Åke Edwardson - Never End

"Jeanette hasn't said anything, has she?"

"Why don't you let her go, Mattias?"

"What do you mean, let her go?"

"You know what I mean."

"I did that ages ago. Let… everything go."

Then Mattias had fallen silent when Halders showed him the picture of Angelika's boyfriend.

"Do you recognize him?" Halders had asked.

The conversation continued. Then Mattias said it:

"It'll… never be like it used to be." Mattias had repeated it, something different. A normal thing to say, but not now, not anymore. And not what came next, after a short pause. "It was different before. I've told you. I've told you before." He repeated it again soon afterward. Halders asked a few follow-up questions, and that was all Mattias had said, but it was enough. It was enough now.

Winter had finished reading, called Bergenhem, and they had driven to the park. There had been no other place to go to.

In the backseat, Mattias said nothing. Winter could see the glow from the neon lights passing over his face without him blinking a single time. The glittering dog leash had been exchanged for handcuffs that gleamed in similar fashion.

They took him through the back entrance and up the stairs to a cell, then everyone assembled in Winter's office. Winter felt too nervous to move to a bigger conference room. He was smoking, drumming his fingers; he looked at everybody's face and noted that Djanali's displayed the most worry.

This was not a moment to open the champagne.

"We'd better get going on the kid," said Cohen, who rarely attended such meetings. The chief interrogation officer generally moved in his own circles.

"What are we going to do with Bielke?" wondered Johan Setter. He looked at Winter. "Assuming it's the boy. Mattias."

"It is him," said Winter. "But it's not only him."

"In both cases?" asked Setter.

"No, he was too young when the first murder was committed," said Djanali.

"He was sixteen or seventeen," said Setter, "and already about six foot, so we're told."

"Bielke killed Beatrice," said Winter. "He hasn't admitted it yet, but it's written between the lines of the letter to his wife, and if we ask him again he'll tell us." He puffed at his cigarillo, then looked around the room again. "He'll tell us now. Once he's heard what happened tonight."

"Why?" asked Setter, playing the role of interrogator, trying to find out how and why. "And how?"

"We know that Bielke took part in the… activities at the house. We haven't found anybody there, but we know. We've seen." He thought about Halders again, could see that Djanali was thinking about Halders. Halders must have seen. "We know that Beatrice was there. We don't know why, but we can guess. More than guess. Beatrice was there five years ago, shortly before she died."

"But why did Bielke kill her?" Setter asked again.

For Christ's sake! thought Djanali. Tell us why people kill one another so that we know once and for all and the world becomes a paradise. Bielke killed her because he's an evil person, or a sick person, perhaps there's a link. It wasn't enough to see her behind a pane of glass. He wanted more than that.

She heard Winter answering Setter's question.

"Maybe that wasn't his intention. Maybe one thing led to another. The man's sick."

Like his son, if it is his son, Djanali thought. Like father, like son.

But the most important thing was Fredrik.

"As far as I can see, there's only one reason why we're all sitting here now, and that's finding Fredrik," she said. "So: what is there about what has happened now that can help us find him?"

"That is what we're talking about," said Setter.

"Oh, yeah?"

"It's all interlinked, surely? What did Halders see in that house that was so compromising that he had to disappear?"

"And Samic," said Bergenhem. "Why did he disappear?"

"There's another big question," said Winter, with a glance at Djanali, possibly slightly apologetic. "Did Bielke rape his own daughter? Or did Mattias do it?"

"Raped his own sister?" said Sara Helander. "Or half sister."

"He might not have known at the time," Ringmar said. "Presuming that is what happened."

"If Mattias murdered Angelika and Anne, he could well have done something like that," said Setter. "But I say it again: why?"

A punishment, Winter thought. Mattias was punishing them for something. For something they'd done. What had they done? Danced, perhaps. Possibly more. How did Mattias know about that? Had somebody told him? Why should Mattias bother about it? Had he been there himself? Had he been there himself? Had he seen Kurt Bielke? Had he seen… his daughter? Had she been there? No. Or… been there without her father knowing? Had Bielke done something that resulted in his daughter being raped? Somebody who was punishing him? Via his daughter? Somebody who had a… hold on him. Who knew what he'd done.

Beatrice five years ago. Beatrice who'd been there. Others who'd been there. Samic had been there. Samic. Where else had Samic been? With whom? There was a woman involved. Was she Mattias's mother?

Mattias had suffered in various ways. He was seeking attention and… he was seeking the ones who were involved… in the sinister game. The girls were involved in the game. Perhaps he thought they were responsible for what had happened to Jeanette and what had happened between the two of them. The girls… but also Kurt Bielke. Did Mattias know what had happened to Beatrice? He hadn't murdered her, couldn't have.

Mattias put the camera in Bielke's car. Mattias broke into the Hanssons' house, looking for something that could expose Bielke. No. Somebody else. Samic? Had Samic already known about the photographs of the bar?

Mattias could have killed Angelika's boyfriend because he might have known Mattias and started to suspect something.

When they searched Mattias's apartment they would find the camera that had taken the pictures of the girls sitting in the bar, a camera with a damaged lens. They'd also find Anne Nöjd's mobile phone.

All this flashed through his mind in the space of a few seconds.

Mattias might give them all the answers, or just add a few more questions. Bielke would talk, maybe too much.

Somebody said, "Samic."

"What was that?"

"If we can find Samic, we'll find Fredrik as well," Djanali said. Samic, Samic. Samic. Winter thought, thought, like everybody else.

It hadn't been possible to talk to Mattias. He was in a silent world of his own that Winter had not been able to break into.

Bielke had not yet confessed, but he would. He did talk, however.

Asked about his daughter, never about his wife. His madness came and went in his eyes. Cohen and Winter tried to concentrate on what had happened in the house on the other side of the river during the hour after Haiders had entered it.

"I know nothing about that."

"You were there," said Winter.

Bielke suddenly looked him in the eye, and held his gaze. Bielke's forehead was throbbing, as if his thoughts were about to burst out of it and spurt all over the table. Winter waited.

"You were there," he said again, as calmly as he could.

"Yes," said Bielke. "Yes."

That was the first time he'd admitted it.

"Where were you?" Winter asked.

"I was in the house."

"Where in the house?"

"I was in the basement."

Bielke's eyes had glazed over, or were in the process of doing so. He stumbled over syllables in a monotone. Weariness was setting in now that it was all over.

"Who else was in the basement?"

"Eh?"

"Who else was in the basement?"

"Her."

"Who's her?"

"I dunno."

"What's her name?"

"Dunno. A girl."

"What did she do?"