Åke Edwardson: Frozen Tracks

They were still alone in the apartment some minutes later. Winter had phoned Bengt Johansson and then Hans Bülow. They were now faced with a hunt.

There was water on the bathroom floor, and on the drain board in the kitchen. Jerner wasn’t on the other side of the world. Micke wasn’t far away.

Winter had gone out and checked the parking lot, but there was no point. Within the next half hour everybody in this building would be telling the police everything they knew and had seen.

“Didn’t anybody react to the fact that he had a little boy in his apartment?” Ringmar wondered.

“Did anybody see?” asked Winter. “He might have waited until it got dark and then carried the boy up.”

“But later?”

“They never went out.”

Ringmar turned away. Winter stood in the middle of the room. He contemplated the video cassettes in their black cases. He went to the table and lifted them up, one after another. There were no markings, no text.

He looked around. There was a shelf of cassettes on the right, most of them marked. Videos he’d bought. He knew that pedophiles copied their films onto innocent thrillers or comedies. Winter had sat watching films containing everything possible under the sun-at any moment an entirely different sequence could appear, a child who… who…

But he didn’t need to do that now.

Pedophile. If Jerner wasn’t a pedophile, what was he? Winter wasn’t sure.

“I don’t suppose you’ve seen a camera in here, Bertil?” he said, waving a cassette at Ringmar.

“No.”

There was no cassette in the VCR. Winter picked an unmarked cassette at random, put it into the player, found the video channel, and started the tape. Ringmar came to stand beside him. They waited while the initial blurred images and buzzing passed.

The picture suddenly jumped onto the screen, unexpectedly sharp.

Trees, bushes, grass, a soccer field. Children in a long line. Adults at both ends and in the middle. A woman’s face that Winter recognized. Another of the women was pointing a camera in various directions. The sound was vague, streaky.

The woman suddenly started to grow as the zoom came into play. Her camera was directed at Winter as he stood beside Ringmar in this disgusting room.

We had him, Winter thought.

I had him, I talked to him. Micke was here while he was with me. It was only half a day ago. One night. But I didn’t see.

Jerner had stood exactly where Winter was standing now and seen the camera pointing at him. What had he thought? Did he care? Did he think the video camera and the cap would protect him?

There was a checked cap hanging out there in the hall. They didn’t need it anymore. Jerner didn’t need it anymore.

The buildings on the other side of the road now appeared on the television screen. It was like seeing images of a story you’d been told, Winter thought. Or watching the movie of a book you’d read.

A blackout, then Micke Johansson was in the picture, in a stroller with Bengt Johansson. Winter recognized the location, and so did Bertil.

“Can you call and ask them to send a car there right now?” he said, without taking his eyes off the screen.

Ringmar dialed, and they continued watching the video. Micke Johansson with his dad, with his mom, on his own on a swing, leaving the nursery in his stroller, half asleep, his legs sticking out. On the way through Brunnsparken heading for the entrance to Nordstan’s shopping mall.

“My God,” said Ringmar, “it’s just before it happened.”

“He must have taken the camera in there with him,” said Winter.

Another cut, a brief sequence of disturbance, then a steady picture taken on a day that was grayer, wetter, perhaps starker.

“November,” said Ringmar.

“The chronology on the cassette is mixed up,” said Winter.

The picture showed a different playground with children playing. Winter suddenly felt sick: He recognized the building. It was Elsa’s nursery school.

It was Elsa on the swing.

It was her face that the camera zoomed in on, as close as the goddamn lens could get, her mouth smiling out into the wonderful world she’d only recently been born into.

The camera followed her as she jumped down from the swing and scampered toward the playhouse.

Winter could feel Bertil’s supportive hand around his arm.

“She’s in Spain, Erik. Spain.”

Winter tried to breathe, to break the spell. He was here, Elsa was there, Angela, his mother. He felt an overwhelming urge to reach for his mobile and call Nueva Andalucía.

He saw himself appear on the screen. The camera followed him from the gate to the door. He vanished. The camera waited, still aimed steadily at the door. Winter turned around in the room where he was standing now. He was in that film! Both here and there at this very moment!

There is a mound on the other side of the road, in front of the cemetery. That’s where he’s standing, Jerner.

The camera waited. Winter and Elsa emerged. He said something and she laughed. They walked back to the gate, hand in hand. He lifted her up and she tried to open it. They went out, and he closed the gate behind them. He lifted Elsa into the front seat of the Mercedes and strapped her into her child seat. I’m a detective chief inspector, but I’m a father as well.

The camera followed the car as it drove off, signaled right, disappeared around the corner.

Black screen. Winter looked at the next cassette on the table. We didn’t take them in order, he thought. That one will feature Kalle Skarin, Ellen Sköld, Maja Bergort, and Simon Waggoner. Before and during. Maybe after. These were future victims. Ringmar had called again. Sent another car to another place.

“There’s more to come,” said Ringmar.

Another place, swings in the background, a slide, a wooden train showing its age that the children could play around in.

“The playground at Plikta,” said Ringmar.

Winter nodded, still thinking about Elsa.

“The conductor,” said Ringmar.

A little boy of about four was busy checking the tickets. The children sat down. The camera concentrated on the conductor, and followed him when he grew tired and wandered off. Followed him back to the swings, watched him swinging back and forth, back and forth. The cameraman moved the camera in sync with the swing, and Winter had the feeling that this was the worst he’d been through, one of the worst things he’d ever experienced during yet another day at work. There were more pictures of the same boy, in different places. The sun shone, it was raining, the wind thrashed its way through the trees.

“Who the hell is that?” said Ringmar, and Winter could hear the desperation in his voice. “Who’s the boy?”

They watched the little boy slip and fall, and burst out crying after the usual intake of breath before the pain and the surprise. They watched a woman come to bend down over him and console him. Winter recognized her. He even remembered her name. Yes. Ingemarsson. Margareta Ingemarsson.

“That’s the nursery school in Marconigatan,” he said. “She works there.”

“Eh,” said Ringmar. “Well done. We have to get ahold of her as soon as possible and show her this. She’ll know who the boy is.”

“Ring Peder at the Police Operations Center. He’ll still be there, and he’s good.”

Winter raised his head and saw morning on the other side of the window, a heavy mist. He suddenly heard a million noises in the hall. Everybody had arrived.

THE NURSERY-SCHOOL MANAGER FROM MARCONIGATAN WAS AT home; she was switched through from the operations center to Winter, who was still in Jerner’s living room. He couldn’t describe the boy over the telephone. She wasn’t going anywhere, to tell the truth she was barely awake.