Håkan Nesser - The Living and the Dead in Winsford

‘It’s a pretty long shot, of course,’ he says, closing his notebook. ‘But we need to turn over every stone — that’s the way we work. .’

‘I still don’t understand. Of course it’s not him. How could it possibly be?’

He raises his hand again. ‘I agree that it sounds out of the question. But we thought we ought to look into it even so. After all, there are not many people around called Holinek. So we thought we’d investigate so that we could exclude the possibility — can I assume that’s all right with you?’

‘Of course. Naturally there’s nothing I’d like more than Martin’s body being found, so that. . well, so that we know for certain. Are you intending. .?’

‘Intending what?’

‘Are you intending to test DNA and that kind of thing?’

He puts his notebook back in his jacket pocket and nods. ‘That would be one method, of course. But maybe there’s a shortcut in this case.’

‘A shortcut?’

He stands up. Looks thoughtfully around the room again. ‘Apparently there’s not much left of that corpse in the bunker. Neither the body itself nor the clothes he was wearing. But there’s one little thing that has survived intact. I had it delivered to my desk a couple of hours ago.’

‘What’s that?’

‘A car key. He had a car key with him, and it seems the rats didn’t find it edible. Forgive me. . That’s probably what he used to scratch things on the wall with. I take it that’s your Audi parked out there on the drive?’

He has walked over to the window and I can see that he is giving some sort of signal to his colleague. Stensson.

‘Come here, let’s see what happens.’

I walk to the window and stand beside him. I watch as Stensson — a tall, well-built young man of about thirty — has got out of the car he’s been sitting in while Chief Inspector Simonsson and I have been talking.

It strikes me. . Yes, it suddenly strikes me that I am standing exactly where I stood that winter evening so long ago. Just as cold or even colder than this one: I’m standing here beside Martin and watching as his sister comes walking up to the house with her secret lover. Our children are small and we have all our lives ahead of us: there are so many wonderful opportunities open to us, so many days, but we don’t think about that; we just stand here, in exactly the same place as Chief Inspector Simonsson and I are standing twenty-seven years later, Martin and I, trying to imagine who that man in the ordinary shoes and with his jumper pulled up over his head might be — and it occurs to me that life passes so quickly that one can remain standing there in the same spot and not notice that it’s already too late. You can sail without any wind for years, and believe all the time that you are on the way to somewhere.

And then I come back down to earth and watch the young police officer open the front door of my car — as usual I haven’t locked it — and see how he settles down behind the steering wheel and waves to us — possibly slightly embarrassed, it seems to me — before leaning forward and inserting the key in the ignition.

The ponies, I think. The pheasants. The Protection . .

The headlights come on, and it starts at the first attempt.

‘How about that?’ says Chief Inspector Simonsson. ‘It started. How do you explain that?’

I don’t answer.

‘Ah well, I think I must ask you to come with us, fru Holinek, so that we can continue our conversation in another place.’

I say nothing. Stand still and watch my car with its engine still running out there in the cold. Castor comes and sits down next to me. My mobile phone rings, I know who it is and don’t need to check.

‘I must just switch off the oven first,’ I say.