Åke Edwardson: Frozen Tracks

One blink again. Yes.

“Was it far away?”

Two blinks. No.

“Were you alone when you started walking across the square?” Yes.

“But you were able to see somebody coming toward you?”

No.

“So somebody was behind you?”

Yes.

“Could you make anything out?”

Yes.

“Did you see a face?”

No.

“A body?”

Yes.

“Big?”

No blinking at all. This boy is smarter than I am, thought Ringmar.

“Medium-size?”

Yes.

“A man?”

Yes.

“Would you recognize him again?”

No.

“Was he very close when you saw him?”

Yes.

“Did you hear anything?”

Yes.

“Did you hear the sound before you saw him?”

Yes.

“Was that why you turned around?”

Yes.

“Was it the sound of his footsteps?”

No.

“Was it the sound of some object scraping the ground?”

No.

“Was it a noise that had nothing to do with him?”

No.

“Was it something he said?”

Yes.

“Did it sound like Swedish?”

No.

“Did it sound like some other language?”

No.

“Was it more like a shriek?”

No.

“More like a grunt?”

Yes.

“Something deeper?”

Yes.

“A human sound?”

No.

“But it came from him?”

Yes.

HE DROVE THROUGH THE TUNNELS THAT WERE FILLED WITH A darkness denser than the night outside. The naked lights on the walls made the darkness all the more noticeable. The cars coming toward him made no noise.

He had the window open, letting in some air and a cold glow. There was no light at the end of the tunnel, only darkness.

It was like driving through hell, tunnel after tunnel. He was familiar with them all. He would drive around and around the city through the tunnels.

Music on the radio. Or had he put a CD in? He couldn’t remember. A beautiful voice he liked to listen to when he was driving under the ground. Soon the whole city would be buried. The whole road alongside the water was being sunk into Hell.

He sat down in front of the television and watched his film. The playground, the jungle gym, the slide the children slid down, and one of the children laughed, and he laughed as well because it looked like so much fun. He pressed rewind, watched the fun once again, and made a note on the sheet of paper on the table beside him, where there was also a vase with six tulips, both of which he’d bought that same afternoon.

Now the boy was there. His face, then the car window behind him, the radio, the backseat. The boy told him what to film, and he filmed it. Why not?

The parrot hanging from his rearview mirror. He’d picked out one that was red and yellow, just like the climbing frame at the playground that needed another coat of paint, but his parrot didn’t need repainting at all.

The boy, who’d said his name was Kalle, liked the parrot. You could see that in the film. The boy was pointing at the parrot, and he filmed it even though he was driving. That called for a fair amount of skill, and he was good at driving while thinking of something else at the same time, doing something else entirely. He’d been good at that for a long time now.

Now he heard the voices, as if the volume had suddenly been turned up.

“Rotty,” he said.

“Rotty,” echoed the boy, pointing at the parrot, and it almost looked as if it were about to fly away.

Rotty. It was a trick. If anybody else were ever to see this film, which wouldn’t happen, but if, it would seem as if Rotty was the parrot’s name. But that wasn’t the case. It was one of his tricks like all the other tricks he had when he was little and his voice suddenly g-g-g-ot s-s-st-st-st-st-st-stu-stu-stu-stuck in midstride, as it were, when he first st-st-started stuttering.

It started when his mom walked out. He couldn’t remember doing it before. Only afterward. He had to invent tricks that would help him out when he wanted to say something. Not all that often, but sometimes. The first trick he could remember was Rotty. He couldn’t say parrot, pa-pa-pa-pa-no, he could stand there stuttering for the rest of his life and still not get to the end of that word. “Rotty” was no problem, though.

He heard a sound that he recognized. It was coming from him. He was crying again, and it was because he’d been thinking about the parrot. He’d had a red and green parrot when he was a little boy, and for a while when he was older. It was a real one, and it could say his name and three other funny things, and his name was Bill. He was sure that Bill had been real.

The film had finished. He watched it again from the beginning. Bill was there in several of the scenes. Bill was still there for him because he hung a little parrot from his rearview mirror every time he went out in the car. They might be different, with different colors, but that didn’t matter because they were all Bill. He sometimes thought of them as Billy Boy. His favorite Rotty. The boy was laughing again now, just before everything went black. Kalle Boy, he thought, and the film ended, and he stood up and fetched all the things he needed for copying, or whatever you called it. Cutting. He liked doing that job.

“Sounds like the Incredible Hulk,” said Fredrik Halders.

“This is the first of the victims who’s seen anything,” said Ringmar. “Stillman’s the first.”

“Hmm. Of course, it’s not certain that it was the same hulk who carried out all the attacks,” said Halders.

Ringmar shook his head. “The wounds are identical.”

Halders rubbed the back of his neck. It wasn’t all that long since he himself had received a savage blow that had smashed a vertebra and paralyzed him temporarily, but he’d managed to get the use of his limbs back. For what that was worth, he’d thought a long time afterward. He’d always been clumsy. Now it was taking him time to get back to his former level of clumsiness.

To get back to his old life. His former wife had been killed by a hit-and-run driver. A nasty word. Former. Lots of things had been different formerly.

He lived now in his former house, with his children who were anything but former.

He rubbed the back of his neck.

“What kind of a pick did he use, then?” he asked.

Ringmar raised both his hands and shrugged.

“An ice pick?” suggested Halders.

“No,” said Ringmar. “That’s a bit passé nowadays.”

Halders examined the photos on Ringmar’s desk. Sharp colors, shaved scalps, wounds. Not the first time, but the difference now was that the victims were still alive. The most common head in the archives is generally a dead one. Not these, though, he thought. These are talking heads.

“Never mind the damn picks,” he said, looking up. “The important thing is to catch the lunatic, no matter what kind of weapon he uses.”

“But it’s significant,” said Ringmar. “There’s something, something odd about these wounds.”

“Yes, no doubt, but we’ve got to put a stop to it all.”

Ringmar nodded his agreement and continued perusing the photos.

“Do you think it was somebody he knew?” asked Halders.

“That thought had occurred to me,” said Ringmar.

“What about the other two guys? The other two victims?”

“Eh. Saw nothing, heard nothing. A relatively open space. Late. No other witnesses. You know how it is. Had a few, but not completely blotto.”

“And then wham.”

“The same attacker every time. Do you think so too?” asked Ringmar.

“Yes.”

“Mmm.”

“We’d better dig a bit deeper into the victims’ circle of friends and acquaintances,” said Halders.