Åke Edwardson: The Shadow Woman

He lathered up, feeling his testicles tighten. Two nights before, Angela had come home from a double shift at the hospital. In the morning hours they’d played the beast with two backs, and he’d felt young again and strong; the orgasm had surged through him for so long that he’d cried out.

But when he moved afterward, it was with the relaxed motion of an old man. She lay on her side and looked at him. Yet again he gazed in awe at the contours of her hips, at her hair, which partially concealed her face. The ends were wet, of a darker hue.

“You think you’re using me, but it’s the other way around,” she said, and twirled her finger slowly in the thick hair on his chest.

“Surely nobody here’s using anyone.”

“But I’ve come to the conclusion that we need something more than just sex.”

“What kind of nonsense is that?”

“The fact that we need more than just sex?”

“The suggestion that all we do is have sex.”

“Well, what else do we do, then?” She took her finger away from his chest.

“Well, right now, for example, we’re having a conversation. A conversation about our relationship.”

“It might be the first time ever.” She sat up in bed. “One conversation for ten couplings.”

“You’re kidding me now.”

“Maybe, but just a little. I want something…”

“Like what?”

“Erik.”

“Maturity?”

“Yes.”

“That I should take responsibility for the family I haven’t got yet?”

“This just isn’t enough for me anymore.”

“Not even when you get to use me?”

“Not even then.”

He was thirty-seven and an inspector at the district CID, in homicide. He’d made inspector at the age of thirty-five, a record in Gothenburg and the whole of Sweden, but it meant nothing to him other than that he didn’t have to take orders as often as he used to.

Now he sat alone at the kitchen table, with two slices of toast and a cup of tea, the sweat returning to his hairline as the heat seeped in through the blinds. The thermometer on the shady side of the balcony read eighty-five degrees and it was just eleven o’clock. He had four days left of his second round of vacation. He was going to continue relaxing.

The telephone rang on the hall table, so he left the kitchen and said his name into the receiver.

“This is Steve, if you remember.” The voice was Scottish.

“How could anyone forget the knight from Croydon?”

Steve Macdonald was a detective chief inspector in South London, and they had worked together on a difficult case earlier in the year. They had become friends-at least Winter saw it that way.

“If anyone’s a knight here, it’s you,” Macdonald said. “Shining armor and all that.”

“I think that’s history now.”

“What?”

“I’m unshaven. And I haven’t had a haircut for months.”

“Did I make such a powerful impression on you? As for me, I’ve been over on Jermyn Street, looking for a Baldessarini suit. Thought it might command more respect. If you’d stayed at the station much longer, they would have started taking orders from you.”

“How’d it work out?”

“What?”

“Did you find a suit?”

“No. Mere mortals can’t afford the stuff you wear. I have to ask you again, by the way-is it true that you don’t pine for your monthly paycheck like the rest of us?”

“Where did you get that idea?”

“Something you said last spring.”

“Clearly, I didn’t listen carefully enough to what I was saying.”

“So you do depend on your paycheck?”

“What do you think? I’ve got a little money in the bank, but no great sum.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“What difference does it make?”

“I don’t know. I just wondered.”

“So that’s why you called?”

“Actually, I called to hear how you’re doing. It was tough going last spring.”

“Yes.”

“Well?”

“What?”

“How’s it going?”

“It’s hot. Summer’s supposed to be over. I’m still on vacation.”

Winter heard the static breaking up the signal as it crossed the heated waters, then Macdonald clearing his throat softly.

“Give us a call sometime.”

“I might come over before Christmas to do a bit of shopping,” Winter said.

“Cigarettes? Shirts?”

“Jeans, I was thinking.”

“Careful that you don’t end up like me.”

“I could say the same.”

They said good-bye, and Winter hung up. Suddenly he felt dizzy and grabbed hold of the tabletop. After a few seconds everything around him settled down, and he went back to the kitchen and took a sip of his tea, which had gone cold. He considered brewing a fresh pot but instead took the cup and saucer to the sink.

He put on a pair of shorts and a cotton shirt and slipped his feet into a pair of sandals. Just when he grabbed the door handle, he heard the postman’s trudge outside and the mail crashed down onto his feet.

Included in the pile, along with the latest issue of Police and a couple of envelopes from the bank, was a notice for a heavy envelope, weighing over a kilo, which could be picked up at the post office on the Avenyn.

The heat was so thick that the square at Vasaplatsen rippled before him like the dazzle of glass filament. A handful of people were standing in the shade of the streetcar shelter, their bodies black silhouettes from across the park.

He fetched his bicycle from the basement and rode along Vasagatan, up past Skanstorget. His shirt was wet before he reached Linnéplatsen, and that was a nice feeling. He decided to keep heading south instead of biking to Långedrag and pedaled in the stark light all the way out to the beach at Askimsbadet. There he took a break and drank a can of soda water and after that continued past the golf course at Hovås and down past Järkholmen, parking among the other bicycles along the path. Then he climbed down to the little beach and plunged into the water as quickly as he could.

He lay in the sun and read, and when it got to be too hot, he went back into the water. It was his vacation.

ANETA DJANALI HAD HER JAW SMASHED IN THE MINUTES JUST after midnight. She’d been walking southward on Östra Hamngatan, and there were people all around her. She wasn’t on duty, but even if she had been it wouldn’t have made any difference, since homicide detectives didn’t wear a uniform on the job.

She’d been accompanied by a girlfriend, and the two women had caught sight of an assault in progress a ways down on the darker Kyrkogatan: three men punching and kicking someone lying on the ground. The men looked up when Djanali called out and took a few steps into the side street. Seconds later one of them hit her in the face as he passed, a single blow; she felt no pain at first and then suddenly it filled her entire head and spread down toward her chest. The men persisted as she lay on the ground, the one who first hit her shouting something about the color of her skin. This was the first time she’d been subjected to violence because of it.

She never lost consciousness. She tried to say something to her friend but nothing came out. Lis looks paler than I’ve ever seen her before, she thought to herself. Maybe it’s a bigger shock for her than for me.

The Gothenburg Party continued around them, people wandering back and forth between the various beer tents and stages. The hot evening was thick with the smell of charcoal grills and people-the streets stinking of booze, and bodies of sweat. The voices were loud, all mixed together, and somewhere in the cacophony of cries Lis had disappeared. This was the third time they’d strolled past that spot this evening. Third time lucky, Djanali thought, aware of the rough asphalt against her cheek. Her head didn’t hurt so much anymore. She saw many bare legs and sandals and boating shoes, and then she was lifted up and carried into a vehicle, which she understood to be an ambulance. She felt someone touch her gently, and then she passed out.