Death Angels

4

THE MUFFLED SOUNDS OF WINTER FOLLOWED THEM INTO POLICE headquarters and lingered in their clothing as they rode the elevator to the fourth floor of the homicide division.

The corridors were lined with tile. For most of the year, noises that made their way in from the street bounced dissonantly off the walls. Now they just rolled by like loosely packed snowballs. A circle of silence surrounds everyone and everything, Winter thought as he stepped out of the elevator and turned the corner. Maybe January is my month after all.

The investigation team gathered in the conference room. The massive effort of the first few days was winding down. Only the core group was left. Just like always.

Most of the remaining fifteen inspectors were crowded in here, and their clothes still smelled of raw cold and overheated engines.

Ringmar, who was acting as the assistant chief investigator, hadn’t slept the night before and had done his best to make sure that nobody else had either. He hadn’t bothered to comb his hair, which was his way of saying how serious things were.

If we were at war and I was the platoon leader, Winter thought, I would demand Ringmar for my assistant or threaten to hang out at the mess hall all day long. He took the folder that Janne Möllerström, their database expert, was holding out to him. If we were at another kind of war, he corrected himself.

Möllerström was new and quite young. He had already done an excellent job in a couple of difficult homicide cases, and Winter had insisted on having him again.

Sometimes there were two database guys, but Möllerström was all you needed. He kept track of everything, and the preliminary investigation database was his most prized possession.

Winter swallowed and felt the scratchiness he had noticed when getting out of bed that morning, a raw feeling way down in the left side of his throat. “Who wants to start?” he asked.

They looked around at each other. Winter was as disciplined as they came, and when he let go of the reins like this, it meant he was looking for some creative thinking about the murder. Or murders.

Nobody said anything.

“Lars?”

Lars Bergenhem shifted in his chair. His face has taken on real character since they made him an inspector, Winter thought.

“I’ve read the reports from London,” Bergenhem offered.

“And?”

“I was thinking about the glove.”

“Go on.”

“The London team found the imprint of a glove in the bed-and-breakfast, and Fröberg found a similar one in the dorm here.”

“Correct.”

“The imprint is in the same place in both rooms.”

“Correct.”

“That’s all I had.” Bergenhem’s features relaxed.

“There’s another thing,” Ringmar said from his favorite corner. He always stood there and fiddled nonstop with his mustache. It might look like he was vain about his appearance, but he simply thought more clearly when his fingers were in motion. “Those marks,” he explained.

Winter looked at Ringmar, swallowed and felt the scratching sensation in his throat again.

Ringmar continued. “Is there anything in the latest report from INTERPOL and London about marks in the middle of the room?”

“No,” Möllerström said, “but they’re not even finished with half of the room yet.”

“That means we’re faster than they are.” This from an inspector who would be leaving the core group soon.

“It doesn’t mean a damn thing,” Ringmar snapped, “until we get all the exact times down.”

“Let’s not turn this into a game of one-upmanship between London and Gothenburg,” Winter said.

“My sentiments exactly,” Ringmar said. “Where was I?”

“The marks,” Möllerström answered.

“Right. The forensic specialists found these marks almost smack-dab in the middle of the room, and now they’re sure what they are.”

“They’re pretty sure,” Winter corrected him.

“Reasonably sure, let’s put it that way,” Ringmar went on. “They’re working on the comparisons right now. I just talked with them, or rather with INTERPOL.”

“It’s time for some direct contact with London,” Winter said.

“Are you planning to keep us in suspense all day long?” a woman’s voice said. Aneta Djanali was one of the few women at Homicide, new to the division but never apologetic about it. Ringmar had talked to Winter about her, and they agreed that she would remain in the group as they prepared for the long haul.

“The marks were from a tripod,” Ringmar said. “It might have been for a video camera or a regular camera-or a pair of binoculars, for that matter-but it’s definitely a tripod.”

“How the hell can they tell?” someone asked from the middle of the room.

“Say that again?”

“How can they be certain that it was a tripod?”

“They aren’t certain, as we just pointed out,” Winter said. “But the lab is in the process of eliminating everything else.”

“So the bastard recorded the whole thing.” The inspector looked around the room from his spot by the door.

“That’s just speculation,” Winter said.

“What we do know is that there are marks from a tripod base in the dried blood,” Ringmar said.

“Can they tell when the marks were left there?” Bergenhem asked.

“What?” Djanali asked.

“Did he put a tripod there before or afterward?”

“Excellent question,” Ringmar said, “and I just received the answer.”

“Which is?”

“They think someone put it there before the murder.”

“In other words, the blood is from later on,” Bergenhem said.

No one spoke.

“So he was making a movie,” Djanali said. She stood up, then walked out of the room and through the corridor to the bathroom. She leaned over the sink for a long time. Where are all the guys? she wondered. Isn’t all this making anyone else sick to their stomach?

Winter had a lot to tell Karin and Lasse Malmström, but at first he just sat there with his hands in theirs. Nothing in here has a life of its own any longer, he thought. The grief has taken over and the shadows have crawled out from their hiding places.

“There’s nothing worse than outliving your own child,” Lasse said.

Winter got up and crossed the hallway to the kitchen on the left. He hadn’t been there for years, though he had been a frequent guest at one time. The days fly by like wild horses across the plains, he thought, trying three cupboards before he found the jar of instant coffee. He filled the pot with water and plugged it into the socket by the sink. Carefully measuring the powder and milk into three cups, he poured the boiling water. He found a tray in a compartment designed for a pastry board and put the cups on it.

All this is keeping you on edge, he thought, but it’s also making you more observant, which is probably good. Learning to sort things out and rearrange them will make you a better investigator. For whatever that’s worth.

The sun trickled through the window over the counter and collided with the dim glow from the hallway, filling the kitchen with a light that revealed nothing and pointed nowhere. How will they find the strength to make it through the days ahead? he wondered.

He took the coffee back to the living room and sat down in the armchair. Karin had opened one of the blinds. The sun painted a long ashen rectangle on the north wall.

“So he had been gone for two days,” Winter started off.

Lasse nodded.

“Did he know where he’d be staying?”

Karin and Lasse looked mutely at each other.

“Did he reserve a room before he left?”

“He didn’t want to,” Karin said.

“Why is that?”

“It wasn’t the first time he’s gone someplace on his own. He’s never been in London by himself before, but he’s been here and there.”

Winter wasn’t surprised that she spoke of Per in the present tense. Her son was still with her, a phenomenon he had observed many times before.

“He wanted to take things as they came,” she continued.

The rectangle of light on the wall had moved, and Karin’s figure was now illuminated. Her head was bowed, lending dark shadows to her face. Something glittered in her right eye, a reflection from far away. She was wearing washed-out jeans and a thick knitted sweater-the first clothes that caught her eye when getting out of bed after a sleepless night, Winter guessed.

“Teenagers don’t like to plan so much,” she added.

“Did he say anything about where he might be staying in London?” Winter asked.

“I think he mentioned Kensington,” Lasse said. “He went with us a few times, and we always stayed at the same little hotel in that part of the city, but he didn’t want me to call and make a reservation. I did it anyway and he was mad, but I never canceled it because I figured he’d end up staying there after all.”

In his suit, white shirt and tie, Lasse formed an odd contrast to his wife. We all grieve in our own way, Winter thought. Lasse will go to the office for another day or two, and late one afternoon, or maybe early one morning, he’s going to collapse over his desk, or into the arms of an unsuspecting client, and after that he won’t be putting on any more ties for a long time.

“But he never made it there,” Winter said.

Clouds swept by outside, erasing the rectangle of light that Karin had fixed her eyes on, and Winter saw them turn inward again as her head sank. I don’t think she’s listening anymore, he thought. “Were you ever south of the river?” he asked Lasse.

“What?”

“The south side of London. Did you ever go there? With Per, I mean.”

“No.”

“Did you ever talk about that part of the city?”

“No. Why would we?”

“Did he mention that he might want to go there?”

“Not as far as I know. Karin?”

She had raised her head again once the clouds were gone.

“Karin?”

“What?” She continued to stare straight ahead.

“Did Per ever say what part of London he was going to?” Lasse asked.

“What?”

Lasse turned to Winter. “Why the hell did he have to go there in the first place?”

“Did he have any acquaintances there?”

“Not that I know of. He would have told us, I’m sure of it. Do you think he met somebody?”

“It seems that way.”

“I mean ahead of time, someone who lured him into that goddam jungle.”

“We have no way of knowing at this point.”

“I’m asking what you believe, for God’s sake,” Lasse said, his voice rising.

Karin still hadn’t budged except to raise and lower her head with the passing shadows.

Winter started to take a sip of coffee but put his cup back down. When you’ve been a detective even as short a time as I have, he thought, you stop believing in much of anything. The worst mistake you can make during a murder investigation is to go around believing something that turns out to be wrong. But Karin and Lasse need something to put their faith in, an explanation of circumstances that can’t be explained. “I don’t think anyone lured him to that particular hotel,” he said, “but he may have met somebody when he was in that part of the city.”

“Thank you.”

“You don’t know of any other reason that he might have gone to London?” Winter’s question echoed through the silent house.

Voices drifted in through the window. The school around the bend had just let out, and the children were on their way home. Their winter break was about to start. Karin stood and left the room.

Back in the car, Winter wondered why he hadn’t asked Karin and Lasse the most obvious questions. Two or three of them were so important that the investigation depended on the answers. Even if they don’t know, he thought, the questions have to be asked, and it’s best to do it now. Take a few minutes to mellow out and then go back.

There are occasional moments in early February when spring whispers a message and then hastily retreats. This was one of those afternoons. As Winter drove down Eklandagatan Street, the city roared around him. The sun grabbed hold of Hotel Gothia Towers and jabbed at his eyes with its spiraling light as he came to the Korsvägen roundabout. Suddenly he knew where he was going.

The car behind him honked and he moved over to the right lane, heading west past the drowsy Liseberg amusement park. He hit all the green lights on the way to St. Sigfrid’s Square and turned into the parking lot at the Television Building.

He coaxed the car into one of the spaces and leaned over the steering wheel. You’ve kept it together so far, he thought, but this is starting to get to you.

You have to talk with Hanne Östergaard, he told himself. Sit here as long as the sun is in your eyes and then go back and see Karin and Lasse. Put on some slow jazz now and try to make out your face in the rearview mirror.