Death Angels

41

WINTER WAS SCALING A CLIFF. A STEREO SPEAKER JUTTED OUT at the top. “What’s New” was playing. Coltrane peered down over the cliff, took the mouthpiece from his lips, lit a Gitanes cigarette and shouted to Winter What’s New, What’s New, What’s New, and the cell phone attached to his tenor sax jangled against its straight neck. A tenor sax is supposed to be bent, Winter thought. It’s soprano saxes that are straight. He was just about to say so aloud, but now Macdonald was holding the phone instead and screaming, Answer you snob, answer before the kid hangs up. Winter tried to take the phone but it was stuck to the instrument. The phone rang and rang.

He woke up and the phone on his nightstand was ringing. It stopped and the cell phone on the desk took over. He barreled out of bed and grabbed it but nobody was there. The landline started all over again. Darting back, he stubbed his big toe on the leg of the bed. The pain surged through his body after a numb second. “Hello?” he said. His eyes were watering from the pain. He reached for his toe but it rebuffed his hand. He was sure he had broken it.

“Is this Erik? Erik Winter?”

She sounded more or less like he felt, a cold gust of agony through the receiver. Out of his other ear, he heard Coltrane’s music stuck on repeat in the living room. It wasn’t the first time he had fallen asleep before turning everything off and getting ready for bed.

The pain in his toe, now his whole foot, had gone from red hot to a dull, malevolent throb. He concentrated on the voice at the other end of the line. “Yes, this is Winter.”

“I’m sorry if I woke you. This is Martina Bergenhem.”

They had met several times. Winter liked her. She possessed a calm maturity he hoped would rub off on her husband. “Hi, Martina.”

Winter leaned over the nightstand and turned on the lamp. He blinked a couple of times to get used to the light. He held up his watch. It was cold in his palm. The hands pointed to four o’clock.

“I can’t get hold of Lars.”

“What did you say?”

“He hasn’t come home tonight and I have to go…”

Winter heard her start to cry-or cry some more.

“I have to go to the hospital.”

“Hasn’t he called?” It was one of those meaningless questions. But maybe they had to be asked anyway.

“No, I thought he was out on some…”

“I don’t know,” Winter said. “But it’s certainly possible.”

“You don’t know?”

“No, Martina, but I’ll find out as fast as I humanly can.”

“I’m worried about him.”

My God, Winter thought. “Are you all alone?”

“Yes. I called my mom but she lives in Stockholm.”

She might as well have said the Caribbean, he thought.

“I just called a taxi,” she said.

“Is there a neighbor or somebody else nearby who can help you?”

“I didn’t want to bother…”

“I’ll send someone to pick you up.”

“But the taxi…”

“Can you hold on a minute, Martina?”

“What?”

“Don’t hang up, I just want to make a quick call on the other line.” He put the phone down, took a step to the side and shouted from the pain. Hopping over to the desk, he picked up the cell phone and made his call. When he was done, he returned and sat back down on the bed, his injured foot dangling over the edge. “Martina?”

“Yes?”

“Somebody will be there within ten minutes to pick you up and take you to Sahlgrenska Hospital. You can lie down in the car if necessary. I asked a friend to go along and assist you. Her name is Angela and she’s a doctor. She’ll be in the car when it gets to your house.”

“I…”

“Get ready, and they’ll be there before you know it. Meanwhile I’ll make sure that Lars goes directly to the hospital. I’ll look for him as soon as we hang up.”

Winter sat still. He carefully flexed his ankle and felt the toe. It was tender but there wasn’t any swelling. Maybe it wasn’t broken after all. It hardly mattered one way or the other-you didn’t put a splint on a toe.

He’d wear a pair of clogs if necessary.

He limped to the bathroom, intimations of disaster coursing through his body.

He was examining his toe under the lightbulb when the phone rang again. He hobbled back. A woman introduced herself as Marianne Johnsén. Winter listened.

Bergenhem was found at eight o’clock in the morning. Unable to resist any longer, the proud owner of a new sailboat had driven down to the Tångudden Road Marina to feast his eyes on it before the season started.

Bergenhem was sitting straight up, wedged between two rocks at Hästevik Bay. The gulls were more raucous than usual at this time of day. The boat owner had seen the legs sticking out and forgotten his plans. The patrol officer responding to the alarm had recognized Bergenhem.

Winter had dragged his sore toe behind him over the meadow and down into the crevices. He stood next to the spot where Bergenhem had been, as if offering his protection. The meaning of life could have become a moot question for you, Lars-for me too, he thought.

The morning drifted blue and white over Älvsborgsfjorden Bay, the light lucid as if it had been scrubbed clean. Stena Line ferried people to Denmark as though nothing had happened. The Stora Billingen fields would be bursting with life in less than a month. As though nothing had happened, Winter repeated to himself. The bus makes its scheduled stops, passengers get on and off. Tonight people will sit down at the dinner table as always and gather in the living room with their eyes glued to the television.

“It’s my fault,” he said. “Tell me that it’s my fault.”

“It’s like you’re pleading with me,” Ringmar said.

“Just say it.”

“He’s your man.”

“More, say more.”

“You’re his boss.”

“I want to hear it all.”

“Pull yourself together.”

Winter looked south over the meadow. They had cordoned it off from the road. The ruts were fresh, but lots of people had driven down to the water in the past few days. Fishermen, boat owners, lovers. “There’s nothing more for us to do here,” he said, down on one knee next to the rocks.

“His neck was bleeding,” Ringmar said.

“Suffocation. Ask the doctors and they’ll tell you someone tried to choke him.”

The forensic team was at work all around them.

“You’re right, we can’t do anything more here,” Ringmar said.

Winter stared at the rocks. He wasn’t sure how old Bergenhem was. Twenty-six? Martina was a few years older, he knew that. “His wife just had a baby girl,” he said, looking up at Ringmar.

“You mentioned that in the car.”

“Everything went fine. Angela was there the whole time, and her mother is coming this afternoon. From Stockholm. Bergenhem’s mother-in-law, I mean.” Winter stood up. “Why haven’t you asked me?”

“What?”

“Why haven’t you asked me when I’m going to tell Martina?”

“Jesus, Erik, it’s only…”

“I’ve got to tell her today. We can’t keep it from the press.”

“No.”

“Today.”

“Let Östergaard go with you.”

“I’ll do it myself. She can take care of me afterward.”

Ringmar drove them back to the city through the old center of Kungsten. Långedragsvägen Way had been patched together and repaired century after century. They went under the viaduct and continued across the Sandarna district. Winter gave a start when the car hit a bump.

“How’s your foot doing?” Ringmar asked.

“It’s my toe.”

“At least you can still walk.”

“That’s what counts.”

“Right.”

“And Marianne has disappeared?”

“We’re looking all over for her,” Ringmar said.

“No trace of her anywhere.”

“It’s only been a few hours.”

“Do you think she’s dead?”

“No, just afraid. Bergenhem was completely unprofessional. He didn’t keep us up to date on what was happening, and it almost cost him his life.”

Winter looked out at the cemetery. “Act unprofessionally and get killed. That’s a good way to sum up our line of work.”

They took the Mariaplan roundabout. Gothenburg is made up of twenty-five small towns, Winter thought, and they’re all just as dangerous.

“Do you think he’s going to make it?” Ringmar asked.

“He’s over the worst of it now. A hell of a headache, but he’s hanging in there. He’s young and strong.”

“But no hero.”

“Not this time, anyway.”

“She knows,” Ringmar said.

“Who, Marianne?”

“She knows.”

“She’s not the only one. So do I.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s almost over.”

Winter called the bar and got the answering machine. He hailed a taxi.

He rang Bolger’s bell and waited. He rang again, then walked back down the two flights of stairs, crossing over to an alley on the other side of the street. The store windows were dark. Night arrived without warning in April, almost like a burglar.

I’ve been blind and deaf, he thought. Maybe I’m to blame, maybe not. There have been hints, innuendos, but who could have…

He swatted away those thoughts. He had already been through them more than once.

Bolger drove up, parked his BMW and got out. He raised the remote and Winter heard the lock click shut in the stillness of the night. Bolger disappeared through the front door of the building.

Maybe you’re the one who’s crazy, Winter thought. Your story is the figment of a madman’s imagination. No rules apply any longer, and never have. Each thought crumbles and falls to pieces that fly off in all directions and come back-often broken, rarely whole. Nothing can be polished or even forced into a symmetrical pattern. Nothing is unblemished, not even on the surface.

A gust of wind blew in from the street and swirled behind him.

He’ll come back out any minute, Winter thought. You can shoot him on the spot and that will be it for your career.

Bolger walked out five minutes later. He extended his arm and the lock clicked. After settling into the driver’s seat, he took off.

How strange that not a single person has passed by while you’ve been standing here, Winter thought. It’s like a movie in which a thousand people gather outside a cordoned-off area and follow what’s going on. The eye of the camera watches from a privileged position above it all.

He stepped out of the alley, limped across the street, climbed the stairs and rang the bell again. He took out his ring of skeleton keys and tried one of them. The steel felt soft through his glove.

The lock gave way and he opened the door. He slowly made his way from room to room.

The first place he looked was the chest of drawers, but there was nothing in it except socks and underwear. Bolger was a stickler for neatness.

He checked the closets: shoes, clothes, belts and ties.

A thick envelope, open like a defiant challenge, lay in the third desk drawer from the top. Inside were three passports, each under a different name, none of them Bolger’s. But the photographs were of him. None of the pages were stamped-the brave new Europe had no use for that sort of thing. He’s got more of these somewhere, Winter thought.

One of the passports was in the name of someone who had flown to London the day after Christian.

The investigators had focused all their attention on the passenger lists for the three days around the victim’s arrival.

It was a monumental discovery, but Winter simply filed it away in his mind like a bread crumb that had been laid out for him. I’ve been blind, but now I see, he thought. I’m holding this passport. My hands are trembling.

Maybe it’s just another inexplicable coincidence.

He found lots of papers-accounting records, invoices, bills, business contracts-but they didn’t interest him. Some porn magazines, nothing alarming, were stacked neatly in the bedroom dresser.

No receipts, no copies of tickets or vouchers.

He went back to the desk and picked up a pile of paper from the hutch. There were at least twenty sheets, each of them scribbled all over in a pointed, angular longhand. It looked like a screenplay written in a state of rage. He couldn’t make out the words, then suddenly caught sight of his name in clear, straight letters. He flipped to the next sheet. There was his name again. It was all he could read. The incomprehensible words sprawled out in all directions.

A chill more wretched than any he had ever felt before ran down his back.

A cloth was draped over a foot-high rectangular object on the desk.

He removed the cloth and stared at a photograph of himself, taken shortly before high school graduation. The glass frame looked new.