Dead of Winter

Epilogue 1

There are three people in the windowless visitors’ room. The air is thick, hard to breathe. Bengt Sandberg, the police officer with the boxer’s nose, is sitting in the corner with his arms folded. His chin is raised as if he’s listening carefully. He is only a silent observer of this conversation.

A man and a woman are sitting at the table in the middle of the room.

The man is aged about seventy, but looks older. His face is grey, his skin almost transparent. His gaze is fixed on the woman opposite, but his eyes are empty. He can’t really take in what he is seeing, which is hardly surprising. The woman he is staring at is a ghost. The dead walking again. Maybe she is the nymph, risen from the bottom of the lake? That’s what some people are saying.

The woman is between forty and fifty, and she is wearing the green tracksuit required by the custody suite. No makeup, her hair tied back in a tight ponytail. Still blonde, but Sandberg can see her dark natural colour beginning to come through at the roots.

‘I’m going to tell them everything,’ the woman says to the old man. Her speech sounds awkward, as if she is speaking with an accent she hasn’t used for many years. ‘I wanted you to know that, just in case you manage to die before the trial is over.’

The woman leans across the table, her lips curling in a contemptuous smile.

‘And when I’m done with you, Daddy dear, no one will be able to mention Ulf Jensen or Källegården without spitting afterwards. That will be your legacy, the only thing you leave behind. A bad taste in the mouth.’

The woman sits back, folding her arms and looking pleased with herself. The smile is simultaneously triumphant, angry and malicious.

But Sandberg sees something else in her eyes. A glimpse of a damaged, lonely little girl who has been let down by all those who should have protected her.

He feels a flicker in his chest, a sensation he can’t explain. Without knowing why, he thinks of his own children and grandchildren.

And for the first time in his long career, Bengt Sandberg realises that he is actually looking forward to his retirement.