ONE OF THE CHILDREN JUMPED DOWN FROM THE JUNGLE GYM into the sandbox below, and he laughed out loud, suddenly, briefly. It looked like good fun. The man wanted to join in, but that would mean getting out of his car, walking around the fence and in through the gate, and climbing up the structure, which was red and yellow.
A drop of rain fell on the window, then another. He looked up and could see the sky was darker now. He turned his attention back to the playground and the trees beyond it and along the left-hand side. There were no leaves on the branches; the trees were bare. Things you couldn’t see in the summer were visible now. The city was naked. That thought had struck him as he drove there through the wet streets. This city is naked again. He didn’t like it. It was almost worse than before.
Now another child jumped down. He could hear the boy laughing as he lay in the sand; he could hear that even when the radio was on, as it was now. He wasn’t listening to it. He was listening to the boy’s laughter. He was laughing himself now. He wasn’t happy, but he was laughing because hearing the child laughing, it sounded like so much fun to be a child getting up to climb the jungle gym and jump down once more.
It stopped raining even before it had really started. He rolled down the window a bit more. There was a smell of autumn turning into winter. Nothing else smelled like it. Leaves lay on the ground and had turned black. People were walking along paths through the park. Some were pushing strollers. A few people were standing around in the playground, grown-ups. There weren’t many of them. But lots of children, and many of them were laughing.
He had also laughed, not now, but when he was a child. He could remember laughing once when his mom had lifted him up high and his head had bumped the ceiling lamp and the light up there had gone out when she put him down again.
Somebody said something on the radio. He didn’t hear what as he was still in a land where he was a small boy who’d come down to the ground again and his mom had said something that he could no longer remember; he couldn’t remember any of it, but she had said something, and afterward he had spent a long time thinking about what she had said, how important it was to him, those last words she had said to him before walking out of the door never to come back.
She never ever came back.
He could feel his cheek was wet, like the windshield would have been if it had continued raining. He heard himself saying something now but didn’t know what it was.
He looked back at the children.
He could see the room again, it was later but he was still a small boy; he sat looking out of the window and there was rain on the windowpane, and he’d made a drawing of the trees outside that didn’t have any leaves left. His mom was standing beside the trees. If he drew a car, she was inside it. A horse, and she was riding it. A little child, and she was holding its hand. They were walking on grass where red and yellow flowers were growing.
He drew the fields. He drew an ocean on the other side of the fields.
Every night he made a bed for his mom. He had a little sofa in his bedroom and he made her a bed on it, with a blanket and a pillow. If she suddenly appeared she’d be able to sleep there. Just lie down without him needing to get the bed ready, it would be all done.
Now he rolled down the window and took a deep breath. Rolled it up again and started the engine and drove around the playground so that he could park right outside the entrance. He opened the door. There were several other cars around. He could hear the children’s voices now, as if they were sitting in his car. As if they’d come to his car, to him.
There was music on the radio now, and that voice he recognized came back and said something. It was a voice he’d heard several times. It spoke when he drove home from work during the day. Sometimes he drove at night.
He could feel how wet the ground was under his feet. He was standing beside his car but didn’t know how he’d gotten there. It was strange; he’d thought about the radio and then suddenly he was standing beside the car.
Children’s laughter again.
He was standing by the playground that was next to the trees that no longer had any leaves, only bare branches.
The video camera in his hand was hardly any bigger than a pack of cigarettes. A little bit bigger, perhaps. Amazing what they could make nowadays. He could hardly hear the faint hiss when he pressed the button and filmed what he could see.
He moved closer. There were children all around but he couldn’t see a single grown-up. Where were all the grown-ups? The children couldn’t be left alone, they might get hurt when they jumped down from the red and yellow jungle gym or leapt from the swings.
The jungle gym was right here, next to the entrance. He was standing by it.
A leap.
“Wheee!”
Laughter. He laughed again himself, jumped, no, but he could have jumped. He helped the little boy to his feet. Up again, up, up! Lift him up to the sky!
He took it from his pocket and held it out. Look what I’ve got here.
It was three paces to the entrance. Then four more to the car. The boy’s steps were shorter, six to the entrance and eight to the car.
Children, children everywhere, it struck him that he was the only one who could see the boy now, keep an eye on him. The grown-ups were standing over there with their coffee cups steaming in the air that was cold and damp, just like the ground.
More cars. The boy couldn’t be seen at all now, not from any direction. Only he could see him, he was holding his hand now.
“There we are. Yes, I’ve got a whole bag full, how about that? So, let’s open the door. Can you climb in all by yourself? You are smart.”
The back of the student’s head had been struck in such a way that the wound looked like a cross, or something very similar. His hair had been shaved off, making the wound all the more visible. It was horrific, but he was still alive. Only just; but he had a chance.
As they left the hospital Bertil Ringmar’s face looked blue in the lights of the front entrance.
“I thought you should see this,” said Ringmar.
Winter nodded.
“What kind of weapon would make a wound like that?” wondered Ringmar.
“Some sort of pick-ax. Maybe a farm tool. A kitchen utensil. A gardening tool. I don’t know, Bertil.”
“There’s something about it, I don’t know. It reminds me of something.”
Winter zapped the doors of his Mercedes. The parking lot was deserted. The car lights flashed like a warning.
“We’d better have a word with Old MacDonald,” said Winter as they drove down the hill.
“Don’t joke about it.”
“Joke about it? What is there to joke about?”
Ringmar made no reply. Linnéplatsen was just as deserted as the parking lot had been.
“This is the third one,” said Ringmar.
Winter nodded, loosened his tie, and unfastened the top two buttons of his shirt.
“Three kids more or less beaten to death with something, but we can’t figure out what,” said Ringmar. “Three students.” He turned to look at Winter. “Is there a pattern?”
“You mean the fact that they’re all students? Or that we think the wounds look like a cross?”
“That they’re all students,” said Ringmar.
“Students are a big group,” said Winter, continuing west. “There must be thirty-five thousand of them in this city.”
“Mmm.”
“Quite a circle of friends, even if they only mix with their own kind,” said Winter.
Ringmar drummed his fingers on the armrest. Winter turned off the main thoroughfare and drove north. The streets grew narrower, the houses bigger.
“A pick-ax,” said Ringmar. “Who wanders around with a pick-ax on a Saturday night?”
“I don’t even want to think about it,” said Winter.
“Did you go to school here in Gothenburg?”
“Briefly.”
“What did you study?”
“Prudence. Then I dropped out.”
“Prudence?”
“Introduction to jurisprudence. But I quit, like I said.”
“Imprudence follows prudence,” said Ringmar.
“Ha, ha,” said Winter.
“I was a student of life myself,” said Ringmar.
“Where do you study that? And when do you qualify for a degree in it?”
Ringmar gave a snort. “You’re right, Erik. A student of life is tested all the time. Continuous judgment.”
“By whom?”
Ringmar didn’t reply. Winter slowed down.
“Turn right here, you’ll avoid the intersection,” said Ringmar.
Winter did as he was told, threaded his way past a couple of parked cars, and pulled up outside a wood-paneled detached house. The lights from the house cast a faint glow over the lawn and through the maples that looked like limbs reaching up to the sky.
“Want to come in for a sandwich?” Ringmar asked.
Winter looked at his watch.
“Is Angela waiting up for you with oysters and wine?” wondered Ringmar.
“It’s not quite the season yet,” said Winter.
“I expect you’ll want to say goodnight to Elsa?”
“She’ll be fast asleep by now,” said Winter. “OK, I’ll have a bite to eat. Do you have any south Slovakian beer?”
Ringmar was rummaging in the fridge as Winter came up from the cellar, carrying three bottles.
“I think I only have Czech pilsner, I’m afraid,” said Ringmar over his shoulder.
“I’ll forgive you,” said Winter, reaching for the bottle opener.
“Smoked whitefish and scrambled egg?” Ringmar suggested, examining what was in the fridge.
“If we’ve got time,” said Winter. “It takes ages to make a decent scrambled egg. Got any chives, by the way?”
Ringmar smiled and nodded, carried the ingredients over to the counter, and got to work. Winter sipped the beer. It was good, chilled without being cold. He took off his tie and hung his jacket over the chair. His neck felt stiff after a long day. A student of life. Continuous judgment. He could see the student’s face in his mind’s eye, then the back of his head. A law student, just like he’d been once. If I’d stuck with it I could have been chief of police now, he thought, taking another sip of beer. That might have been better. Protected from the streets. No bending over bodies with shattered limbs, no new holes, no blood, no wounds in the shape of a cross.
“The other two don’t have an enemy in the world,” said Ringmar from the stove, where he was stirring the egg mix with a wooden fork.
“Who?”
“The other two victims who survived with the cross-shaped wounds on their heads. Not an enemy in the world, they’re saying.”
“That goes with being young,” said Winter. “No real enemies.”
“You’re young yourself,” said Ringmar, lifting up the cast-iron pan. “Do you have any enemies?”
“Not a single one,” said Winter. “You make enemies later on in life.”
Ringmar put the finishing touches to the open sandwiches.
“We should really have a drop of schnapps with this,” he said.
“I can always take a taxi home.”
“It’s settled, then,” said Ringmar, going to get the hard stuff.
“The same man was responsible for all the attacks,” said Ringmar. “What’s he after?”
“Satisfaction from causing injury,” said Winter, draining the last of his second schnapps and shaking his head when Ringmar lifted the bottle questioningly.
“But not any old way,” said Ringmar.
“Nor any old victim.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
“We’ll have to hear what this kid has to say tomorrow,” said Winter.
“Attacked from behind in an unlit street. He saw nothing, heard nothing, said nothing, knows nothing.”
“We’ll see.”
“Pia Fröberg will have to put in some extra effort to help us with the weapon,” said Ringmar.
Winter could see the forensic pathologist’s pale, tense face in his mind’s eye. Once upon a time they’d been an item, or something pretty close to that. All forgotten and in the past now. No hard feelings.
“Always assuming that will help,” Ringmar added, gazing down into his beer glass.
They heard the front door open and shut, and a shout from a female voice.
“We’re in here,” Ringmar informed her.
His daughter came in, still wearing her anorak. As dark as her father, almost as tall, same nose, same eyes, focused on Winter.
“Erik needed some company,” said Ringmar.
She reached out her hand. Winter shook it.
“You still recognize Moa, don’t you?” asked Ringmar.
“Haven’t seen you for ages,” said Winter. “Let’s see, you must be…”
“Twenty-five,” said Moa Ringmar. “Well on the way to being a senior citizen, and still living at home. What do you say to that?”
“You could say that Moa’s in-between apartments at the moment,” Ringmar explained.
“It’s the times we live in,” said Moa. “Fledglings always return to the nest.”
“That’s nice,” said Winter.
“Bullshit,” said Moa.
“OK,” said Winter.
She sat down.
“Any beer left for me?”
Ringmar got her a glass and poured out what was left of the third bottle.
“So there’s been another assault,” she said.
“Where did you hear that?” wondered Ringmar.
“At the department. He’s a student there. His name is Jakob, I’m told.”
“Do you know him?”
“No, not personally.”
“Do you know anybody who knows him?” asked Winter.
“Hey, what’s all this?” she protested. “I see you’re back at work again.” She looked at Winter, then turned to her father. “Sorry. It is serious. I didn’t mean to joke.”
“Well?” wondered Winter.
“I might know somebody who knows somebody who knows him. I don’t know.”
Vasaplatsen was quiet and deserted when Winter got out of the taxi. The streetlamps lit up the newspaper kiosk at the edge of Universitetsplatsen. A student of life, he thought as he punched the code to the front entrance.
There was a faint smell of tobacco in the elevator, a lingering aroma that could have come from him.
“You smell like alcohol,” said Angela when he bent down to kiss her as she lay in bed.
“Ödåkra Taffel Aquavit,” he said.
“I figured as much,” she said, turning over to face the wall. “You’re dropping off Elsa tomorrow morning. I have to get up by half past five.”
“I just looked in on her. Sleeping like a log.”
Angela muttered something.
“What did you say?”
“Just wait until tomorrow morning,” she said. “Early.”
He knew all about that. After six months’ paternity leave? He knew all there was to know about Elsa, and she knew all about him.
It had been a terrific time, maybe his best. There was a city out there that he hadn’t seen for years. The streets were the same, but he’d been able to view them at ground level for a change, in his own time, not needing to be on the lookout for anything more than the next café where they could pause for a while and he could sample some of that other life, real life.
When he went back to work after his paternity leave, he felt a sort of… hunger, a peculiar feeling, something he almost felt ashamed of. As if he were ready for battle again, ready for the war that could never be won but had to be fought well, regardless. That’s the way it was. If you chopped an arm off the beast, it promptly grew another one, but you just had to keep on chopping.
As Winter fell asleep he was thinking yet again about that remarkable wound on the back of the student’s head.