Death Angels

21

BERGENHEM HAD TlPTOED AROUND ONE OF THOSE PLACES A FEW times long ago. The only thing he remembered was pink flesh everywhere he looked and a sheepish feeling that clung to him afterward.

He parked half a block away and crossed the street toward Riverside. It was the fourth strip joint he’d been to. He had also stepped inside a couple of others that didn’t flaunt themselves as openly.

The entrance to Riverside was discreet enough-a steel door in a nondescript brick wall and a sign next to it showing the hours. He immediately found himself in a large room with magazines along the wall like the browsing room of a library. A handful of men were hanging around the racks. Overcome with the feeling that invisible eyes were watching him, he walked over to the left wall, glanced at the men and continued on.

At the far end of the room was a doorway with a curtain hanging down and a man in a little booth. Bergenhem paid the cover charge and ducked through the drape. He hung up his coat in an untended cloakroom and sat down at one of the tables. Four other men were there, each seated alone. A young woman came over and asked him what he wanted to drink. He ordered a light beer. She walked out through a swinging door and came back with a bottle and an empty glass. “Welcome to Riverside.” She smiled.

Bergenhem nodded and felt like an idiot, just the way it had been at the other clubs. Should I invite her to sit down? he asked himself. Isn’t she supposed to make the first move?

“The show starts in five minutes,” she said, smiling again.

Bergenhem nodded once more. Does she wonder why you’re here? Is she a student working her way through college who thinks you’re repulsive?

What difference does it make? You’re just doing your job. People can probably tell you’re a cop as soon as you walk in the door.

The show began. Tina Turner’s voice blasted over the speakers. Two women danced at either end of a little dais that served as a stage. They moved their hips faster and faster. Bergenhem couldn’t help but think of an aerobics class.

The show was over in fifteen minutes, and he had seen about all there was to see. One of the women’s nipples had been big and brown, seeming to cover half her breasts.

The other woman was younger and didn’t follow the music as well. Maybe she was new at this. Her slender body seemed to shiver under the floodlights.

She had sat on a stool with her back to the audience, spread her legs and looked over her shoulder with feigned coquettishness in her eyes. She wasn’t a very good actress yet. Compassion, maybe shame, swept over Bergenhem. She’s an outsider, he thought, just like me. She’s not used to being gawked at through a red glare.

Nobody feels any better after watching this, he thought-or horny, not even when they make those little circular movements with their breasts. All I feel is a longing for fresh air.

She looks wounded, he thought. She’s hiding inside her skin, and something even more frightening is waiting for her when she steps off the stage. Performing for strangers is her only refuge.

He stood up and walked through a door on the left side into the movie section. Riverside had thirty private screening rooms, each with a remote control device, a wastebasket and a roll of toilet paper. It also featured three rooms with large screens that showed the same kinds of movies as the other clubs he had been to.

The sounds and the writhing bodies were all alike. The first time Bergenhem had sat in one of these rooms, he’d hoped to be turned on, but he’d simply been exhausted after a little while, the tightness in his groin gone slack.

Just like the other times, he felt like a Peeping Tom even though the spectacle didn’t really interest him.

He’d browsed through the racks at all the clubs but found nothing out of the ordinary. Tucked away among the inner aisles were various scat magazines, but that wasn’t so unexpected. Somebody was always standing around the rack pretending he just happened to be passing by. It was an odd sight, as if the man were about to break away in every direction at once.

The movies Bergenhem had seen were provocative but not violent in any way. At a couple of clubs, he’d asked about the kind of stuff he was looking for and got only a puzzled look in return. No surprise there either.

It was necessary preparation, even if it didn’t yield any results, and now he was ready for his next move.

Winter sat in his office examining the composite sketch Beckman had reluctantly helped them create, but he knew what a chancy proposition it was. A front view based on what Beckman had seen from the back and side wasn’t much to go on. He stared at the sketch for a long while, but nothing registered.

They had told Beckman to spend some time thinking about his streetcar routes, when he had driven and what he had seen. Ringmar had said, “Good luck,” prompting incredulous glances from both Winter and Beckman.

Winter removed his coat from the hook by the door, then walked through the corridor to the elevator. Rain lashed against the window in the entryway.

It’s the worst kind of rain, Winter thought. This damn shit does nobody any good. The snow is already shoveled away, there’s plenty of groundwater, and all it does is seep under your collar and make everything colder until your mood is subfreezing as well. And I was so happy just a week ago.

Winter took the shortest route to Douglas Svensson’s Kobbarnas Road address and parked next to a handicap spot.

Standing in the fourth-floor living room, he could see police headquarters off in the distance.

“I already talked to the cop… police once,” Svensson said.

“Once isn’t always enough.”

“What?”

“Sometimes we need to follow up with more questions.” Winter pondered whether Svensson was the right type for a bar owner. He looked like somebody who’d been shoved up onstage and forced to talk. Winter had never been to his bar. Who knows, maybe he was more cheerful when he was in his element.

“Okay, have a seat,” Svensson said.

The police had talked with the two acquaintances of Jamie whose names Svensson had given to Bolger, who in turn had passed them on to Winter. The officers hadn’t turned up very much, other than that the kids might be gay but didn’t know whether Jamie was or not. It would have become obvious soon enough, they had said, and Winter had wondered what they might mean. That was all they were willing to say on the subject. He had the impression they were afraid.

Something was missing.

Svensson sat down uneasily and waited for him to begin.

Finally Winter slipped the composite sketch out of his briefcase and handed it to him. “Can you tell me whether you recognize this face?”

“Who is it?”

“I just want to know whether there’s anything in the face that’s familiar to you.”

“Anything? Like the nose or the eyes?” Svensson looked down at the picture, turned it at different angles and glanced up at Winter. “It looks like a Martian.”

“It’s a computer image based on what a witness told us.”

“A computer-you’re putting me on, surely.”

“No.”

“Amazing.”

“So you recognize the face?”

“No.”

“Not at all?”

“Not even the nose.”

Winter’s next move had to be decisive. “What was Jamie like?” he asked.

“What?”

“Did he get along with people?”

“What people?”

“Let’s start with you and his coworkers.”

“It’s just me and one other person,” Svensson said. “Plus someone who’s been working part-time since Jamie was murdered.”

“I know.”

“Then why did you ask?”

“My question was how well you got along.”

Svensson seemed on the verge of answering but apparently changed his mind. A shadow flitted across his face as if the reality of Jamie’s death had struck him for the first time. His features turned gray and his gaze wandered off in a new direction. “We always got along. Everybody liked Jamie, and his English-or Scottish, I should say-was a drawing card.”

“Did he ever get into arguments?”

“With one of us? Never.”

“How about with anybody else?”

“What about?”

“It’s fairly common.”

“At my place?”

“In general.”

“Those are places that hire nutcases as bouncers. We don’t use bouncers, so we don’t have to worry about nutcases. I don’t even have a cloakroom.”

“Fine,” Winter said, “but let me ask the question a different way. Were there any regular customers Jamie talked to more than others?”

“I don’t have the slightest idea.”

“You’ve got regulars, right?”

“Lots of them, more than the city jail, I’d guess.”

Winter remembered Bolger’s account of something Svensson had recalled-an unfamiliar face, someone who’d shown up a few times, not a regular customer, maybe a new one. Careful to avoid mentioning Bolger’s name, Winter worked his way around to the subject, steering the conversation a little closer as naturally and purposefully as he could. “No new regulars?” he asked.

“What?”

“You don’t remember anybody who liked to hang out at the bar and talk to Jamie?”

“Everybody and his brother confides in a bartender,” Svensson said as if coining a new expression. “People pour their hearts out, he stands there and listens and they feel a little better.”

“Well put.”

Svensson nodded, an Aristotle with his disciple: the purpose of tragedy is catharsis, my son.

That’s what faith is, Winter thought. The Big Bartender in the Sky. The tones of Coltrane’s “The Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost” echoed in his mind. “So you’re telling me Jamie was a good listener?”

Svensson raised his arm as if to say the question answered itself. “Was there anybody in particular he listened to?”

“That’s a tough one. I have my hands full when I’m working behind the bar.”

“You can’t remember anybody at all?”

Svensson didn’t answer.

“Try to think.”

“There was somebody I hadn’t seen before but who suddenly came in several times, maybe a few weeks before Jamie was murdered.”

Bingo. The ball rolls into the cup on the thirtieth putt, Winter thought, and suddenly you remember why you became a detective. “So there was a face you recognized?”

“I wouldn’t go that far. At least I’m not sure I would recognize it now. But there was someone who sat at the bar a few times, and I hadn’t seen him before.”

“Did you ever talk to him?”

“I don’t remember.”

“But Jamie talked to him?”

“He sat or stood there occasionally during Jamie’s shift, or during happy hour when each of us worked half the bar.”

“So he could have talked to Jamie?”

“He must have ordered something, at least.”

“Would you recognize him now?”

“I told you I don’t know.”

“But he didn’t look like this?” Winter pointed to the image on the table between them.

“Not in the least.”

“Then we’ll have to do a better sketch.”

Ringmar helped Winter keep the investigation moving, making sure nobody let up. He had a mild case of the flu but didn’t show it; he coughed up all the phlegm early in the morning and tried to get plenty of fresh air during the day. A word with Birgersson would have suited him, but he held back.

They ran into each other on the stairs between the fourth and fifth floors-a welcome change from their wordless encounters in the elevator. They shook hands.

“I hear the investigation is going well,” Birgersson said.

“Very well.”

“Thanks to you, Bertil. Just don’t let Winter get too far ahead of himself. Wise old heads like us have to pick up the pieces when upstarts like him charge off in every direction.”

Fighting words, Ringmar thought. “Yes, that’s the way it goes,” he said.

“What’s the way it goes?”

“Our job. Clearing away the smoldering ruins of the Swedish welfare state.”

Birgersson stared at him.

“It takes wise old heads like us to understand that,” Ringmar continued.

“We need to talk. I want to pick your brain about this case.”

“How about this afternoon?”

“I have a meeting but it might work anyway. I’ll give you a call.”

Ringmar nodded and smiled affably.

“See you,” Birgersson shouted. He disappeared around the corner.

The moment Ringmar stepped into his office, the phone rang as if it had been connected to a tripwire in the doorway. “Hello?” he grunted.

“There’s a call I think you should take,” Möllerström said.

“Why me?”

“It’s Geoff ’s pen pal, the second one.”

“Who?” Ringmar asked, but then just as quickly understood. “Put him through, dammit.”

After a click a new voice came on the line. “Hello?”

“This is Bertil Ringmar.”

“I…”

“Who’s calling, please?”

“Do I have to tell you my name? I have…”

“What are you calling about?”

“I read in the paper the other day that you were looking for someone who had corresponded with that British kid who was murdered.”

“Yes?”

“That’s me.”

The man sounded young, Ringmar thought, but you could never tell for sure. Sometimes he guessed someone was no older than twenty when they first talked on the phone and then had to add fifty years when he connected the voice with a face.

“Hello?”

“Sorry, so you corresponded with Geoff Hillier?”

Silence.

Ringmar repeated the question.

“Yes, I did.”

“This is very important for us. I need to talk to you about it in person.”

“Talk about it?”

“Just an ordinary conversation. Not an interrogation or anything like that.”

“Can’t we do it on the phone?”

“Unfortunately not.”

“I don’t know if…”

“We need help, and you could be the one who determines whether we succeed or fail.” Pretty soon I’m going to say that this call is being traced and we’re going to be at his place in ten minutes flat, Ringmar thought. “We can pick you up if you like,” he said.

“No, I’ll come on my own.”