Åke Edwardson - Death Angels

He couldn’t budge the bottom drawer. Had the police been in here and tried before?

He pulled harder. The drawer came loose and he fell down and felt like an idiot. He looked around. The drawer was empty.

He lay back on the floor and looked up at the room. A mirror dangled from a hook on the wall above the chest, which now had a gaping hole like a missing row of teeth where the drawer had been. Even eight feet away from the mirror, he could see behind it. Something stuck out like a silhouette in the light that filtered through the space between the mirror and the wall.

Praise the Lord, Winter thought, standing up. He turned the mirror around and looked for the silhouette in the brighter light of the room.

It was gone. He gazed down at the floor. No paper, no photo, no receipt-nothing. A piece of fabric stuck out from the back of the mirror. He didn’t see anything else in there.

He hung the mirror back up and lay on the floor once more, trying to position himself at the same angle. He saw the space and the silhouette again. It was the loose piece of fabric. I’m letting all this get to me, he thought.

He had saved the photos for last. A collage was tacked up on a little bulletin board over the kitchen table. Ringmar had said that Vikingsson was vain. People like that don’t go very far without a mirror or a photo of themselves.

The collage was the only object in the apartment that revealed who lived there. Winter leaned over the table and looked at it. He counted the photos-eight in all, and Vikingsson the only person in each of them.

They had been arranged in a circle. He followed them clockwise, returning to the one on top: Vikingsson sat at some kind of counter that looked like a bar. He took up most of the photo. You could see behind his shoulders and five or six feet along the counter. Somebody had stood behind it and taken the picture with a wide-angle lens. Winter’s gaze meandered from Vikingsson to the area in back of him and off to the side.

Something about the place was familiar. The windows behind Vikingsson… Winter closed his eyes and saw the windows emerge from the past. The same bar. He saw himself sitting there and saying something to the man on the other side.

Take it easy, he told himself. It’s just a coincidence. The city is full of popular bars-and ones that aren’t so popular.

WlNTER COULD ALMOST SMELL THE ADRENALlNE lN THE CONference room. The mood had changed drastically since his departure for London, investigators now in motion, having found their direction.

Winter spent ten minutes telling them about London. “I want to know what each of you is thinking at this very minute,” he said. “Don’t worry if it comes out all jumbled up. Ringmar will write everything down. Okay-lights, camera, action.”

The semicircle they formed around Winter was like half a clock without the hour hand, as if they expected to solve the case before it came around again.

“Welcome back, boss,” Halders said.

Damn ass kisser, Djanali thought. He’s trying to sound ironic, but everyone knows he’s just sucking up.

“Sara?” Winter said.

“The marks on the floor indicate that the murderer was not only very strong, but beside himself with rage,” Helander said.

“Rage?”

“That’s our interpretation based on the way he moved around the room.”

“Hmm.”

“Something he had repressed finally got the chance to come out.”

“The bastard ran amok,” Halders said.

“Do you have people looking at Vikingsson’s past?” Winter asked, his eyes on Ringmar.

“You bet.”

“It seems to start quietly,” Helander continued. “Like a system or a pattern, and then it spirals out of control.”

“You can say that again,” Halders interjected.

“Hold your tongue, Fredrik,” Winter said, “and let us know when you have something constructive to contribute.”

Halders’s neck turned red, and he gave Djanali a sideways glance. She sat impassively and blinked her eyes.

“It’s the same story over and over again,” Helander said. “The murderer has a plan that gets out of hand, but the scary thing is that it gets out of hand exactly the same way each time.”

“What do you mean?” Möllerström asked.

“The patterns look the same, as if a robot had lost its mind, or was programmed to go crazy just like the time before.”

“ C’est la folie ,” Halders muttered, a naughty child who can’t keep his mouth shut.

Does he really know French? Djanali mused to herself. Maybe he’s taking an evening class.

“Except for the second murder in London,” Helander continued. “The photos I got from Erik show another pattern. It’s like a couple of sequences are missing.”

“He was interrupted,” Winter said.

“It shows.”

Everyone sat quietly and looked at the photos. It’s the way it keeps repeating itself that’s so horrible, Djanali thought. It’s revolting, but without this constant repetition, we would be totally lost. The art of monotony, that’s our specialty. She cleared her throat.

“Aneta?”

“We chatted with some of Vikingsson’s neighbors,” Djanali said. “People keep to themselves there. It’s your typical apartment building. But when we asked about his habits, somebody said he worked out a lot.”

“Worked out?”

“I don’t know if he meant anything special by it. But Vikingsson was carrying a big duffel bag the two or three times the neighbor ran into him.”

“Bertil?” Winter said.

“We just heard about the duffel bag today,” Ringmar answered. “We didn’t know about it yesterday or bring it up with Vikingsson.”

“I was referring to what you found in his apartment.”

Ringmar picked up a file folder from the table, flipped to one of the pages and read from a list. “No duffel bag,” he said.

“Nothing at all-not even a travel bag or a rucksack?”

“No-one of those roller bags that flight attendants use, that’s all. But we didn’t have time to turn the place upside down.”

“And now he’s home tidying up,” Halders said.

“Find out whether he has a gym membership,” Winter said to Halders.

“Okay.”

“Check out every health club in town if you have to.”

“Aye, aye, Captain.”

“Where is he now, by the way?” Möllerström asked.

“Somewhere over the North Sea,” Ringmar said.

“There’s something I wanted to bring up about the victims’ backgrounds, or however you put it,” Halders said. “We were supposed to look for whatever they might have in common, so we spent dozens of hours talking to their acquaintances and their girlfriends and boyfriends.”

“Possible boyfriends,” Winter corrected him.

“We’re pretty certain about that.”

“Go on.”

“Sure enough, there’s a place that Jamie, Per and Geoff all went to on a fairly regular basis,” Halders said.

“Not Christian?”

“We don’t know yet. It might be the kind of place that most kids their age go to.”

He said the name and Ringmar looked over at Möllerström.

“Halders mentioned it this morning,” Möllerström said.

“A lot of information came together last night,” Halders said. “But I haven’t had a chance yet to find out anything about Christian.”

Erik looks totally exhausted, Djanali thought. I wonder how the rest of us would appear to a stranger who just happened to drop by.

“Does Vikingsson have a car?” Winter asked Ringmar.

“Not one that’s been registered, in any case.”

“That doesn’t tell us much. We need to check the resident cards on the windshields of all the cars parked in his neighborhood. If we find one that nobody will own up to, it could be Vikingsson’s.”