Frozen Tracks

3

HE DROVE THROUGH THE TUNNELS THAT WERE FILLED WITH A darkness denser than the night outside. The naked lights on the walls made the darkness all the more noticeable. The cars coming toward him made no noise.

He had the window open, letting in some air and a cold glow. There was no light at the end of the tunnel, only darkness.

It was like driving through hell, tunnel after tunnel. He was familiar with them all. He would drive around and around the city through the tunnels.

Music on the radio. Or had he put a CD in? He couldn’t remember. A beautiful voice he liked to listen to when he was driving under the ground. Soon the whole city would be buried. The whole road alongside the water was being sunk into Hell.

He sat down in front of the television and watched his film. The playground, the jungle gym, the slide the children slid down, and one of the children laughed, and he laughed as well because it looked like so much fun. He pressed rewind, watched the fun once again, and made a note on the sheet of paper on the table beside him, where there was also a vase with six tulips, both of which he’d bought that same afternoon.

Now the boy was there. His face, then the car window behind him, the radio, the backseat. The boy told him what to film, and he filmed it. Why not?

The parrot hanging from his rearview mirror. He’d picked out one that was red and yellow, just like the climbing frame at the playground that needed another coat of paint, but his parrot didn’t need repainting at all.

The boy, who’d said his name was Kalle, liked the parrot. You could see that in the film. The boy was pointing at the parrot, and he filmed it even though he was driving. That called for a fair amount of skill, and he was good at driving while thinking of something else at the same time, doing something else entirely. He’d been good at that for a long time now.

Now he heard the voices, as if the volume had suddenly been turned up.

“Rotty,” he said.

“Rotty,” echoed the boy, pointing at the parrot, and it almost looked as if it were about to fly away.

Rotty. It was a trick. If anybody else were ever to see this film, which wouldn’t happen, but if, it would seem as if Rotty was the parrot’s name. But that wasn’t the case. It was one of his tricks like all the other tricks he had when he was little and his voice suddenly g-g-g-ot s-s-st-st-st-st-st-stu-stu-stu-stuck in midstride, as it were, when he first st-st-started stuttering.

It started when his mom walked out. He couldn’t remember doing it before. Only afterward. He had to invent tricks that would help him out when he wanted to say something. Not all that often, but sometimes. The first trick he could remember was Rotty. He couldn’t say parrot, pa-pa-pa-pa-no, he could stand there stuttering for the rest of his life and still not get to the end of that word. “Rotty” was no problem, though.

He heard a sound that he recognized. It was coming from him. He was crying again, and it was because he’d been thinking about the parrot. He’d had a red and green parrot when he was a little boy, and for a while when he was older. It was a real one, and it could say his name and three other funny things, and his name was Bill. He was sure that Bill had been real.

The film had finished. He watched it again from the beginning. Bill was there in several of the scenes. Bill was still there for him because he hung a little parrot from his rearview mirror every time he went out in the car. They might be different, with different colors, but that didn’t matter because they were all Bill. He sometimes thought of them as Billy Boy. His favorite Rotty. The boy was laughing again now, just before everything went black. Kalle Boy, he thought, and the film ended, and he stood up and fetched all the things he needed for copying, or whatever you called it. Cutting. He liked doing that job.

“Sounds like the Incredible Hulk,” said Fredrik Halders.

“This is the first of the victims who’s seen anything,” said Ringmar. “Stillman’s the first.”

“Hmm. Of course, it’s not certain that it was the same hulk who carried out all the attacks,” said Halders.

Ringmar shook his head. “The wounds are identical.”

Halders rubbed the back of his neck. It wasn’t all that long since he himself had received a savage blow that had smashed a vertebra and paralyzed him temporarily, but he’d managed to get the use of his limbs back. For what that was worth, he’d thought a long time afterward. He’d always been clumsy. Now it was taking him time to get back to his former level of clumsiness.

To get back to his old life. His former wife had been killed by a hit-and-run driver. A nasty word. Former. Lots of things had been different formerly.

He lived now in his former house, with his children who were anything but former.

He rubbed the back of his neck.

“What kind of a pick did he use, then?” he asked.

Ringmar raised both his hands and shrugged.

“An ice pick?” suggested Halders.

“No,” said Ringmar. “That’s a bit passé nowadays.”

Halders examined the photos on Ringmar’s desk. Sharp colors, shaved scalps, wounds. Not the first time, but the difference now was that the victims were still alive. The most common head in the archives is generally a dead one. Not these, though, he thought. These are talking heads.

“Never mind the damn picks,” he said, looking up. “The important thing is to catch the lunatic, no matter what kind of weapon he uses.”

“But it’s significant,” said Ringmar. “There’s something, something odd about these wounds.”

“Yes, no doubt, but we’ve got to put a stop to it all.”

Ringmar nodded his agreement and continued perusing the photos.

“Do you think it was somebody he knew?” asked Halders.

“That thought had occurred to me,” said Ringmar.

“What about the other two guys? The other two victims?”

“Eh. Saw nothing, heard nothing. A relatively open space. Late. No other witnesses. You know how it is. Had a few, but not completely blotto.”

“And then wham.”

“The same attacker every time. Do you think so too?” asked Ringmar.

“Yes.”

“Mmm.”

“We’d better dig a bit deeper into the victims’ circle of friends and acquaintances,” said Halders.

“They’re all separate circles,” said Ringmar. “They don’t know each other, and they don’t have any friends in common, as far as we’ve been able to find out.”

“OK, so they don’t move in the same circles,” said Halders, “we know that. But then again they’re all students in departments located in the town center, and they might have bumped into each other without realizing it. A nightclub, the student union, a political party, handball, bird-watching, any damn thing. Fraternities with strippers jumping out of cakes and giving a few blow jobs. Maybe that’s what it is, and so they think they’ve got a good reason to lie about it. Or a student disco. No doubt they still have them at the union. It’s got to be more likely than not that they’d run into each other somewhere or other.”

“OK,” said Ringmar. “But so what? Was their attacker there as well?”

“I don’t know. But it’s a possibility.”

“So he was specifically out to get these three?”

“It’s a hypothesis,” said Halders.

“But you could just as well say he was ready to attack anybody at all he happened to come across,” said Ringmar. “Late, deserted, a drink or two to dull their wits.”

Halders got to his feet and walked over to the wall map of Gothenburg. He stretched both arms back over his shoulders, and Ringmar could hear his colleague’s joints creak. Halders glanced at him with what might have been a little grin, then turned to the map again and put his finger on it.

“Linnéplatsen the first time.” He moved his finger to the right. “Then Kapellplatsen.” He ran his finger downward. “And now Doktor Fries Square.” He turned around and looked at Ringmar. “A pretty limited area.” He looked back at the map. “Like a triangle.”

“Not all within walking distance, though,” said Ringmar.

“There’s such a thing as public transportation.”

“Not much of it late at night, though. No streetcars, for instance.”

“Night buses,” said Halders. “Or maybe the Hulk has a car. Or he just walks. The attacks weren’t all on the same night.”

“But why change location?” asked Ringmar.

“He probably thinks we have enough resources to keep an eye on the previous place,” said Halders. “So he doesn’t go back there.”

“Mmm.”

“But we don’t.”

“There’s something about these places,” said Ringmar. “It’s not just coincidence.” Then he added as if talking to himself: “It rarely is.”

Halders made no comment, but he knew what Ringmar meant. The location of a violent assault was often significant. The attacker, or the victim, nearly always had some kind of link with that particular spot, even if it wasn’t obvious from the start. The location is always key. Always start off with the location. Spread your search out from there.

“I’ve had a word with Birgersson,” said Ringmar. “After the Guldheden incident. We’re probably going to get a few more officers so that we can knock on a few more doors.”

Halders could see the superintendent in his mind’s eye. As scraggy as the vegetation in the far north where he grew up, chain-smoking after yet another failed attempt to quit.

“What about the triangle?” asked Halders. “The triangle theory? Add the third line and you’ve got a right triangle.” Halders ran his finger over the map from Doktor Fries Square to Linnéplatsen.

“No. You’re the first to come up with that fascinating link.”

“Cut the sarcasm, Bertil. You’re too nice a guy for that kind of thing.” Halders grinned. “But Birgersson has a soft spot when it comes to math, I know that, especially geometrical shapes.”

Halders grinned again. Maybe it was Sture Birgersson who did it. Nobody could fathom the man. Once a year he would disappear, nobody knew where. Winter maybe, but maybe not. Maybe Sture was wandering around the streets in a black cloak, wielding the mechanical cloudberry picker he’d had as a kid and using it to draw crosses on students’ heads. Halders could picture his silhouette in the light from the street lamp: Doctor Sture. Afterward, Mister Birgersson. One might ask which of them was worse.

“So you think we’d get more officers because we can see a geometrical shape here?” wondered Ringmar.

“Of course.”

“And the more it changes, the more men we’d get?”

“Obviously. If the triangle turns into a square, it means that the Hulk has struck again.”

“I’ll stick with the triangle,” said Ringmar.

Halders went back to the desk.

“If they give us a few more detectives we might be able to do a proper check on what buses were running those nights,” he said. “Talk to the drivers. There can’t be all that many of them.”

“Taxis,” said Ringmar.

“Are you crazy? Our dark-skinned friends are all operating without a license. When’s the last time we got any useful information from a cabbie?”

“I can’t remember,” said Ringmar.

The sun made everything look even more bare. Yes, that was how it was. You could see what it was really like. Nothing existed anymore, just the trunks and branches of trees, and the ground.

The sun isn’t serving any useful purpose here, he thought. It belongs somewhere else now. Take off.

The children had spilled off the streetcar at Linnéplatsen. It was always the same, day after day. They always walked in a long line over the dead grass of the soccer field in the middle of the square.

Sometimes he followed them.

He’d parked his car on the other side, where the children were headed.

It was the first time he’d driven to this place.

He’d talked to the boy in his car. That had happened once.

He wanted to do it again. No. No. No! He’d shouted out loud during the night. No!

Yes. Here he was. Just because he wanted to… see, get… close. No big deal.

The long procession of children broke up, and they spread out in all directions. One little girl disappeared into some bushes, emerged on the other side, then turned back again, going around the bushes this time. He looked at the two women in charge and could tell they hadn’t noticed her.

Just think if some stranger had been standing behind the bushes when the little girl emerged on the other side?

There she was again, around the bushes once more, and then back to the other children.

He carried her in his arms; she was as light as a feather. Nobody noticed him; the trees were leafless, but they were densely packed. The surprise when he lifted her up and carried her off. Is this really me doing this? His hand placed so gently over her mouth. It all went so quickly. There’s the car. You can drive in and park here, but nobody ever thinks of doing that. Probably think it’s not possible, or not allowed.

This is just something I draped over here. Let’s lift it up and go into the tent. Yes, this is a tent. Let’s pretend!

We’ve got a radio. Listen, the nice man’s saying something. Did you hear that? They’re going to play some music.

Now, let’s see what we’ve got here. You can take whatever you like. There’s lots of interesting things here.

What lovely hair you have! What’s your name? You don’t know? Yeees, of course you do!

This is Bill. That’s his name. Bill. Billy Boy. He can fly. See that? Fly fly fly.

Ellen? Is your name Ellen? That’s a lovely name. A splendid name. Do you know what my mom was called? No, how could you know that?

What do you think, wasn’t it a marvelous name, my mom’s?

Have some more. Take the whole bag.

He… he… here it co-co-co-co-comes…

He moved his hand lightly over the girl’s head. Her hair was like the down on a baby bird, a little fledgling whose heart you could feel beating when you touched it. He’d felt that once on a little bird that was even smaller than Bill. He was just as small as a bird too, in those days.

He touched her again. The man on the radio was saying something. He found it difficult to breathe, rolled down the window, and found some air he could breathe. He touched the girl again, that down, all those tiny bones. She said something.

Evening was closing in. Clear outlines. The sun lingered there between the houses, like a memory that Winter breathed in. He could feel the late autumn air between drags as he stood smoking. Winter was closing in. He looked down on Vasaplatsen, and watched people heading off, gradually leaving the square deserted. Everybody was going home, by bus, streetcar, or car, and leaving him and his family behind, here where they belonged.

Angela hadn’t said anything about buying a house for ages, and he knew she felt as he did, always had. They were city dwellers, and the city was for them. The city of stone, the heart of the city. The heart of stone, he thought, taking another pull on his cigarillo. A beautiful heart of stone. It was easier to live here. In the classy suburbs down toward the sea you became worn out more quickly, past it, over the hill. For God’s sake! He’d turned the corner already. Forty-two. Or forty-three. He couldn’t remember right then, and that was just as well.

He shivered, standing on the balcony in his shirtsleeves, the cigarillo in his hand fading away just like the evening out there. A few young people sauntered past down below, full of self-confidence. He could hear them laughing even at this distance. They were all set for a good time.

He went back in. Elsa saw him coming and presented him with the drawing she’d made. A bird flying in a blue sky. These last few weeks all her drawings had been of blue skies and yellow sands, green fields and then lots of flowers in every color in her crayon box. Nonstop summer. Autumn hadn’t sunk in for Elsa yet. He’d taken her down to the park and helped her to collect fallen leaves, carried them back home, dried them. But she’d put off depicting autumn till the very end. Just as well.

“A bird!” she said.

“What kind of a bird?” he asked.

She seemed to be thinking it over.

“A gull,” she said.

“Let’s let the bird have a laugh,” he said to Elsa, and burst out laughing himself. “Ha-ha-ha-ha.” She looked a bit frightened at first, but then she couldn’t stop herself from giggling.

Winter picked up a crayon and a blank sheet of paper, and drew something that could just possibly be construed as a seagull laughing. There was even a name for this gull, and he announced it in the top right-hand corner of the picture. “Blackie the Blackhead.” His bequest to posterity. The first drawing he’d made for thirty years.

“It looks like a flying piglet,” said Angela.

“Yes, isn’t it amazing? A pig that can laugh and fly as well.”

“But pigs can fly,” Elsa said.

They were sitting at the kitchen table with a glass of red wine each. Elsa was asleep. Winter had made some anchovy sandwiches, which they’d just finished eating.

“Those things make you thirsty,” he said, getting up for some more water.

“I bumped into Bertil on our ward today,” said Angela.

“Yes, he was there.”

Angela rubbed the base of her nose with her finger. He could see a faint shadow under one of her eyes, only the one. She was tired, and so was he. Not excessively so, but the way you feel after a day’s work. She couldn’t always relax at home and forget about her job as a doctor, but she was better at it than he was. Still, he was better than he used to be-not good, but better. He often used to sit with his laptop, working on a case until he fell asleep in his chair. He was no longer that solitary, and he didn’t miss the old ways.

“That boy got a nasty blow,” she said. “He could have died.”

“Like the other two.”

She nodded. He could see the shadow under her eye deepen when she bent forward. When she leaned back it almost disappeared.

Their… everyday work overlapped. He wasn’t sure what to call it. Their professional activities, perhaps. Was that preordained? He sometimes thought so. When they first met Angela had just decided to study medicine. He’d recently joined the CID as a raw recruit.

Nowadays she saw right into his world, and he into hers. The injured and dying and sometimes even the dead came from his world into hers, and he would follow them, and then everybody would move back and forth between the two worlds, just like Bertil earlier that day, who’d bumped into Angela when he’d been trying to extract some words from a battered body that Angela was simultaneously trying to heal. Fucking hell. He drank the remains of his red wine. She poured some water into his glass. The radio was mumbling away on the counter. It was almost night.

“They seem to be in a bind at the nursery school,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Lots of children and not many staff.”

“More and more of one, and fewer and fewer of the other.”

“Yes.”

“Is there something in particular that made you think of that just now?”

“Well, this morning I suppose, when I dropped off Elsa. They didn’t seem to be able to keep an eye on all the children.”

“Is that the police officer in you talking?”

“If it is, doesn’t that make it all the more important? All the more serious? The police officer in me sees the shortcomings in the security.”

“Shortcomings in the security? You sound like you’re responsible for President Bush’s safety.”

“Bush? He can look after himself. It’s those around him that need protecting.”

“You know what I mean.”

“And what I mean is that you can’t risk a child wandering off. There was a little boy who ran through a gap in a hedge and would have disappeared if it hadn’t been for the fence on the other side.”

“But Erik, that’s why the fence is there. So that the children can’t get out. Can’t disappear.”

“But nobody noticed him wandering off through the bushes.”

“They don’t need to worry about that. The staff knows there’s a fence on the other side.”

“So there’s no problem, is that it?”

“I didn’t say that. I seem to remember saying a couple of minutes ago that there are more and more children and fewer and fewer staff. Of course that’s a problem, for heaven’s sake.” She took a sip of water. “A big problem. In lots of ways.”

“And that brings us back, well, to security again,” he said. “What a responsibility it is for the ridiculously few staff. Keeping an eye on all those kids as they go toddling off in all directions.”

“Hmm.”

“When they go out on a trip. If they dare to go on outings at all. They don’t seem to want to risk it anymore.” He stroked his chin, making a rasping noise. “And they have good reason not to.”

He fingered the wine bottle, but resisted the temptation to pour himself another glass. She looked at him.

“You know too much about all the dangers lurking out there,” she said.

“So do you, Angela. You know all the things that can make people sick.”

“Is it anything in particular, this business of security at the nursery school?” she wondered.

“It’s really a matter of children and their safety in general,” he said. “OK, maybe I do know too much about the potential dangers. So would you if you stood outside a children’s playground and took a careful look at what was going on. Maybe you’d notice somebody walking around and devoting an unusual amount of attention to the kids. Types like that often hang around a nursery school as well. Or outside a school at dismissal. Or they might be sitting in their cars watching the girls play handball or volleyball. Gentlemen who get into their fancy cars after work or the latest board meeting and park outside the schoolyard with the morning paper over their knee and their hands around their cocks when the girls jump up under the basket.”

“You sound cynical, Erik.”

“Cynical? Because I’m telling it like it is?”

“What do you do, then?”

“Eh?”

“What do you do about these fancy men in their fancy cars? And the others lurking around these places?”

“Try to keep an eye on them in the first place. You can’t arrest someone for sitting in his car reading a newspaper, can you? That’s not a crime in a democracy.”

“For God’s sake!”

“But don’t you see? We have to wait until a crime is committed. That’s the frustrating thing about it. We know, but we can’t do anything.”

“Why can’t you… caution them?”

“How?”

“Erik, it’s not-”

“No, but I’m being honest and serious now. I’d love to hand out loads of cautions, but I also want to keep my job. You can’t just march up and fling a car door open. Or arrest somebody for looking shady and standing under a tree next to a children’s playground.”

“But you think about it.”

“It struck me this morning at the nursery school just how vulnerable little kids are, and older ones too, come to think of it. All that watching, and all that goes with it. And what it leads to. But the danger as well. Real danger.”

“Yes.”

“I’d love to hand out no end of cautions, but it’s difficult. And we need more police.” He poured himself some more wine after all. “In that respect we’re in the same position as the staff at the nursery school,” he said with a smile.

She gave a shiver, as if the window looking out over the courtyard was wide open instead of just a narrow crack letting in a little wisp of night air.

“You know, Erik, you give me the creeps with all this.”

He didn’t reply.

“Elsa goes to a nursery school,” she said. “Elsa’s one of a group of children with too few staff to look after them properly. I can’t get that out of my mind now.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, no. It’s just as bad for you too.” She suddenly burst out laughing, short but loud. “God, it’s ridiculously easy to be worried when you are a parent.” She looked at him. “What should we do? Send her to a different nursery school? Get a nanny? Hire a bodyguard for Elsa?”

He smiled again.

“There is a fence around the place, as you pointed out a few minutes ago. And Elsa loves her nursery school.”

She drank up the rest of the water in her glass. “You’ve certainly gotten me thinking, Erik.”

“Oh hell, it was stupid of me to go on about all the dangers.”

“At least about all those sick weirdos hanging around outside schools,” said Angela. “What’s going to happen when she starts school?” She stood up. “No, that’s enough for one night. I’m going to take a shower.”