Åke Edwardson - Frozen Tracks

Peters bowed in acknowledgment. “Not bad. You should be too young for the Only Ones.”

“Has Jens been here on more than one occasion?” Bergenhem asked.

“Yes.”

“Have you received any threats?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Has anybody ever threatened you?”

Peters said nothing. He took another drink, just a sip. Bergenhem could smell the high-quality malt again. The Only Ones continued their dark, 1980s journey through the world of drugs; a dark mass of music hovered over the room.

“Of course there have been threats,” said Peters. “Once people find out that you’re gay, you’re always exposed to that risk.”

Bergenhem nodded.

“Do you understand what I mean?” asked Peters.

“I think so,” said Bergenhem.

“I’m not sure you do,” said Peters.

“Do you understand what I’m getting at?” asked Bergenhem.

Peters thought it over. He held onto his glass but didn’t drink. The music had finished. Bergenhem saw a black bird fly past the window, and then another. A telephone rang somewhere in the apartment, and again, and again. Peters didn’t move a muscle. The music started again, something Bergenhem didn’t recognize. The telephone kept on ringing. Eventually the answering machine picked up. Bergenhem could hear Peters’s voice, but no message afterward.

“Surely you don’t mean that whoever hit Jens was really after me?” said Peters in the end.

“I don’t know.”

“Or that he was after Jens because of, well, for some special reason?”

Bergenhem didn’t reply.

“That he was being targeted? Because he’s gay?”

“I don’t know,” said Bergenhem.

“Well, I suppose that could be the case.” Peters held up his glass. It was empty now. “That sort of thing doesn’t surprise me anymore.”

“Tell me about when you’ve felt threatened,” said Bergenhem.

“Where do I start?”

“The last time.”

Aneta Djanali parked by the curb and they got out of the car. Halders was massaging the back of his neck as he watched Djanali lock the doors. She turned around.

“Does it hurt?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“I could give you a massage this evening.”

“I’d like that,” said Halders.

Djanali checked her notebook, and they walked to the entrance of the student dorm. There was a bicycle in the stairwell. A noticeboard was plastered with layer upon layer of messages and a big poster at the top advertised the autumn ball at the student union-which had taken place ages ago.

There was a vague smell of food, an aroma that had accumulated over decades of inventive cooking skills applied to cheap ingredients. Halders had lived in a student hall while he was at police college in Stockholm. He recognized the smell immediately.

“It smells just like the hall I lived on as a student,” he said.

“Toasted sandwiches and minced meat sauce,” said Djanali.

“Baked beans,” said Halders.

Aneta Djanali laughed out loud.

“What’s so funny?” asked Halders.

“In the hall where I lived we had a girl whose diet consisted exclusively of baked beans, and she used to eat them straight out of the can, with a spoon, without heating them up. It made me feel sick.”

“Don’t baked beans always have that effect?” wondered Halders.

Djanali breathed in the aroma again.

“Isn’t it strange how we have memory chips that kick in as soon as we come across a particular smell?” she said. “That smell is familiar, and so all the memories come flooding back.”

“I hope it doesn’t make you feel too ill,” said Halders. “We’re out on business.”

“But do you know what I mean?”

“Only too well,” said Halders. “There are things I thought I’d forgotten all about, but now they come tumbling out, just like you said.”

“I hope they don’t influence you too much,” said Djanali with a smile.

“Speaking of that girl’s diet,” said Halders. “You should have seen what me and my friends used to eat.”

“I’m glad I didn’t,” said Djanali, and she rang the bell of the hall where Gustav Smedsberg had lived before transferring to Chalmers. Jakob Stillman had a room on the floor directly above, when he wasn’t in Sahlgren Hospital. He’d soon be back here again.

Aryan Kaite lived in the dorm next door. That didn’t necessarily mean that the boys knew one another, or would even recognize one another if they met in the street. This is a pretty anonymous environment, Djanali thought. Everybody minds his or her own business and studies and occasionally slips out into the communal kitchen to fix a bite to eat, then slips back into their room with a plate, and the only time they look at anybody else is when there’s a party. Then again, there’s always a party. I remember in my day it was Saturday every day of the week, every week. Maybe it’s still like that today. If it’s always Saturday, good for them. For me nowadays it always seems to be Monday. Well, maybe not anymore.

Halders read the list of nameplates.

“Maybe one of these people has a grudge against his neighbor?” he said.

“Hmm.”

“Here comes one of them,” he said, as a girl appeared on the other side of the glass door. Halders held up his ID, and she opened it.

“I remember Gustav,” she said.

They were sitting in the communal kitchen. Halders’s and Djanali’s memories were all around them, a swarm of baked beans. Everything was familiar, time had stood still in there just as it had in all other student halls in every city in the country. It smelled like it always had. If I opened the fridge door, I’d be back in my prime, Djanali thought.

“So he was clubbed down?” asked the girl.

“No,” said Halders. “He was attacked, but he escaped uninjured, so he is a very important witness for us.”

“But… why are you here, then?”

“He lived here not long ago.”

“So what?”

It wasn’t an impertinent question. She doesn’t look the impertinent type, Halders thought.

“This whole business is so serious that we’re trying to pin down everybody the victims might have come into contact with,” said Djanali.

“But you said Gustav wasn’t a victim?”

“He could easily have been,” said Djanali.

“Why did he move out of here?” asked Halders.

“I don’t know,” said the girl, but he could see she wasn’t telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

“He didn’t exactly trade up by moving to the Chalmers dorm,” said Halders.

She shrugged.

“Did he have a dispute with anybody here?” Halders asked.

“A dispute? What kind of a dispute?”

“Anything from a minor difference of opinion to all-out war with air raids and antiaircraft fire,” said Halders. “A dispute. Some sort of dispute.”

“No.”

“I’m only asking because this is such a serious case,” he said. “Or series of cases.”

She nodded.

“Is there any special reason why Gustav moved out of here?” Halders asked again.

“Have you asked him?”

“We’re asking you. Now.”

“Couldn’t he tell you himself?”

Neither Halders nor Djanali said anything. They just kept on looking at the girl, who looked out of the window that was letting in the mild November light. She turned to look at them.

“I didn’t know Gustav all that well,” she said.

Halders nodded.

“Not at all, really.”

Halders nodded again.

“But there was something,” she said, and stared out of the window again, as if looking for that something so that she could show it to them.

“What, exactly?” Halders asked.