Åke Edwardson - Death Angels

Ringmar didn’t want to talk about it any longer.

“The music has stopped,” Winter said.

“What did you say?”

“I’ll go in and put on some more.”

“What’s this?” Halders asked.

“Charlie Haden and his Quartet West,” Winter answered.

“Good stuff.”

“Yes.”

“Even though it’s jazz. They call this jazz, right?”

“Immortal music of the forties and fifties.”

“What?”

“You’re right, it’s jazz.”

Möllerström was telling Östergaard and Djanali about his last relationship. Helander held his hand to steady him.

Winter sat down on the floor next to Östergaard.

“I was just kidding,” Möllerström said. “She picked up a pebble and threw it in the water.”

“Was the moon out?” Djanali asked.

“What?”

“Was it a moonlit night?”

“I can’t remember. Anyway, I said, Did you know it took ten thousand years for that pebble to make its way up to the beach? Or something like that.”

“Oy,” Helander said.

“Was that such a terrible thing to say?”

“It’s no big deal, Janne,” Djanali assured him.

“It sure as hell was a big deal. She was angry, or hurt. Things were never the same between us after that.”

“May I borrow that album, boss?” Halders asked, coming over to them.

Winter and Östergaard took the elevator down and crossed the street to Vasaplatsen Park. The fountain was like an iron anvil in the night. When he turned around and looked up, he saw the lights shining in his apartment. He thought he glimpsed a ponytail swinging in the shadows of the balcony.

They looked for the comet and spotted it right away.

May was approaching. It never got completely dark anymore.

He picked up a pebble and threw it across the grass.

“It took ten thousand years for that pebble to make its way from the obelisk up to this bench,” she said.

“Let’s go look at it.”

“Wait a minute.”

“Why?”

“How are you doing, Erik?”

“I’m making it. Tomorrow’s another day and all that.”

“I meant how you’re feeling.”

“Better than I expected. Honestly.”

“What have you been thinking about these last few days?”

“The meaning of life, but Halders taught it to me an hour ago.”

“Just in time.”

“No kidding.”

A car passed.

“For a while there, I thought everything might be my fault. Who knows, maybe I’m indirectly responsible, but nobody could have stopped Bolger. If we hadn’t finally stumbled across a way to do it, he would have kept on going for God knows how long.”

“Yes.”

“He wanted it to continue, but he also longed for it to end.”

She let him talk.

“I think my numbness has finally worn off,” he said.

They went down and walked around the obelisk.

“Does an obelisk have six sides?” he asked.

“It could be four.”

“This one has six.”

“But it looks like one.” She strained to make out the inscription.

Wild birds plow their way through the far reaches of space.

How many never reach their final destination.

But what difference does that make?

They die free.

They walked back to the bench. She sat down and he put his head in her lap. The coolness of the earth soothed him. He heard a fluttering above them.

“Do you want to pray?” she asked.

“I’m already saying my prayers. The free association kind.”

The wings fluttered again.

“Explain it all to me,” he said.

“Later.”

“I want to know everything.”

“It’s getting warmer day by day,” she said.

Åke Edwardson is a Swedish author of detective fiction, and a professor at Gothenburg University, the city where many of his Inspector Winter novels are set. Edwardson has had many jobs, including a journalist and press officer for the United Nations, and his crime novels have made him a three-time winner of the Swedish Crime Writers' Award for best crime novel. His first novel to be translated into English, in 2005, was Sun and Shadow. The second, Never End, followed in 2006.