Death Angels

22

BERGENHEM RETURNED TO THE ROOM. THE SHOW HAD STARTED up again. Two women he didn’t recognize were onstage. After a while he realized that one of them was the older woman from before and that the younger one was gone.

He sat down at the same table. The air was thick with cigarette smoke and the room seemed to have shrunk. More men sat around the tables, devouring the dancers with their eyes. Tina Turner was singing again, asking what love had to do with it.

Bergenhem spotted the younger woman now. She was sitting at one of the tables talking with two men, and he didn’t like what he saw.

He didn’t want her with those fucking pigs, and the feeling surprised him. It’s not moral indignation that’s got me riled up, he thought. I know this is none of my business, so what is it?

She’s my age, he told himself. She’s not a fourteen-year-old who grew up too fast. The men are forty-five and beyond help. And I shouldn’t have an opinion about any of this.

She got up and one of the men followed her. They walked through a door on the right side, by the stage. He kept his eyes on them the whole time.

“Inspector Bergenhem?”

Something stirred to his right, and he looked up at a man with his blond hair in a ponytail and a suit that was lusterless against the colors of the stage. Bergenhem straightened up a little. “Yes?”

“I’m the owner. You wanted to see me.”

“Oh, right.” Bergenhem stood up. “I had a couple of questions…”

“How about we go to my office?” The owner scanned the room and the stage, then looked back at Bergenhem. “This way,” he said.

His office was just to the left on the other side of the curtain. It had a window-the first one Bergenhem had seen at Riverside -with a view of the alleyway. The owner halted as soon as they were inside the door, apparently waiting for Bergenhem to do or say something. “I’m glad you’re playing it straight,” he said finally.

“What?”

“I’m grateful when a policeman doesn’t sneak around and pretend to be someone he’s not.”

“It wouldn’t work anyway.”

“Not after a while, no.”

“There you have it.”

“It’s annoying when the police treat us like we’re not capable of taking care of ourselves or running a respectable establishment.”

Bergenhem heard strains of Tina Turner through the south wall, mostly the bass lines. It sounded like she had a barrel over her head.

“I heard you were looking for me,” the owner said.

“You didn’t have to bring me all the way in here.”

“We don’t have anything to hide.”

“I didn’t think you did.”

“So what can I do for you?”

Bergenhem explained as much about the case as he was authorized to, hinting at the police’s suspicions. He acts like he’s wearing earplugs, Bergenhem thought, but it’s obvious he’s soaking it all up. He understands everything and he will answer the questions he admits to having heard.

“Snuff movies? In Gothenburg?” The owner sat down in an armchair, crossing one leg over the other. His cigarette smoke swirled through the barely open window and out into the night air. Two train signals sounded through the gap. There was a railyard a couple of blocks away, deserted and windswept and sparsely populated by freight cars that jostled each other in the dark. “Never heard of anything like that. What made you come to me?”

“We’re talking to everyone who owns this kind of establishment,” Bergenhem lied.

“Never heard of it.”

“You must have.”

“You don’t believe me?”

“I mean you must know that such movies exist.”

The owner frowned. “Are you putting me on?”

“What?”

“If I heard you right, you wanted to know about snuff movies in Gothenburg. Not Bogotá or Los Angeles or London, or wherever the hell they’re a box office hit.”

“Haven’t you ever seen a snuff movie?” Bergenhem realized he’d made a mistake before the words were out of his mouth.

“God knows why I’m sitting here and putting up with all these idiotic questions of yours.”

Bergenhem wasn’t sure what to say next. The wind magnified the sound of two freight cars bumping, iron against iron.

“But what the hell,” the owner continued. “Okay, I’ve never seen a snuff movie. Have you?”

“What?”

“You’re an inspector. I assume you’ve seen most everything.”

“No, never.”

“And why not?”

Bergenhem slumped down in a chair. The bass lines were heavier and deeper. Maybe they had put on a new set. No voices came through the wall and the door was soundproof.

Extinguishing his cigarette, the owner went over and opened the window a few inches more to let the foul air out.

The railyard sounds disappeared, as though the fact that the window had been open just a crack was what had made them audible. An open window evokes silence, Bergenhem thought. It’s like the new highspeed trains. The faster they go, the less you hear. Finally you don’t notice them at all until they’re about to run you over.

The owner closed the window and turned to Bergenhem. “You haven’t seen anything because there’s nothing to see. Gothenburg may not be the innocent place it once was, but there’s no market for snuff movies here.”

Bergenhem could tell the owner was considering how to complete his thought.

“You probably think I’m naïve about the people in this city. But you’ve come to the wrong person if you believe I would be involved in that kind of thing. It wouldn’t have a chance here even if I were. We aren’t depraved enough yet.”

“Yet?”

“Even though it’s bound to happen eventually.”

“You seem pretty sure of yourself.”

“Do you know why I’m even bothering to talk to you about this stuff? I’ll tell you why-it’s because we club owners have our ethics just like everybody else.”

“And what are those ethics, exactly?”

“What?”

“Where does love of your fellow man stop and the profit motive begin?”

The owner looked Bergenhem over as if trying to figure out where he was going to dump his body afterward. “There are limits to everything,” he said.

“Just in Gothenburg, you mean?”

The owner picked at a seam in his jacket, then rubbed the bridge of his nose. Bergenhem could tell that he was about to get up and thank him for a pleasant visit. All his talk about ethics had a bombastic hollow-ness to it, like the low rumble of bass through the wall. Which had just stopped-intermission time.

“You’ve never received any requests from customers who are interested in something different?” Bergenhem asked.

“Just from you.”

“Nothing beyond the visible selection?”

“The visible selection? That’s a new expression.”

“You know what I mean.”

“No.”

“Come on, now.”

“What I’m trying to say is that we don’t get any requests like that because we have everything our customers could possibly want. I don’t know how familiar you are with the movie industry, Inspector, but it might surprise you to discover how much is legal these days.”

“Okay, I got you.”

“Anything else on your mind?”

Not right now, Bergenhem told himself, but I’ll be back. Something the owner just said doesn’t make sense. I should have brought a tape recorder. Better to go someplace where I can jot down my notes. “No, that will be all for today,” he said to the owner, rising from his chair.

They walked out of the office together. Bergenhem heard the music start up like rolling thunder and made his way over to the curtained doorway. The younger woman was dancing to Tina Turner, her eyes staring into another world. For a couple of minutes, Bergenhem stood transfixed, and when he finally left, the owner followed him with his eyes.

It was late afternoon and the sun had already set. Winter sat in Ringmar’s office reading the interrogation report.

“What do you think?” Ringmar asked.

“Not so much to think about.”

“It’s like he was embarrassed.”

“For not having called us about the letter sooner?” Winter asked.

“You know I’m talking about something else.”

“It’s outrageous that people still have to keep this kind of thing secret even though society professes to be so tolerant.”

“Maybe there’s another letter somewhere.”

“Another letter that tricked Geoff into coming to Gothenburg? I’ll believe that when I see it.”

Ringmar pointed to the report. “Meeting somebody online-is that common these days?”

“That’s what I’ve heard.”

“He couldn’t really explain why they had switched to regular mail.”

“Yeah, I noticed that.”

“Maybe they thought it was safer.”

“Could be,” Winter said. “It lent the whole exchange an old-fashioned air of secrecy.”

“We’ll have to keep this guy in mind and hope something else turns up.”

“I’ve been thinking about why we didn’t find a letter from him in Geoff’s dorm room. He had no reason to throw it out, did he?”

“No.”

“Where is it, then?”

“Maybe he wasn’t the kind who saves letters.”

“A letter from a boyfriend who was one of the main reasons he came to Gothenburg? I’d bet anything he kept it, but somebody else got their hands on it.”

“Why would anyone else be interested?”

“Because something in it was incriminating.”

“Incriminating about what?”

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”

“So Hitchcock took it?” Ringmar asked.

“Right.”

“Because something in it would give us a lead?”

“I don’t know.” Winter reached for his cigarillos but remembered where he was. Ringmar hated it when the smell of smoke filled his office long after the culprit was gone.

“We’ll talk to this guy again, but not right away,” Ringmar said. “I was thinking about the flights between London and Gothenburg the other night. The passenger lists we requested have started to arrive now, and we need an extra office to go through all of them, not to mention more staff.”

“Lists for the past three months?”

“Right.”

“How long do the airlines keep them?”

“Two years for the flights out of Gothenburg.”

“Two years?”

“It’s a shot in the dark, Erik.”

“How many daily departures between London and Gothenburg?”

“Five round-trips on weekdays. The first is Scandinavian Airlines at 6:10. A.M. and the last is British Airways at 5:45 P.M. Then there’s an extra Scandinavian Airlines flight out of Gothenburg at 5:50 on Sunday morning.”

“Not all go to Heathrow, do they?”

“British Airways has a 7:15 A.M. flight to Gatwick.”

“That’s right, I was on it once.”

“You have one of those travel passes, don’t you?”

“I used to.”

“Every flight between Gothenburg and London carries a hundred to a hundred and twenty passengers.”

Winter nodded.

“Guess how many that makes in a year.”

“I don’t have my pocket calculator on me.”

“Somewhere around four hundred thousand.”

“That many?”

“Yep.”

“But we’re limiting ourselves to three months,” Winter said.

“That’s still too much work.”

“Any period we choose is going to be too much work.”

“Assuming we find the time,” Ringmar said, “I suggest we start with the flights the victims took. Then go backwards week by week. But we still don’t have the lists from London for the departures to Gothenburg.”

“I guess we’ll have to do it the way you suggest.”

“We’re still talking about a hell of a lot of passengers.”

“The lists show each passenger’s final destination, right?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“I hope so,” Winter said. “That way we can cross out those who left from Gothenburg but had connecting flights to Blackpool, Cape Town or wherever.”

“Assuming they weren’t pulling a fast one.”

“I’m trying to be a little constructive here. We both know what an impossible task this is.”

“Sorry.”

“So that leaves the passengers who flew round-trip between London and Gothenburg.”

“On their own passports.”

“Right.”

“The airlines check each ticket against the passenger’s passport, but if you have a fake one…”

“So all we have to do is identify everyone who flew on a valid passport. It’s a simple process of elimination. Then we nab the others.” Winter smiled.

“We can start with those who flew back and forth within a few days-say, a week or so.”

“Now you’re being constructive.”

“Constructive idiocy.”

“We’ll rule out as many passengers as we can. Somebody’s got to do it.”

Ringmar scratched his arm. “Maybe it’s constructive to track down the murderer this way,” he said finally, “but I’m not as convinced as you are.”

“I’m never convinced.”

“We have no evidence that the murderer commuted between Gothenburg and London. We don’t even know how many murderers we’re looking for.”

There was nothing for Winter to say. The role of investigators was to try out different theories one by one, occasionally several at a time. They didn’t let go of a hypothesis until they ran into a dead end, and even then they didn’t discard it entirely.

“All three murders were similar,” Ringmar said, “but there are plenty of possible explanations other than that it was the same guy.” They had already hashed this out a hundred times.

We have no choice but to plod along, Winter mused. We think out loud, and suddenly somebody comes up with something that hasn’t yet been said and we pounce on it. “They were paid to do it, is that what you mean?” he asked.

“Could be.”

“But what was the purpose?”

“The profit motive. I could be wrong, but I really think someone was out to make a movie.”

“We haven’t found any link between the three kids,” Winter said.

“Except that they might all have been homosexual or bisexual.”

“But we can’t even be sure about that.”

“Perhaps they never had the chance to find out themselves.”

“But at least it’s something they had in common.”

“Maybe.”

“And it might have been the cause of their deaths,” Winter said. “Indirectly at first, and then as directly as could be.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Curiosity about something that was secret or forbidden got the better of them, and that’s what made them let a stranger into their apartments.”

“There might have been another reason.”

“Like what?”

“What could persuade you to let a stranger in?” Ringmar asked.

“Lots of money?”

“No.”

“A movie contract?”

“Try again.”

“A case of whisky?”

“You’re getting warmer.”

“Somebody I knew.”

“Bingo.”

They sat there silently.

An angel flitted through the room.

“You’re giving me goose bumps,” Winter said.

“Somebody they knew.”

“It’s certainly possible, but I’m skeptical somehow.”

Ringmar tried to weave together the various strands of the conversation in his head.

“I’m pretty sure there’s only one murderer,” Winter said. “He’s been here and there, and he’s here or there now too. Gothenburg or London.”

“We look for this person in the victims’ past. If he’s there, we grab him.”

“That’s not where we’re going to find him. Not in their past.”

“The past and the present, where do you draw the line?”

Winter had no answer.