Åke Edwardson - Death Angels

“It’s a strange investigation.” Macdonald paused. “Actually, it’s several investigations rolled into one. My boss has put our team on the case full time.”

“Same here.”

“Nothing new on the letters?”

“We talked to Geoff ’s pen pal, but she couldn’t help us out very much. She didn’t notice anything unusual in his last letter, only that he was excited about coming to Gothenburg. As far as the letter that he supposedly received from someone else in Sweden is concerned, we don’t know anything yet. His pen pal had no idea who it might be from.”

“I guess it’s to be expected that he no longer had the letter when you found him.”

“No new witnesses who saw Per?” Winter was still mulling over Macdonald’s remark about being onstage.

“Yes and no, you know what it’s like. Everybody has seen everything and nobody has the information you’re looking for. To say that our phones are ringing off the hook would be an understatement.”

“Nothing solid to go on?”

“Not at the moment, but that’s how it always is. The good news is that the press has been unusually cooperative. A white European kid murdered in the ghettos south of the river is a real story, as opposed to the crack-related murders we usually deal with. Try to get the papers to write about them. I’m grateful for all the publicity and calls we can get, even if we have to weed out a bunch of nutcases. Croydon is England ’s tenth largest town-three million of us. So there’s no shortage of loonies here.”

“Gothenburg is Sweden ’s second largest, and that adds up to half a million.”

“Any drugs to speak of?”

“More and more.”

“Did you get the newspapers I sent by diplomatic pouch?” Macdonald asked.

“Yes, we did, thanks.”

“Then you know what I’m talking about. When the Sun demands that a curfew be imposed until an arrest has been made, the public feels called upon to help us solve the case.”

Winter was thinking to himself. “What did you mean by feeling like we’re onstage?” he asked finally.

“Onstage?”

“What made you say that?”

“It’s like somebody’s watching us, somebody who’s in orbit above us, just out of reach.”

“I have the same feeling.”

“Maybe it’s the tripod. It could give anyone the creeps.”

“What on earth did he need a tripod for?”

“Excellent question.”

Winter thought out loud. “Maybe he wanted to have his hands free. That’s one scenario at least.”

“Who knows, maybe there’s even a script.”

“What makes you think he needed one?”

“Everyone needs a script.”

Winter’s cell phone began ringing on the other nightstand. “Hold on a second.” He put down the receiver and lunged across the bed.

“Hello?”

“Erik? It’s Pia Fröberg over at the coroner’s lab. We’ve got a big problem with that blood on Jamie’s shoulder.”

“Yeah”

“There’s been a terrible mistake. It turns out the blood is from somebody on the ambulance crew.”

“How can something like that happen?”

“It can’t.”

“I understand,” Winter said calmly, but he didn’t know whether his effort at restraint came across over the phone. “I’ve got someone on the other line. I’ll call you back in a little while.”

He hung up and returned to Macdonald. “Sorry for the interruption.”

“No problem.”

“We need to go through all this from beginning to end, and there are a few things I have to see firsthand in London.”

“When are you coming over?”

“As soon as I get the go-ahead.”

“My boss and I are both anxious to have you here. It’s a case for international cooperation if I ever saw one.”

“I’ll let you know the moment my plans firm up.” Everyone needs a script, Winter thought. We’re onstage and somebody is orbiting just above our heads. We’re part of something bigger than ourselves. We make one mistake after another. Maybe we learn.

“The ambulance guy,” Fröberg said.

“How could anyone be so careless?”

She had taken off her white jacket to meet Winter in her rectangular office, where the shelves were overflowing with books and file folders.

She’s started to wear glasses at work, Winter thought.

“He had a day-old cut on his wrist in the opening just above his glove,” Fröberg said.

“Unfuckingbelievable.”

“He scraped it on the doorjamb when they came in with the stretcher and accidentally smeared the blood on Jamie’s shoulder while they were wrapping him up.”

“One little drop was all we needed.”

“Actually, you should thank me, Erik. It takes just as much time to eliminate a possible clue as to verify it.”

“Sorry.”

“No need to apologize.”

“So you’ve followed up on all the evidence?”

“Everything we could.”

“And I was hoping that all we needed was one good suspect.”

“What happened to all the ace interrogators?”

Winter thought about his best hope, Gabriel Cohen, who had been brought in on the second day of the investigation. Cohen was as methodical as Winter, reading all of Möllerström’s printouts, waiting, preparing. “Cohen’s ready to go,” he said.

“Medical science can’t always come to the rescue.”

“You’re right as usual. How about dinner tonight?”

“I can’t.” She smiled and reached for her jacket on the back of the chair, her blouse stretching against her breasts. “My husband is back.”

“I thought he had left for good this time.”

“So did I.”

Waving good-bye, he walked out of the office and nearly rammed headlong into a stretcher that had come rolling past.

YOU HAD TO MAKE UP YOUR MlND HOW MUCH OF THE NEIGHBORhood to cover-which buildings and which particular entrances. That meant all the tenants who lived in the chosen locations had to be questioned, no matter how heavy an accent they had, or how much they smelled of garlic, or how dirty they were- what we in this country call dirty , ventured a grinning twenty-five-year-old investigator fresh from the National Police Academy, his youthful cynicism intact. A seed of racism that could only grow, Winter thought, making a mental note of the man’s name. You’re far from enlightened yourself, he mused, but little shitheads like him can go find somebody else to work for.

Jamie had died on the fifth floor while the cars passed by on Chalmersgatan Street below, and Winter thought about a possible connection with Geoff ’s dormitory half a mile away. It was pure speculation at this point.

The buildings in this part of the city clung to each other, massive as cliffs carved out millions of years ago. The police walked up and down stairways, knocked on doors, drew muttering replies, invoked vague memories of incidents that nobody had paid any attention to when they’d happened and couldn’t say much about now.

Lasse Malmström had continued to put on his suit and go to work, and on the afternoon of the third day it all caught up with him.

It wasn’t only Per’s body, which had just arrived by plane.

Time was like a stone wall. He was having gruesome thoughts. As the plane was landing, he had hoped for a second that one of the wings would fly off and the whole runway would go up in flames.

Then the world ceased to exist for him. No job, no suits, silence all around and almost nothing he wanted to remember. Everything he thought he knew was gone, his refuge a place deep within.

The last thing he needs to hear is that you feel his pain, Winter thought.

The morning light flooded the living room, adding a shimmering veneer to the silence. A two-day-old beard deepened the wrinkles on Lasse’s face. He rubbed his chin nonstop, and it sounded like a nail file, or a rake unearthing frozen leaves. “What’s the latest?” he asked.