Åke Edwardson: The Shadow Woman

Fredrik Halders received the news when he arrived at the police station at seven thirty the following morning. He was a buzz-cut police detective who busted chops whenever he got the chance, preferably with Aneta Djanali and preferably about her skin color and background. He sometimes came across as unintelligent and was called a racist and a sexist, but he let it run off his scalp.

Alone following a divorce three years before, he was forty-four and always pissed off-a violent man with a hell of a lot of festering, unresolved issues, though he’d rather jerk off in public than see a shrink. The nervous energy surging through his body could lead him into a very dark place-he knew that already-and this only intensified when he heard what had happened to Djanali.

“No witnesses?” he shouted.

“Yeah, they-,” Lars Bergenhem said.

“Where are they?”

“The girlfr-”

“Let me at ’em! Nah, fuck it.” He made for the door.

“Where are you going?”

“Where the hell do you think?”

“She’s sedated. Or at least she was when they were setting her jaw.”

“How do you know that?”

“I just got off the phone with Sahlgrenska Hospital.”

“Why didn’t they call me ? When have you ever been on assignment with her?”

“They don’t know that,” Bergenhem said quietly.

“What about the witnesses?”

“I’ve been trying to tell you that Aneta’s girlfriend should be coming up here in,” he checked his watch, “about fifteen minutes.”

“Was she there?”

“Yes.”

“Nobody else?”

“You know there’s a party going on there. There were masses of people, which, of course, means nobody saw a thing.”

“Christ al-fucking-mighty.”

Bergenhem didn’t answer.

“You like this city?” Halders asked. He’d sat down, stood up, and sat down again.

“It’s a modern city. Entering a new, more nuanced age.”

“More nuan-What the hell does that mean?”

“There are good things and bad things,” Bergenhem said, instantly aware that he’d let a worn-out phrase slip from his tongue. “You can’t tell a whole city to go to hell.”

“Two people go for a walk along Hamngatan. Some bastard comes up and smashes one of their heads in. There’s your nuanced city for you.”

Bergenhem said nothing. How many violent provocations had they had over the past month? Fifteen? It was like gearing up for war. A guerrilla war between all the tribes of Gothenburg. And yesterday there was a melee.

“Who’s gonna talk to the girl?” Halders’s voice sounded far away. “The girlfriend?”

“I am and you can too, if you want.”

“You do it,” Halders said. “I’ll get over to the hospital. How’d it go for that other poor bastard, by the way?”

“He’s alive.”

Halders drove impatiently, didn’t even notice that the air coming through the AC vent was hotter than the air in the car.

Aneta Djanali was sitting up in bed when he came in, or rather she was propped up with pillows. Her face was covered in bandages.

She’s just woken up and I shouldn’t be here, he thought, pulling a chair to the bed and sitting. “We’re gonna get them,” he said.

She didn’t move. Then she closed her eyes, and Halders wasn’t sure if she had fallen asleep.

“By the time you wake up we’ll have cuffed those bastards,” he said. “Even the black citizens of this city deserve to be able to walk the streets safely after dark.”

She didn’t respond to that either. The mountain of pillows behind her looked uncomfortable.

“In a situation like this you gotta think it would have been better if you’d stayed back in Ouagadougou.” It was an old joke between them. Djanali was born at Östra Hospital in Gothenburg. “Ouagadougou.”

As if the word would calm her nerves.

“This is actually a unique opportunity,” he said after a few minutes of silence. “For once, I can say important things without you butting in and getting all superior. I can voice my opinions. I can explain to you what it’s all about.”

Djanali opened her eyes and peered at Halders with a look he recognized. She’s injured all right, but that injury is limited to the lower part of her skull, he thought. This is the only chance I’ll ever have to get a word in.

“It’s all about keeping your cool,” he said. “When we catch those bastards, we’re going to keep our cool for as long as we can, and then we’re going to make one or two mistakes that prove we’re human too. I mean, cops are also human beings.” Halders paused for a moment before continuing. “They say Winter went a little loopy after last spring. He’s been walking around all summer in a pair of cutoff jeans and a T-shirt that says ‘London Calling’ on it. Rumor has it he’s been up to the department to pick up some papers and has a beard and long hair.”

Aneta Djanali closed her eyes again.

“I miss you,” he said.

Winter broke off his vacation almost the moment Bertil Ringmar called with the quick rundown. It wasn’t out of duty, more the opposite. It was a selfish act, maybe therapeutic.

“You’re not needed here yet,” Ringmar said.

“I’ve gotten enough dirt between my toes,” Winter answered.

In the afternoon he stepped into his office and angled the blinds upward. It smelled of dust and work, though the surface of the desk was clear. An ideal state, he thought. Maybe I can be like the chief-keep investigations off my desk by shoving them in drawers.

Sture Birgersson was the head of the homicide department, and he had the good sense to hand over all real responsibility to his deputy. That meant Winter was in command of thirty homicide detectives who worked to control the violence in society.

“Close the door,” Winter said to Ringmar, who had just stepped across the threshold. “What’s going on?”

“We’re going through all the known troublemakers, but they could have come from out of town,” Ringmar said.

“You think so?”

“That’s what we’re hearing,” Ringmar said. “But the situation out there is pretty confused right now. I don’t know how much you know, but I guess you watched the news.”

“The demonstrations?”

“Yeah, but it doesn’t stop there. The city is in a state of unrest, or whatever you wanna call it. Over the last few weeks we’ve had about a dozen gang showdowns, or close to that. Yeah, and a lot of brawls too. Who knows how many ethnicities have been involved, Scandinavians included. It’s really nasty, Erik. Maybe there are some bastards trying to fan the flames from on high. Steering it, in certain areas anyway. There’s something… I don’t know what it is. Hate? Something that’s causing people to get violent or, so far, mostly to threaten violence. But still. We’re trying to do what we can.”

Ringmar was the homicide department’s third inspector and head of the department’s surveillance unit: ten officers, with tentacles reaching down into the criminal underworld, assigned the task of keeping tabs on the city’s worst troublemakers and professional criminals.

“Aneta isn’t exactly unknown in this town,” Ringmar said. “I think they’d think twice about hurting one of ours unless it’s a case of extreme self-defense.”

“Maybe that’s just what it was,” Winter said.

“What?”

“Since we think they know that we know that they know that we think they would never do anything like that, maybe that’s just what happened,” Winter said.

Ringmar didn’t answer.

“What do you say?”

“Well, that’s a classic dilemma, isn’t it? If I’ve understood you correctly.”