Åke Edwardson - Never End

They stayed out for ages. The heat piled up between the buildings, having sunk slowly down to street level.

"It must still be as hot as ever," Elin said. "No sun, but just as hot."

Jeanette nodded without replying.

"Evenings really are the best part of hot summers in Gothenburg."

She nodded again.

"Cat got your tongue?" Elin said.

"It's just that I'm so incredibly tired."

"But it's only just past twelve."

"I know. It must be the sun."

"Some people have all the luck. I've been slaving away at a checkout all day."

"It's your day off tomorrow."

"That's precisely why we've got to have a little paarty." She said it again: "Paaarty."

"I don't know, Elin."

"For God's sake! When I said that about you having white hair, I didn't mean it literally. Having white hair doesn't mean you can act seventy-plus. My God! Now you're yawning again."

"I know. I'm sorry."

"What's it going to be, then?"

"Tonight? Or this morning, rather?"

"No, I mean one night in November next year, of course."

"I don't know…"

"Am I going to have to go to the club on my own?"

"No," she said, "the gang's coming."

There they were. Three boys and two girls, and it was perfect timing, because she didn't feel like partying the night away. It must be the sun. A massive overdose of sun. And now she wouldn't have to go just for Elin's sake.

"Now you don't need to come along just for my sake," Elin said.

"What are you talking about?" one of the boys asked. Time for bye-byes here," said Elin, nodding at Jeanette and smiling.

"I'm really tired, that's all," she said.

'Go home and get to bed then," the boy said. "Should I call for an ambulance?"

She stuck her tongue out. He laughed. "I'm off." "Walking?" "Yes, walking." It's a long way. And the last streetcar's probably gone."

"There's always the night bus. Or I might take a taxi for the last part."

"Get one now," Elin said.

"Eh? You can't mean that… What do you mean?"

"You shouldn't walk through town alone."

She looked around.

"On my own? The place is full of people." She looked around again. "People of all ages, at that."

"You do what you want," Elin said.

"Are we going, then?" asked one of the gang.

They stood up.

"Eleven tomorrow morning, OK?" Elin said.

"Can you manage to get up by then?"

"I can manage when there's some sunbathing in store."

"You know where to find me," she said, bid them good night, and set off walking southward.

"Rest in peace," said one of the guys.

"That was a ridiculous thing to say," Elin said.

Jeanette hesitated when she got to the taxi stand. She suddenly felt livelier, as if walking had triggered some spare engine inside her or something. She paused. Looked at the park. There were as many people there as had been at the café, maybe more. There were lights everywhere, the trees and bushes sparkled in bright colors that seemed to have been painted onto the leaves. There was a pleasantly cool breeze coming from that direction; she could feel it. It smelled good. And cool. She could take a shortcut through the park to the street beyond. There were thousands of people around, everywhere. She could hear music coming from the café to the right. It was only a hundred meters away.

Something was tugging at her, from the park. She stood on the grass. It smelled even better from there. She could hear voices on all sides, just like by the water earlier. She closed her eyes and heard fragments of voices, splinters. It wasn't red and yellow inside her head now, more green, and perhaps just a touch of yellow. She opened her eyes again and started across the lawn. People everywhere. Voices everywhere. She entered a group of trees and could see the street beyond them. Another twenty meters, perhaps.

She felt awake, wide awake, like in the morning after a good night's sleep and breakfast.

There was a rustling in the branches above her. The path was more like grove. She could see street lamps everywhere. It was already getting light. The sky was bluer now than it had been an hour ago. It was only just past 1:00. There was a rustling, a swishing. Cars, laughter. She was already wondering when the first taxi would come rolling down the street.

A rustling to her right, a shadow in the corner of her eye, perhaps. She heard something, a bird. A laugh on the other side. A bush moved in a sudden gust of wind.

She was out in the street now. Cars passing by.

She walked along the pavement, then turned back into the park to cut off the last corner before emerging on the other side. There would be people absolutely everywhere and she wasn't scared and there was no reason to be, either. The very thought almost made her laugh. Just a few more steps to go.

She had become numb, lapsed into unconsciousness, come back to life. Reached home. The sun was already hot, it felt like midmorning. She'd walked down the hill hiding her face, so that nobody would see what had happened to her, what she had done. What somebody else had done to her.

The room looked the same as before, but nothing would ever be the same as before.

She ripped off her clothes, ripped off her clothes, and flung everything into the washing machine without looking and turned it on. The sound of the water was comforting.

She stood under the shower and washed herself under her skin, or so it seemed. She stood there for a long time, rubbing her body and destroying all the evidence while the washing machine tossed her clothes back and forth, dissolving the evidence, back and forth. There was nothing left by the time Detective Inspectors Fredrik Halders and Aneta Djanali from the local CID arrived an hour later; nothing when the forensics officers from the police station in Ernst Fotell's Square eventually tried to find something among the threads and fibers.

The officer in charge who had sent them out, Detective Chief Inspector Erik Winter, suspected serial rape every time a rape was reported. He'd been right on two previous occasions.

Aneta Djanali eyed the park, Slottsskogen, as they drove past-the girl had told her mother and father it had happened in the park, they knew that. Djanali noticed the dog. Not something to play with. Nothing was to be played with. Three uniformed police officers were hovering around the parking lot. There were about ten cars there.

"Do you think they're checking the cars?" asked Halders, who was driving.

"Not yet, from the looks of it."

"You get this big show every time."

"Show?"

"They go crazy. Twenty-five cops with their hands in their pockets, and the bastard could have run off and left his car behind, that could be it there in the middle. That green Opel. Or that black Volvo."

"There are three of them, not twenty-five."

Djanali saw one of the officers take a notebook out of his pocket and start writing down the registration numbers.

"They're starting now."

The Bielkes's house was set back from the road, within a walled garden. The sea glistened only a few hundred meters away. Halders could smell the salt, see the water, hear the gulls, see the sails, a couple of ferries, a catamaran, the oil storage tanks, three cranes in the abandoned wharf on the other side of the estuary. A horizon line.

The house must be worth ten million, but he couldn't let that affect him. People had a right to more money than he had. It might be newly built. Inspired by Greek architecture. The thing looked like a whole Greek village.

He wiped the sweat from his brow, felt it on his back under his shirt. Aneta looked cool. Must have to do with genes or something. Black on the outside, cool on the inside.