Åke Edwardson - Sun and Shadow

He went out again. An advertising poster had blown out of its frame and was fluttering toward the crossroads. It flew over the lawn on the other side and was stopped by the Martells’ seven-story apartment building, pressed against the wall level with the windows on the second floor.

The woman with the stroller followed him out. She turned left past a pizzeria and a baker’s shop, both of which had closed down. Chairs piled one on top of the other could be seen through the pizzeria’s windows. She continued up a hill. Winter could see the church tower. He went down the steps in the opposite direction. The buildings were in a hollow and the clifflike hillside blocked the view. Nobody was coming or going now. Cars were swishing past on the main road ahead. He walked as far as the shop called Krokens Livs, where he’d bought a packet of Fisherman’s Friends last time. Two posters advertising films were fluttering in the wind, like the last time. They were the same films, City of Angels and The Avengers.

Also like last time, a bus stopped ten yards away and several old people got out. Winter went into the shop to buy a box of matches. He stood among the dairy products, packets of chips, film, candy, dishwashing brushes, and newspapers. He could see the wind blowing outside through the glass in the door. The woman at the checkout was foreign, possibly from Turkey or Iran. She smiled. Winter took his matches and paid. Behind the woman was a picture of the building he was standing inside. It had been cropped drastically but showed the minimarket in bright sunshine. There was no doubt that it was the same shop. Then as now there were two frames on either side of the door with posters advertising films. The photograph had been enlarged to about two feet by three and was partly obscured by advertisements for cigarettes. Winter couldn’t remember seeing the photograph last time, but surely it must have been there? The colors were faded and pale. The picture could have been three years old, or ten. An old man was standing outside the shop door, holding a pile of newspapers and looking like the proud owner. But it wasn’t his appearance that made Winter continue to stare at the picture, forgetting all about his change and not hearing when the woman spoke to him. Over the man’s head was a sign that was no longer there. Now the sign projected at right angles from the wall, and on it was written Krokens Livs.

In the photograph the name in red letters was different: Manhattan Livs.

Börjesson had asked again at Powerhouse, the record shop in Vallgatan. The young detective didn’t mind going there. He’d been there before, on his own time.

“I’ve been here before. Privately, if you see what I mean.”

“That’s nice to hear.” The young man behind the counter was chewing away and working through a pile of secondhand CDs. “I haven’t seen you.” He opened a jewel case and checked the condition of the disc. “But I’ve been away this last year.” He closed the case, looked up at Börjesson and smiled. “New York, L.A., Sydney, Borneo.”

“That sounds great,” Börjesson said. He took a CD out of his pocket. “Do you recognize this?”

The man took Sacrament and looked at the cover, then at Börjesson.

“If you mean have I sold it, yes, sir.”

“You recognize the disc?”

“I recognize most things in the music line.” He looked at the gloomy landscape on the cover. “Maybe it was this lousy drawing that made me long to get away to the sun.” He opened the lid. “We had two,” he said.

“That’s exactly what I was going to ask you about,” Börjesson said.

“It’s not bad stuff if you ignore the production.”

“I don’t suppose you can remember who you sold them to, can you?”

“You must be joking! In the first place I’m not the only person working here, and anyway, I’m better at album covers than I am at faces.” He turned the cover over and looked at the pictures of the men of darkness against the shocking-colored background. “Sometimes I can remember who I bought the disc from. Some people come in with mountains of CDs. Sometimes you come across a find.” He looked at Börjesson. “This one’s a borderline case.” He took out the booklet with the words and leafed through it. “Why is it so interesting?”

“The music is linked to a case we’re working on,” Börjesson said.

“That murder I read about?”

“Why do you say that?”

“Well… it’s the obvious thing.” He looked at Börjesson. “The songs on this CD are pretty bloody. But fairly innocent, really.” He gave a laugh. “It almost reminds you of that song. Blood, blood, glorious blood!”

“Have you any idea of when you bought the CD?”

“I’m afraid not. Maybe it wasn’t me. No, it wasn’t me. Have you asked the others?”

“Yes. They don’t recognize it at all.”

“I suppose it might have been me, then… I do remember that we had it… let me see… we had two, one of them was in the shop when I started… it’s quite an old CD, of course…” He left the counter and went over to the hard rock section and scanned the titles. “Nothing here now. But we did have two, not at the same time, though.”

Börjesson thought. Somebody had changed the music and now it was Led Zeppelin.

“When I took off there was one copy,” the man said, looking at Börjesson. They were about the same age. “When I came back, it had gone.”

“All right.”

“We sell so much stuff it’s simply not possible to keep tabs on everything, as you can imagine.”

“I can imagine.”

“We get all ages here, all races, all sizes.”

Börjesson looked around the shop. There were more than twenty customers in the big sales area, all of them men. Most of them were youngsters, but there were some men in their thirties working their way through the racks, and at that very moment in marched a man who must have been about forty-five, with a pile of LPs in his arms. Two young girls followed him in.

“There’s a fair amount of turnover among the staff as well. Several have come and gone this last year.”

“Business is good, is it?”

“You can say that again.” He went back to the counter and the pile of CDs that had now been joined by the pile of LPs. He stopped and turned to face Börjesson again. ‘As you’re from the police you’ve reminded me that a guy kept stopping in and checking to see what we had in stock. Several times. A cop, that is. That was shortly before I went off on my travels.“

“A cop? A police officer? How do you know?”

“I hope I can recognize a police uniform. I wouldn’t recognize the man, but the uniform…”

“What do you mean by checking to see what you had in stock? As a customer?”

“Yes, obviously.”

“Is that unusual?”

“That police officers come in uniform and check our stocks? I suppose he’s the only one I’ve ever seen in here. You should ask the others. Didn’t any of them mention him?”

“No.”

He looked at Börjesson again. The man with the LPs was being served by another assistant. “Do you men have time to buy a few discs in working hours?”

The woman repeated what she had said. Winter dragged his eyes away from the photograph.

“Have you got anything smaller?” she said. “No small change?”

“I’m afraid not.” He looked back up at the picture on the wall behind her.

“Did this shop use to be called Manhattan Livs?” he asked, pointing at the photograph. She turned to look, then spun back around on her chair.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I only recently started here.”

Winter knew that the owner was a man. They had routinely interviewed all the people living in the vicinity and he’d read the transcripts, just as he’d read all the other material connected with the investigation.