Åke Edwardson - Never End

"How's the hunt for the bar going?"Beier asked.

"No bites yet."

"It's bound to be an unlicensed joint."

"No doubt."

"Don't you know about them all?"

"We don't know what they all look like inside," Winter said.

Beier stood up, went over to the window, and pulled up the blinds. The room turned white.

"You should be worried about how difficult it's been to find out exactly what those girls were doing the hour or so before they were attacked."

"I am worried," said Winter. "I think they were at that bar or pub or whatever it is. They were there and they left and somebody else was there and went with them. Or followed them." He looked at Beier, who was a silhouette: in black against white. "When we find the place I'll be less worried."

"Or more," Beier said.

A male witness had said he'd heard screamscoming from the park. It had been about 2:00 a.m., or closer to 2:30. Half an hour to an hour after Beatrice had last been seen, entering the park.

Winter read through the Wägner case notes, the same thing over and over again. Winter read the witness's account, but nothing happened in that story, nothing emerged from it, he could see no subtext; he read it all again and tried to find the secret hidden underneath, but couldn't see it.

Something had happened, though.

Beatrice's final hours. He'd started interviewing some of the old witnesses again, her old friends. It was so long ago. They tried to remember, just as he was doing now. They'd gotten older, would be twenty-five soon. He'd spoken to four who'd been part of the group that last night. Two of them had kids now. Finished studying. A new life. One could still have passed for nineteen. One might pass for thirty. Where would Beatrice have been on that scale? What would she have looked like? I miss her, one of the women had said. I really miss her.

Winter compared what they'd said now with what they'd said before.

There was one thing that didn't match, not quite.

A blurred memory, perhaps, ravaged by time. But perhaps not.

That last night? Surely there's nothing else to add? He'd looked hard at Winter. Klas, an old friend of Beatrice's. Finished his studies. Does he realize he's a survivor? Does he think about it? Winter had felt for his packet of cigarillos in his breast pocket, a reflex action. He'd felt reflex pain when he groped for the packet: a tumor attached to his chest that had been cut away. He'd been having a sore throat. Felt worse since he'd stopped smoking. A cold spreading all over his body, waiting. Set free when the nicotine no longer protected him. Who had protected Beatrice? That last night. There was something that didn't add up. Klas remembered it all differently now. Or they'd asked the questions differently then. Beatrice hadn't been with the rest of them for the whole evening. Yes, they'd met up. But… sort of, afterward. Most of them had been out for a meal, but she'd showed up later and then she left again, and it had been a few hours before the rest of them went their different ways home.

Hang on. Winter thought back to what the case notes said. Hadn't they asked what had happened during the whole evening?

"Weren't you all together for the whole evening?"

"Not as I remember, no."

"What was she doing when she was not with you, then?"

"Her own thing, I suppose."

"What was her own thing?"

"I dunno."

"Oh, come on!"

"I don't know."

"What's the matter with you? Can't you see this is important?"

"Calm down, Inspector."

"What was her own thing?"

"There was some place she used to go to, I think."

"What place?"

"Somebody said something about her going to some place or other. A club. I must have said that when… when it happened. When she was murdered."

"No."

"I guess I didn't know for sure. She'd never said anything about it to me personally."

"And?"

"I wasn't sure, as I said. I probably didn't say anything because I didn't know for sure."

Winter looked hard at him.

"Who did know?"

"Nobody."

"But somebody said something."

"I don't know who it was. That's the truth. The truth!"

"You deserve a good beating."

Winter had blurted that out because he felt completely… unprotected and on edge. The nicotine that used to act as an inner protection, a barrier, had gone. There were other brands. A good man doesn't become less good because he changes his habits.

Klas had stared at him.

"I what?"

"I'm sorry. But this is something you ought to have said earlier."

"But it's just a little thing. And anyway, it's your job to… map out what she did."

That's the problem. There are gaps. Winter returned to the text in front of him. The male witness. But before starting to read again he stood up and paced up and down the room for a while, trying to subdue his craving for the poison. He turned on the kettle, made himself a cup of coffee, then sat down again.

The witness had heard screams. Winter read through the text for the umpteenth time. He'd been scared and rushed to get help. He'd met a couple about thirty-five years old, wearing white clothes. The couple had just walked through the park and, the woman thought, maybe seen somebody. According to the witness.

The police had never talked to that couple because they hadn't come forward.

He thought about that again. Why had they not come forward?

A man and a boy had been packing a car next to the park that night, perhaps at the very time that it happened. They had never been tracked down. Why had they not come forward either?

Winter drove to Lunden with his window down. He passed Halders's house, but that wasn't where he was going. Halders wasn't there. Halders was taking things a day at a time, an hour at a time. There was a hedge outside the house, about one and a half meters high. Winter could hear a dog barking.

He turned right about three blocks after Halders's house and stopped outside another house with another hedge. There was a brand-new BMW parked in the street outside. The car gleamed in the sun. Winter could feel the sweat under his shirt collar and down his back. He went in through the open gate and turned left, continued down a sloping flagstone path around the house and into the back garden, where the man he always referred to as "the gangster" was reclining on a lounger with a beer in his hand. The sun glittered on the surface of the swimming pool. The gangster watched him approach.

"You're wearing too many clothes," he said, raising his beer by way of greeting.

"I'm at work."

"I'm on vacation myself."

"On vacation from what?"

"Sit down, Erik."

Winter sat on the chair next to him.

"Would you like a beer?"

"Yes."

Benny Vennerhag got up and disappeared into the house through the patio door and returned with a bottle of beer that felt cold in Winter's hand as he accepted it.

Vennerhag sat down again. Swimming trunks didn't suit him. He was an old acquaintance, if you could call it that. He'd been married to Winter's sister, Lotta, at one time. For a very short time.

What the hell had she seen in him?

"I heard about your murders."

"They're not mine," said Winter, taking a swig of beer.

"Not mine either. But I told you that when you called."

"What about the other thing?"

"Illegal clubs? Not my field."

"Isn't it strange how nothing I ever ask you about is your field, Benny?"

"What's strange about that?"

"How do you make ends meet when nothing is your field?"

"That's a business secret."

"We know quite a bit about your secrets, Benny."

"And nevertheless, here I am in my trunks taking it easy," said Vennerhag, gesturing toward the pool and the mosaic tiles and the fresh green lawn.