Åke Edwardson - Death Angels

Winter’s taxi swerved in and out near Mölnlycke, found a spot in the outer lane and zoomed past an airport bus. There’s plenty of time, he thought. It must be a matter of professional pride for the driver to get you there as fast as possible.

The phone hummed in the inside pocket of his sport coat. He pulled out the antenna and answered.

“Erik!” His mother sounded slightly out of breath. No doubt she had just jogged from the kitchen table to the refrigerator and back. “Are you at home?”

“I’m on my way to the airport.”

“You’ve always been such a smart boy, Erik.”

Winter looked at the driver, who was staring fixedly at the road as though he were considering whether to veer over to the right lane and smash his way through the guardrail into the cliff.

“You’re a traveling man,” she continued. “They always need you someplace.”

“I spend most days going back and forth between the Vasaplatsen subway station and Ernst Fontell Square,” he said.

“Fontell what?”

“It’s the square in front of police headquarters, on Skånegatan Street.”

“I see.”

“There’s all my traveling for you. Sometimes I even ride my bike.”

“So where are you going now? Not on your bike, I hope.”

“ London.”

“It’s a dreary city. But I’m proud of you anyway.”

“That’s what you always say.”

Beneath the static on the phone line, Winter thought he heard fragments of words that clung to each other like the language of another planet. “What were you calling about?” he asked.

“Do I need a reason to call my son?”

“We’re at the exit ramp now,” he lied.

“Since you wanted to know, I called Karin Malmström yesterday. She said you had been very kind to them.”

Winter looked out the window.

“She also told me that Lasse has taken it extremely hard. She was surprised to find out that she could handle it better than him.”

The taxi slowed down and weaved its way over to the right lane toward the exit. Winter heard a rumble behind them and turned around. The airport bus had caught up, apparently poised to zip into the priority lane a hundred yards ahead.

“It’s a tough time for them,” Winter said.

“What did you say?”

“They’ve got a lot to work through before they can come to terms with Per’s death.”

“Fucking idiot!” the taxi driver screamed. His eyes, which had suddenly turned wild, snapped to the rearview mirror. The bus had screeched to a halt a few inches behind them. “Those assholes are out of their minds,” he said to Winter’s reflection. “They drive like there’s no tomorrow.”

Winter put his hand over the phone. “They’ve got a schedule to keep.”

The driver snorted.

“What did you say?” his mother asked.

“Nothing.”

“What’s going on?”

“We’re at the airport now.”

“Don’t forget to call your sister.”

“I promise. Bye, Mom.”

“Watch out in Lond…”

But he had already lowered the phone and hung up.

At check-in, a murmur of expectancy ran through the long line to Winter’s right; the Canary Islands were a popular destination. Handing his ticket and passport to the attendant, he requested an aisle seat, in an exit row if possible to leave more room for his long legs.

While the attendant prepared his boarding pass, he thought about all the passenger lists his team had received. It was a thankless task, trying to keep track of everybody who had flown from Gothenburg to London the past two months, mainly for the purpose of having something to shove in the face of the reporters and police honchos demanding signs of progress. When we’ve got three thousand more officers and two extra years to work on the case, he thought, we’ll go through all the lists and hope that nobody was traveling under a false name.

Was Macdonald’s group in the same predicament-staring at a pile of passenger lists, never knowing what they might show? After receiving his boarding pass, Winter watched his suitcase bounce away on the conveyor belt. He smiled at the attendant, then walked upstairs to security.

Djanali could see her breath. The cold shadows under the apartment building smarted after the sunshine at the end of the street.

“You’re not so used to this kind of thing, are you?” Halders asked.

“What do you mean?”

“All this cold. It must come as quite a shock to you.”

“What are you talking about?”

“They call it snow.” He snatched imaginary flakes out of the air.

“You don’t say.”

“They’ve never seen it back where you come from, right?”

“And where is that, exactly?”

“You don’t need me to tell you that.”

“But I want to hear you say it.”

Halders watched his breath drift away, turned his head and looked down at Djanali’s face. “ Ouagadougou.”

“Excuse me?”

“ Ouagadougou, the place you come from.”

“Okay.”

“The capital of Burkina Faso.”

“Uh-huh?”

“Formerly known as Upper Volta.”

“Never heard of it.”

“ Burkina Faso,” he repeated.

“Is it anywhere near East Hospital in Gothenburg, where I was born?”

“The Ouagadougou branch.”

They both burst out laughing.

They opened a gate just down the street from the scene of the murder. It was their second round of the neighborhood, and they were looking for people who hadn’t been home before or had failed to return their calls. A little walkway ran from the entrance to the stairs that led up to Jamie’s apartment.

The late-morning sun was like a forty-watt bulb, startling by its very existence after the long winter.

Ringing the bell on the second floor, Djanali heard a hissing sound from somewhere else in the building, a voice in the apartment above and finally someone approaching the door. A man opened it all the way. He was somewhere between thirty-five and forty, with bushy hair, wide suspenders over a white shirt and unbuttoned cuffs as if he were in the middle of dressing, maybe for a party. An unknotted tie was draped around his neck. Must be a party, Djanali thought, a midweek bash for the fast crowd. He looks rather elegant in a degenerate kind of way, his hands trembling slightly, his eyes watery. A drinker.

“Can I help you?”

“Mr. Beckman?” Halders asked.

“Yes?”

“We’re from the police.” Halders employed his usual bumbling swagger.

He’s in his element here, Djanali thought, invading somebody’s privacy like this. That’s why he does the same thing year after year and never gets promoted. He doesn’t understand his own mind, or else he understands it all too well and there’s no longer anything he can do about it.

“And?” Beckman said, fiddling with his tie.

Italian, Djanali thought. Silk, could be expensive. Winter would know. “Do you mind if we come in for a second?” she asked.

“What for?”

“We’d like to ask you a few questions.”

“About what?”

Halders pointed at the stairs to remind him that anybody could be listening. “May we come in?”

Apparently convinced, or perhaps feeling like a couple of burglars had threatened him at gunpoint, Beckman backed up. Closing the door behind them, he ushered his guests through the hallway into a room that was bigger than any they had seen in the other apartments. Djanali took note of the height of the ceiling, the stucco, the amount of space, everything that had been so hard to judge in Jamie’s apartment. “You’ve got a big room here,” she said.

“I knocked out a wall,” Beckman explained.

“All by yourself?” Halders asked.