Åke Edwardson - The Shadow Woman

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.