Death Angels

11

WHlLE ANGELA HEADED FOR THE SHOWER, WlNTER SQUlRMED HlS way across the bed to pick up the phone. She closed the bedroom door.

“Erik Winter here.”

“Good afternoon, this is Steve Macdonald in London. I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”

“Not anymore. I’m glad you called back.”

“I got the message.”

“We have some things to talk about.”

“You can say that again. Somebody else was also… Sorry, I’m not talking too fast, am I?”

“Not at all.”

“You Scandinavians speak excellent English. That’s more than I can say of us in south London.”

Winter heard the shower running. Soon she would come out and wave good-bye as if it had all happened in a distant, stormy dream. He felt the dried perspiration at the top of his forehead. “Your English is easy to understand,” he said to Macdonald.

“Well, just tell me if I need to repeat anything. It’s my own special blend of Scottish and Cockney.”

Winter heard Angela turn off the shower. He pulled the sheet up to his waist, suddenly embarrassed by the stranger’s voice. Or maybe I’m just cold, he thought.

“We’ve got to get down to the nuts and bolts of this,” Macdonald went on.

“I’m with you all the way.”

“I’ve been reading your reports, and the last one makes me feel like we’re standing on some kind of stage.”

“A stage?”

“Somebody’s out to prove something.”

“Isn’t it always that way?”

“This guy is a little too clever,” Macdonald said. “We’re not talking about your everyday sociopath.”

“You’re right. He’s a sociopath, but there’s something more.” Angela slowly opened the door and threw him a kiss. He nodded back. She turned around and walked out. He heard the front door close and the elevator cage rattle.

“We just talked to Jamie’s parents for the first time,” Macdonald said. “Or rather his mother. They live on the outskirts of London.”

“Our database expert mentioned that.”

“I heard that he called his counterpart over here. He speaks good English and they had no trouble communicating.”

Winter saw Möllerström in his mind’s eye, the way he enunciated every syllable. Why doesn’t everyone have an e-mail address? Möllerström had wanted to know. Is English easier to write than speak? Halders had asked.

“It’s a strange investigation.” Macdonald paused. “Actually, it’s several investigations rolled into one. My boss has put our team on the case full time.”

“Same here.”

“Nothing new on the letters?”

“We talked to Geoff ’s pen pal, but she couldn’t help us out very much. She didn’t notice anything unusual in his last letter, only that he was excited about coming to Gothenburg. As far as the letter that he supposedly received from someone else in Sweden is concerned, we don’t know anything yet. His pen pal had no idea who it might be from.”

“I guess it’s to be expected that he no longer had the letter when you found him.”

“No new witnesses who saw Per?” Winter was still mulling over Macdonald’s remark about being onstage.

“Yes and no, you know what it’s like. Everybody has seen everything and nobody has the information you’re looking for. To say that our phones are ringing off the hook would be an understatement.”

“Nothing solid to go on?”

“Not at the moment, but that’s how it always is. The good news is that the press has been unusually cooperative. A white European kid murdered in the ghettos south of the river is a real story, as opposed to the crack-related murders we usually deal with. Try to get the papers to write about them. I’m grateful for all the publicity and calls we can get, even if we have to weed out a bunch of nutcases. Croydon is England ’s tenth largest town-three million of us. So there’s no shortage of loonies here.”

“Gothenburg is Sweden ’s second largest, and that adds up to half a million.”

“Any drugs to speak of?”

“More and more.”

“Did you get the newspapers I sent by diplomatic pouch?” Macdonald asked.

“Yes, we did, thanks.”

“Then you know what I’m talking about. When the Sun demands that a curfew be imposed until an arrest has been made, the public feels called upon to help us solve the case.”

Winter was thinking to himself. “What did you mean by feeling like we’re onstage?” he asked finally.

“Onstage?”

“What made you say that?”

“It’s like somebody’s watching us, somebody who’s in orbit above us, just out of reach.”

“I have the same feeling.”

“Maybe it’s the tripod. It could give anyone the creeps.”

“What on earth did he need a tripod for?”

“Excellent question.”

Winter thought out loud. “Maybe he wanted to have his hands free. That’s one scenario at least.”

“Who knows, maybe there’s even a script.”

“What makes you think he needed one?”

“Everyone needs a script.”

Winter’s cell phone began ringing on the other nightstand. “Hold on a second.” He put down the receiver and lunged across the bed.

“Hello?”

“Erik? It’s Pia Fröberg over at the coroner’s lab. We’ve got a big problem with that blood on Jamie’s shoulder.”

“Yeah”

“There’s been a terrible mistake. It turns out the blood is from somebody on the ambulance crew.”

“How can something like that happen?”

“It can’t.”

“I understand,” Winter said calmly, but he didn’t know whether his effort at restraint came across over the phone. “I’ve got someone on the other line. I’ll call you back in a little while.”

He hung up and returned to Macdonald. “Sorry for the interruption.”

“No problem.”

“We need to go through all this from beginning to end, and there are a few things I have to see firsthand in London.”

“When are you coming over?”

“As soon as I get the go-ahead.”

“My boss and I are both anxious to have you here. It’s a case for international cooperation if I ever saw one.”

“I’ll let you know the moment my plans firm up.” Everyone needs a script, Winter thought. We’re onstage and somebody is orbiting just above our heads. We’re part of something bigger than ourselves. We make one mistake after another. Maybe we learn.

“The ambulance guy,” Fröberg said.

“How could anyone be so careless?”

She had taken off her white jacket to meet Winter in her rectangular office, where the shelves were overflowing with books and file folders.

She’s started to wear glasses at work, Winter thought.

“He had a day-old cut on his wrist in the opening just above his glove,” Fröberg said.

“Unfuckingbelievable.”

“He scraped it on the doorjamb when they came in with the stretcher and accidentally smeared the blood on Jamie’s shoulder while they were wrapping him up.”

“One little drop was all we needed.”

“Actually, you should thank me, Erik. It takes just as much time to eliminate a possible clue as to verify it.”

“Sorry.”

“No need to apologize.”

“So you’ve followed up on all the evidence?”

“Everything we could.”

“And I was hoping that all we needed was one good suspect.”

“What happened to all the ace interrogators?”

Winter thought about his best hope, Gabriel Cohen, who had been brought in on the second day of the investigation. Cohen was as methodical as Winter, reading all of Möllerström’s printouts, waiting, preparing. “Cohen’s ready to go,” he said.

“Medical science can’t always come to the rescue.”

“You’re right as usual. How about dinner tonight?”

“I can’t.” She smiled and reached for her jacket on the back of the chair, her blouse stretching against her breasts. “My husband is back.”

“I thought he had left for good this time.”

“So did I.”

Waving good-bye, he walked out of the office and nearly rammed headlong into a stretcher that had come rolling past.