Åke Edwardson - Death Angels

Macdonald removed the rubber band from his ponytail and let his hair fall over his shoulders. “Long black hair?” he asked, tugging on his own. James twitched, continuing to sway from side to side like a mourner. His eyes resembled caves.

“Bla-a-ack,” he said again and pointed to Macdonald.

“And white?” Macdonald asked, running his fingers across his face and pinching his cheeks. “White? A white man? White skin?”

“Whi-i-ite.”

THEY SAT lN MACDONALD’S OFFlCE, ALONE FOR THE FlRST TlMEin twelve hours. Macdonald’s eyes were nuggets of coal. The skin of his face looked like it had been taped to his cheekbones. His hair still hung loose over his shoulders.

Winter was wearing a sport jacket and black jeans, a gray button-down shirt without a tie, and dark boots. His chin and cheeks were unshaven.

So much for Scandinavian elegance, Macdonald thought. “I hope you realize that you’re more than an observer now,” he said.

“When does your team get together?”

Macdonald held his wrist up and looked at his watch. “In an hour.”

It was dusk. The dying light filtered through the blinds and shredded Macdonald’s face into blue strips.

“We’re never going to be this close again,” Winter said.

“Assuming he’s our man.”

“If not, we have a brand-new problem, right?”

“Then he’s got to be our man.”

A stack of papers started to vibrate. Macdonald brushed them aside and picked up the phone. Winter noticed that the papers came from a printout of Macdonald’s policy file. I follow the policy to a T, Macdonald had told him. It gives me cover for everything I do. That way I can justify my decisions when the top brass call me in for my monthly grilling.

“Hello?” Macdonald picked up a pen and asked a few short questions, taking notes.

Winter studied Macdonald as he played his role in the eternal cycle of evil that both of them and every other homicide investigator around the world were part of. He could have been sitting there himself with the receiver pressed against a sore ear, Macdonald could have been in Winter’s chair, or they could have been two other detectives in a crowded room in Singapore, Los Angeles or Stockholm. Or Gothenburg. It was all the same, and everyone was interchangeable. It’s bigger than life, he thought. It was there before we came, and it will be there after we’re gone.

Macdonald clenched his pen harder. “That was the lab-at Lambeth.”

“Yes, I remember.”

“He went about it the same way.”

“Exactly the same?”

“As far as they can tell right now.”

“Marks on the floor?”

“Yes.”

“Jesus.”

“All of a sudden he was in a hurry to get out of there.”

The sun had set and Winter saw Macdonald’s face in silhouette.

“Our poor witness pounded on the door and howled like a baby,” Macdonald said. “The murderer didn’t panic, but he stopped whatever he was doing.”

“But it might have made him a little careless.”

“What do you mean?”

“I was just wondering if he slipped up at that point.”

“Actually, he did.”

“How?”

“They found a loose metal sleeve from one leg of the tripod.”

Winter felt like he’d been locked inside a walk-in freezer. The roots of his hair tingled and his fingers turned to rubber. “The Lord is with us after all,” he said.

“So you believe in a merciful God?”

“Yes.”

“Maybe he’s looking down on us right now.”

“That metal sleeve. It’s not just something that happened to be in the room?”

“You’re selling some of the world’s best forensic specialists short.”

“Sorry.”

“There’s a streak of defiance in this,” Macdonald said. “It makes me wonder if it really was sloppiness.”

“That’s occurred to me too.”

“The defiance?”

“Yes, and that it could be a message of some kind, or a greeting.”

“Or a cry for help. But we’ll have to leave that up to the forensic psychologist.”

“Not help. It’s something else, more intimate. I can’t find the word for it.”

“Just as long as you can say it to yourself-the Swedish word, I mean.”

“I can’t find it in any language.”

The north wind had risen and Bergenhem felt the boat rock from side to side for the first time. The porthole was whistling like a flute. “The porthole is drafty,” he said.

“It doesn’t bother me,” Marianne said. “I’m used to it.”

“I can fix it.”

“I’d probably be nervous without it.”

“When you’re Angel…”

“What?”

“When you’re working.”

“Yes?”

“When somebody follows you into the other room.”

“What are you getting at?”

“What do you do there behind the bar, or wherever it is?”

“What do you want from me?”

“I just want to know what goes on back there.”

“If I fuck them?”

“No, I was just wondering if they say any-”

“You want to know whether I’m an honest-to-goodness hooker.”

“No!”

“You think I’m a hooker.”

“No way.”

“I’m not a hooker. I’ve never done it for money, not what you’re talking about.”

There was only one thought in Bergenhem’s head-that he had become someone else. His fists were clenched, and they didn’t belong to him.

“Hello? Anybody home?” Marianne edged toward him.

“Stay right where you are.”

“What?”

“Don’t come any closer.”

“So you think I’m a hooker after all.”

“That’s not it.”

“What are you talking about then?”

He drank some more wine. They were on their second bottle. He was off duty tonight, but Martina thought he was working. I wish you could stay home, she had said. It feels like my water is about to break any minute.”

“I dance for those poor bastards,” Marianne said. “All I do is dance.”

Bergenhem had lost interest in his question. He closed his eyes and saw a child on a table. He and Martina were watching through a screen. Angel danced for them and smiled at something she was holding in her hand.

The hull surged, as if a gale had lashed the boat, lifted it up and hurled it back into the river. Suddenly he felt sick to his stomach. His hands throbbed, the blood storming through his fingers. They weren’t his hands. His head was somebody else’s.

“Like when I was little,” Marianne continued. “Did I ever tell you how much fun I had?”

She had told him about the child she had once been, and that was one of the reasons he stayed. He thought about the privileged and the underprivileged. There was no justice anywhere, and it wasn’t going to get any better. All the signals that flashed on the road to the future were red as could be, with the same glare as at the strip joints, a light that led the human race on its pilgrimage to perdition.

“I was the star of my parents’ dinner parties,” she said.

Bergenhem lunged off the bed, dashed up to the deck, leaned over the gunwale and vomited. Tears filled his eyes and all he saw was a black hole. He felt a hand on his back. Marianne said something he didn’t catch.

“Don’t lean any farther or you’ll fall over.”

He breathed more easily now and he could see again. Below him the river ran dark between the boat and the stone of the wharf. The boat bumped up against the stone. Down there-that wasn’t any way out.

She wiped his forehead with a damp towel. He was drenched from the rain, his shirt clinging to his body as if he had fallen into the water. She steadied him as they walked back below deck. His feet slipped back and forth on the boards.