The Shadow Woman (7 page)

“No.”

“I always feel that way when we have a murder victim with no identity. Well, you know. No peace.”

Ringmar nodded.

“I’d like to hold off on the newspapers and posters for twenty-four hours,” Winter said.

“Posters? We’re gonna start putting up posters?”

“Yes. Our counterparts in London have started working with them, and I want to test it out here.”

“Is it producing any results in London?”

“I don’t really know.”

“I see.”

“I’ll write up a draft tonight.”

“What are you going to use?”

“I don’t really know that either. Can’t we use this?” Winter held up the image of the dead woman’s face.

“Let me see,” Ringmar said, and reached for the photo. He studied the portrait and handed it back.

“Doesn’t really sit well. But I guess we’ll have to if nothing happens soon. Freshly deceased and a reasonably good picture. It’ll probably be the first time it’s been done in Gothenburg.”

Ringmar stood up and stretched his back, then raised his arms above his head and groaned. “It’s evening for me,” he said.

“Pull yourself together,” Winter said.

“And then there’s the press conference,” Ringmar said, and sat back down again with one leg crossed over the other. His khaki pants and short-sleeved gabardine shirt were infinitely more elegant than Winter’s shorts and washed-out hockey shirt.

“Press conference? Who ordered that? Birgersson?”

“No. They tried to get hold of you when you were on your way in from Östra. Wellman.”

Henrik Wellman was district chief of CID. He was the one homicide inspectors had to turn to for money for any trips they had to make. Or new cars.

Above Wellman there was District Police Commissioner Judith Söderberg. After that, God.

“Is Henrik going to be there himself?” Winter asked with a smile.

“You have to understand him,” Ringmar said. “Young woman murdered, unidentified. Parliament isn’t back in session yet. The hockey season hasn’t gotten started. The press is all over this. A summer murder.”

“A summer murder,” Winter repeated. “We’re taking part in a classic summer murder. A tabloid’s wet dream.”

“It’s the fault of this goddamn weather,” Ringmar said. “If it hadn’t been for this unrelenting heat, it would have been a different thing. For the press, that is.”

“A fall murder,” Winter said. “If it is murder. It is murder, of course, but it’s not official yet. Well. Maybe it’s a good idea to have a conference with our friends from the press. I assume I’ll be the only one representing us.”

“At two o’clock. See you later.”

Ringmar stood up and walked out.

They needed a room now, a house or an apartment. If they couldn’t get a name, they needed a space to start in. The possibilities would fade quickly if they didn’t get an address to work from.

He took an envelope from the top left-hand drawer and opened it. Inside were more photographs from the dump site. He tried to imagine what had happened in the minutes leading up to the woman being deposited there. She could have been carried through the forest, across the bog. That was possible for a strong man. She didn’t weigh more than 120 pounds.

She had been carried. So far they hadn’t found any drag marks in the parking lot or on the path or in the grass. The parking lot. Had she been driven to the parking lot and hauled out of the car and carried over to the ditch? That was a possibility. The two stolen cars? Why not one of them? He would soon know. Somebody kills someone and walks down the street and steals a car and carries out the body and drives off? Would you do that if you had murdered somebody, Winter? Would you drive to Delsjö Lake?

He thought about the lake. Perhaps she’d come in a boat. He had people combing the entire lakefront. Almost seven miles of shoreline. How did one go about concealing a boat?

Could there have been some jogger out running around the lake at that hour? You never know with joggers.

There’s always a meaning behind the choice of disposal site, even if the murderer himself isn’t always aware of it. There’s a clue hidden somewhere in his choice. Something made him drive there of all places. Something in his past.

The dump site. We’ll start from there. I’ll start from there again. I’ll drive back there.

He put the envelope back in the desk drawer, closed it, and stood up so quickly that he felt dizzy for a split second.

 

Winter felt hungry earlier but the feeling was gone now. Still, he needed to eat something. He drove his car the short distance to the Chinese restaurant on Folkungagatan and ate a quick lunch and drank a quart of water.

WINTER LISTENED TO THE LOCAL NEWS AS HE PASSED LISEBERG
Amusement Park. “The police have no leads yet in the . . .” It was true, no matter who it was that told Radio Gothenburg. This afternoon he would clarify what they didn’t know.

Various wheels were spinning around in the amusement park. It struck him that he hadn’t been in there in many years.

The asphalt was soft beneath his tires. Car and road melted into each other, as if both were disintegrating. He passed a sign that measured the temperature of the air and road surface: 93°F in the air, 120°F on the road. Jesus Christ.

After the Kallebäck junction he saw a police sobriety checkpoint on the other side of the road up the hill. A uniformed officer cordially waved drivers over to the curb. Another officer, with a video camera, stood at the roadside a little farther on.

Winter saw him in his rearview mirror. The camera was recording the oncoming traffic. But then he saw the guy train the camera on him. That meant he had been caught on the tape; he and the other drivers headed in the opposite direction were registered, even if they weren’t the ones the police were primarily interested in.

He turned right at the Delsjö junction and continued underneath the highway and past the recreation area. The sweltering heat kept people away—nobody in the parking lot or on the grass.

He was about to turn off to the spot where they’d found the woman when he decided to continue along the old road, underneath the highway that roared right alongside. After barely half a mile he reached an intersection and turned right into a combined parking lot and bus stop. He stopped the car and turned off the engine, got out and lit a Corps, and leaned against the side of the car.

The policeman with the video camera could be an opening. Hadn’t the traffic department been sending out night patrols for a while? Early mornings? Cameras that could see in the dark? Testing out heat-sensitive cameras?

And wasn’t this test supposed to be concentrating specifically on the eastern districts and arteries?

Winter grabbed the phone from its cradle on the dashboard and called traffic. He introduced himself to the watch commander and asked to be connected to the department chief.

“Walter’s busy.”

“For how long?”

Winter could see the shoulder shrug, could almost hear the sigh from the other end: why can’t this guy call somebody else?

“I asked for how long.”

“Who are you, did you say?”

“Inspector Erik Winter. I’m the deputy chief of homicide.”

“You can’t speak to somebody else?”

“We’re involved in a murder investigation, and it’s very important that I speak to Walter Kronvall.”

“Okay, okay, hang on,” the manly voice said, and Winter waited.

“Yeah, this is Kronvall.”

“Erik Winter here.”

“I was busy.”

“You still are.”

“What?”

“You’re busy with this conversation with me now, Walter. And I’ll get straight to the point. I need to know if you had any cameras out around Boråsleden last night, by the Delsjö junction, or anywhere in the vicinity. Early in the morning. While it was still dark.”

“Speed check?”

“You’d know that better than I would.”

“What’s this about?”

“Haven’t you heard about the murder yet? We got a strangled woman this morn—”

“Oh sure, I know about it. Despite the communications in this place, I might add.”

Winter waited for him to continue. He could feel the sweat around his eyes and where the telephone pressed against his cheek. He sat on the car seat in the shade and wiped his forehead with the back of his right hand.

“You want to know if we were filming in the vicinity, when it was dark. Well, it’s possible. Normally we don’t have that kind of equipment, but we got some in on loan from the boys in the copter unit to test it out a bit. Heat-sensitive cameras. I’ll have to check with the local precinct in Härlanda.”

“Can you do that now?”

“Well, I guess I’d better if you’re going to have any chance of seeing the footage. If they’ve been there, that is.”

“How do you mean?”

“Don’t you know how it works, Chief Inspector? The officers in the video cars peruse the tapes and then rewind them, and then somebody else takes over.”

“The tapes are usually recorded over?”

“Sure. We don’t exactly have infinite resources over here in the traffic department.”

“Then call them, please.”

“Where can I reach you?”

Winter told him and hung up, then rose from his seat and walked across the asphalt to the bus timetable. The first departure of the day was at 0500 hours. The final one left at 2343. Yet another lead to add to all the others in the investigation. An investigation is a great big vacuum cleaner that sucks in everything: witness statements and forensic evidence, sound ideas and crazy hunches, most of it completely irrelevant to the case. Eventually you find things that fit together. Then you can formulate a hypothesis.

The phone in his breast pocket rang. He answered with his name.

“It’s Walter here again. That was good thinking, Winter. It turns out that they were out last night and this morning in the video cars in the eastern part of town.”

“Okay,” Winter said. “Were they set up along the Boråsleden?”

“You bet. And a couple of the cameras that were used last night haven’t been reused since.”

“Is that all the cameras?” asked Winter.

“I’m not following you.”

“You said that there were a couple of cameras. Were there more than that being used in the area we’re talking about?”

“No, not as I understood it.”

“I need to see those tapes.”

“Where?”

“Can you get them over to homicide by this afternoon?”

“Absolutely. We have special courier cars set aside just for that kind of thing,” Kronvall said, and Winter gave a short laugh.

“Thanks for your help.”

“If this solves the case, then we want credit.”

“Of course.”

“Chief Walter Kronvall of the traffic department provided the crucial assist. Something like that.”

“Here at homicide we don’t forget our friends,” Winter said, then hung up and lingered next to the timetable.

He thought once again about the woman who just a short time ago lay so close by and had been carried there like a slaughtered animal. A victim—and perhaps quarry. Her nameless body was itself a message about what happened. Why? He thought of her half-open mouth and exposed teeth. Like a silent plea. A distant cry.

Winter drove back to the area where the woman was discovered. The grass in the ditch still looked flattened from the weight of her body. He turned around and followed his own tracks with his gaze. It was a long way to carry someone, dead or alive. A dead body was heavy but offered no resistance.

Whoever carried her need not have been a giant. Fear of discovery could make a murderer strong, assuming that he even cared, that is. Or had several people walked there in the sparse light of dawn? More people filled with madness, rage, adrenaline.

She could have been carried over the rough fields, through the fog. Why not?

The police tried to work their way through the terrain within a reasonable radius, but they couldn’t go stomping around haphazardly. If there were too many of them, everything became haphazard.

A shot made Winter start. Another shot shattered the early afternoon silence of the forest and disturbed the low drone of the cars driving alongside. The hard sounds sent echoes above the birch trees and across the water beyond. The shooting ranges were back in use.

 

“And the sun also rises,” Ringmar said, knocking on the open door before Winter had had a chance to wring his shirt dry.

“I like the sun.”

“When you’re ready, the gentlemen of the press are waiting.”

“It’ll have to be quick. I want to look at these tapes as soon as I’m done.”

Winter explained the videocassettes to Ringmar as they walked down the corridors. The representatives of the media looked like they were on their way to the beach: shorts, thin shirts, someone in sunglasses. Cool guy, Winter thought, and took his place in front of a lectern at the far end of the room.

“We don’t know who she is yet,” he answered to the first question. “And we may need your help to find that out.”

“Do you have a photo?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Hans Bülow from the
Göteborgs-Tidningen
was one of the few journalists Winter knew by name.

“We’ve taken photos of the victim’s body. We don’t usually release pictures like that to the public, as I’m sure you’re aware.”

“But if you have to?”

“We’ll get back to you on that.”

“But she was murdered?”

“I can’t answer that yet. It could be suicide.”

“So she took her own life and then drove out to Delsjö Lake and lay down in a ditch?” said a woman from the local radio news.

“Who said anything about her dying anywhere else?” he said.

The woman looked at Hans Bülow out of the corner of her eye. The latest issue of
GT
had an article that speculated about what might have happened.