Åke Edwardson - Frozen Tracks

It was a small town bank it was a mess, well I had a gun you know the rest. Angela’s songs had become his as well.

“Snow!” shouted Elsa, and ran into her room to draw a snowman like the real one she’d just made.

“And I’m going to take all this away from her,” said Angela, looking at him with a faint smile. “Tomorrow we’ll fly away from the first white Christmas of her life.”

“It will disappear during the night,” he said.

“I don’t know if that was pessimistic or optimistic,” she said.

“Everything depends on the context, doesn’t it? Positive, negative.”

He hung up his overcoat and wiped a few drops of water off his neck. He undid another shirt button.

“Where’s your tie?” she asked.

“A guy out there borrowed it,” he said, gesturing with his thumb at the park outside.

“A silk tie. Must be the best-dressed snowman in town.”

“Clothes make the man,” said Winter, going into the kitchen and pouring out a whiskey.

“Would you like one?”

She shook her head.

“You don’t have to go,” he said. “You could stay at home. I’m not forcing you to go.”

“I thought that this afternoon as well,” she said. “But then I thought about your mom. Among other things.”

“There’s nothing stopping her from coming here.”

“Not this Christmas, Erik.”

“Do you understand me?” he asked.

“What am I supposed to say to that?”

“Do you understand why I can’t go with you now?”

“Yes,” she said. “But you’re not the only person in Gothenburg who can interrogate a suspect. Or lead an investigation.”

“I’ve never claimed that I am.”

“But you still have to stay here?”

“It’s a question of finishing something off. And it’s only just begun. I don’t know what it is. But I have to follow it through to the end. Nobody else can do that.”

“You’re not the only one on the case.”

“I don’t mean it like that. I’m not talking about me as a lone wolf. But if I break off now, I won’t be able to come back to it. I’ll… lose it.”

“And what does that mean? What will you lose?”

“I don’t know.”

She looked at the window that was being pelted with snowflakes hurled by strong gusts of wind. Springsteen was singing, again and again:

I threw my robe on in the morning.

“Something terrible may have happened,” said Winter.

“Have you appealed to the public for information?”

“Yes.”

“Ah, that reminds me, your contact at the newspaper, Bülow, called.”

“I’m not surprised. He’ll call again.”

“Can you hear the phone ringing? Of course you can’t. That’s because I’ve pulled the plug out.”

“I can hear ‘The Ghost of Tom Joad,’ ” he said.

“Good.” She made a gesture. “Is this case going to take up the whole Christmas holiday?”

“That’s why I’m staying behind, Angela.” He took a drink of whiskey now; a cold heat passed down his throat. “I can’t say any more than that. You know me. Don’t you? I can do my job or I can pack it in. Either or. I can’t do it by halves.”

“Why bother to make plans for a vacation at all, then? It’s pointless. It would be better to work all the time, eighteen hours a day, all year round, year after year. Always. Anything else would be half-assed, as you say.”

“That’s not what I’m saying.”

“OK, OK. I understand that you have to keep going now. That things are happening all the time now. That what has happened to the little boy could be horrendous. Or is horrendous.” She was still looking at the snow on the window. “But it never stops, Erik.” She turned to look at him. “Horrible things happen all the time. And you are always there, in the thick of it. It never stops, never.”

He said nothing.

I did take six months’ paternity leave, he thought. That might have been the best time of my life. The only time of real value.

“I’ve been looking forward to this trip,” she said.

What should he say? If we miss one Christmas together, there’ll be a thousand more to come? How did he feel himself? What did it mean to him, not spending the special days with Angela? And Elsa?

How many days were they talking about?

“I might be down there with you the day after,” he said.

“The day after the day?”

“Stay here, Angela. We’ll go there together the moment all this is over.”

“Sometimes when I think about you and your job it’s like you’re a sort of artist,” she said. “No fixed working hours, you choose yourself when and how you work, you sort of direct the work yourself. Do you understand, Erik? You… create your work yourself.”

He didn’t respond. There was something in what she said. It wasn’t possible to explain it, nobody could. But there was something in it. It was a frightening thought.

“I can’t explain it,” she said.

“I understand what you’re saying.”

“Yes.”

“Of course, you should stay here over Christmas,” he said again.

“Let me think about it,” she said. “Maybe it’s best for all concerned if we go to Spain, Elsa and I.”

Five days, he thought out of the blue. It’ll be all over in five days. It’ll be over by Boxing Day.

He knew already that wasn’t going to be something to look forward to. Regardless of what happened, he knew there was something dreadful in store after the Christmas holiday. Or during it. He knew that he would be surprised, find questions and answers that he hadn’t formulated. He would be left with unanswered questions. See sudden openings that had previously been welded together. And new walls. But he would be on the way all the time, really on the way, and this moment at this table would be the last bit of peace he would have. When would he be able to return here, to this? To peace?

“Will you marry me, Angela?” he asked.

The telephone rang the moment he plugged it in again. It had just turned midnight. Nothing new on his mobile, and nobody had that number unless he’d given it to them personally. Hans Bülow wasn’t among those.

“What’s going on, Erik?” asked Bülow.

“What do you want to know?”

“You’ve sent out an appeal for information about a four-year-old boy called Micke Johansson?”

“That’s correct.”

“What happened?”

“We don’t know. The boy is missing.”

“In Nordstan? In the middle of the Christmas rush?”

“That’s precisely where and when such things happen.”

“Has it happened several times, then?” asked Bülow.

“I meant in general. Children get lost when there are lots of people around.”

“But this one hasn’t come back?”

“No.”

“It’s been almost a full day.”

Winter said nothing. Bülow and his colleagues could follow the hands on a clock just as well as he could.

Angela moved in bed. He went quickly out into the kitchen and picked up the receiver of the wall telephone. The reporter was still there.

“So somebody kidnapped the boy?” said Bülow.

“I wouldn’t use that term.”

“What term would you use?”

“We don’t know yet what happened,” said Winter again.

“Are you looking for the boy?” asked Bülow.

“What do you think?”

“So he disappeared.” Winter could hear voices in the background. Somebody laughed. They should be crying, he thought. “It sounds like a very serious business,” said Bülow.

“I agree,” said Winter.

“And then there was the abuse of that English boy.” Winter could hear the rustling of paper near Bülow’s telephone. “Waggoner. Simon Waggoner. He was evidently kidnapped as well and mistreated and abandoned.”