back her name. The little girl was smiling in the photo, wider and more openly than her mother. The girl’s name was Jennie, and she wasn’t here. At first Winter had felt relieved that he hadn’t fou—But before he could finish thinking that thought, it gave way to another almost just as unspeakable, unthinkable. In the hunt for the killer they would also be searching for the child. They had had a body without a name, and now they had that name. But they now also had a name without a body. The thought struck him hard and wouldn’t leave him.

OFFICERS FROM THE FORENSICS DEPARTMENT’S CRIME SCENE
unit swabbed ninhydrin on the newspaper that lay on Helene Andersén’s bedside table and applied the chemical to other loose objects. The ninhydrin method allowed them to lift fingerprints that were left long ago. Salts and proteins from people’s sweat penetrate paper and stay there, like a handshake through time.

Prints on steel could not be polished away. They were like etchings. There were even methods for finding fingerprints on wet paper.

The officers dusted the apartment’s surfaces with the black charcoal powder Winter knew Beier didn’t like. The iron in the powder rusted when it became damp and left ugly marks.

The three technicians searched for prints by the light switches, around doors, tables, and other surfaces that hands may have touched. They dusted with powder and then waited for it to fully adhere to the print residue, which they would then lift using tape.

The danger was not actually getting the print onto the tape, which sometimes happened when it was too firmly attached. In the few instances where this seemed likely, the fingerprint was photographed before an attempt was made to lift it. The photographer always used black-and-white film.

 

Karin Sohlberg was crying. Winter sat opposite her in the residential services office.

“Ester was right,” she said.

“Yes.”

“What’s she saying now?”

“I’m going to speak to her shortly.”

“How awful.” Sohlberg blew her nose. “That little girl and everything.”

“You don’t remember her?”

“I feel like I’m completely confused now. But I can’t really remember. Maybe later.”

“Well, I’m afraid we’ll have to ask you to help us with the identification later.”

“What does that mean? Do I have to accompany you to—to the morgue?”

“Yes, I’m afraid so. We’re going to have to ask the old lady to come too. I’m sorry.”

She thought quietly for a moment. “I know it sounds strange, but I haven’t been here very long, after all, like I said. And maybe they were the kind of people who kept to themselves. Or the mother anyway.”

“Kept to themselves?”

“Some people are a little quiet or don’t attract much attention.”

Winter knew what she meant. Loneliness could cause a person to withdraw. Loneliness and poverty. Winter was born into a poor family, but suddenly, while he was still a child, there was money. He’d spent his first years in one of the innumerable high-rises in the outskirts of Gothenburg. It was a world he still remembered.

Karin Sohlberg blew her nose again. A small group of onlookers had gathered outside the entrance to Helene Andersén’s courtyard, fifty yards away, on the other side, and followed a football game between two girls’ teams.

“So her rent is paid,” he said. “Do you know anything more about that?”

“No, nothing other than that’s what I got from the computer at the district office.”

“So you could only see that the rent for that specific apartment was paid?”

“Yes. On the computer.”

“Paid using a preprinted rent slip?”

“Yes, or with a regular deposit slip. Manually, in other words.”