Åke Edwardson - Never End

"You didn't see him at the party?"

"No." She looked at the picture again. "He looks a bit like that older guy." She looked at Winter. "They could be father and son." She turned to the photo again. "I should have recognized him."

Winter said nothing.

"Do you know him then?" asked Bergenhem. "The one who might be his father, the older man? Or anybody else in the picture?"

"Er… I don't know." She was still looking. "I really don't know. Some faces are pretty familiar… and I've known some of them for ages. But I don't remember those two."

"What about her?" asked Winter, pointing to the woman on the edge of the frame, as if about to leave it.

"No."

"This fair-haired man, then? With the beard."

"No, 'fraid not."

They were strangers to Cecilia, just as they had been to Angelika's father.

"They showed up afterward," Lars-Olof Hansson had said. "Don't you understand? They showed up later!… Nobody saw them… But they came with a message. A message from Hell!"

Good God.

"But I do recognize the boy," Cecilia said.

"It was him both times? At the café and when you were on the streetcar?"

"Yes. Definitely him."

"And you spoke to him?"

"We only said hi."

"Nothing else?"

"No." She looked again at the photo. "This is awful," she said. "He was at the party." She nodded at the photo. "Why didn't I see him?"

"What did Angelika say about him?"

"I've already told him over there that she didn't want to talk about it," she said, indicating Bergenhem.

"She must have said something."

"Only that she had no desire to talk about it." She turned to Winter again. "But I still don't understand why I didn't see him there, at the party."

"But you'd seen them together before the party," Winter said.

"Yes… at least, I think so."

"You said a moment ago that you should have recognized him at the party. In that case you must have seen him beforehand, right?"

"Yes… that's true."

"Tell us again when it might have been. At the café and from the streetcar."

She thought again. Yes. It must have been beforehand. In the spring. Late spring, May. May both times. That was what she'd told him over there.

Winter thought. He tried to picture this girl at the graduation party. What might she have done there? Apart from watching and celebrating with her friends?

"Do you have any pictures of your own from that day?" he asked, nodding at the photo.

"Er… yes, I do actually."

"Can you fetch them?"

"What, now?"

"Yes."

"I don't know…"

"You'll be taken home by car to get them." Winter had stood up. "We'd really appreciate it."

An hour later Cecilia was back with a brightly colored envelope. He noticed she'd gotten changed and done something to her hair.

Winter took out the photos taken at the graduation party and laid them on his desk, which was only just big enough.

It was the same occasion. Possibly also the same time. But a different angle. Whereas Lars-Olof Hansson had taken his pictures from straight in front of his daughter, Cecilia had taken them from the side. From Lars-Olof Hansson's left.

There were several people in the way.

He couldn't see the boy, nor the man who might have been the boy's father. Nor could he see the man with the beard and glasses.

But he could see the woman. The woman who was on her way out of the picture. Winter produced Hansson's photo and looked at the woman standing on the left of the frame, then at Cecilia's picture, and there she was, taken from the front. As if she'd left one photograph and walked into the other.

He showed Cecilia. "There's the woman, in your picture."

"God, you're right. I don't remember her. Not taking a picture of her." She looked at Angelika's pictures, and then at her own. Winter and Bergen hem waited. She looked up. "But… shouldn't we be able to see at least a little bit of… the others, in my photos as well?"

"If the pictures were taken at the same time," Winter said.

"But she's in the shot. So it must be the same time. The same minute, surely?"

Winter said nothing.

"This is spooky," said Cecilia. "It's like… ghosts."

They showed up later!

"But the boy's real," said Winter. "You've seen him in town twice, with Angelika."

"But not here. Why didn't I notice him here?"

Winter didn't reply, neither did Bergenhem. There was no answer they could give at the moment. Winter felt his flesh creep again.

"There's something else I want to show you," he said.

Cecilia looked hard at the brick wall.

"No, I don't recognize the place."

"Take your time."

"That wall's quite unusual. I think I would've noticed if it was in a bar I'd been to."

"But you recognize her?"

"Are you kidding? That's Angelika."

"Do you recognize anything she's wearing?"

Cecilia studied the picture of her friend.

"Those are winter clothes," she said. "I mean, she's wearing the kind of clothes you wear indoors in winter."

Winter nodded.

"I think I bought her that cardigan last year."

"When exactly?"

"Last winter."

"When, exactly?"

"I think it was after New Year's. Yes. After New Year's."

"This year, in other words?"

"Eh? Yes, it must have been."

Bergenhem was making notes.

"How often did you go out together?" Winter asked. "You and Angelika?"

"Quite a lot."

"What does that mean? In terms of frequency."

"I don't kn… Why are you asking me that?"

"How close were you?"

She paused to think before answering. She looked again at the picture of Angelika at the table in front of the brick wall.

"Angelika was kind of… private that way. She never said very much about what she was up to… on her own."

Winter waited.

"Like with that guy. She just refused to talk about it."

"What about this place?" Winter gestured toward the photo she was still holding.

"I don't know." She looked at Winter. "I mean, if she went somewhere when I wasn't with her she's hardly likely to come and describe the decor to me afterward! It doesn't have to be a secret just because she didn't tell me about it."

"Who said anything about it being a secret?"

"It seems like that. Like all this is about secrets."

"But isn't it normal to talk to your friends about places you've been to?"

"I suppose so… Yes."

"Why didn't she say anything about this place, then?"

"Well, she might have," said Cecilia. "That's what I mean. She wouldn't necessarily say there was a brick wall there, though, or anything like that." She looked at the picture again. "Who knows, I might have been there myself. Maybe in a different room."

"Would you be able to make a list of all the places in Gothenburg you and Angelika went to, and others that you knew about?"

"All you need to do is read the Gothenburg Entertainment Guide."

"Did you go out that much?"

"No, no. But all the places we went to would be in there."

"So you should be able to point them out for us now then."

Bergenhem had left. Winter reached for his pack of Corps on the shelf next to the sink, and found that it was empty. He needed a smoke. An excellent excuse to leave, buy some more, and then go home before Elsa went to bed.

It was a pleasant evening. He walked by the water. There wasn't much traffic near the railway station. A lot of people were sitting outside Eggers Hotel. A group with suitcases came out of the hotel and walked toward the station. Winter thought he could see the envy in their eyes as they glanced furtively at the sidewalk café. Traveling on a night like this when they could be sitting out there. He waved to some colleagues who were getting into a police van outside Femman shopping mall. They drove off, with a flash of the headlights.