Death Angels

28

EARLY THE NEXT MORNlNG, WlNTER WALKED THROUGH THE underground garage and up the narrow staircase to the investigation room. He passed two heavily armed men wearing bulletproof vests. The walls in the stairwell were colorless, as if the everyday world had receded behind him when he came in from Parchmore Road. He heard the drone of a fan and telephones ringing nonstop.

Stepping into the corridor, he saw women and men moving in and out of a maze of rooms. The chart covering the wall to the left of the stairs was more suggestive of a sci-fi space laboratory than a regional criminal investigation center. Spokes of a big wheel shot out in a thousand different directions, like a diagram of the solar system with the earth in the middle instead of the sun.

Macdonald had explained the chart the day before. Each line represented a call from the murder victim’s phone in the center. This was for a big drug case that led to the West Indies. The calls had been traced all across London, Britain and the entire Western Hemisphere.

The offices of the detective inspectors lined the corridor. The other investigators worked in two rooms, as well as the open space farthest from the stairs. Desks had been moved together to enlarge the work surfaces.

Everywhere Winter turned, he saw computers, typewriters, file cabinets, phones, stacks of paper, witness reports, handwritten notes that had been retyped. Photographs stuck out of the piles like awnings against the white and yellow paper. Old-fashioned efficiency. Computers aside, this was how Swedish police headquarters had looked back when he had started.

They have a more intuitive way of working, Winter thought. There’s a feeling here of anarchy and freedom and participation in decision making that we don’t have in Sweden. We don’t sit close enough to each other at our fortress on Skånegatan Street.

Macdonald’s office was no exception: a hundred square yards, stacks of papers, phones. Heavy protective gear was crammed behind the door, impossible to reach in an emergency. His service pistol lay in a worn-out leather holster on the desk. A very English sun filtered through the venetian blinds and drew stripes across his face. “Tea?” he offered by way of greeting.

“Please.”

Out in the corridor, Macdonald said something Winter didn’t catch to someone he couldn’t see. Macdonald came back, sat down and motioned to the visitor’s chair, which was wobbly but had held out for the few minutes Winter had sat there the day before.

“Tea’s on its way,” Macdonald said.

“We have to make it ourselves in Gothenburg.”

“ England is still a class society. The weak make tea for the strong.”

“We’re on our way back to that time. The world-renowned Swedish model is out of date.”

“You don’t give the impression of being a working-class hero, exactly.”

A young woman dressed like a waitress in a white blouse and tight black skirt slipped in with a tray. On it were perched china teacups, a white pot, a sugar bowl and a carton of milk. Macdonald thanked her, pushed a pile of forms out of the way and asked her to put the tray on his desk. She did as he said, smiled at Winter and left the room.

“Do all Swedish inspectors dress like you?” Macdonald asked, raising a cup in Winter’s direction.

“Only when they’re on the road.”

“In England we come as we are, and that’s probably the best idea if you work this area. This station is perfectly located. As you see, we don’t go out of our way to make our presence known. We’re by ourselves here, out of sight, and we come back as fast as possible after a hard day. This is where all the computers are, where we do our thinking and chew things over with each other.”

“And answer the phones.”

With these words the phone on the desk began to ring. Macdonald lifted the receiver, mumbled for half a minute and hung up. “The Hilliers can see us tomorrow.”

“That’s good.”

“That remains to be seen.”

“Can you describe the area you work-the southeast quadrant of London? Is there a general tenor to the place?”

“No, except that the farther you get from London, the more pleasant it is. Less crime, more attractive buildings, nicer people. It’s not so bad in Croydon. There’s a big town center here that’s rolling in money, but the poor neighborhoods have quite a bit of trouble. It’s even worse to the north: Brixton, Peckham. Lots of crime, little or no money, a large ethnic population that has never been given a chance.”

“Hmm.”

“I’ve been a policeman for all these years down here on the south side,” Macdonald said. “If there’s one thing I know for sure, it’s that those who had a little chance before don’t have a hope in hell now.”

“And that means plenty of crime.”

“It means plenty of crime, and it means plenty of silence. The way it used to be, the rich were a trifle discreet. Now there’s nothing but open contempt. Those who have something to protect are arrogant and make it clear they don’t give a damn about anyone else. I see it every day.”

“But poverty isn’t the only problem, is it? Or the color of people’s skin?”

“How so?”

“It’s the pervasive sense of alienation. Of being ostracized in every conceivable way.”

“Right.”

“We’re starting to see signs of that in Sweden too.”

“You must be kidding.”

“No.”

“ Sweden? God forbid.”

“Is it the cynical policeman in you that’s talking?”

“I don’t know.” Macdonald slurped a mouthful of tea.

“But it’s not only the fact of being a policeman that makes you cynical,” Winter said. “It’s this feeling that you’re all alone, that nobody else gives a shit. You discover that people lie so damn much, all the time. Not only the suspect, the criminal whose testimony doesn’t hold up against the evidence, but others too.”

“And the real culprits, whoever they are, go free. Those are the kinds of thoughts that can really make you cynical.”

“And all the other horrible stuff.”

“What?”

“So much exposure to violence. That makes you cynical too.”

“Yes.”

“The most important thing is the daily contact with people. That’s what keeps us going.”

“We do everything we can to sustain that,” Macdonald said. “If somebody has been murdered or has simply disappeared, we put up notices everywhere and we get thousands of calls from people who have seen something and want to help. As you can hear right this minute.” He gestured toward the corridor. Phones were ringing, softly but relentlessly, in room after room. “We had a case a few years ago. A boy, twelve years old at most, was brutally raped and murdered, and we were all stunned. What the hell were we dealing with here? What kind of evil was on the loose?”

“I know the feeling.”

“We got a call from a guy who said he’d delivered newspapers when he was a kid in the neighborhood where the boy was found. A man lives there who used to molest me, he said. There were plenty of stories about him, but nobody did anything. I’m thirty-two now, he said, but I’ve never forgotten that pig.”

“Did he know the man’s name?”

“He knew his name and address, and sure enough the man lived there and he wasn’t an old codger exactly. All we had to do was ask him a few questions and he crumbled.”

“That doesn’t happen so often.”

“No, but it’s not simply a question of luck, not if you look at the big picture. If we hadn’t made ourselves available, or if people hadn’t known we were here, even if we’re a bit out of the way, that guy would never have called.”

“We’re waiting for a phone call like that now.” Winter had forgotten to drink his tea.

“Do you want a refill?”

“No thanks.”

“It’s no hassle.”

“Not for you, no.”

Macdonald looked at him and rubbed his knee.

“How’s the soccer injury?”

“It’ll be gone by Sunday and back on Monday. Do you want to get in on it?”

“In on what?”

“A match with the pub team?”

“Where?”

“Out toward Farningham. It’s in Kent, fifteen miles down the road. That’s where I live. The pub is nearby.”

“If I’m still here.”

“You don’t have to worry about that.”

Winter wanted to change the subject. “I guess I’d like another cup after all.”

Macdonald got up and went out to the corridor. After a while he came back carrying the tray. “Our maidservant is busy at the computer.”

“So the son had to do it.”

“What?”

“The Son of a Servant. It’s an autobiographical novel by Sweden ’s most famous author.”

“August Strindberg.”

“Who’s Mr. Know-It-All now?”

“I have the translation at home. It’s on my list of things to do after I retire.”

Winter tasted the tea. It was strong and sweet. The sun warmed his back through the closed window. Macdonald had lines in his face, and they weren’t from the blinds anymore. His clean-shaven skin had a bluish tint, and his black eyebrows were almost joined. Next to the stacks of paper on his desk lay a pair of frameless reading glasses. When Macdonald fiddled with them, they disappeared in his hand as if they had been made for children.

He must be a terror on the soccer field, Winter thought. Worse than me. “Do you have any witnesses who saw that man with Per?” he asked.

Macdonald let go of his glasses. The lines in his face deepened as he leaned forward. “Yes, several. And the best one thinks that the man looks like me.”

“Like you?”

“That’s what he said.”

“What did he mean?”

“As far as I could tell, he meant that the guy was big and had long, dark hair.”

“That’s what we came up with too. Big and dark.”

“He could be one of Per’s acquaintances and nothing more.”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“No?”

“Do you really believe that?” Winter asked.

“No.”

“The man who walked through the park with Per is the guy we’re looking for. Surely he would have contacted you otherwise.”

“There are other possible reasons-if he’s a closet gay, for example.”

“You mean he’s afraid that his family will find out?”

Macdonald shrugged. “A few people have turned up of their own accord, but they’re the usual crackpots.”

“I saw the notices you put up.”

He couldn’t have missed the notices when Macdonald dropped him off at Clapham High Street Station the night before-the photo of Per they’d sent from Sweden, information about the murder, the scene of the crime, the park, the facts that the investigators wanted the public to know. An appeal to call the police if you had seen anything at all.

The notices looked like zany posters, a parody out of a horror movie. Winter had felt a wave of nausea, which caught him by surprise.

Frayed at the bottom, they had already acquired a pale veneer that said everything was too late. They were stapled to three different poles and were in identical condition, apparently put up at the same time. The trains came and went, and some people read the notices and called the Thornton Heath police, but that hadn’t yet led to any breakthroughs.

When he’d reached Victoria Station, the lower right corner of a notice flapped from a pole by the exit as the trains passed-as if someone had torn off a map of London and left only the southeast side.

It was an odd coincidence, like an encrypted message meant for Winter’s eyes.