Åke Edwardson - Sun and Shadow

One of the cars from Lorensberg checked up on her now and again, but that was more or less it. Waited outside sometimes when she finished work, but not every day.

He took the elevator back up. Didn’t know what to do next. He could feel something in his stomach, rising up like lava.

He phoned his sister. Lotta answered after the second ring.

“Is Angela with you?” Winter asked.

“No… why are you…”

“She’s not here, and her car has been in the street with a parking ‘ticket for a couple of hours.”

“Have you phoned the hospital?”

“I’ve even been there.”

Bartram kicked off his shoes and went in to his computer, which was glowing like a face looking forward to his arrival.

Only a couple of minutes, and he was in there. He explored, checked. Printed out. Spread the pages out on his kitchen table, then went to the kitchen to get some water. He wasn’t hungry. He hadn’t washed up for several days, but nobody would complain. Who will complain if I don’t? he asked himself.

He was back. The screen lit up the room softly, combined with the desk lamp that was pointed downward.

He used his finger to follow the column down.

He had his notebook at hand. It was the same one as then, shabbier now, but in decent condition even so. He was a man of few words. Concentration. Concentrate.

Coincidence or not? He’d forced his telephone number out of him, but nobody answered when he called. The shoplifter. His address was still there.

Bartram compared the name and address in his notebook with the film extras on the list. You didn’t need to be a genius to see that they were the same. It was enough to be able to read, and to be in the right place at the right time. If he’d been in charge of the investigation, he’d have been able to show them how an investigation ought to be conducted. He knew more than the others.

Winter had searched the car, but found nothing. He didn’t touch the wheel. Beier’s boys were on their way.

He phoned Ringmar, who answered with his mouth full.

“Hang on a minute. I was just having a bite of supper-”

“Angela’s disappeared,” Winter said.

“What the hell…?”

“Something’s happened.”

“Have you raised the alarm?”

“Yes.” Winter felt his body going cold, the flow of lava solidifying. He felt sick. “No point in holding back.”

Ringmar didn’t ask what Winter thought.

Right now he was thinking about the parent group. Him and Angela busy asking about how to minimize the pain. The smell of coffee.

“Where are you?” Ringmar asked.

“Here,” Winter said. “At home.”

“I’m on my way.”

Ringmar had set off immediately. He was there within half an hour, they’d spoken, quickly and briefly. Winter was like a talking and thinking copy of his alter ego. He’d nodded, made notes, spoken. Ringmar had yelled into the telephone. They’d received a barrage of calls.

He had always been bad at putting work behind him. Going in an entirely different direction once he’d finished for the day, or the night. Always found it difficult to do. Difficult to become hardened. He’d avoided the coldness but not been able to become inured.

God. I’ve always believed in you. Give me the strength to think now, let me retain that strength. You can take it away from me later, but not now. Divide me up now. Two beings, one heart. No panic now.

“Erik?”

Ringmar was there. Had he been standing there all the time? He was in the doorway, but his voice seemed to be next to Winter’s ear.

Winter changed his position and tried to be there again, with his own strength and with God’s help.

“There’s one of your contacts on the phone.”

“Who?”

“Benny.”

Winter reached for the receiver.

“What the hell’s going on?” Vennerhag said.

“I’ve been trying to get hold of you.”

“So I gathered. I’ve been out of town. But what the hell’s going on? Has she-”

“The help I asked you for. It’s more important now than ever.”

“Is that really you I’m talking to, Winter? Your voice sounds-”

“Make an effort, Benny.”

“Is this really connected with-”

“Yes.”

“Jesus.”

“Make an effort, Benny.”

“If only I knew what to do. But I’ll do… continue to do whatever I can. Find out what people have to say.”

“Make an effort,” Winter said yet again.

They’d put more officers to work on the interviews with the lonely hearts-better to think of them like that. Halders had more names. Names, names.

Winter wasn’t sleeping at all now. If he needed drugs, he’d take some.

He knew that all this was interconnected. Ringmar knew, everybody knew. Angela hadn’t just vanished into thin air…

He scratched his head. Ringmar was in the doorway again. Was it the third day in hell? The fourth?

Tomorrow he’d be forty. He’d noticed that when he’d gone home to collect the mail and some clean clothes. He wanted to make the journey alone. Nodded to Bergenhem, who was standing guard in the dark in Vasaplatsen. There would be others there as well. If…

Forty years old. He’d forgotten all about it. Angela had drawn a red lipstick line around the date on the calendar hanging above the stove. Six inches up from the work surface and some four feet up from the floor. As he stood there looking, he’d thought of getting a tape measure and checking the distances, anything that kept him in touch with everyday things. But total control was bordering on lunacy.

During the night he’d thought about the boy again, in the hospital.

The boy had recognized somebody. When had he first come into the picture? There was a parallel story here-but it was linked to himself, with the murders.

Winter had driven back in his own car, where there were no traces at all. He’d phoned Hanne Ostergaard and asked her to come in. She looked tortured, as if she’d turned into a mirror. They’d sat in Winter’s office, and he’d suddenly told her what had happened to the people who had been murdered. What had happened. For three seconds he lost his composure, let his hell rain down upon her.

She answered after the first ring.

“I was awake,” she said. There was something urgent about her voice.

“When Maria… was taken care of…” Winter said, and asked some more questions as she described what had happened, who had been there. The urgency was still in her voice, as if she were waiting for her turn.

Then she said it. Broke her silence, you might say. One duty superseded another. Simon had not poured out his memories while in confession. She knew she wasn’t bound to silence.

“I don’t know what it signifies,” she said, “but when you told me what had happened…”

Winter could feel the lava again, on its way upstream, just as cold.

“Has he told you about it several times? The accident? The bodies?”

“Yes.”

“Erik?”

Winter looked up. He was alone in his office. Ringmar had appeared in the doorway.

“We ran through the addresses again,” Ringmar said, transcripts in hand. “The pornography list. There’s something…” He came into the room, sat down, and spread out the papers on Winter’s desk.

“What?”

“It’s not close to Krokens Livs. But this responder has given an address in one of the apartment buildings down in Askim and we compared it like you said and, well, there is a link.”

“A link? What did I say?” Just now his mind was a blank, as white and blank as the sky and the ground had been in the middle of January.