Åke Edwardson - Never End

She saw Samic and the woman turn the corner. They were thirty meters away. She paused and thought. There was nobody between her and the corner. She took a few more paces. The sound of music drifted from one of the cafes. She didn't hear the engine but saw the boat emerge from behind the corner and set off northward along the river. Quite a large motorboat that could be beige or light blue or yellow, but right now looked orange and black in the glow from the streetlights. Samic was at the wheel. He didn't look back. The woman was standing beside him, her hair fluttering in the breeze.

When Lars-Olof and Ann Hansson came home early the next morning, having spent the night with friends in the archipelago, they could see that something was wrong. As they stood in the hall, they noticed that it still smelled of night, a cool scent.

The window of Angelika's room was broken and standing half open. Paper and books and smashed ornaments were scattered over the floor. The desk drawers were wide open. Angelika's clothes were in a mess in the wardrobe, and its door was ajar. Her bed was in disarray. The uncovered mattress was lying sideways.

Ann Hansson fainted. Her husband called Winter.

Winter and Ringmar stood in Angelika's room. Winter noticed that the fresh flowers, formerly in a vase on the bureau, were now spread out in a semicircle.

"Somebody was looking for something," Ringmar said.

"Can you guess what?"

"The photograph."

Winter agreed.

"Didn't bother to clean up afterward."

"He knows what we're looking for," Winter said.

"Could be an ordinary burglar."

"There's a television set here," said Winter, pointing. "And a telephone on the bedside table over there." He gestured toward the bureau. "I'll bet her jewelry is still in the top drawer."

Winter tried to read something in Andy's face. It was a map showing different directions.

"On which side of the river?" Winter asked.

"I don't follow."

"There's a bar there, isn't there? That Anne went to sometimes?"

Andy's face indicated that he thought it was nothing to do with Winter, that it was irrelevant.

"It's very important," Winter said.

"Eh?"

"Can't you get it into your head that this bar is relevant to her death?"

You little shit head.

Ringmar could see what Winter was thinking. His face was a map now, too.

Winter put the photographs on the table. Andy took his time.

"I don't recognize either of them," he said.

"They're both dead," said Winter.

Andy was silent.

"In the same way as Anne."

"I still don't recognize them," Andy said.

"Is there anything else you recognize, then?"

Andy turned to look Winter in the eyes.

"What do you mean?"

"The place. The surroundings."

"No."

"Take as much time as you need."

"I don't recognize it."

Winter didn't speak, just sat. He could hear faint noises of summer. They were in an interrogation room containing nothing of all the things outside. There were no colors in here. Sounds were muffled, filtered through the air-conditioning, flattened to a buzz that could be anything.

Winter felt for the pack of cigarillos in his breast pocket. He could see the sweat on Andy's brow despite the low temperature in the room.

Maybe it would happen now.

"I don't recognize it," Andy repeated.

Then he said it.

"I've never been there."

Winter was holding the pack halfway out of his pocket.

"I beg your pardon?"

"I've never been there."

"Where?"

"There," said Andy, waving his hand at the photographs on the desk.

"Where is it, Andy?"

"Where… where they used to go."

"They?"

"Yes, they. There are several of them, aren't there?"

Winter waited. A car set off on an emergency call, he could hear it. A voice shouted, more loudly than usual. Or maybe it was at normal volume in the thin air.

"You know where it is, Andy."

No response.

"Where is it, Andy?"

He looked at Winter. His face changed, then changed again.

"What does it matter?"

"Have you still not gotten it through your head?"

"I'm just thinking of… of her."

Winter nodded.

"Do you understand?"

"You can help her now."

"It was so… innocent."

"What was innocent, Andy? What?"

"The… the dancing."

"The dancing," Winter repeated, as if he'd been waiting to hear those words all afternoon. As if everything had been leading up to those words: the dancing. A dance for a murderer?

"Tell me about the dancing," Winter said.

"It was just an extra job on the side."

"Tell us about the extra job on the side."

"I don't know exactly what it was."

"Just tell us about the dancing, then."

"Some stripping," Andy said. "It was… nothing much."

"Some stripping? Striptease?"

Andy nodded.

"She was a stripper. Is that what you're saying?"

"Yes… that's what she told me, anyway."

Winter held his eyes. Why hadn't Andy said anything right at the beginning? From the first minute he knew what had happened to Anne. Dancing naked wasn't the end of the world, not even to old men like… like him, like Winter, an old man of forty-one, knocking forty-two. It wasn't the most desirable summer job, but it didn't mean eternal damnation.

But had it meant eternal death for Anne? And for the others? Had the other girls also had summer jobs as strippers?

Winter wasn't shocked to hear that young girls of about twenty earned extra cash at strip clubs. It wasn't exactly news. It was rather an increasingly wearisome fact. He felt more angry about the unknown prostitution young girls could be led into. Not so much in the clubs, they had a pretty good check on those. But over the Net. The Internet, which was supposed to spread happiness and socially useful information to mankind.

At the very beginning of the case he'd ordered a check on the shady places they knew about in the seamier parts of town and by the railway line running east. They thought they knew more or less all there was to know about them. And the girls who worked there. Some had only just started secondary school.

Winter looked at the photographs of Angelika and Beatrice. Had they been there? Had they wiggled and waggled to kitschy disco music in front of that brick wall?

He thought. Then something dawned on him. Something quite different. It wasn't a club, not a restaurant, not a strip joint, not a bar.

It was a home. Somebody's private house.

If so, that would mean they'd have to start searching in a new way. A new way that wasn't possible. It could be anywhere. Any house. Any dirty old man at all.

"You said before that you didn't know exactly where it was," Winter said.

"Yes."

"But roughly?"

"I know which part of town."

It was an entirely different part from what Winter had expected. Not at all where he'd tried to find a common… starting point. Where the trails started. A different part of town altogether. Over the river and in among the houses. Over the hill, through the viaducts, under the highways. A far larger area than the one he'd expected. If Andy was right, that is. He'd already decided to hold Andy for six more hours. He didn't think he'd be contacting the prosecutor after that, or even during it. But what he thought now was of no significance.

"Did you ever go with Anne?" Winter asked.

"No."

"Why not?"

"She didn't want me to."

"And that was enough?"

He nodded. "And it wasn't all that often anyway."

"What wasn't all that often?"

"Her doing it. Dancing."

"Was that all she did? Dance?"

"What… what are you implying by that?"

"I'm just wondering why it's taken you so long to tell me this, Andy."