Åke Edwardson - Never End

"I'm having trouble hearing you," said Halders in a loud voice, rising to his feet. His forehead was striped white when he frowned. "Say that again, please."

Winter could see Halders's expression change as he began to understand what the voice was telling him.

"Wh-" said Halders. "What the hell…"

His face twitched as if he'd lost control of his muscles. It was unnerving. Winter could tell that something serious had happened. Something unconnected with the investigation.

"Yes… Yes, of course," said Halders. "I'll go there right away." He hung up and looked at Winter with a new expression on his red face, which had turned pale. Almost gray.

"It's my ex-wife," he said in a voice Winter had never heard before. Halders was still staring at him. "My ex-wife. Mar- Margareta. She was run over and killed an hour ago. On the sidewalk."

He ran his hand over his head, scratched the red patch on his brow again; it was as if the last time he did it had been in another age. Nothing would be the same again.

"On a goddamn sidewalk. On a sidewalk outside a supermarket in Lunden." He gestured toward the window. "That's just down the street." His face muscles were twitching again, out of control.

"What happened?" asked Winter. He had no idea what to say.

"Run over," said Halders, still in the strange voice. "Hit and run." He stared past Winter into the beautiful afternoon light. "Of course, it would be hit and run."

"Is it… definite? That she's… dead?" Winter asked. "Who called?"

"What?" said Halders. "What did you say?"

"Where are we going?" said Winter, getting to his feet. Halders stood motionless. His face still twitching. He tried to say something, but no words came. Then he looked at Winter, his eyes became fixed.

"East General," he said. "I'm going now."

"I'll drive," said Winter.

"I can manage," Halders said, but Winter was already halfway out the door. They jumped into the elevator and hurried into the parking lot. Haiders sat beside Winter without a word, and they drove off in an easterly direction.

A cruel message, Winter thought. Couldn't they have said that she'd been badly hurt? Who was it that had given Halders the news?

He'd once heard a joke on this theme. He suddenly thought of it as the car was plunged into the shadows cast by the tall buildings on either side of the road.

The joke was about a man who is traveling abroad. He calls home and his brother says right out: Your cat's dead. The man calling from abroad tells him you shouldn't come out with such cruel news in such a direct manner. You could say the cat was on the roof… yes, that the fire brigade had arrived, and that the police and everybody had done all they could to get the cat down, and in the end they managed to capture it but it wriggled out of their grasp and jumped and landed awkwardly and they took it to the animal hospital and a team of vets operated throughout the night but in the end they had to concede that it was impossible to save the cat's life. That's the way you should tell somebody about a tragic event like this. Tone it down a bit. His brother says he understands now, and they hang up. A few days later the man calls home again and his brother says a tragic event has just taken place. What? wonders the man. His brother says, Mom was on the roof…

Winter didn't laugh. Halders said nothing. They came to a roundabout and turned off for the hospital. Winter could feel the sweat gathering at the base of his spine. Traffic was dense, with vacationers returning after a day on the rocks on the big islands to the north, or by the lakes to the east.

"The children haven't been told yet," Halders said.

Winter waited for him to elaborate as he drove into the hospital parking lot. The shadows were sharp and long.

"I have two children," Halders said.

"I know."

They'd talked about it, but Halders had forgotten.

"They're at their after-school clubs now. For God's sake!" Halders suddenly blurted out.

Winter parked. Halders was out of the car before it had even stopped moving, and started half running toward one of the hospital buildings.

He was a stranger to Winter, and yet like a member of the family at the same time.

That's exactly what Winter thought as he watched Halders hurry over the asphalt through the sunlight, then into darkness as he came to the Emergency Room entrance. Halders had become more distant, and yet more close, simultaneously. Winter had a new feeling of unreality, like he had entered into a dream. He could no longer see Halders, and didn't know what to do.

He'd been here just the other day, had accompanied the Hansson girl from Slottsskogen Park to her postmortem. Now he was here again.

Halders stood by the stretcher. Margareta's face was just as he remembered it, from the last time he'd seen her.

Only three days ago. Sunday. He'd been to Burger King with Hannes and Magda, and Margareta had opened the door with a smile, and he'd muttered something, then left without even going in. Not this time. Not that they weren't on friendly terms. It was all so long ago. So long ago that he'd been an idiot. He was still an idiot, but back then he'd been one in a different way.

He couldn't see the rest of her body underneath all that white, and he didn't want to, either. He thought about Hannes and Magda as he thought about Margareta. He thought about the dead girls, too, and that was sufficient to make him start slumping toward the floor, lose his balance, recover it, hold on to the stretcher, bend down toward Margareta's face, cling to the moment that he knew would be the last.

Now it's happened to me, he thought. Hit me with full force. This is no dipping into somebody else's misfortune. This is my very own.

He stroked Margareta's cheek.

There had been a first time.

Damn the thought. He'd been nineteen… no… yes, nineteen. He'd been like the girls he and Winter had been talking about only half an hour ago.

Then he was twenty-two, soon to be a fully qualified cop.

He stroked her cheek again.

The divorce hadn't meant anything. Not in that way. It didn't come between them in that way.

Somebody spoke. He wasn't listening and kneeled by the side of the stretcher, intended doing so for a long time. He felt a hand on his shoulder and looked up to see Winter.

It was as light as day when Winter got home that evening. Light shone into the flat. There was the smell of food in the hall, but he wasn't hungry anymore.

He'd called Angela some hours earlier.

He went in to Elsa and wondered about waking her up, but contented himself with smelling her, and listening.

Angela was waiting in the kitchen with a glass of wine.

"I'll have a whiskey," said Winter, and went over to the countertop, took one of the bottles, and poured several inches into a chubby glass. This wasn't the time for a delicate malt whiskey glass.

"Oh, dear."

"You can have the rest if I can't drink it all."

"Just because I've finished breast-feeding doesn't mean I'm ready to become an alcoholic."

"Cheers," said Winter, taking a swig. Angela raised her wineglass.

"Are you hungry?"

Winter shook his head, felt the punch of the whiskey reverberate through his body, sat down at the table, and looked at Angela, who was a little flushed. It was hot in the kitchen.

"How's Fredrik?" she asked.

Winter absently waved his hand: Halders is still with us. He hasn't broken down altogether.

"What'll happen to the children?"

"What do you mean?"

"What I said. How are the children?"

"You said, 'What'll happen to the children?' That's obvious, surely. They're with Halders."

Angela said nothing.