Frozen Tracks

43

JERNER HAD BROUGHT A BROWN BRIEFCASE WITH HIM THAT looked to be about as old as he was. Winter had seen it. Jerner had it tucked under his arm, Winter had seen it leaning against the visitor’s chair when they stood up to leave.

Oh my God.

Winter felt he couldn’t really control the hand still holding the damn receiver, which had almost become a part of him over the last few hours.

Was that a car he could hear outside? Had traffic started moving? Was it that early, or late?

Stay calm now, Winter.

There was one thing he had to do, without delay. He dialed the number for Police Operations Center.

“Hello Peder, it’s Winter again. Send a car immediately to this address.”

He listened to what his colleague had to say.

“It’s to the home of somebody called Mats Jerner,” he said. “No, I don’t know exactly which apartment, I’ve never been there. But send the nearest team there as quickly as possible. What? No, wait outside. Outside the door to the apartment, on the landing, yes. They are to wait for me. I’m on my way.” He needed to clear his throat. “Send a locksmith there as well. Tell him to step on it.”

What was the number three route? Westward from the city center? Eastward, southward? Maybe Jerner didn’t drive that route exclusively. Did he remember correctly that they had changed the number three route recently? It had stopped passing by Winter’s flat, didn’t stop at Vasaplatsen anymore. Then it had come back again. I seem to remember noticing that.

He put on a sweater, stepped into his boots, wriggled into his leather jacket, and grabbed the door handle just as the bell rang from the other side.

He opened it and found Ringmar standing there.

“Are you on your way out, Erik?”

“Where’s your car?”

“Just outside your front door.”

“Good. I can drive,” said Winter. “Come on, I’ll explain on the way.”

They took the elevator. Ringmar had left the sliding doors open so that it didn’t automatically return to the ground floor.

“It’s Smedsberg,” said Ringmar as they rattled down.

“What?”

“Old man Smedsberg. Georg Smedsberg. He was the one who attacked the students.”

“Where have you been, Bertil?”

Ringmar’s face was blue in the red light of the elevator, which tended to highlight his features. There was fire in his eyes. Winter detected a smell coming from Ringmar that he’d never noticed before.

“His son knew the whole time, of course,” said Ringmar. “Or almost the whole time.”

“Have you been out there, Bertil?” Winter looked askance at Ringmar, who was staring straight ahead. “Did you go there on your own?” Ringmar continued to stare straight ahead. “For Christ’s sake, Bertil. I’ve been trying to reach you.”

Ringmar nodded and continued to tell his story as if he hadn’t heard Winter’s question.

“They’ve all been out there. All the guys. I have half a kilo of dirt that will prove it, though we don’t even need technical evidence in this case.”

“Did he confess?” Winter asked.

Ringmar didn’t answer the question, but continued telling his story.

“I went into the house just as he was about to do God only knows what to the boy. His son. Then it was just a matter of listening. He wanted to talk. He’d been waiting for us, he said.”

They were down. Winter opened the door and Ringmar accompanied him, almost tentatively, still absorbed in his story. Their footsteps echoed in the stairwell. Ringmar’s voice echoed: “Gustav knew his father wanted to punish the others-or warn them, rather, give them a serious warning that they were not to say anything, that he’d already done it, and would do it again, so Gustav came to us with his story about branding irons.”

They were standing on the pavement. Ringmar’s unmarked police car felt warm when Winter touched the hood.

“I’ll drive,” he said. “Give me the keys.”

“But it wasn’t really a story, was it?” said Ringmar, as they sat down in the car. “Branding irons like that did exist, and we checked up. And came to Carlström. And from him to old man Smedsberg. Or was it vice versa?” Ringmar stroked his nose and took a deep breath. “The boy wanted us to get to his father.” Ringmar looked at Winter. “He didn’t dare say anything himself. He was too scared. He knew he’d never be able to get away from the old man.”

“Did he tell you that?” asked Winter, running a red light in the deserted Allé. The traffic lights weren’t working.

“He came home with me in the car,” said Ringmar.

“Good Lord. Where is he now?”

“In his room.”

“Are you sure?”

Ringmar nodded.

“Do you believe it all?”

“Yes.” Ringmar turned to look at Winter. “You weren’t there, Erik. If you had been, you’d have understood.”

“Where’s old man Smedsberg?”

“With our colleagues in Skövde by now,” said Ringmar, checking his watch. “Christ, is that the time?” He looked at Winter again. “They were out there, Kaite and the other guys, and saw the old man attack his son. I’m not clear about all the details, but they surprised the bastard. The boy, Gustav, must have been unable to move. Paralyzed. His father laid into him.” Ringmar rubbed his face. “It must have been going on for ages.” He rubbed his face again, making a scraping noise against the stubble on this chin. “Destroyed, of course. Ruined.” He rubbed, and rubbed again. “There’s nothing to see on the surface, of course, but it’s there inside. Ruined by his father. It came-”

“Bertil.”

Ringmar gave a start, as if waking up out of something else, from a different dimension. The word came into Winter’s head, “dimension.” We’re moving in different dimensions here, one, two, three. The heavens, the ocean, the earth, out and in, down and up. Dreams, lies.

He ran another red light-the system seemed to be stuck on the merry color of Christmas. He drove in a semicircle, past old Ullevi Stadium, the Göteborgs Posten offices, Central Station. It was early morning, but still black night. Dark taxicabs were parked alongside the railway lines. Follow the tracks, Winter thought.

“He set off for the city and paid them a visit,” Ringmar continued. “And, well… we know the rest.”

“So he was the one who stole the iron from Carlström’s barn?” said Winter.

“Yes.”

“That’s not the only connection we have out there,” said Winter.

“What do you mean?”

“Smedsberg was married to Gerd, who had previously been a neighbor of Carlström’s. Do you remember that?”

“Of course. We checked up on the marriage.”

“I think that Carlström and Gerd Smedsberg had an affair.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Go back and read the case notes, Bertil. Think about how people have reacted. You’ll realize then.”

“Is it relevant?” Ringmar asked.

“Carlström’s foster son, Mats Jerner, wasn’t unknown to Smedsberg,” said Winter. “I could see that from the start. It was obvious.”

“And?”

“Smedsberg is just as guilty for what’s happened. He probably abused Mats Jerner. I’m almost convinced that he ruined Jerner as well, when he was a boy. Or was one of the people who did. Abused him sexually. Smedsberg is just as guilty for what’s happened.”

“Just as guilty of what, Erik?” asked Ringmar, who seemed to have only just become aware of the fact that they were heading somewhere. He looked around as they drove up onto the bridge. “Where are we going?”

“To Mats Jerner’s place,” said Winter.

They were on the bridge. Lights were burning everywhere, as if on a dome rising out of the sea and the land around them on all sides. It’s as if the city were alive, Winter thought. But it isn’t.

They were alone on the apex of the bridge, then started descending again. Winter could see the water glittering from the reflection of the illuminated oil storage tanks that were the most attractive objects in sight. They passed a streetcar and a bus. Neither had any passengers.

“I’ve also got some news,” said Winter, and summed up his Christmas Eve night in one minute flat. They were approaching Backaplan. He turned right, then left. He could feel the adrenaline pumping through his body, creating a heat that cooled him down.

“It could be coincidence,” said Ringmar. “He just happens to stutter like others do, and has a bird like others do.”

“No, no, no, no.”

“Yes, yes, yes.”

“We need to take a look at where he lives no matter what,” said Winter and parked. He could see the discreet blue light on his colleagues’ car illuminating the sky over the residential area where Jerner lived in one of the three-story apartment blocks. It looked almost like a new day.

The Hisingen police were waiting outside the building. They had switched off the blue light now. Their squad car was covered in dirt, as if they’d had to cross a muddy field in order to get there.

“We weren’t sure if the flat was in A or B,” said one of the inspectors, gesturing toward the entrance doors.

“Has anybody entered or left?” asked Winter.

“Not since we arrived, ten minutes ago.”

Another car arrived and parked in the parking lot opposite the buildings. A man got out, carrying a small case.

“The locksmith,” said Winter, gesturing in his direction. “That was quick.”

The smith opened the front door for them. Jerner lived on the second floor, the door on the right. Winter rang the bell and heard the ringing inside the apartment. He drummed with his fingers on the yellow tiled wall that resembled the corridors at police headquarters. The echo died down and he rang again. There was a scraping noise behind the door opposite. The neighbor was evidently watching them through the peephole.

“Open the door,” he said to the locksmith.

“Is there anybody in there?” asked the locksmith.

“I don’t know,” said Winter.

The locksmith looked scared, but he had the door open within twenty seconds. After the click he practically leaped to one side. Winter opened the door with his gloved hand. He crossed the threshold with Ringmar close behind him. The two uniformed officers waited on the landing. Winter had asked the locksmith to wait as well.

The hall was lit up by streetlights shining into a room at the far end. Street lighting was slowly beginning to mix with the faint light of dawn. Winter saw an open door and the corner of a sofa.

“I’m going to switch on the light,” he said.

He could see Bertil blinking. The light seemed very bright.

There were shoes scattered all over the floor, items of clothing. There was something at his feet and he bent down and saw that it was a length of cord, frayed at one end.

He stepped over a man’s boot. Ringmar went into the room at the end of the hall, and switched on a light. Winter joined him and stopped dead to stare up at the ceiling that Ringmar was also staring at. There was no other possible reaction.

“What the hell…” said Ringmar.

The ceiling was split into two. On the left it was black with bright yellow stars some fifteen centimeters in diameter. On the right was a blue sky.

The sofa was red and there were several video cassettes on the table, which was low and wide. There was a television set to the left and a VCR on top of it.

Things were scattered over the wrinkled carpet. Winter squatted down again. He could see a toy car, a green ball, a watch.

He was prepared for this. Ringmar wasn’t.

“Jesus,” said Ringmar. “It’s him. It is him.”

Winter stood up straight again. He was aching all over; it felt as if he’d broken every bone in his body during the last twenty-four hours.

They moved quickly through the apartment. The bed was a mess. There were newspapers on the floor. There were remains of food on the table, butter, bread. On the floor next to the sofa was a plastic cup with a spoon in it. Inside the cup were remains of food, something yellow.

There was a little sock half a meter from the cup.

Winter bent down over a cushion on the sofa and thought he could see small, fine strands of hair.

An unpleasant smell pervaded the flat, a most unpleasant smell.

“He’s not here,” said Ringmar, emerging from the bathroom. “The boy’s not here.”

Good for you, thinking first and foremost about the boy, Winter thought.

They examined all the closets, every nook and cranny, looked underneath everything, looked up as well.

In the bedroom Winter found a thin cord tied to one of the bedposts. There were red stains on the cord. He leaned over the bed and saw a green parrot hanging with its beak pointing toward the wall. It was no bigger than the stars in the sky.

“Did he leave without taking that with him?” asked Ringmar, peering from behind Winter.

“He doesn’t need it anymore,” said Winter.

“What does that mean?”

“You’d rather not know, Bertil.” Winter took his mobile from the inside pocket of his leather jacket. “And I’d rather not tell you.” He almost dropped it. Suddenly, he was no longer in full control of his movements. “Jerner has a car. We’d better see if it’s parked outside.”

He rang for all the reinforcements available.

They were still alone in the apartment some minutes later. Winter had phoned Bengt Johansson and then Hans Bülow. They were now faced with a hunt.

There was water on the bathroom floor, and on the drain board in the kitchen. Jerner wasn’t on the other side of the world. Micke wasn’t far away.

Winter had gone out and checked the parking lot, but there was no point. Within the next half hour everybody in this building would be telling the police everything they knew and had seen.

“Didn’t anybody react to the fact that he had a little boy in his apartment?” Ringmar wondered.

“Did anybody see?” asked Winter. “He might have waited until it got dark and then carried the boy up.”

“But later?”

“They never went out.”

Ringmar turned away. Winter stood in the middle of the room. He contemplated the video cassettes in their black cases. He went to the table and lifted them up, one after another. There were no markings, no text.

He looked around. There was a shelf of cassettes on the right, most of them marked. Videos he’d bought. He knew that pedophiles copied their films onto innocent thrillers or comedies. Winter had sat watching films containing everything possible under the sun-at any moment an entirely different sequence could appear, a child who… who…

But he didn’t need to do that now.

Pedophile. If Jerner wasn’t a pedophile, what was he? Winter wasn’t sure.

“I don’t suppose you’ve seen a camera in here, Bertil?” he said, waving a cassette at Ringmar.

“No.”

There was no cassette in the VCR. Winter picked an unmarked cassette at random, put it into the player, found the video channel, and started the tape. Ringmar came to stand beside him. They waited while the initial blurred images and buzzing passed.

The picture suddenly jumped onto the screen, unexpectedly sharp.

Trees, bushes, grass, a soccer field. Children in a long line. Adults at both ends and in the middle. A woman’s face that Winter recognized. Another of the women was pointing a camera in various directions. The sound was vague, streaky.

The woman suddenly started to grow as the zoom came into play. Her camera was directed at Winter as he stood beside Ringmar in this disgusting room.

We had him, Winter thought.

I had him, I talked to him. Micke was here while he was with me. It was only half a day ago. One night. But I didn’t see.

Jerner had stood exactly where Winter was standing now and seen the camera pointing at him. What had he thought? Did he care? Did he think the video camera and the cap would protect him?

There was a checked cap hanging out there in the hall. They didn’t need it anymore. Jerner didn’t need it anymore.

The buildings on the other side of the road now appeared on the television screen. It was like seeing images of a story you’d been told, Winter thought. Or watching the movie of a book you’d read.

A blackout, then Micke Johansson was in the picture, in a stroller with Bengt Johansson. Winter recognized the location, and so did Bertil.

“Can you call and ask them to send a car there right now?” he said, without taking his eyes off the screen.

Ringmar dialed, and they continued watching the video. Micke Johansson with his dad, with his mom, on his own on a swing, leaving the nursery in his stroller, half asleep, his legs sticking out. On the way through Brunnsparken heading for the entrance to Nordstan’s shopping mall.

“My God,” said Ringmar, “it’s just before it happened.”

“He must have taken the camera in there with him,” said Winter.

Another cut, a brief sequence of disturbance, then a steady picture taken on a day that was grayer, wetter, perhaps starker.

“November,” said Ringmar.

“The chronology on the cassette is mixed up,” said Winter.

The picture showed a different playground with children playing. Winter suddenly felt sick: He recognized the building. It was Elsa’s nursery school.

It was Elsa on the swing.

It was her face that the camera zoomed in on, as close as the goddamn lens could get, her mouth smiling out into the wonderful world she’d only recently been born into.

The camera followed her as she jumped down from the swing and scampered toward the playhouse.

Winter could feel Bertil’s supportive hand around his arm.

“She’s in Spain, Erik. Spain.”

Winter tried to breathe, to break the spell. He was here, Elsa was there, Angela, his mother. He felt an overwhelming urge to reach for his mobile and call Nueva Andalucía.

He saw himself appear on the screen. The camera followed him from the gate to the door. He vanished. The camera waited, still aimed steadily at the door. Winter turned around in the room where he was standing now. He was in that film! Both here and there at this very moment!

There is a mound on the other side of the road, in front of the cemetery. That’s where he’s standing, Jerner.

The camera waited. Winter and Elsa emerged. He said something and she laughed. They walked back to the gate, hand in hand. He lifted her up and she tried to open it. They went out, and he closed the gate behind them. He lifted Elsa into the front seat of the Mercedes and strapped her into her child seat. I’m a detective chief inspector, but I’m a father as well.

The camera followed the car as it drove off, signaled right, disappeared around the corner.

Black screen. Winter looked at the next cassette on the table. We didn’t take them in order, he thought. That one will feature Kalle Skarin, Ellen Sköld, Maja Bergort, and Simon Waggoner. Before and during. Maybe after. These were future victims. Ringmar had called again. Sent another car to another place.

“There’s more to come,” said Ringmar.

Another place, swings in the background, a slide, a wooden train showing its age that the children could play around in.

“The playground at Plikta,” said Ringmar.

Winter nodded, still thinking about Elsa.

“The conductor,” said Ringmar.

A little boy of about four was busy checking the tickets. The children sat down. The camera concentrated on the conductor, and followed him when he grew tired and wandered off. Followed him back to the swings, watched him swinging back and forth, back and forth. The cameraman moved the camera in sync with the swing, and Winter had the feeling that this was the worst he’d been through, one of the worst things he’d ever experienced during yet another day at work. There were more pictures of the same boy, in different places. The sun shone, it was raining, the wind thrashed its way through the trees.

“Who the hell is that?” said Ringmar, and Winter could hear the desperation in his voice. “Who’s the boy?”

They watched the little boy slip and fall, and burst out crying after the usual intake of breath before the pain and the surprise. They watched a woman come to bend down over him and console him. Winter recognized her. He even remembered her name. Yes. Ingemarsson. Margareta Ingemarsson.

“That’s the nursery school in Marconigatan,” he said. “She works there.”

“Eh,” said Ringmar. “Well done. We have to get ahold of her as soon as possible and show her this. She’ll know who the boy is.”

“Ring Peder at the Police Operations Center. He’ll still be there, and he’s good.”

Winter raised his head and saw morning on the other side of the window, a heavy mist. He suddenly heard a million noises in the hall. Everybody had arrived.