Åke Edwardson - Frozen Tracks

“Good Lord.” She looked up. “Get off your high horse.”

“Come on, give me a real challenge.”

“Confit?”

“Too easy.”

“Vierge?”

“Vierge?”

“Yes, vierge.”

He glanced down at the menu he had on his knee. “That’s not on the list.”

“Eh! I knew you were cheating.”

A car passed by in the street outside. The evening had cleared up. There were stars visible in the sky above Angela’s former home.

When he’d gone there for the first time, he’d been in uniform. It wasn’t while he was on duty. Are you mad? she’d asked him. The neighbors will think I’m a crook.

I forgot, he’d said.

How can you forget a thing like that? she’d asked.

“What are you smiling at?” she heard him say.

“That first time,” she said, nodding in the direction of the apartment building that was gleaming in the light from the streetlamps. A car was coming up the hill from Kungsgatan. “You came in uniform.”

They continued the conversation. It calmed them down. There’s always a feeling of absolute privacy when you’re sitting in a public place surrounded by strangers, Winter thought. A strange paradox.

He took a sip of wine. His glass now contained Fiefs de Lagrange, to accompany the rack of lamb with gremolata, ragout with lima beans, and artichokes, and this vierge that he hadn’t thought about when he ordered: a light sauce made of virgin olive oil, tomato, lamb stock, garlic, and herbs. He’d had a taste of Angela’s red wine risotto.

The waitress changed the candle. There were fewer people in the restaurant now. Winter’s mobile rang in the inside pocket of his jacket.

Elsa, Angela thought.

“Hello?” said Winter.

“It’s Bertil. Sorry to disturb you.”

WINTER COULD SEE THE BOY THROUGH THE DOOR. HE WAS ASLEEP. Or more likely mercifully anesthetized. Angela was standing beside Winter. They’d taken a taxi from the bistro. I want to be there this time, she’d said. You shouldn’t have to face everything on your own. Besides, it’s my workplace. Even my ward. And Elsa’s asleep.

“He could have frozen to death,” said Ringmar, who was standing on the other side of Winter.

“That, or some other awful fate,” said Winter. He’d read the reports, not that there were many of them so far. One by the hospital doctors, and one by Pia Fröberg, the pathologist.

“When did the call go out?” Winter asked.

“It couldn’t have been long after he disappeared,” said Ringmar.

“When was that? When did he disappear?”

“Just after four.” He checked his notes. “About a quarter past four. But that timing hasn’t been confirmed.”

“Is that information from the nursery-school staff?”

“Yes.”

“What exactly happened? What did they do? What did he do?”

“Nobody can say for sure.”

“So he was wandering around on his own?”

Ringmar didn’t respond.

“Is that what he was doing?”

“I don’t know, Erik. I haven’t interrogated the-”

“OK, OK. Anybody determined to kidnap a child can do it, no matter what.”

Angela gave a start.

There was a woman dressed in white sitting beside the boy. Machines were humming away. Sounds that didn’t sound natural. Lights that were anything but pretty.

“Let’s go to that other room,” said Winter.

A room had been set aside for them.

“Where are the parents?” Winter asked as they walked down the corridor.

“With one of the doctors.”

“I expect they’ll be staying overnight?”

“Of course.”

“I’m going home now,” said Angela.

They embraced, and Winter kissed her. He looked Ringmar in the eye over Angela’s shoulder. Ringmar’s face looked hollow.

The room was as bare as the trees outside the window and the streets below. Winter leaned against the wall in a corner of the room. The three glasses of wine he’d drunk had given him a headache that he was now trying to rub away from his forehead with his left hand. A radio in the distance was playing rock music. He could just about hear it.

Touch me, he thought he heard. And something that sounded like take me to that other place. But there was no other place. It was here, everything was here. He didn’t recognize the tape. Halders would have recognized it immediately, as would Bergenhem. And Macdonald. When was Steve supposed to be visiting them? Take me to that other place. Reach me. It’s a beautiful day.

The boy in that other room wasn’t that much older than Elsa.

“What happened next?” Winter asked.

“They sent out a car, and then another one,” said Ringmar.

“Where to?” Winter asked.

“First to the Plitka playground at Slottskogen Park. Then, well…”

“Grasping in the dark,” said Winter.

“They were six miles apart,” said Ringmar.

Six miles between Plitka and the place where he was eventually found.

“Who found him?”

“The classic setup. A dog, and then the dog’s owner.”

“Where is he? The dog’s owner, I mean.”

“At home.”

Winter nodded.

“So four hours had passed,” he said.

“Just over.”

“How much do we know about the injuries?” he asked.

Ringmar made a gesture that suggested everything and nothing. It was as if he could barely raise his hand. The guitars had stopped resounding in the corridor. Who the hell was playing rock music in the hospital?

“There are obvious injuries to the boy’s torso,” said Ringmar. “And his face. Nothing under, er, below his waist.”

“I saw his face,” said Winter.

“I saw one of his arms,” said Ringmar.

“Does anything surprise you anymore?” Winter asked, prying himself away from the wall and massaging his forehead again.

“There are questions you can’t answer with a yes or a no,” said Ringmar.

“Where were the parents when the alarm was raised?”

“The man was at work-he has lots of colleagues-and his wife was drinking coffee with a friend.”

And I was drinking wine in a restaurant, Winter thought. A brief moment of calm and warmth in a protected corner of life.

“He must have had a car,” he said. “Don’t you think? Driving through the rush hour traffic when everybody else is staring straight ahead and looking forward to getting home.”

“He parked inside the park,” said Ringmar. “Or close by.” He scratched his chin and Winter could hear the rasp from the day-long stubble. “The crime-scene boys are out there now.”

“Good luck to them,” said Winter, without conviction. A million tire tracks one on top of the other in a parking lot. With some luck a soft and wet patch of grass; otherwise there would be no chance.

We’ll have to check up on the usual suspects, he thought. To start with. Either we find him there, or we don’t. This could be a long journey.

“I’ll have to talk to the nursery-school staff as well,” he said. “How many of them are there now? Or rather, how few?”

But first, the parents. They were sitting in an office that Winter recognized. It was Angela’s. She’d arranged for them to be settled there before going home. There was normally a photograph of himself with Elsa on her desk, but she had removed it before Paul and Barbara Waggoner arrived, bringing their desperation in with them. Good thinking. Angela was sensible.

The man was standing, the woman seated. They radiated a sort of restrained restlessness that Winter knew all too well from all his other meetings with the relatives of victims, who were also victims, of course. A restlessness that was a sort of tangible desire to reach back in time and preserve the past forever. Of course. The victims of crimes were always searching for a life in the past. Perhaps they were not the only ones. He himself would have liked to remain in Bistro 1965, an hour ago, which could easily have been in another era in another world. The protected corner.