Åke Edwardson - Death Angels

The bag was light and fragile when he picked it up. He walked over to the cottage and unlocked the door.

Opening the sack in the kitchen was like peeling away layers of bark. A videotape was inside. A sheet of typing paper had been folded in half and taped to the front. TO ERIK, it said in tall letters, meticulously traced with a blue felt-tip pen.

He closed his eyes, but the words were still there when he opened them again.

He tore off the sheet of paper and crumpled it up in the palm of his hand, then threw it to the ground.

There was more. Credit card receipts from stores and restaurants. Bus passes, underground tickets.

Everything was from London. Winter poked at the pile as if it were alive. A taxi receipt lay on top. Someone had scrawled STANLEY GARDENS across it with the same felt-tip pen.

He saw a letter to Geoff from Sweden.

One of Bolger’s last bread crumbs, Winter thought, but I haven’t watched the videotape yet. This is where it all comes together.

He had seen the television set last time he was here, a small LCD monitor with a built-in video player. After checking the main switch on the power strip, he turned it on.

Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, he thought, pushing the tape in.

The speakers roared. He turned the volume down and watched the static dance on the screen. He recognized the music immediately, and it made him sick to his stomach. New York Eye and Ear Control .

The video started off with a panorama of Bolger’s bar; the camera must have been perched on the mirror behind the counter. Winter saw himself. The screen filled with static and quickly cut to the next scene: Per Malmström on a bar stool. Cut. Winter again, a glass of beer in his hand. Cut. Per. Cut. Winter. Cut. Jamie Robertson. Cut. Winter. Vikingsson sat ten feet behind him and smiled. The camera zoomed to his face. Cut. Geoff. Cut. Winter, smiling at an invisible figure in front of him. Cut. Vikingsson, at the bar. Cut. Winter. Cut. Vikingsson. Cut. Per again. Cut. Back and forth, faster and faster.

The music stopped and the screen went blank.

A room appeared. A naked boy sat in a chair. A man came into view, bare chested with a piece of cloth covering his thighs. Winter stared at the boy’s eyes and heard his muffled cries as a rag was stuffed into his mouth.

The man took off his mask and peered into the camera. It was Bolger.

Winter heard a male voice.

Bolger’s lips weren’t moving and the boy was in no condition to speak.

Winter’s jaws began to ache. He tried to open his mouth but couldn’t. He grabbed his chin and pulled down. His mouth opened and the pain subsided.

He stopped the tape, rewound it a few seconds and hit play. There was the voice again. It sounded like an announcement. Winter replayed it, catching something about a camera.

Somebody else was in the room. It could be the same voice they had on the interrogation tapes. Vikingsson’s voice. Bolger wanted him to know that Vikingsson had been there. The police had experts who could compare and match voices. It was only a matter of time and effort. The eternal routine.

Winter let the tape run this time, for another three minutes, then stopped it and walked quickly out of the cottage to inhale all the oxygen he could find there at the top of the cliff.

EVERYBODY GATHERED AT WINTER’S PLACE. THE MOOD WAShushed, dominated by an overpowering need to be together. Some of them were drinking, but Winter refrained, having numbed himself sufficiently after hours under the shower.

“Get as drunk as you want,” he had said when they arrived, ushering them into the dining room, where the bottles were lined up on the table.

Winter hugged Bergenhem, careful not to touch the bandage around his head, and then Martina, who had an easier time hugging him back.

They all oohed and aahed over the baby.

“What’s her name?” Djanali asked.

“ Ada,” Martina answered.

“Permit me,” Winter said, coming back with a box of Cuaba Tradicionales he’d bought at Davidoff.

“I was supposed to bring those,” Bergenhem said.

“Right,” Winter said. “But that headache of yours isn’t quite gone yet, and in the meantime I’m going to hand out these fine old cigars as tradition dictates.”

Halders poured two glasses of whisky and handed Macdonald one.

Winter was off talking to Möllerström and Bergenhem, both of whom were sipping wine. They stood by the windows and looked out at the sunset. Djanali and Martina joined them.

“There was a chance that Christian would survive,” Macdonald was explaining to Halders. “We decided right away to keep it secret. His parents knew, of course, plus anybody else who needed to, and then we just sat back and waited.”

“Jesus Christ,” Halders said. “I almost fainted when Erik came back and told us about it.”

Winter walked over from the window. He had finally broken down and poured himself a glass of wine.

“Are you actually drinking?” Macdonald asked.

“Sometimes you’ve got no choice.”

The hours passed. Ada slept in Winter’s bedroom. Macdonald told Möllerström all about HOLMES-the Holmes Office Large Major Enquiry System-and caught up on the latest developments in Sweden. Östergaard, Djanali and Martina were back at the window, glasses in hand.

Halders brooded by the clutter of bottles. He had given Macdonald the lowdown on all the recent car thefts in Gothenburg.

“In such a lovely little town?”

“We have the highest figures in the European Union,” Halders boasted.

Winter and Ringmar sat in the kitchen. Ringmar’s voice was getting ragged around the edges. A beer and half a highball were on the table in front of him.

“You’re saying there was animal blood in his apartments?” Ringmar asked.

“He’s confessed,” Winter said.

“Fucking Viking.” Ringmar picked up the beer bottle and knocked over the whisky glass. A rivulet ran toward the edge of the table. “Shit,” he said, looking around for a dishcloth.

“Don’t worry about it.”

“What a bastard.”

“He thought he’d found the ultimate kick.”

“But still…”

They fell silent and listened to the music from the living room.

“He never managed to sell the tape?” Ringmar asked.

“I think he ran out of time. Assuming that was ever his intention.”

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

“It might not have been the most important incentive.”

“If you ask me, we’re talking about big money here,” Ringmar said. “Business is business. It’s hard to believe it wasn’t a consideration.”

“Perhaps for Vikingsson. Macdonald says he’ll find out if anybody bought the tape. He has some sources with sources of their own.”

“And Bolger had his motives too.” Ringmar avoided Winter’s eyes. “They used each other. Two madmen, coming from opposite directions.”

“I called my mother,” Winter said.

“You did what?”

“I asked her about the past twenty years. Suddenly she was razor-sharp.”

“Razor-sharp?”

“I wanted to find out about a few things I didn’t know back then, or was too young to notice, and it turns out she remembers quite a lot.”

“About you and Bolger?”

“The stuff that went on in those days. What he was like and everything that’s happened since.”

“What stuff?”

“How screwed up he was.”

“Did he really hate you that much?” It occurred to Ringmar that he wouldn’t have asked the question sober.

“I can’t answer that.”

Ringmar drank his beer.

“But he wanted to meet me on my terms,” Winter said after half a minute. “It consumed him day and night. He wanted to challenge me on my own turf. That’s the conclusion I’ve come to anyway.”