Frozen Tracks

44

THE NURSERY-SCHOOL MANAGER FROM MARCONIGATAN WAS AT home; she was switched through from the operations center to Winter, who was still in Jerner’s living room. He couldn’t describe the boy over the telephone. She wasn’t going anywhere, to tell the truth she was barely awake.

Winter drove to her house in Grimmered, following her directions.

“Can I have my car back one of these days?” Ringmar had asked as Winter was on his way out.

“I hope so,” Winter had replied. “Will you call Skövde station?”

“Already done,” Ringmar had said. “They’re on their way to the old man’s house.”

It was a possibility, Winter thought as he drove through the morning. Jerner going back to his old home in the sticks. He could be there already. Natanael Carlström would let him in.

But Carlström couldn’t know.

Winter remembered Carlström’s telephone number. He called from the car. After six rings he hung up, then called again, but there was no reply this time either.

He met three taxis on the highway, but no other traffic at all. A solitary bus stood in Kungsten in a cloud of steam and exhaust fumes, waiting for nonexistent passengers. Nobody crossed the streets. Snow was still lying as a thin layer of powder that would be blown away by the slightest breeze, but at the moment there was no sign of any wind in the city.

He saw three squad cars emerging from the tunnel. He heard a snatch of siren and saw another squad car approaching from Högsbo höjd.

The police radio was rapping out instructions regarding the hunt for Jerner and the boy.

He turned off Grimmeredsvägen and found the house. The Christmas tree in the garden was tastefully lit up. Winter thought of Ringmar’s neighbor. Did Ringmar murder him yesterday?

The sky behind the timber-built house was alternating between bright yellow and wintry blue. It was going to be a beautiful Christmas Day. It was cold. The time was just past nine.

She was dressed when she opened the door. The man beside her had tousled hair, bloodshot eyes, a hangover.

“Come in,” she said. “The tape player is in here.”

He found the sequence with her and the boy. The man smelled of alcohol and looked as if he were going to throw up when he saw the scene.

“It’s Mårten Wallner,” she said without hesitation.

“Where does he live?”

“They live at-just a moment, I have the address list on the fridge. It’s not far from here.”

Winter phoned from the kitchen.

“Mårten’s at the playground,” said his mother. “He’s an early bird.”

“On his own?”

“Yes.” He heard her intake of breath. “What’s going on?” she asked, a new sharpness audible in her voice.

“Go and get him immediately,” said Winter, replacing the receiver and hurrying into the hall.

“I heard,” said Margareta Ingemarsson. “The playground-assuming it’s the one near here-is on the other side of the hill. That’s the quickest way.”

She pointed, and he ran through the undergrowth. You could never be certain.

Never. He could see Elsa’s face in Jerner’s recording.

There were some fir trees on the top of the hill, and there was a little playground a bit farther on, and a little boy in a wool hat walking away from it hand-in-hand with a man in a thick jacket and a cap. Winter could see only the man’s back, and he started sliding down the slope and scraped his thigh on the frozen ground under the thin layer of snow, and he shouted and the boy turned around and the man turned around, and they stopped:

“It’s only us,” said the man. The boy looked at Winter, then up at his father.

Ringmar was making a Basque omelette in the kitchen, Winter had explained how to do it before sitting down in the living room and calling Angela.

He wouldn’t say anything about the video. Not now.

“My God,” she said. “How will you find him?”

She meant the boy.

It was a difficult question. They knew who the abductor was, but not where he was. Winter was very familiar with the opposite situation: the body of a victim but no identity for the killer. Sometimes they didn’t know the identity of either.

Children disappeared and never came home again. Nobody knew, would never know.

“We’re trying to think of every possibility,” said Winter.

“When did you last get some sleep?”

“I don’t know.”

“Forty-eight hours ago?”

“Something like that.”

“Then you’re not functioning now, Erik.”

“Thank you, doctor.”

“I’m being serious. You can’t keep going for another day on nothing but cigars and coffee.”

“Cigarillos.”

“You have to eat. For God’s sake. I sound like a mother.”

“Bertil’s making a Basque omelette at this very moment. I can smell paprika burned black.”

“It’s supposed to be burned black,” she said. “But Erik. You have to get some rest. An hour at least. You have colleagues.”

“Yes. But right now I have all the details in my head, everything, that’s how it feels. So does Bertil.”

“How is he?”

“He’s spoken to his wife. He doesn’t want to tell me what they said. But he’s, shall we say, calmer now.”

“Where’s Martin?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know if Bertil knows. I haven’t asked yet. He’ll talk when he wants to talk.”

“Say hello for me.”

“I will.”

Winter heard Ringmar shout from the kitchen, which was a long way away.

“Lie down for a few hours,” she said.

“Yes.”

“What are you going to do then?”

“I don’t have a clue, Angela. I have to think about it over the food. We’re looking everywhere.”

“Have you canceled the ticket?”

“What ticket? Tomorrow’s flight?”

His ticket for the late afternoon flight to Málaga, return two weeks later. It was lying on the hall table, as a sort of reminder.

“Of course that’s what I mean,” she said.

“No,” he said. “I’m not going to cancel it.”

“Where the hell are they?” asked Ringmar over the kitchen table, but mostly muttering to himself.

They were trying to contact any friends of Jerner’s, colleagues, nonexistent relatives. He didn’t seem to know anybody.

Jerner had been off sick for the last few days. When he came to see Winter it wasn’t after work. He drove straight back there, Winter thought when he heard.

And then possibly left immediately for somewhere else. Where?

Winter looked up from his plate. He’d felt slightly dizzy when he sat down, but that was gone now.

“Let’s drive out to the old man,” he said.

“Carlström? Why? The Skövde boys have already been there.”

“It’s not that. There’s something… there’s something to do with Carlström that’s linked with this business.”

Ringmar said nothing.

“Something else,” said Winter. “Something different.” He pushed his plate to one side. “Are you with me? Something that can help us.”

“I’m not sure I understand,” said Ringmar.

“It’s something he said. Or didn’t say. But there’s also something in that house of his. It was something I saw. I think.”

“OK,” said Ringmar. “There’s nothing more we can do in town at the moment. Why not?”

“I’ll drive,” said Winter.

“Are you up to it?”

“After this restorative meal? Are you kidding?”

“We can always get someone to drive us,” said Ringmar.

“No. We need every single officer for the door-to-door.”

The telephone rang.

“Press conference in an hour,” said Birgersson.

“You’ll have to take it yourself, Sture,” said Winter.

Winter smoked before they set off. The nicotine bucked him up. He didn’t look at the headlines outside the newsstand.

The city streets seemed to be deserted. Normal for Christmas Day, perhaps. Now that was drawing to a close as well. Where was it going? Dusk was lying in wait over Pellerin’s Margarine Factory.

“I checked with Skövde again,” said Ringmar. “No sign of anything at Carlström’s place, no tire tracks, and they’d have seen those in the newly fallen snow if there’s been any.” Ringmar adjusted the two-way radio. “And old man Smedsberg is saying nothing in his cell.”

“Hmm.”

“And now it’s starting to snow,” said Ringmar, looking skyward through the windshield.

“It’s been looking dull for ages,” said Winter.

“The tracks will disappear again,” said Ringmar.

They’d discovered a new, faster way of getting to Carlström’s farm. It meant that they didn’t need to pass Smedsberg’s house.

It seemed to have been snowing quite heavily on the plain.

Winter hadn’t announced their visit in advance, but Carlström seemed to take it for granted.

“Sorry to disturb you again,” said Winter.

“Save it,” growled Carlström. “Would you like a cup of coffee?”

“Yes, please.”

Carlström went to the wood-burning stove, which seemed to be on all day long. It was warmer in the little kitchen than anywhere else Winter could imagine. Hell perhaps, but Winter thought that was a cold place.

The heat in this kitchen could induce him to fall asleep in midsentence.

“It’s a terrible situation,” said Carlström.

“Where could Mats be now?” Winter asked.

“I don’t know. He’s not here.”

“No, I’ve gathered that. But where could he have gone?”

Carlström tipped coffee into the saucepan straight out of the tin, which was covered in rust.

“He liked the sea,” he said eventually.

“The sea?”

“He didn’t like the flats,” said Carlström. “It looks like a sea, but it isn’t a sea.” Carlström turned around to face them. Winter noticed a warmth in his eyes that could have been there all the time, but he hadn’t detected it. “He could go and fantasize about the sky up there, the stars and all that, and the sealike plain.”

“The sea,” said Winter, and looked at Ringmar. “Do you know any of the places he used to go?”

“No, no.”

Carlström came with the coffee. There were small cups on the table that looked out of place, elegant. Winter looked at them. They told him something.

It was linked to what had inspired him to come here.

Ringmar told Carlström about Georg Smedsberg.

Carlström muttered something they couldn’t hear.

“What did you say?” asked Winter.

“It’s him,” said Carlström.

“Yes,” said Ringmar.

“Just a minute,” said Winter. “What do you mean by ‘it’s him’?”

“It’s his fault,” said Carlström, staring down at the little cup hidden inside his big hand. His hand was twitching. “It’s him. It wouldn’t have happened but for him…”

Winter saw. It was coming to him now, he knew why they’d had to come out here again. He remembered. He stood up. Jesus

Christ.

He’d seen it the second time, or was it the first? But he hadn’t thought, hadn’t realized.

“Excuse me,” he said, and went back into the hall; the ceiling light with no shade cast faint light onto the upper part of the cupboard in the far corner where there was a little collection of photographs in old-fashioned frames gleaming vaguely gold or silver. That’s what Winter had seen, only a passing glimpse of something you find in every home, and he’d seen the face, the second from the left, and it was a young woman with blond hair and blue eyes and the reason why he remembered, why he had re-created this photo in his mind’s eye, was her features that he had recognized later, yesterday, or whenever the hell it was, on Christmas Eve, in his office. Her face had stuck in his memory, her eyes, they were transfixing him now, that remarkable piercing quality that almost made him want to turn around to see what she was looking at straight through his head.

He went closer. The woman’s face had a cautious smile that ought to have vanished by the time the photograph was taken. The similarity to Mats Jerner was astonishing, frightening.

He had seen that face previously as a framed portrait on a desk on the other side of the table in Georg Smedsberg’s kitchen. He could see that in his mind’s eye as well. The woman in that portrait was middle-aged, and smiling a cautious black-and-white smile. It’s my wife, Smedsberg had said. Gustav’s mom. She left us.

He heard a shuffling sound, Carlström’s slippers.

“Yes,” said Carlström.

Winter turned around. Bertil was standing behind Carlström.

“It was many years ago,” said Carlström.

“What happened?” was all Winter could say. Open questions.

“She was very young,” said Carlström. He sank down onto the nearest chair, the only one in the hall. He looked at Winter’s face, which was a question mark.

“No, no, I’m not Mats’s father. She was very young, like I said. Nobody knows who he was. She never said.”

Carlström made a sort of gesture.

“Her parents were old, and they couldn’t cope. I don’t know if it killed them, but it all happened quickly. First one then the other.”

“Did you look after her?” Winter asked.

“Yes. But that was after.”

“After what?”

“After the boy. After she’d had him.”

Winter nodded and waited.

“She came back without him. It was best, she said.” Carlström squirmed on the chair, as if in pain. Winter felt wide awake, as if he’d been resurrected. “I guess they had some kind of contact, but…”

“What happened next?”

“Then, well, you know what happened. Then she met h… She met him.”

“Georg Smedsberg?”

Carlström didn’t answer, as if he didn’t want to utter the man’s name.

“He did it,” said Carlström, and now he looked up. Winter could see tears in his eyes. “It was him. It is him. He ruined the boy.” He looked at Winter, then at Ringmar. “The boy was damaged before, but he ruined him altogether.”

“What… How much did Gerd know?” asked Winter.

Carlström didn’t answer.

“What did she know?” said Winter again.

“They’d already had the other boy by then,” said Carlström, as if he hadn’t heard the question.

“The other boy? Do you mean Gustav?”

“She was already getting on in years by then,” said Carlström. “One came early, the other one late.” He squirmed on the chair again, and it creaked. “And then… and then… she vanished.”

“What happened?”

“There’s a lake in the next parish,” said Carlström. “She knew. She knew. She wasn’t… wasn’t healthy. Not before either.”

Carlström bowed his head, as if in prayer, Our father… thy kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven; Carlström’s head dipped farther. “I had to look after him, Mats. When she couldn’t cope. He came here.” Carlström stood up slowly. “You know about that.”

How much did the social services know? Winter thought. It was unusual for a single man to be allowed to take charge of a child. He’d wondered about that before. But Carlström had been regarded as safe. Had he been safe?

“I’d tell you where Mats was if only I knew,” said Carlström.

“There’s one other place,” said Ringmar.

They didn’t speak as they drove through the fields. The distance seemed shorter this time. Smedsberg’s house was hidden by the barn as they approached from this direction. The mixture of dusk and snowfall made it difficult to see. The road was a part of the field that stretched as far as the horizon that couldn’t be seen. There were no tracks on the road in front of them. There were no tracks outside the house when Winter turned in and parked some twenty meters away. If there had been any tracks, they’d been covered up by the snow.

There was a light in one of the upstairs windows.

Ringmar opened one of the barn doors and examined the floor that was covered in bark and sawdust.

“A car was parked here not long ago,” he said, and he wasn’t referring to Smedsberg’s Toyota that was standing to the right.

Winter picked the lock on the front door of the farmhouse. The light from the floor above lit up the stairs at the far end of the hall.

“Did the Skövde boys forget to turn a light off?” wondered Ringmar.

“I don’t think so,” said Winter.

There was a packet of butter on the drain board, and a glass that seemed to have contained milk.

“Only one glass,” said Ringmar.

“Let’s hope it was the boy who used it,” said Winter.

“They’ve been here today,” said Ringmar.

Winter said nothing.

“He managed to get out of Gothenburg,” said Ringmar. “We didn’t have time to seal the place off. How could we have?”

“There was nothing for him here,” said Winter. “This was just a temporary refuge.”

“Why not Carlström’s place?”

“He knew we’d go there.” Winter looked around the kitchen that smelled cold and damp. “He assumed this house would be boarded up and forgotten about.”

“How could he be sure of that?” said Ringmar, and stiffened, just as Winter had stiffened as he spoke.

“Fucking hell!” exclaimed Winter, whipping out his mobile and barking Gustav Smedsberg’s address to a colleague at Police Operations Center: Chalmers student dorm, room number, “but stay outside, unmarked cars only, he might be there already or he could turn up at any time, he might be on his way there right now. Don’t scare him off. OK?

Don’t scare him off. We’re on our way.”

“I was blind, blind,” said Ringmar as Winter drove quickly south. Darkness was falling fast. “I was distracted by my own problems. When I was out here last night.”

“Old man Smedsberg attacked those boys,” said Winter.

“My God, Erik. I gave Gustav a lift back home! I presented Jerner with somewhere to hide. Two places, in fact! Gustav must have told him that the old man was in jail and the house was empty.” Ringmar shook his head. “I gave him time. That’s time he has taken from us.”

“We don’t know if he’s been at Gustav’s place,” said Winter.

“He’s been there alright,” said Ringmar. “He’s his brother.”

The information had hit home like a punch to the solar plexus when Natanael Carlström told them. The truth. Winter was convinced that he’d been told the truth. Gustav Smedsberg and Mats Jerner were brothers, or half brothers. They hadn’t grown up together, but they had the same mother and the same man had destroyed their lives. One of their lives, at least.

Why hadn’t Carlström reported Georg Smedsberg to the police long ago? How long had he known? Had Mats told him recently? As recently as Christmas Eve night? Was that why Carlström had telephoned Winter? Was he incapable of saying that over the telephone? He was that sort of man, an odd man.

“I wonder when they discovered that they were brothers,” said Ringmar.

“We’ll ask Gustav,” said Winter.

They drove past Pellerin’s Margarine Factory. There was more traffic now than when they’d left Gothenburg.

People were roaming the streets in the city center as if it were a normal Saturday night, more than on a normal Saturday night.

“Christmas Day is when everybody goes out nowadays,” said Ringmar in a monotonous tone of voice.

Taxis were lining up outside the Panorama. The glass wall of the hotel was decorated with a star pattern.

Winter parked outside the student dorm, where most of the windows were just as dark as the facade.

Bergenhem slipped into the backseat.

“Nobody has come out or gone in through this door,” said Bergenhem.

“Nobody at all?”

“No.”

“OK, let’s go in,” said Winter.