Åke Edwardson - Sun and Shadow

“What’s that?” Winter asked. Does it matter? he wondered. I’m just so used to asking questions.

“It’s a Sonicaid. For measuring ultrasound waves.” She held the microphone against Angela’s blue stomach with its slightly convex mound.

Winter could hear the sound of a heart beating. Actually hear it! It was beating fast, twice the speed of an adult’s. It filled the whole room, all around him. Angela took hold of his hand. He shut every other thought out of his mind, simply listened.

Patrik closed the refrigerator door, but it was opened again immediately by one of his father’s friends who had brought with him from the living room an acrid smell of smoke and liquor.

“I had a bottle of Marinella here that should be cold and tasty by now,” he said, looking at Patrik. “Have you stolen it?” He burst out laughing. His eyes were porcelain: frigid, gleaming. Before long they’ll sink back into his skull and he’ll end up on the floor, thought Patrik. Maybe the old man will end up on top of him.

Pelle Plutt slammed the fridge door shut. “WHERE’S MY ‘NELLA?!” he screamed into the living room, where the party was going with a bang. They’d been struggling to get to where they were now, but from here on in it was downhill all the way. Pelle Plutt looked at Patrik. He was only twenty-five, but could have been the old man’s brother. He still had all his hair, but that was all he still had.

“What have you done there?” he said, screwing up his eyes and pointing at Patrik’s face. “That was a king-size wallop if ever I saw one.”

“It’s nothing.”

“You had it seen to?”

“Yes.”

“It’ll go away, but it’ll be black and blue for a while,” said Pelle Plutt, opening the fridge door again and rummaging around inside. A tub of margarine fell out onto the floor. “Here’s the fucking nectar!” He held up the bottle, half full of the yellowish-red liquid.

One of these days I’ll dilute it with piss. Fifty percent piss and he won’t notice a thing. Patrik smiled at Pelle Plutt. Piss, you bastard.

“This looks like your face,” said Pelle Plutt, gaping at the blue label. He looked at Patrik. “Only joking.” He looked at the bottle again, then back at Patrik. “Would you like a drop?”

“No, thanks.” Patrik went into the hall and put on his jacket and his shoes, which were very wet inside. You could put newspaper in them when you took them off, to dry them, but it was a long time since he’d done that. He had a vague memory of it. Maybe it was his mum, when he was very young.

Some woman started singing in the living room. His father laughed, and Patrik closed the door quietly behind him.

Maria was sitting with a cup of hot chocolate on the table in front of her when he arrived at Java.

“It’s getting worse,” she said.

“It’ll get better eventually”

“Was anything broken?”

“No.”

“You ought to turn in that bastard.”

“That’s what the police say as well,” he said, taking off his jacket and hanging it on the back of his chair. “Your mom’s pal, Winter.”

“He’s not exactly her pal.”

“Well, him, anyway” He eyed her cup.

“Would you like one?”

“Chocolate? No, thanks. I had enough at your place.”

“Four cups.” She smiled. “Mom figured you’d get into the Guinness Book of Records.”

“I’ll order a coffee,” he said, getting up.

“You haven’t gotten any further with what you saw on the stairs?” she asked when he came back.

“I’m not sure.”

He said hello to somebody walking past. The cafe was full of young kids smoking and drinking coffee or tea or hot chocolate. There were books everywhere. Patrik himself used to come here with his school-books when he really should have been at school with them on his desk.

“You look half dead,” she said. ‘And it’s not just your swelling.“

“Thanks very much.”

“I’d never be able to start delivering papers at four in the morning.”

“Five. I get up at four.”

“Damn early”

“You get used to it.”

“You can borrow from me if you’re short of cash.”

“From you? Hasn’t your mom cut off the supply?”

“I have a bit.”

“So do I,” he said. “I don’t need anybody to help me.”

Winter had asked Hanne Ostergaard to call in the next time she came to the “police palace” at Ernst Fontell’s Square. That was today. She knocked on his door and went in.

“Hello, Erik.”

“Hi, Hanne. Thanks for coming.”

“I was in the building, after all.”

“Please sit down. Would you like a cup of coffee?”

“No, thank you.” She sat down on the visitor’s chair. Winter was in a short-sleeved shirt and suspenders. He’d draped his tie over his jacket, which was on a coat hanger by the side of the sink. His hair was shorter than when she’d last seen him. He was slimmer. His face was narrower than she remembered it, more sharply outlined. It was softened somewhat by the thin-framed glasses he was wearing. If she knew Erik Winter they wouldn’t be Giorgio Armani spectacles. Nothing as simple as that.

“I see you’re wearing glasses.”

“Reading glasses. We’re all getting older.”

“Nice. They’re not Armani, are they?”

“Er… no, they’re…” He took them off and peered at the inside of one of the earpieces. “Air Titanium.” He looked at her. “Is that one of your special interests?”

“Spectacle frames?” She gave a little laugh. “No. I don’t have time for hobbies like that.”

He put his glasses on the desk. She waited for him to say something.

“How are things otherwise?”

“Otherwise? What do you mean? When I’m not in this building?” She crossed her legs. “That’s a good question.”

“Well…”

“Come to the point. You want to know about me and my daughter.”

“What makes you think that?”

“You know perfectly well.”

“Know what, Hanne?”

“Stop it, Erik. Everybody here in the police station must know that my daughter was taken into custody by some of your colleagues when she was drunk. Drunk and disorderly is what the crime is called, if I’m not mistaken?”

“Give it up, Hanne. Yes, I know about it. No, that wasn’t why I wanted to talk to you.”

“You’re welcome to do so.”

“What?”

“You’re welcome to ask me how things are… after that incident.”

“How are things?”

“Better now,” she said, and smiled. “Maria has been behaving herself since then.” It sounded as if she let out a sigh. “As far as I know, that is.”

“No doubt it taught her a lesson, for want of a better way of putting it.” He put on his glasses again. “It’s only human, after all.”

“Yes. We are poor, sinful humans. That’s what I try to tell the Social Services,” she said.

“Social Services?”

“There’s always an inquiry when something like that happens.”

“Regard it as a formality.”

“You don’t have any children, I can tell that.”

“Not yet.”

“Yes, I’ve heard. Terrific. Congratulations. And pass them on to Angela.”

“Thank you. But you really must regard all that business as a formality.”

‘As long as it doesn’t happen again.“

Winter didn’t know what to say.

“There’s no guarantee that it won’t happen again, is there?” she said.

“Er…”

“It would be me, in that case. I’d be the guarantee. But I’ve obviously failed.”

“That’s a lot of crap, if you’ll pardon the expression, Hanne.” He repeated the comment but not the apology: ‘A lot of crap.“