Åke Edwardson - Sun and Shadow

Maybe somebody else.

What did you have to do?

He read on until he came to information about answers. Telephone replies, postal replies. They hadn’t asked the Elfvegrens about which type of ad it was. Or ads. Replies. That was careless and showed lack of knowledge and perhaps it was also creditable. Not even Halders had asked.

They had lists of all their telephone calls, so they could check.

They hadn’t found any filled-in ad coupons at the Valkers’ nor at the Martells‘. No ad texts, no replies.

Winter phoned the editorial office of Aktuell Rapport. A woman answered and he explained who he was.

“The coupons with the text for the ads are kept for three months,” she said.

“Does that mean that you have the addresses of all the people who’ve advertised over the last three months?” Winter asked.

“Yes. Generally speaking.”

“Generally speaking? What does that mean?”

“Sometimes we don’t manage to keep up with the shredding. There are so many of them…”

Shredding, he thought. That damn shredding. There should be a law against shredding. In order to assist police investigations into serious crimes.

“How long could they be saved in those circumstances, then?”

“Six months, perhaps. But that would be exceptional.”

“How?”

“What do you mean?”

“How are the addresses saved?”

“We keep the coupons people send in. We also have a computer record that we erase when the paper is shredded.”

‘Are they mainly home addresses?“

“Yes.”

“Don’t you have anonymous box numbers that a lot of people use?”

“No, we don’t allow that. When we did, the ads turned out to be… not serious enough.”

Winter didn’t dig any further into that.

“Can you see who replies?”

“No. The respondent puts the reply into an envelope, seals it, and writes the contact number of the advertisement on it. Then he or she puts that envelope in another envelope and sends it to us at return postage rates that include a handling charge. We then pass the replies on to the advertiser.”

“And the respondent has three months in which to react?”

“Yes.”

Winter thought that over. With a bit of luck the Valkers’ ad coupon might be in the records at the editorial office, or their home address confirming that they’d put in an advertisement. He would phone his colleagues in Stockholm, which was where the magazine’s editorial office was based.

They might also find a coupon from the Martells. Or the Elfvegrens. The Martells. He thought about the Martells again. They had been murdered less than three months ago.

If the Martells had advertised, they wouldn’t have received their replies yet. There could be replies being kept by the editorial staff. He recalled Erika Elfvegren’s story about “a man.”

That was how the man got in. Winter had wanted to know how he got into the apartments, and this could be the answer, the solution.

But the ads could have been put in at any time, several years ago. Calm down now.

He asked the woman a few practical questions, hung up, then phoned Stockholm again and talked to a DCI colleague.

No answer from Matilda Josefsson, who had worked at Krokens Livs. Djanali tried the other number, and a man answered by repeating the numbers she had just keyed in.

She said who she was, and why she was ringing.

“That was ages ago.”

“What was?”

“When I worked there. The fool was out of his mind.”

“The fool?”

“Andréasson. Claimed I couldn’t count. So I quit. Of my own free will.”

Djanali asked some more questions about regular customers.

“I suppose there were a few who came in quite often. It would have been odd if that hadn’t been the case.” Pause. ‘And then there were the shoplifters.“

“Excuse me?”

“We used to get a few shoplifters. A few little things kept disappearing. I never noticed anything myself, but there were a few incidents.”

“When?”

“I can’t remember exactly. I didn’t write it down in my diary or anything. But the girl who worked there at the same time as me knows more about it.”

“Matilda? Matilda Josefsson?”

“Exactly. That was her name.”

“Did she tell you about shoplifters?”

“She said something about shoplifters when she was on shift. You’ll have to ask her.”

“We will. But she’s left as well.”

“There you see. And she could count. Ha, ha.”

“We’re trying to contact her now.”

“She was always going on about running off to where the sun is. Try there.”

Winter checked up on where the sun is. His mother didn’t know anybody called Ake. He probably didn’t live in Nueva Andalucia, but that wasn’t the only colony. The Swedish consul in Fuengirola answered after the third ring. Winter could picture the town in his mind’s eye, the motorway looking like a black wound, the houses that seemed to have been hurled down the mountain at the sea.

“Of course I know Åke,” said the consul, who was a Swede. ‘And your name also sounds familiar.“

There was no reply from Killdén in the Elviria colony. That was to the east of the hospital, on the other side from Marbella. He could remember restaurants, hotels, golf courses, little whitewashed houses.

Passing through by taxi one night on the way to Torremolinos. The taste of wine lingering on his palate.

Winter drove out to the Sahlgren Hospital. Siv Martell was still in a merciful coma. He didn’t need to drive out there to discover that, but he wanted to escape the confines of his office. Her body was a sort of reminder of something.

He studied her through the glass. Would she be able to provide any answers if she came around? Or was allowed to come around? He felt a cold flush. As if he had a layer of ice underneath his clothes.

He went out. The new and old buildings at the hospital gave the impression of being a stage set. Ambulances and police cars drove backward and forward over the stage. Nurses in white hurried over the stage, doctors. Angels. He was on the stage himself, but there was no limelight.

He had no script. Just the feeling that a catastrophe was on its way.

Bartram bought the magazine and rented a war film. The woman gave him a friendly smile. He didn’t know if she recognized him from one time to the next. She should. That kind of thing was the same even at the other end of the world, or wherever she came from.

She was pretty new. They’d come and gone. He didn’t like the young man. Not suited to work involving service. If you’re going to provide a service you have to make an effort to help your customers. Otherwise you’re better off doing something else.

He’d seen the old man one evening. Presumably he owned the place. He didn’t look like a service type either. Seemed to have a bonfire under his backside when he sat on the chair. Couldn’t keep still.

He’d liked the girl. Then one day she’d gone. She could have said something the previous week. But there again, why should she say anything to him? Just because he liked her didn’t mean that she had to like him. Perhaps she laughed at him when he’d gone. Or behind his back. He’d spun around quickly and she hadn’t been laughing then, but maybe that was because she didn’t dare. She knew that he was a police officer sometimes. When he had his uniform on he was a policeman and he would come in here and be a policeman. Now he wasn’t a policeman because he was wearing civilian clothes. Now he couldn’t go around telling people to put their seat belts on and expect to be taken seriously.

She’d been there when he stood in the way of the boy who stole some videos. He thought it was better to see it like that. He’d stood in the way. The boy had intended to pay, he said. Just forgotten.