Frozen Tracks

30

THE APARTMENT WAS BEING HAUNTED BY THE GHOST OF TOM Joad when Winter stood in the hall with his overcoat half off and heard the sound of Elsa’s feet on the way to greet him. Angela dropped something hard on the bedroom floor and the volume was high and piercing: The highway is alive tonight, but where it’s headed everybody knows, another bang from the bedroom, Elsa’s face lit up, Winter was down on his knees.

It had started snowing outside. Flakes were still melting on his shoulders.

“Would you like to come outside with me and see the snow, Elsa?”

“Yes, yes, yes, yes!”

The pavement was white, and the park.

“We make snowman,” said Elsa.

They tried, and managed to make a small one. The snow wasn’t really wet enough.

“Have carrot for nose,” said Elsa.

“It would have to be a little one.”

“Can Daddy get?”

“Let’s use this twig.”

“Snowman breaking!” she said as she pressed the twig into the middle of the round face.

“We’ll have to make another head,” he said.

They were back home after half an hour. Elsa’s cheeks were as red as apples. Angela came out into the hall. Springsteen was singing on repeat about the dark side of humanity, still loud:

It was a small town bank it was a mess, well I had a gun you know the rest. Angela’s songs had become his as well.

“Snow!” shouted Elsa, and ran into her room to draw a snowman like the real one she’d just made.

“And I’m going to take all this away from her,” said Angela, looking at him with a faint smile. “Tomorrow we’ll fly away from the first white Christmas of her life.”

“It will disappear during the night,” he said.

“I don’t know if that was pessimistic or optimistic,” she said.

“Everything depends on the context, doesn’t it? Positive, negative.”

He hung up his overcoat and wiped a few drops of water off his neck. He undid another shirt button.

“Where’s your tie?” she asked.

“A guy out there borrowed it,” he said, gesturing with his thumb at the park outside.

“A silk tie. Must be the best-dressed snowman in town.”

“Clothes make the man,” said Winter, going into the kitchen and pouring out a whiskey.

“Would you like one?”

She shook her head.

“You don’t have to go,” he said. “You could stay at home. I’m not forcing you to go.”

“I thought that this afternoon as well,” she said. “But then I thought about your mom. Among other things.”

“There’s nothing stopping her from coming here.”

“Not this Christmas, Erik.”

“Do you understand me?” he asked.

“What am I supposed to say to that?”

“Do you understand why I can’t go with you now?”

“Yes,” she said. “But you’re not the only person in Gothenburg who can interrogate a suspect. Or lead an investigation.”

“I’ve never claimed that I am.”

“But you still have to stay here?”

“It’s a question of finishing something off. And it’s only just begun. I don’t know what it is. But I have to follow it through to the end. Nobody else can do that.”

“You’re not the only one on the case.”

“I don’t mean it like that. I’m not talking about me as a lone wolf. But if I break off now, I won’t be able to come back to it. I’ll… lose it.”

“And what does that mean? What will you lose?”

“I don’t know.”

She looked at the window that was being pelted with snowflakes hurled by strong gusts of wind. Springsteen was singing, again and again:

I threw my robe on in the morning.

“Something terrible may have happened,” said Winter.

“Have you appealed to the public for information?”

“Yes.”

“Ah, that reminds me, your contact at the newspaper, Bülow, called.”

“I’m not surprised. He’ll call again.”

“Can you hear the phone ringing? Of course you can’t. That’s because I’ve pulled the plug out.”

“I can hear ‘The Ghost of Tom Joad,’ ” he said.

“Good.” She made a gesture. “Is this case going to take up the whole Christmas holiday?”

“That’s why I’m staying behind, Angela.” He took a drink of whiskey now; a cold heat passed down his throat. “I can’t say any more than that. You know me. Don’t you? I can do my job or I can pack it in. Either or. I can’t do it by halves.”

“Why bother to make plans for a vacation at all, then? It’s pointless. It would be better to work all the time, eighteen hours a day, all year round, year after year. Always. Anything else would be half-assed, as you say.”

“That’s not what I’m saying.”

“OK, OK. I understand that you have to keep going now. That things are happening all the time now. That what has happened to the little boy could be horrendous. Or is horrendous.” She was still looking at the snow on the window. “But it never stops, Erik.” She turned to look at him. “Horrible things happen all the time. And you are always there, in the thick of it. It never stops, never.”

He said nothing.

I did take six months’ paternity leave, he thought. That might have been the best time of my life. The only time of real value.

“I’ve been looking forward to this trip,” she said.

What should he say? If we miss one Christmas together, there’ll be a thousand more to come? How did he feel himself? What did it mean to him, not spending the special days with Angela? And Elsa?

How many days were they talking about?

“I might be down there with you the day after,” he said.

“The day after the day?”

“Stay here, Angela. We’ll go there together the moment all this is over.”

“Sometimes when I think about you and your job it’s like you’re a sort of artist,” she said. “No fixed working hours, you choose yourself when and how you work, you sort of direct the work yourself. Do you understand, Erik? You… create your work yourself.”

He didn’t respond. There was something in what she said. It wasn’t possible to explain it, nobody could. But there was something in it. It was a frightening thought.

“I can’t explain it,” she said.

“I understand what you’re saying.”

“Yes.”

“Of course, you should stay here over Christmas,” he said again.

“Let me think about it,” she said. “Maybe it’s best for all concerned if we go to Spain, Elsa and I.”

Five days, he thought out of the blue. It’ll be all over in five days. It’ll be over by Boxing Day.

He knew already that wasn’t going to be something to look forward to. Regardless of what happened, he knew there was something dreadful in store after the Christmas holiday. Or during it. He knew that he would be surprised, find questions and answers that he hadn’t formulated. He would be left with unanswered questions. See sudden openings that had previously been welded together. And new walls. But he would be on the way all the time, really on the way, and this moment at this table would be the last bit of peace he would have. When would he be able to return here, to this? To peace?

“Will you marry me, Angela?” he asked.

The telephone rang the moment he plugged it in again. It had just turned midnight. Nothing new on his mobile, and nobody had that number unless he’d given it to them personally. Hans Bülow wasn’t among those.

“What’s going on, Erik?” asked Bülow.

“What do you want to know?”

“You’ve sent out an appeal for information about a four-year-old boy called Micke Johansson?”

“That’s correct.”

“What happened?”

“We don’t know. The boy is missing.”

“In Nordstan? In the middle of the Christmas rush?”

“That’s precisely where and when such things happen.”

“Has it happened several times, then?” asked Bülow.

“I meant in general. Children get lost when there are lots of people around.”

“But this one hasn’t come back?”

“No.”

“It’s been almost a full day.”

Winter said nothing. Bülow and his colleagues could follow the hands on a clock just as well as he could.

Angela moved in bed. He went quickly out into the kitchen and picked up the receiver of the wall telephone. The reporter was still there.

“So somebody kidnapped the boy?” said Bülow.

“I wouldn’t use that term.”

“What term would you use?”

“We don’t know yet what happened,” said Winter again.

“Are you looking for the boy?” asked Bülow.

“What do you think?”

“So he disappeared.” Winter could hear voices in the background. Somebody laughed. They should be crying, he thought. “It sounds like a very serious business,” said Bülow.

“I agree,” said Winter.

“And then there was the abuse of that English boy.” Winter could hear the rustling of paper near Bülow’s telephone. “Waggoner. Simon Waggoner. He was evidently kidnapped as well and mistreated and abandoned.”

“No comment,” said Winter.

“Come on, Erik. I’ve helped you before. You ought to know by now, after all the contact you’ve had with the media, that facts are better than rumors.”

Winter couldn’t help laughing.

“Was that an ironic laugh?” asked Bülow.

“What makes you think that?”

“You know I’m right.”

“The statement is true but the messenger is false,” said Winter. “I deal in facts, you deal in rumors.”

“That’s what can happen when we don’t get any facts to work with,” said Bülow.

“Don’t work, then.”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t write anything until you know what you’re writing about.”

“Is that how you work?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Do you sit around doing nothing until you get a little piece of the jigsaw?”

“I wouldn’t find a little piece of the jigsaw if I sat around doing nothing,” said Winter.

“Which brings us back to the point of this conversation,” said Bülow, “because I’m also doing something to find a little piece of the jigsaw that I can write about.”

“Ask me again tomorrow evening,” said Winter.

“I have to write about this now,” said Bülow, “tonight. Even you must understand that.”

“Hmm.”

“We’ve already got facts in connection with the Waggoner case.”

“Why are you waiting to publish them, then?” asked Winter.

Winter could hear that Bülow was hesitating before answering. Was he going to say “no comment”?

“We’ve only just gotten hold of them,” said the reporter. “In connection with the appeal for information about the other boy.”

“Oh.”

“Can you see a connection, Erik?”

“If I say yes, and you write that, it’s hard to see what the consequences would be,” said Winter.

“Nobody here is going to create panic,” said Bülow.

Winter was about to burst out laughing again.

“What creates panic is the indiscriminate spreading of unconfirmed rumors, and I’m looking for facts,” said Bülow.

“Haven’t we had a conversation about that very topic before?” said Winter.

“Is there a connection?” asked Bülow again.

“I don’t know, Hans. I’m being completely honest with you. I might know more tomorrow or the day after.”

“That’s Christmas Eve.”

“And?”

“Will you be working on Christmas Eve?” asked Bülow.

“Will you?”

“That depends. On you, among other things.” Winter heard voices in the background again. It sounded as if somebody was asking Bülow a question. He said something Winter couldn’t hear and resumed the conversation. “So you don’t want to say anything about a link?”

“I’d prefer you didn’t raise that question just now, Hans. It could make a mess of a lot of things. Do you follow me?”

“I don’t know. I’d be doing you yet another favor in that case. Besides, I’m not the one who makes all the decisions here,” said Bülow.

“You’re a good man. You understand.”

The alarm clock woke him up from a dream in which he had rolled a snowball that grew to the size of a house, and kept on rolling. An airplane had passed overhead, and he’d been sitting on top of the snowball and waved to Elsa, who had waved back jerkily from her window seat. He hadn’t seen Angela. He had heard music he’d never heard before. He’d looked down and seen children trying to make an enormous snowball, but nothing had moved, not even Elsa’s hand as the airplane had passed by and vanished into a sky, where all the colors he’d seen earlier had been mixed together to form gray. He’d thought about the fact that when all those brilliant colors were mixed, the result was simply gray-and then he’d woken up.

Angela was already in the kitchen.

“The snow’s gone,” she said. “As you predicted.”

“There’ll be more.”

“Not where we’ll be.”

“So you’ve made up your mind?”

“I want some sun.” She looked at Winter, held up one of her bare arms. “I damn well want a bit of sun on this pale skin. And a bit of sun in my head.”

“I’ll join you on Boxing Day.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Or the day after.”

“Should we stay there over New Year’s?”

“At least.”

“Have you spoken to Siv?”

“I’ll call her now. I wanted to be certain what you were going to do.”

She leaned over the table. There was a teacup in front of her, the radio was mumbling in a corner, words full of facts.

“Erik? Were you serious last night? Or were you just prepared to do anything at all in order to be allowed to stay at home and spend Christmas on your own, thinking to your heart’s content?”

“I was as serious as it’s possible to be.”

“I’m not sure how to interpret that.”

“Give me a date. I’m fed up with calling you my partner or my fiancée,” he said.

“I haven’t said yes yet,” she said.

Winter’s mobile rang as he was shaving. Angela handed it to him.

“That cap has popped up again,” said Ringmar.

“Where?”

“We’ve heard from three witnesses during the night who think they saw a man pushing a stroller with a child in it from H &M or somewhere near there, and he was wearing a checked cap. No leading questions.”

“What made them notice that?”

“A woman was working right by where the mother left the stroller, and she noticed that it was unattended for a while, and then a man came up after a while and went off with it.”

“And she didn’t react?”

“Well, it seemed natural enough at the time. She recalled the incident when we started rooting around.”

“Good God, Bertil: If what she says is right, we’re onto something here. What about the other witnesses?”

“Independently of each other, they both saw that cap in Nordstan.”

“Nobody saw it outside?”

He could hear Bertil sigh. Bertil had had another sleepless night. Winter hadn’t been able to stay with him, it wouldn’t have been possible. It had been necessary to discuss the Christmas holiday with Angela. And to make a snowman with Elsa.

“We’ve had the usual idiots who’ve seen everything you can imagine. There’ve been more than ever of them, but that probably has to do with Christmas,” said Ringmar.

Winter didn’t ask him what he meant by that.

“Have you made copies of the photo?” he asked.

“Hundreds.”

“I’ll be with you in half an hour.”

“I haven’t gotten around to talking to the parents yet,” said Ringmar.

“I heard his father was taken into the hospital last night,” said Winter.

“I’ve never seen anybody in such a state of shock,” said Ringmar. “It hit him afterward, like an avalanche.”

“Nothing new from the mother? Carolin?”

“She’s told her side of the story,” said Ringmar. “She didn’t set up a kidnapping scenario, I don’t think so. But we’ll be talking to her again.”

“I thought of trying again with Simon Waggoner later this morning,” said Winter.

“At home? Or at the station?”

“At home. Do you have the video camera?”

“It’s here on my desk.”

“How are the checks on the nursery-school staff going?” Winter asked.

“It’s progressing. It takes time, as you know.”

“We have to check up on everybody who works, or has worked, at those places. I take it that Möllerström is aware of that? Even if we have to go back ten years, or even longer.”

He embraced Elsa and whispered things into her ear that made her giggle. The bags were all packed.

“We should have had some sort of Christmas party last night,” said Angela.

“We’ll do it in a few days’ time,” he said.

“Don’t fool yourself,” she said.

He didn’t respond.

“We’ve both hidden a Christmas present for you somewhere in the apartment,” she said.

“You’ll never find mine!” said Elsa.

“Animal, vegetable, or mineral, or somewhere in between?” he said.

“Fish!” Elsa shouted.

“It’s a secret, Elsa!” said Angela.

“Is it easy to find the packages?” Winter asked.

“There’s a letter in the kitchen with clues,” said Angela.

The taxi was waiting. The snow had gone, but the sun was there, located quite low in the blue expanse.

“Daddy is coming as well,” said Elsa as she got into the car. She looked miserable.

What am I doing? Winter thought.

The driver crammed the bags into the trunk. He glanced at Winter. He’d heard.

Winter’s mobile rang in his inside pocket-two, three rings.

“Aren’t you going to answer?” asked Angela from the backseat, through the open door.

He saw “private number” on the display, and answered. It was Paul Waggoner, Simon’s father: “I just wanted to check what time we could expect you,” he said.

Winter exchanged a few words with him, then hung up.

“I’ll take you to the airport,” he said, starting to take the bags out of the trunk.

“Merry Christmas,” said the taxi driver, as he prepared to drive his empty car away.

Winter and Elsa sang Christmas carols all the way to Landvetter airport.

The check-in line was shorter than he’d expected.

Angela smiled and waved from the escalator up to the terminal. He needed that. She was a good lady. She understood.

The question was how much she understood, he thought, as he drove back to Gothenburg from the airport. On the way he listened to the news reports about his own reality. Now that was his whole world.