Frozen Tracks

10

THE HOSPITAL WAS SUFFUSED WITH A LIGHT THAT MADE PEOPLE in the emergency waiting room look even more ill. There seemed to be lots of waiting rooms. It looks like half of Gothenburg is here, Larissa Serimov thought. Despite the fact that this is a welfare state. We’re not in the Urals. She found it difficult not to laugh. Emergency treatment was not a term that existed in Russia anymore. Emergency, yes-but treatment, no.

At least there was a doctor here, even if the line to see him was long.

The Bergort family were on their own in one of the side rooms. The girl was rolling a ball backward and forward, but her eyes were heavy. She’ll sleep her way through the examination, Serimov thought, and shook hands first with the mother and then her husband. She could see that people were staring at her uniform, which was black with the word POLICE in grotesquely large print on her back. What’s the point of that, she had thought the first time she put it on. To avoid being shot in the back? Or to encourage it?

“Yes, here we are,” said Kristina Bergort.

“How much longer before your turn?” asked Serimov.

“I have no idea.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” said Serimov, and went over to the desk. Kristina Bergort saw her talking to the nurse, then vanishing through a door behind it. Then she saw her emerge again with a doctor, who gestured toward the little family.

The doctor examined the girl. He had considered sedating her, but didn’t.

Serimov waited outside. It struck her how calm the Bergort family was. The husband hadn’t actually said a word so far.

They emerged, and she stood up.

“The doctor would like a word with you,” said the mother, looking at her daughter sleeping in her father’s arms.

“What was the outcome? What did he find?”

“Nothing at all, thank God.” Kristina Bergort started walking toward the big glass doors. “I’ll have another word with Maja tomorrow morning.”

“You’re welcome to call me again,” said Serimov.

The mother nodded, and they left.

Larissa Serimov went back to the doctor’s office. He finished dictating his summary into the tape recorder, then looked up and rose to his feet. This wasn’t the first time she’d been in there. Police officers and doctors met frequently, especially in Frölunda, where the hospital and the police station were practically next door, separated only by the service road. Just a stone’s throw away, she had once thought; and stones had been thrown, but by citizens expressing their views on law and order in the city. Ah well. Perhaps it had helped to make her feel at home in a country she didn’t come from, or in the other one that she hadn’t asked to live in, but was grateful for having been born in.

She knew the doctor.

“What’s this all about, Larissa?”

“I don’t really know.”

“Does anybody know?”

“The mother was worried, and that’s hardly surprising,” said Serimov.

“The kid has an imagination, and a pretty lively one at times,” he said. “The mother told me what happened, and, well, I don’t really know what to think.”

“You don’t have to think anything at all. An examination is all we need.”

“Which showed that she hadn’t been interfered with, at least.”

“At least? Are you suggesting there’s something else, Bosse?”

“A few bruises on her arm. One on her back. Hard to say what caused them.”

“Somebody holding her too tightly? Or something worse?”

“I asked about them. Didn’t get a convincing answer. At first.”

“What do you mean?”

“The father seemed to look the other way.” He looked at her. “But perhaps it was just a feeling I had.”

“What did the mother say?”

“That the girl had fallen off a swing and crashed into the frame. But then she seemed to remember why they had come here and said maybe this stranger the girl had gone off with did it.”

“Is that possible? Falling into the frame of the swing? Could that have left those marks?”

“Well… The bruises are fresh.”

“You’re being evasive.”

“It just struck me that it’s not all that unusual for parents who beat their children to report such incidents as accidents. Or to dream up stories that would seem to fit in, sometimes amazing flights of fantasy.”

“Like a girl going off with a stranger.”

“Yes. But that’s more your field,” he said, answering the telephone that had just rung. He looked up with his hand over the receiver. “But I have to say it is possible that it’s true.”

Winter and Ringmar were preparing for the afternoon’s interrogations. They were in Ringmar’s office, which Winter thought was even gloomier than usual. It wasn’t due exclusively to the late autumn weather outside.

“Did you repaper the place?” he asked.

“Of course. Last weekend, all on my own. I can do yours for you next Sunday.”

“It’s just that it looks darker,” said Winter.

“It’s my mood. Reflected in the walls.”

“What’s the matter?”

Ringmar didn’t answer.

“Is it the usual?” Winter asked.

“It’s Martin, of course.”

“Still no word from him?”

“No.”

“But Moa knows?”

“Where he is? I don’t think so anymore. If she did I think she would’ve told me.” Ringmar snorted and raised his arm, sneezed once into it, then twice. He removed his face from his arm and looked at Winter. “He calls her now and then. I think so, at least.”

Bertil’s eyes were watery. Winter knew that was due to the sneezing attack, but Bertil’s situation was enough to bring tears to anybody’s eyes. Why didn’t the boy get in touch? Bertil deserved better than this. Winter knew him well enough to be certain of that.

“Ah well, I’m still in contact with my other child,” said Ringmar, looking past Winter at the window, which had a narrow band of condensation across the bottom of it. “I suppose that’s not all that bad an outcome.” He looked at Winter. “Fifty percent success in the breeding stakes. Or however the hell you describe it.”

“He’ll come back,” said Winter. “He’s just on a journey, trying to find himself. Young people go searching, more than others.”

“A journey to find himself? That was nicely put.”

“Yes, I’m glad you think so.”

“But for Christ’s sake, he’s nearly thirty. You call that young?”

“You keep calling me young, Bertil. And I’m over forty.”

“Are you also on a journey to find yourself?”

“I most certainly am.”

“Are you being serious?”

“I most certainly am.”

“Searching for the meaning of life?”

“Of course.”

“Do you still have far to go?”

“What do you think?” said Winter. “You’re past fifty. You’ve got further to go than I do.”

Ringmar looked past Winter again, at the window that reflected the fading afternoon light.

“I think I’ve found it,” said Ringmar. “The meaning of life, the whole point of life.”

“Let’s hear it, then.”

“Dying.”

“Dying? Is that the only point of living?”

“That’s the only point.”

“For God’s sake, Bertil.”

“That’s the way it feels right now, at least.”

“There’s medicine you can take for this, Bertil.”

“I don’t think I’m suffering from clinical depression.”

“Well, you’re not suffering from manic optimism, that’s for sure,” said Winter.

“Everybody has the right to feel depressed now and then,” said Ringmar. “There are far too many people running around with a grin on their faces.”

“I couldn’t agree more.”

“Far too many,” said Ringmar.

“Why don’t you have a talk with Hanne?” Winter suggested.

Hanne Östergaard was the police vicar who worked part-time in the police headquarters, and she’d been a great help to a lot of officers. She’d been a solid rock of support for Winter in one of his cases that had caused him extreme anguish.

“Why not,” said Ringmar.

Ringmar did have a talk later that afternoon, but it wasn’t with Hanne Östergaard.

Jens Book was propped up by pillows and didn’t look especially comfortable, but he shook his head when Ringmar offered to rearrange the bedclothes.

Here we go again, Ringmar had thought as he entered Sahlgren Hospital, which was swarming with people in both civvies and white coats.

We should have an office here. Why has nobody thought of that before? I should get a bonus for the idea. We spend lots of our time here. We need some kind of practical and convenient arrangement. Maybe our own secretary? A whole team of doctors with the word POLICE printed in black on the back of their white coats? Vehicles that are a mixture of ambulance and police van? Firing range in the basement? His head was full of ambitious plans when he stepped into the elevator. The boy had had his plans rudely interrupted. No journalism studies for him for a while, if ever. Halders had suggested he set his sights on the para Olympic Games, and that was a comment from somebody who had come close to being a prospective competitor himself. If he’d wanted to and had the ability.

But Jens Book had started to regain mobility, first in his right shoulder and then slowly down through the rest of his body. There was life and hope. He had recovered some movement in his face, which made it possible for them to talk; but Ringmar wasn’t sure what they should talk about. You don’t always get the answers you want from your questions.

“Do you think he crept up on you on a bicycle?” he asked now.

The young man appeared to be thinking. He had been walking along the pavement at Linnéplatsen, past the video store. Hardly any traffic, dim light, mist over the park veiling the night sky.

“Maybe,” he said. “It happened so quickly.” He turned his head toward the pile of pillows. “But I didn’t hear, or see, anything to make me sure that he was riding a bike.”

“Nothing at all?”

“No.”

The kid moved his head again.

“How’s it going?” Ringmar asked.

“Well…”

“I heard that you’re on the mend.”

“It seems so.”

“Can you move your right hand?”

“A little bit, yeah.”

“Soon you’ll be able to wiggle your toes.”

Book smiled.

“We’re still not absolutely clear about where you’d been that night,” Ringmar said.

“Er, what do you mean?”

“Where you were coming from when you were attacked.”

“What difference does it make?”

“Somebody might have followed you.”

“From there? No, I don’t think so.”

“From where, Jens?”

“Didn’t I say that I’d been to a party in, er, Storgatan I think it is? Just past Noon.”

“Yes.”

“Well, then.”

“But you weren’t there the whole time,” Ringmar said.

“What do you mean?”

Ringmar looked down at his notebook. The page was empty, but sometimes it was a good idea to look as if you were checking information you already had.

“You left that party about two hours before the attack at Linnéplatsen took place.”

“Who said that?”

Ringmar consulted his notebook again.

“Several of the people we’ve spoken to. It wasn’t a secret.”

“It sounds almost like I’m being accused of something.”

“I’m not saying that.”

“It sounds almost like that.”

“I’m only trying to establish what you were doing. Surely you can understand that? If we’re going to find this attacker, we have to walk in your footsteps, so to speak,” Ringmar said.

Pure bullshit, he thought. I’m thinking like my daughter speaks.

The boy didn’t answer.

“Did you meet somebody?” Ringmar asked.

“Even if I did, it’s got nothing to do with this.”

“In which case there’s no harm in telling, is there?”

“Telling what?”

“If you met somebody,” Ringmar said.

“Yes and no,” said Book. His eyes were wandering all round the room.

Ringmar nodded, as if he understood.

“What year are you in?” asked Winter.

“My second.”

“My wife’s a doctor.”

“Really?”

“She’s a hospital doctor. General medicine.”

“I suppose that’s what I want to be.”

“Not a brain surgeon?”

“It would be useful to be one, after this,” said Aryan Kaite, grimacing slightly and touching his head with his left hand: The big bandage had been replaced by a smaller one. “The question is whether I’ll be able to go on studying.” He took down his hand again. “Thinking. Remembering. It’s not certain that everything will still work.”

“How do you feel now?” Winter asked.

“Better, but not good.”

Winter nodded. They were in a café in Vasastan, chosen by Kaite. I should come here more often, Winter thought. It’s relaxing. Interviewing people over coffee. There should be a sign outside: Coffee and Questions.

“I live just around the corner,” Winter said.

“Working within walking distance, then,” said Kaite.

“Yes, again,” said Winter, and told him about the case he’d worked on a few years previously, the couple in the apartment fifty meters down the street who had been sitting so still. The odd circumstances regarding their heads. But he didn’t say anything about that particular detail.

“I think I read something about that,” said Kaite.

“We got the call from a newspaper boy,” said Winter. “A young kid who became suspicious.”

“I guess they see a lot,” said Kaite.

“You didn’t see a newspaper boy that morning, did you, Aryan?”

“When I had my head bashed in? I couldn’t see anything at all.”

“When you came up to Kapellplatsen, or just before you were attacked. You didn’t notice a newspaper boy around? Or on the other side of the square? Near the buildings?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Did you see anybody carrying newspapers?”

“No.”

“OK. I’ll tell you why I’m asking. I take it you’ve heard that another young man was, er, attacked, in the same way? At Mossen?”

“Yes.”

“He says he saw a newspaper boy shortly before it happened, but there was no newspaper boy there that morning. The usual person was sick.”

“So it must have been a replacement.”

“No. The usual one called in sick at the last minute, and they didn’t have time to find anybody else.”

“How does he know it was a newspaper boy he saw, then?”

“There was somebody carrying newspapers up and down staircases at four-thirty in the morning.”

“Sounds like a newspaper boy,” said Kaite.

“Exactly,” said Winter.

“But isn’t there something a bit fishy there? How could he know the usual delivery person was sick?” he asked. “He could have bumped into her. How did he know?”

“That’s what we are wondering as well,” said Winter, studying the boy’s face-it was as black as Aneta Djanali’s, but with different features from another part of Africa.

“Very odd,” said Kaite.

“Where do you come from, Aryan?”

“ Kenya.”

“Born there?”

“Yes.”

“Are there a lot of Kenyans living in Gothenburg?”

“Quite a few. Why?”

Winter shrugged.

“I don’t hang out with any of them,” said Kaite.

“Who do you hang out with, then?”

“Not many people.”

“Fellow students?”

“Some of them.”

“Who were you with that evening?”

“Eh?”

“When you were attacked. Who were you with then?”

“But I told you I was on my own.”

“Before you came to Kapellplatsen, I mean.”

“Nobody. I was just wandering around the streets.”

“You didn’t meet anybody?”

“No.”

“Not at all? All evening?”

“No.”

“It was a long night.”

“Yes.”

“And you didn’t meet anybody later on, either?”

“No.”

“And you expect me to believe that?”

“Why shouldn’t you?” He looked surprised. “Is it that strange?”

“So you didn’t know the person who clubbed you down?”

“What kind of a question is that?”

“Do you want me to ask it again?”

“You don’t need to. If I knew who it was, I’d say so of course.”

Winter said nothing.

“Why on earth wouldn’t I?”