Åke Edwardson - Never End

Birgersson stood smoking by his window as Winter asked his first question. Birgersson's scalp was visible through his close-cropped gray hair, lit up by the rays of the sun. The boss would be sixty next year. Winter would be forty-two. Birgersson was more of a father to him than a big brother.

"I don't know where it would have led us," said Birgersson, flicking ash into the palm of his hand, "but we really did try to trace that pair: father and son, or whatever they were." He looked at Winter. "You were involved, of course."

" Reading about it now, I remember getting very angry at the time." "I got pretty worked up about it too." The muscles in Birgersson's lean face twitched. "But that was only natural. We didn't have much to go on, and so that detail seemed to be more important that it might really have been."

"Do you often think about the Beatrice case?" asked Winter, from his chair by the desk in the middle of the room.

"Only every day."

"It hasn't been like that for me. Not quite every day. Until now." You're still a young man, Erik. I run the risk of retiring with that Woody case still unsolved, and I don't want to do that." He pulled at the cigarette, but the smoke was invisible against the light from the window. "I don't want to do that," he said again, gazing out from the window, then looking back at Winter. "I don't know if this is a sort of twisted wishful thinking, but I hope it is him who's come back. That this business has never ended."

"That's why I'm scrutinizing the Beatrice case notes," said Winter.

"The belt," Birgersson said. "The belt is a key."

"It could well be."

"Did the Bielke girl have a belt?" Birgersson asked.

"That's one of the things I wanted to check before I came here," said Winter. He lit another Corps, stood up, and went to keep Birgersson company by the window. "But she didn't have one. She doesn't wear one."

"Maybe that's what saved her," said Birgersson. He looked Winter in the eye. "What do you think, Erik? Maybe she wasn't as interesting as a victim when there was no belt for her to be strangled with. No belt to take home, as a trophy."

She felt a prick in her right foot, under her toes. She'd been feeling her way forward, but the bottom was covered in seaweed here, a sort of long, thick grass that swayed with the current. It was brown and nasty. Like dead flowers.

Now she was standing on a little sandbank. She balanced on one leg and examined her right foot: she could see it was bleeding, but only a little. It wasn't the first time this summer. Par for the course.

She heard shouts from the rocks. Leaped into the water, which was warmer than ever, like a second skin, soft, like a caress.

"Anne!"

They were shouting again. Somebody held up a bottle, but all she could see was a silhouette against the sun, which was on its way down. Could be Andy. As far as he was concerned the party had begun the minute they got here, or even in the car, still in town.

"Anne! Paaarty!"

She could see him now, wine bottle in hand, a grin on his face. Party, why not yet another party? She deserved that. Three years of school at Burgarden. Who wouldn't deserve a few parties after that?

There was something else that made her deserving of it. She didn't want to think about it now.

"Anne!"

She clambered over the rocks, hung onto a projecting stone, and felt we sting in her foot again.

She reached the top, and checked her foot. Half a meter of seaweed had wrapped itself around her shin. She pulled it off. The seaweed felt slippery. "Here comes the little mermaid," said Andy. "Give me a drink."

"Have you ever seen an evening as beautiful as this?" "A drink. Now!"

Fredrik Halders was sitting on a sofa he didn't recall seeing the last time he'd been inside. He looked around him like a stranger. The house was more foreign to him than ever.

He'd begun to feel unreal in the house immediately afterward. Immediately after the divorce. He'd seem to be wandering around in a dream. Everything was familiar, but he no longer recognized it. Couldn't touch anything. He was an outsider. That's how it had seemed. He'd been standing outside his own life. That's how it had felt. The divorce had made him stand outside his own life, and things hadn't improved much since.

Maybe that was why he'd been so angry these past few years. In a rage. He'd woken up in a rage and gone to bed in a rage and been in even more of a rage in between. Just living had been a pain, you might say.

But that had been nothing. Nothing at all compared to this.

Hannes and Magda were asleep. Magda had sobbed herself to sleep. Hannes had stared at the wall. He'd tried to talk to them about… about… What had he tried to talk to them about? He'd forgotten.

It was past midnight. The patio door was open, letting in scents from the garden he didn't remember. He could see Aneta Djanali's face in the doorway, which was lit up by the lamp on a shelf to the left.

"Don't you want to come outside?"

He shook his head.

"It's lovely out here."

"I'll go and get a beer," he said, getting up and going to the kitchen.

"It'll start getting light soon," Djanali said when he'd come out and sat down on the bench next to the house.

He took a swig and looked up at the sky. It was already light enough for him. If he could stop the passage of time, now would be the moment. Let there be darkness. Forever darkness, and rest. No children to wake up in the morning and remember. With the rest of their lives ahead of them. Sometimes I feel like a motherless child, he suddenly thought. Then he thought of Margareta.

He took another swig and looked directly over the patio at his colleague. And friend.

"Shouldn't you go home now, Aneta?" He could make out her silhouette, but no more. At any other time he'd have joked about it, as he usually did; her black skin was not much of a contrast to the night. Not now.

"I don't mind staying."

"I'll manage."

"I know that."

"So, why not go home and rest? You're on duty tomorrow morning, aren't you?"

He couldn't see if she'd nodded.

"Will you have to get up early?" he asked.

"Yes. But I've never needed much sleep."

"Me neither." He emptied the bottle and put it down on the table. "In that case, we can sit here a little bit longer."

"Yes."

She saw that he'd put a hand over his face. She heard a muffled sound. She went and sat on the bench beside him, and she put her arm around him, or as far around as she could. He was shaking ever so slightly.

"I need to work."

They were still sitting on the bench. It was morning now, a few minutes past three. The light had come back. The shadows in Halders's face were like bays of a sea, formed in the last few hours. Djanali could hear the shrieks of seagulls. A car passed by on the road behind the hedge. Some small birds flew up out of a bush, perhaps disturbed by the car. She didn't feel tired. That would come later, that afternoon, in the car patrolling up and down in the heat.

"Do you understand what I mean?" Halders turned to look at her. A blood vessel had burst in his left eye. "It's not because I want… to get away. Not in that sense." He rubbed his face, under the base of his nose. But I think it's best… for everybody… if I go to work."

"If you feel up to it, OK."

"Why shouldn't I feel up to it?

She shrugged.

"Do you think I don't understand myself?"

"No."

"Do you think I'm not taking the children into consideration?"

"Certainly not."

Halders stroked his face again. He could hear the rasping from his stubble, which now seemed longer and thicker than his crew cut.