Åke Edwardson - Never End

Winter gave a little smile and took another puff.

"Pretty strong, these things," said Wägner, looking at the long, thin cigarillo in his hand. "I was going to buy a pack a few months ago, but they didn't have any."

"I'm the only one smoking them," said Winter. "And when they don't make them anymore, I'll give up."

"But you won't give up on… Beatrice."

"Never."

"Will you… we… will we find that bastard?"

"Yes."

"Now you're hoping again."

"No. By the end of this summer we'll have gotten him."

"It could be a long summer," said Wägner, looking up at the sky.

Winter called from Wägner's lawn. Halders answered after four rings. Winter drove back eastward and found the house in Lunden, following the instructions Halders had given him. Halders's car was parked outside. Winter pulled up behind it.

"I could have come down to the station," said Halders, who was waiting at the gate.

"I was out anyway."

"It's a great job, lots of freedom, eh?"

"Do you have anything to drink?"

"Will low-alcohol beer do?"

Winter said it would and followed Halders into the house.

"I hadn't been here for four years or so."

"Not at all?"

"Only to the gate." Halders took a can out of the fridge. "Here you go."

Winter opened the can and drank.

"I can get you a glass."

Winter shook his head and took another gulp. It was light in the kitchen. There were no piles of unwashed dishes on the draining board. No crumbs on the countertop. Hanging on the wall over the kitchen table was a framed poster from the sixties advertising a toothpaste that no longer existed. Next to the telephone in front of Winter was a tear-off wall calendar, and he noticed that the date was old. Nobody had torn off the pages from day to day. Winter knew what date it showed without needing to figure it out.

"There's something fishy about her dad," said Halders. "Jeanette's dad."

"What do you mean?"

"Or between the two of them. There's something odd there."

"Can you be more specific?"

"There are several details on which their versions of events don't agree. The night she came home. After it had happened."

Winter had noticed the discrepancies. It wasn't uncommon. It didn't necessarily mean that one of them was lying, not consciously at least.

"I wonder which one of them's lying," Halders said. "I think it's her, and he knows but doesn't want to say anything."

"It happens."

"We've got to be tougher on them."

"On him, in that case." Winter emptied the can. "Jeanette needs to do some thinking. Get us off her back for a while."

"I wonder what time she got home," Halders said. "I don't think it was when she says." He went to the fridge and got a beer for himself. "But then why doesn't he say anything about it? I don't think he was asleep."

They had a witness who'd seen Jeanette coming home around three hours later than she'd said.

"She's the key," Halders said. He looked at Winter, came closer to him. "Jeanette Bielke is the key here. She went somewhere that night but doesn't want to say where."

The key, thought Winter. One of the keys.

"Her old man might know."

"We'll question him again."

"I'll question him."

Winter could see how tense Halders's face was. Not just the usual policeman's pessimism. The question was, how would it affect his work? How would Halders react in a critical situation? It could end up in tragedy if he made a bad decision then.

Should he take Halders off the case? What would be the right thing to do? Would it work itself out?

"There's another thing I've been wandering around thinking about," said Halders, sitting down at the kitchen table. "Sit down." Winter did as he was told. "Why haven't we found the guy who put a bun in Angelika's oven?

"I can't tell you why, Fredrik."

"It was a so-called rhetorical question."

"There's nobody in her circle of friends who knows," said Winter. 'Of those we've talked to so far. Nobody who wants to say anything, at least."

"That's really odd."

"She may have kept it secret. From everybody."

"Even from herself?"

"She may not have known," Winter said. "Or may have suppressed the thought that she was pregnant."

"Which amounts to the same thing," said Halders. "But he does exist. The father."

"One of her friends knows," Winter said.

"She must have had a number one boyfriend?"

"Not according to her parents."

"They know nothing about that kind of thing," said Halders. "Parents don't have a clue about what their former little children are up to." He looked at Winter. "Am I right, or am I right?"

"You are right in that parents might not always be completely reliable witnesses."

"We've got to find this guy," Halders said, making a face. "He would have been a parent too."

They had to find him. Winter felt the full burden of the case as he drove back to the police station. They had put a lot of resources into finding Angelika's boyfriend, but they had failed.

Maybe they'd solve the problem when they found the father of the child that would never be born. Maybe he murdered Angelika. Maybe it was as simple as that.

The man who murdered Beatrice was somebody else.

And the one who raped Jeanette somebody else again.

No.

He'd parked the car and was inside his office within five minutes. There were a few raindrops still on the ledge under the window he'd left open.

The phone rang.

"We've got a new witness," Bergenhem said.

"Oh?"

"It's… er, the murder of Angelika Hansson, that is. A young man who says he heard some strange noises as he walked past the park that night."

"Does the time fit?"

"Yes."

"What did he hear?"

"A hissing noise, he says. A repeated hissing."

"What did he do?"

"Kept on going. Sped up, in fact."

"He wasn't curious?"

"He thought it was a badger, and was scared."

Winter could understand that. He'd once been chased by a badger.

"But he doesn't think it was a badger anymore?"

"He's seen the news," said Bergenhem.

"And it was at the same spot?"

"It looks like it."

That evening they went to the park. Angela was licking away at an ice cream, Winter was in charge of the stroller, and Elsa was asleep, although she woke up when they were passed by a group of kids on Rollerblades.

"It was about time anyway," said Angela, and she picked Elsa up as she reached out for the ice cream. "No need to arrest them."

"She wants an ice cream," said Winter, carrying Elsa to the kiosk, only to find that it had just closed. The kid in charge of it was just about to get onto his bike and ride off, and Winter wondered whether he should order him to open up again. Elsa realized she wasn't going to get an ice cream, and was not pleased.

"She needs something to hold her attention," said Angela when they came back.

"It was closed," Winter said.

"Think of something else, then."

He carried Elsa to the pond and dipped her feet into the water: the tears turned to laughter. He dipped them in again and mumbled into her ear, then he looked over the water. It was all so familiar. He could see the little open area in front of the circle of bushes, and the trees, and the rock glinting in the last rays of the sun.

He could see a shadow to the left, just where the police tape blocked off the black opening. The shadow was motionless. Winter didn't move either until he felt Elsa squirming in his hands. He didn't take his eyes off the shadow, which had the shape of a person, even more so now as the sinking sun beamed farther in like a searchlight. The shadow moved.

Winter heard Angela say something just behind him, lifted Elsa out of the water, and dumped her in Angela's arms without a word, heard the child's disappointed cries as he sprinted behind the hedge to the left of the pond, came to the pathway on the other side of the bushes, and could see the opening and the cleft that was no longer lit up by the sun, and he pushed his way past a young couple and darted through the shrubbery and saw the trees and all the other nasty but familiar sights, and his pulse was racing as he felt for his gun that was in a closet a long way away.