Åke Edwardson - Never End

She'd walked toward the park. Her friends had seen her go. Let her go. She'll be back in a minute. But when they left the shop Beatrice hadn't come back. They'd called for her, walked in the direction of the park, and called out again.

They'd turned back then. She'd turn up eventually. She must be on the other side of the park by now. She must have caught the night bus. She was already at Lina's, waiting for them. She'll be sitting there waiting for us, Lina had said, out there in the night, five years ago, and then the night bus came, and… well, they'd all jumped aboard and looked out of the window as they passed by the park, and there was no sign of Beatrice, which meant that she must be waiting for them at Lina's, didn't it?

Beatrice wasn't waiting for them. She was in among the trees all that time. Perhaps. She was definitely there at 11:45 on Sunday morning, behind the bushes in the shadow of the big rock: naked; murdered. The sun had been high in the sky, as high as it was now.

Her clothes were in a heap by her side. Winter read the list of clothes she'd been wearing that evening, the clothes the murderer had pulled off her. They were all in the inventory, but that wasn't what he was looking for. He was looking for what was missing. Sometimes something was missing that the victim had had, but the murderer had taken away with him.

In Beatrice's case, it was her belt.

Winter found it in the interrogation of her friends, and, later, in the interview with her parents. Beatrice had been wearing a leather belt that had not been found in the untidy pile of clothes next to her body. One of the detectives who had conducted the interviews had referred to it as a "waistbelt." The word jumped off the page when Winter saw it. It seemed a wry comment on the waste of a life.

That could be what the murderer had strangled her with, wasted her life. They couldn't know for certain as they had never found the belt.

Winter turned to the newer case notes. Angelika Hanssons's. He searched for the inventory of her clothes: T-shirt, shorts, socks, panties, bra, hair band, sneakers-basketball type, Reebok. But no belt. Would she have worn a belt with her shorts?

Had anybody asked about her clothes? He couldn't see any reference to a belt. He read Pia Froberg's report. Angelika could well have been strangled with a leather belt. He picked up the phone and dialed the direct number to Goran Beier on the SOC team. No reply. He called the main lab. Beier answered.

"Ah, Goran, it's Erik. Can I disturb you for a couple of minutes?"

"No problem."

"I'm sitting here with the Wägner case notes. Beatrice."

"OK."

"Were you on duty then?"

"Beatrice Wägner? Let's see, that must be, what… four years ago? Five?"

"Five years. Exactly five."

"Whatever, it's not a case you forget."

"No."

"We did what we could."

Winter thought he detected a hidden meaning in Beier's words.

"I haven't given up," he said.

Beier made no reply.

"That's why I'm calling," Winter said. "Maybe there's a connection."

"Meaning?"

"Do you remember that Beatrice had a belt that she evidently always used to wear, and that it couldn't be found after the murder?"

"I do. One of her friends had made some comment about it the same night she was murdered," Beier said. "I read that in the preliminary reports." He paused. "Now that I think about it, I seem to remember that it was you who signed off on it. My memory's that good."

"I have it in front of me now," said Winter, picking up the document. He could see his own signature. Erik Winter, Detective Inspector.

"That was before the glory days of chief inspector," said Beier. "For both you and me."

Winter didn't reply.

"I suppose it was Birgersson who was in charge of the investigation?"

"Yes."

"I remember we had a talk about that belt," Beier said.

"What conclusion did you draw?"

"Only that we thought the belt might have been used to choke her. But we never found it, of course."

"And now it's Angelika Hansson we're dealing with," said Winter.

"I heard from Halders that you thought there might be a link," Beier said.

"There could very well be."

"Or not."

"There could also be a belt," Winter said.

There was a pause. "I see what you mean," Beier said, eventually.

"Is it possible to find out if Angelika Hansson generally wore a belt with those shorts she had on that night?"

"We've already established that," said Beier.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Don't you read the reports? What's the point-"

"When did you send them?"

"Yesterday, I think. It sho… Hang on, somebody's telling me something here." Winter could hear Beier talking to a colleague. Then he spoke into the phone again. "I apologize, Erik. Pelle says he hasn't sent them off yet. He wanted to che-"

"OK, OK. But she did have a belt?"

"There had at one time been a belt in the waistband, so the answer is yes. Of the shorts lying in the heap by her body. We can say that for sure. It's not complicated at all."

"But I can't find any mention of a belt in the inventory of what was in that pile of clothes," said Winter.

"No, because it wasn't there."

"So he took it with him," said Winter, mainly to himself.

Beier said nothing.

"Angelika Hansson could have been strangled with her own belt, then," Winter said.

"That's a possibility."

"Just like Beatrice Wägner."

"I understand what you're getting at," Beier said. "But take it easy."

"I am taking it easy."

He took it easy for another hour while the sun outside crept slowly across a cloudless sky. The smoke lingered inside the room. He continued to trace the hours and the days after the murder of Beatrice Wägner.

Witnesses had seen cars leaving the scene. One car had seemed in a hurry to get away, according to one woman, but he knew that could be an impression she'd formed after the event, a dramatization because she so badly wanted to help them with their investigation, although most such efforts had the opposite effect.

Then, as now, the season had been a problem, because fewer people than usual were at home during the summer. He had now started reading the clippings from each case in parallel, and smiled at one sentence that jumped off the page, spoken by Sture Birgersson one summer's day almost exactly five years ago: "The problem the police are up against in this murder investigation is the vacation period," Birgersson had said.

Birgersson was Winter's superior at the CID. Winter had an appointment with him this afternoon.

A house-to-house operation around the park had produced as little by way of results that summer as this, so far.

Winter paused at one detail from the night Beatrice Wägner was murdered. Two witnesses had independently observed that a man and a boy had been packing a car for some time in the early hours of the morning.

That had been outside one of the three-story apartment buildings to the northeast of the park, a hundred meters away. The two witnesses had noticed the man and boy from different directions, but at more or less the same time. The man and the boy might have seen or heard something, but nobody knew, as they had never made themselves known to the police. They had issued an appeal, but nobody had come forward. They had simply been unable to find a man and boy in the building who matched the description they'd been given.

Just then, Winter's desk telephone rang. He answered and recognized Birgersson's voice.

"Could we meet a bit earlier than planned, Erik? I just found out I have to attend a meeting at four."

"OK."

"Can you come up now?"

"Give me fifteen minutes. I want to ask you a few things, but I have to do a bit of reading first."