Never End

15

"I recognize the dress," Lisen Wagner said. Her face was heavy with sorrow as she studied the photographs. "She bought it a few weeks before… it happened."

"Are you sure about that?" her husband asked.

"Yes."

"Two weeks before?" asked Winter.

"About that." She seemed to feel the doubt coming from both men. "I can't forget it." She looked at her husband. "I've thought about it a lot. About that dress." She looked at Winter. "As if it were the last. Her last."

"It's been a few years," said Bengt Wägner.

"That makes no difference."

"In that case she must have picked up the pho-"

Winter was interrupted by Lisen Wägner: "Just before she was murdered."

Winter gazed at the window, avoided her eyes. He didn't want to use that word in there.

"There's a date on the back," said Bengt Wägner. He sounded surprised as he eyed the white surface.

Winter had seen the date. Beatrice had picked up the photographs the week before she died. If her mother remembered correctly, then, these photos couldn't have been taken more than a few days beforehand. But she must have had a full roll. There must be more pictures from that roll.

"Where do you usually have your film developed?" he asked.

"The photo shop at Mariaplan."

"Beatrice too?"

"I suppose so," Bengt Wägner said.

Lisen Wägner had sat down. Her tan was fading. Winter could see the daughter's features in the mother's face.

Winter looked at the photograph in his hand. Beatrice had been in a room where there was an exposed brick wall and tables and dishes. Probably a bar, or a restaurant.

She had been there a few days before she was murdered. She had saved the occasion as a secret souvenir.

Why?

Angelika Hansson had also been there. It must be the same place. When had Angelika been there? There was no date on her photograph. It must have been developed in another shop. Winter pictures. Not… hidden away. But it was the same background, the same place. He had found a link.

Winter sat in his office. It was still Saturday, still hot. Bergenhem was sitting opposite him, browner than before. Looking even stronger.

"So, she saw Angelika with a young man several times," said Winter as he read the document. "Cecilia, her friend."

"Twice," said Bergenhem. "Once at a café and once from a streetcar."

"And he still hasn't contacted the police," muttered Winter to himself.

"No. She's been shown a few pictures, but that hasn't helped." Bergenhem started rolling up his shirtsleeves. "I expect the kid must be abroad." He'd finished with his sleeves. "Otherwise he would've seen our appeals."

Perhaps he's dead, Winter thought. He knew Halders had wondered the same thing.

They needed a name and a face. Cecilia had tried to describe him. He was roughly the same age as Angelika. "He looked sort of pale. Dark, but pale. Kind of Southern European looking."

Winter picked up the photographs from the graduation party he'd found at the Hanssons.

There had been four people whom Lars-Olof Hansson didn't recognize. Three were men and one was a woman. Though one of the three men looked more Angelika's age.

1 He looked sort of pale.

Winter had felt his flesh creep when he first set eyes on the picture, and he felt it again now.

Something was happening.

He showed Bergenhem the photograph.

"I'll call her straight away," Bergenhem said, and did so.

"That's him," said Cecilia. She was wearing a thin blouse and khaki shorts, and had brought the sweet scent of sunscreen with her into Winter's office from the rocks she'd left when Bergenhem called her on her mobile. Her hair was stiff from the saltwater and the wind. "That's him," she said again.

"Take your time," said Winter.

"I don't need to."

"There's no rush."

"I've seen enough. There's no doubt. One hundred percent certain." She studied the photograph, the location, the balloons, as if she were looking for her own face. "I was there myself, but I'm not in this picture."

"You didn't see him at the party?"

"No." She looked at the picture again. "He looks a bit like that older guy." She looked at Winter. "They could be father and son." She turned to the photo again. "I should have recognized him."

Winter said nothing.

"Do you know him then?" asked Bergenhem. "The one who might be his father, the older man? Or anybody else in the picture?"

"Er… I don't know." She was still looking. "I really don't know. Some faces are pretty familiar… and I've known some of them for ages. But I don't remember those two."

"What about her?" asked Winter, pointing to the woman on the edge of the frame, as if about to leave it.

"No."

"This fair-haired man, then? With the beard."

"No, 'fraid not."

They were strangers to Cecilia, just as they had been to Angelika's father.

"They showed up afterward," Lars-Olof Hansson had said. "Don't you understand? They showed up later!… Nobody saw them… But they came with a message. A message from Hell!"

Good God.

"But I do recognize the boy," Cecilia said.

"It was him both times? At the café and when you were on the streetcar?"

"Yes. Definitely him."

"And you spoke to him?"

"We only said hi."

"Nothing else?"

"No." She looked again at the photo. "This is awful," she said. "He was at the party." She nodded at the photo. "Why didn't I see him?"

"What did Angelika say about him?"

"I've already told him over there that she didn't want to talk about it," she said, indicating Bergenhem.

"She must have said something."

"Only that she had no desire to talk about it." She turned to Winter again. "But I still don't understand why I didn't see him there, at the party."

"But you'd seen them together before the party," Winter said.

"Yes… at least, I think so."

"You said a moment ago that you should have recognized him at the party. In that case you must have seen him beforehand, right?"

"Yes… that's true."

"Tell us again when it might have been. At the café and from the streetcar."

She thought again. Yes. It must have been beforehand. In the spring. Late spring, May. May both times. That was what she'd told him over there.

Winter thought. He tried to picture this girl at the graduation party. What might she have done there? Apart from watching and celebrating with her friends?

"Do you have any pictures of your own from that day?" he asked, nodding at the photo.

"Er… yes, I do actually."

"Can you fetch them?"

"What, now?"

"Yes."

"I don't know…"

"You'll be taken home by car to get them." Winter had stood up. "We'd really appreciate it."

An hour later Cecilia was back with a brightly colored envelope. He noticed she'd gotten changed and done something to her hair.

Winter took out the photos taken at the graduation party and laid them on his desk, which was only just big enough.

It was the same occasion. Possibly also the same time. But a different angle. Whereas Lars-Olof Hansson had taken his pictures from straight in front of his daughter, Cecilia had taken them from the side. From Lars-Olof Hansson's left.

There were several people in the way.

He couldn't see the boy, nor the man who might have been the boy's father. Nor could he see the man with the beard and glasses.

But he could see the woman. The woman who was on her way out of the picture. Winter produced Hansson's photo and looked at the woman standing on the left of the frame, then at Cecilia's picture, and there she was, taken from the front. As if she'd left one photograph and walked into the other.

He showed Cecilia. "There's the woman, in your picture."

"God, you're right. I don't remember her. Not taking a picture of her." She looked at Angelika's pictures, and then at her own. Winter and Bergen hem waited. She looked up. "But… shouldn't we be able to see at least a little bit of… the others, in my photos as well?"

"If the pictures were taken at the same time," Winter said.

"But she's in the shot. So it must be the same time. The same minute, surely?"

Winter said nothing.

"This is spooky," said Cecilia. "It's like… ghosts."

They showed up later!

"But the boy's real," said Winter. "You've seen him in town twice, with Angelika."

"But not here. Why didn't I notice him here?"

Winter didn't reply, neither did Bergenhem. There was no answer they could give at the moment. Winter felt his flesh creep again.

"There's something else I want to show you," he said.

Cecilia looked hard at the brick wall.

"No, I don't recognize the place."

"Take your time."

"That wall's quite unusual. I think I would've noticed if it was in a bar I'd been to."

"But you recognize her?"

"Are you kidding? That's Angelika."

"Do you recognize anything she's wearing?"

Cecilia studied the picture of her friend.

"Those are winter clothes," she said. "I mean, she's wearing the kind of clothes you wear indoors in winter."

Winter nodded.

"I think I bought her that cardigan last year."

"When exactly?"

"Last winter."

"When, exactly?"

"I think it was after New Year's. Yes. After New Year's."

"This year, in other words?"

"Eh? Yes, it must have been."

Bergenhem was making notes.

"How often did you go out together?" Winter asked. "You and Angelika?"

"Quite a lot."

"What does that mean? In terms of frequency."

"I don't kn… Why are you asking me that?"

"How close were you?"

She paused to think before answering. She looked again at the picture of Angelika at the table in front of the brick wall.

"Angelika was kind of… private that way. She never said very much about what she was up to… on her own."

Winter waited.

"Like with that guy. She just refused to talk about it."

"What about this place?" Winter gestured toward the photo she was still holding.

"I don't know." She looked at Winter. "I mean, if she went somewhere when I wasn't with her she's hardly likely to come and describe the decor to me afterward! It doesn't have to be a secret just because she didn't tell me about it."

"Who said anything about it being a secret?"

"It seems like that. Like all this is about secrets."

"But isn't it normal to talk to your friends about places you've been to?"

"I suppose so… Yes."

"Why didn't she say anything about this place, then?"

"Well, she might have," said Cecilia. "That's what I mean. She wouldn't necessarily say there was a brick wall there, though, or anything like that." She looked at the picture again. "Who knows, I might have been there myself. Maybe in a different room."

"Would you be able to make a list of all the places in Gothenburg you and Angelika went to, and others that you knew about?"

"All you need to do is read the Gothenburg Entertainment Guide."

"Did you go out that much?"

"No, no. But all the places we went to would be in there."

"So you should be able to point them out for us now then."

Bergenhem had left. Winter reached for his pack of Corps on the shelf next to the sink, and found that it was empty. He needed a smoke. An excellent excuse to leave, buy some more, and then go home before Elsa went to bed.

It was a pleasant evening. He walked by the water. There wasn't much traffic near the railway station. A lot of people were sitting outside Eggers Hotel. A group with suitcases came out of the hotel and walked toward the station. Winter thought he could see the envy in their eyes as they glanced furtively at the sidewalk café. Traveling on a night like this when they could be sitting out there. He waved to some colleagues who were getting into a police van outside Femman shopping mall. They drove off, with a flash of the headlights.

Gone. He had some of the photographs in his inside pocket, and pictured them in his mind's eye, saw the faces of the four people that nobody had recognized, who were there but not there. Gone. Except the woman. She had been there in both versions.

The boy had been there, at least in Angelika's pictures. They'd made an appeal for him to come forward immediately after they'd first spoken to Cecilia. But now they had a picture of him; his face would soon be displayed everywhere. Bergenhem had gone to take care of that.

Winter walked across Brunnsparken and came to his tobacconist's in the Arcade.

"I'm sorry," the woman in the shop said. "I warned you, but I didn't know myself that the time had come."

"The time had come?"

"They're not importing Corps any more. We can't get them at all."

"What!" Winter felt his mouth go dry. A tingling in his chin. He swallowed. He felt bad. "You can't get them at all?"

"I was just about to put aside the last pack yesterday, but a customer came in, and, as I had it in my hand, I couldn't exactly say 1 didn't have any and hide it under the counter for you."

"I suppose not."

"Well, I couldn't, could I?"

"No, of course not." said Winter. "Thanks for the thought, anyway."

"You could take it up with Swedish Match."

Winter tried to smile.

"I called the other tobacconists in town, but nobody has any left," she said. "Haven't had any for ages, they said. We were the only ones still selling them, and you were the only customer who still asked for them. Aside from that man yesterday."

Another victim, Winter thought. He felt he'd been taken by surprise, or something more. Don't panic.

He'd been thinking about giving it up. This was his opportunity. Divine intervention. A favor. Fate had done him a favor. The tobacco distributor. Everybody was working together to safeguard his health. His family needed him, his child needed him. Now was the moment to choose a life free of poison.

He suddenly felt desperate for a smoke, absolutely desperate.

"There are other brands, you know, Inspector," said the woman, turning to the well-stocked shelves behind her.

"I've been smoking Corps for fifteen years," said Winter. "No other brand." He hoped he didn't sound like he was about to burst into tears.

"But there are others."

"Not for me," said Winter, and bade her farewell. Now he needed to concentrate on getting home in one piece and discussing with Angela what to do next. She was a doctor. He needed some of those nicotine patches. Nicotine gum. Morphine.

The sun was behind a cloud. It was shining from a clear sky for everybody else, but everything was black for him.

There were other things. Corps weren't everything. He could give them up. He was weak, but other weak people had managed to give them up.

As he walked across the market square he felt a pain in his chest. He had just lost a friend.