Åke Edwardson - Sun and Shadow

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“For Christmas, you mean?”

“Hmm.”

“Working.”

“What? You’re going to be working over Christmas as well?”

“Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.” Bartram shifted his position. “All the more free time for next summer.” He looked out at the people, the packages, the lights. “I don’t like all this stuff anyway.” He turned to Morelius. “I’ve never liked Christmas.”

“I bet you’ll like it even less if you’re working in the middle of it,” Morelius said. “It’s not much fun having to sort out families when Mom and Dad have been overdoing the celebrations.”

Bartram didn’t respond, seemed to be lost in thought.

“I’d be happy to skip it,” Morelius said. “It feels pointless sometimes.”

“ ‘Our Lord, how long must I beg for your help before you listen? How long before you save us from all this violence?”’ Bartram said.

“That sounds like a quotation.”

“It’s from the Bible.”

“You don’t say.”

“Don’t ask me which part. It’s the sort of thing that sticks in the memory but you don’t know why. Useless knowledge.”

“I wasn’t going to ask.”

Winter met the caretaker in the latter’s cramped office. He’d considered summoning him to the station for questioning, but decided to take the softly, softly approach. The man had given the impression of being nervous from the start, and that could be disastrous for his memory.

The office smelled of tools and tobacco. Shabby files were stacked on a desk that also seemed to serve as a chopping block. There was nothing of the century-old elegance of the rest of the building down here.

The man looked down at his desk as if he were searching for something.

It occurred to Winter that this might be the caretaker of his own building as well. He asked.

“What’s the address?”

Winter told him.

“Yep, that’s me. That’s part of my job as well. I look after three buildings in all, from here down to Storgatan.”

“You do?”

“Yep.” He lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply “That’s what they’ve saddled me with this last year.” He looked at Winter and tapped ash into an old soda bottle that was half full of cigarette butts and dark brown tobacco juice. “Nowadays you have to be thankful that you’ve got a job.”

“Sounds like a lot of work.”

“Too much.”

“Still, I’m glad that you discovered that there was something wrong in that apartment.”

“In the end, yes.”

“You didn’t speak to anybody else about it?”

“What do you mean, anybody else?”

‘Anybody else who also thought the same thing.“

“No.”

All right, Winter thought. We’ll leave it at that for now. He might get wary on his guard for anything and everything.

The man flicked off more ash, half of which missed the neck of the bottle. A fire risk? Winter thought. There again, the caretaker was sitting in his own basement room. His own office. If this could be called an office.

“Do you have an office in my building as well?”

“Of course. There are three, from here down to the crossroads.” He inhaled again, and squinted through the smoke hanging in a cloud around him. “The second crossroads, that is.”

“Of course.” Winter could feel the irritation in his throat. No point in a discreet cough here. The old bastard lit another cigarette. Winter coughed even so. “Er… the Valkers… how often do you think you met them?”

The caretaker didn’t remove the cigarette from his mouth. He wiped his hands along his trousers to get rid of the oil on them. He examined his palms, which had been clean at the start. Then he turned to Winter, with a new furrow between his eyebrows.

“Not very often, I must say.”

“Were you working here when they moved in?”

“I’ve always worked here,” he said, and succumbed to a combined cough and laugh that turned into a nasty smoker’s hack and reminded Winter of the man at the next table when he’d breakfasted at Gaspar’s in Marbella.

The caretaker finished coughing and dropped the cigarette end into the bottle, where it hissed away and went out. He lit another one, and waited for the next question.

“But you did meet the Valkers sometimes?” We’ll take them separately later, Winter thought.

“I don’t know about meet, but I’ve come across them, obviously. I’ve never been in their apartment, though.”

“Never?”

“I suppose he managed to change washers himself.” The man took another drag on his cigarette, flicked ash in the direction of the bottle. “It’s the same with you. I look after the building you live in but I’ve never spoken to you. I’ve seen you, but that’s not the same thing.” He looked up at the ceiling and then back at Winter. “On the other hand, I’ve only been in charge of your building for the last few months.”

“Have you ever spoken to him? Christian?”

“No.”

“To her? Louise?”

“Yes. Once…,” he said, and a new furrow returned between his eyebrows. “She once asked me about… hmm, it might have been the heating. I can’t remember now.”

“Is there anything about them that made you wonder? Or about one of them?”

“Such as what?”

“Their visitors.” Winter coughed again, turned away. “Did they have visitors, for instance?”

“People come and go in this building just as in any other. Who knows who visits who? And I don’t go running up and down stairs unless I have to, you could say.”

Winter could see his point.

“But they did have the occasional party now and again,” said the caretaker.

“Really?”

“Things got a bit lively there at times.”

“In what way?” Winter tried to encourage him.

“People coming and going, sort of thing. I sometimes had to change a bulb or something on the stairs in the evening, so I might have heard something then.” He reached for the cigarette packet again, but it was empty. “Could have been somebody else, of course.”

Winter nodded again.

“No, I can’t remember if it was them or not,” the man said. “Have you finished with me yet? I’ll have to go out to the newsstand to buy some cigarettes.” He waved the empty packet. “None left in here.”

Winter asked about dud bulbs on the stairs, about dates.

“Good Lord, you stink!” Angela said when she came to greet him in the hall.

“A witness chain-smoking like a chimney.”

“Do you normally allow that?”

“We were in his office. He’s our caretaker as well, incidentally”

“What was he a witness to?”

“Nothing here. But he looks after that other property as well,” said Winter, nodding his head in the direction of “that” apartment.

“But what was he a witness to?”

“Nothing more than he’s told us so far, it seems.”

“But you can call him a witness even so?”

He is that type, thought Winter. Takes all the credit for himself.

“Get those clothes off and have a shower,” Angela said.

Winter put his pigskin briefcase on the floor, beside the shoe rack, took off his overcoat and jacket and hung them up. He started unbuttoning his shirt, went into the bathroom, and put all his clothes except for his trousers in the big wash basket Angela had brought with her.

He closed the door, got into the shower, and was just going to turn on the water when Angela shouted something. He shouted back that he couldn’t hear a word, and she opened the door.

“I’m looking for a form from the maternity clinic,” she said. “I think you put it in your briefcase. That was a while ago, but I need to check something.”

“It’s probably still in my briefcase,” he said. “In the hall.” She went out, he drew the shower curtain again, and turned on the water. The pungent smell of tobacco smoke started to fade away and eventually disappeared altogether as he rubbed the shampoo into his hair. He tried to clear his mind, and was rinsing away the lather when he heard a shout from the hall. He turned off the water.