Never End

11

There was nobody there by the time Winter arrived. He could see the opening between the trees, and the rock, and the twigs and bushes at the sides, and the patches of dusky sky-but no shadow.

The grotto was empty.

The grass outside was bone dry again. There was no point in searching for footprints. But he ought to call somebody who could search for any new objects that might have appeared there. You never knew. You just never knew.

He circled around the clearing, then hurried onto the path behind and followed it for fifty meters. He went back again, and there was Angela with Elsa in her stroller, and she was staring wide-eyed at him as he ducked underneath a sapling.

"If you're going to play hide-and-seek with us, the least you can do is to tell us before you run off," Angela said. "Or maybe you want to hide and then go seeking yourself?"

He brushed a few pine needles off his shoulders and reached for the packet of cigarillos that was no longer in his big, wide breast pocket.

"Now's the time to give up," said Angela, who had seen what had happened.

Winter contemplated the packet on the ground, and bent down. Several of the cigarillos had fallen out and were lying in a semicircle. He walked over to it, picked up the packet, and then the cigarillos one by one-then he noticed a button lying next to the last one. Just a button, white or bony white, a shirt button.

They would have found it if it had been there when they first cordoned the place off after the murder of Angelika. And after the rape of Jeanette.

Since then, anybody at all could have walked past and lost a button.

"Do you have a tissue?" he asked, turning to Angela. He was still squatting.

Angela produced a Kleenex out of her handbag. Winter took it and wrapped it around the button.

"What is it?"

"A button."

"You don't say."

"A shirt button," said Winter. "I think."

"Oh, yes? Well, now we've seen how you go about your business," said Angela, turning to Elsa. "This is how detectives work, Elsa. Look and learn."

"Do you want Elsa to grow up to be an investigator?" said Winter, crouching down again, this time by the stroller. Elsa made a sound. "She said detective," Winter said.

"No. She said perspective." Angela looked at him with a smile. "I think she means that you've got to put your job in perspective." She looked toward the bushes. "Is this the way it's got to be when we go for a walk in the evening?"

"I thought I saw somebody," said Winter.

"Oh, for God's sake!"

"It's more complicated than you think."

"You can say that again."

"There was somebody standing there. It wasn't just your ordinary… passerby."

"Don't forget the button, Erik." She'd seen his eyes glaze over. It had turned cold among the trees. Elsa was trying to clamber out of the stroller. He helped her. "Sorry, Erik. I know it's important… and serious. Awful. But I couldn't resist teasing you a bit."

"That's OK."

He picked Elsa up. They went back to the pond.

"Do you think that… that he's returning to the scene of the crime?"

"Yes."

"You think that's what always happens."

"That's my experience. Others think the same."

"And the shadow that you saw could… have been him?" Winter shrugged. "The moment I saw him I had the distinct feeling that it was… important. Important for the case." He turned to look at her with Elsa on his shoulder. "I don't know anymore, for fuck's sake."

"Fuck," Elsa said. It was one of the first words she had pronounced correctly.

"What's a private life? You tell me," Halders said to Aneta Djanali, in the passenger seat beside him. They were parked outside the Hanssons' house. Djanali could smell the salt of the sea through the open window.

"When does a life stop being private?" asked Halders, turning to look at her. "I can't keep my various lives apart any longer."

"No."

"I've become a philosopher now, too." He gave a laugh. "Private philosopher." He laughed again, shorter, drier. "Amateur philosopher."

He ought to be at home, Djanali thought. Why doesn't Winter take him off the case? Or Birgersson? It would cause less of an upset if Birgersson did it.

"I know you think I should be taking time off at home right now," Haiders said. "That's what you're thinking."

"Correct."

"I know you mean well, but you're wrong." He opened the car door. "There are lots of ways of dealing with sorrow." He put a foot into the road. "If I find the kids don't want to go to school any more, or develop other problems, I'll run a mile from all this. But not until then." He was outside in the street now, and bent down toward Djanali. "Are you coming or not?"

Lars-Olof and Ann Hansson were sitting at opposite ends of the sofa. Djanali and Halders were facing them, in armchairs. She looks shattered, thought Aneta, when Angelika's mother turned to stare out of the window, seemingly to study the various shades of green out there.

Lars-Olof Hansson stared down at the table.

Behind the couple was a sort of bookcase and a recently taken photo of Angelika. Her student cap was brilliant white, contrasting with her black skin. She' s even blacker than I am, thought Djanali.

Lars-Olof Hansson had noticed what Djanali was looking at, and turned to face her.

"That was taken just five or six weeks ago."

Djanali nodded.

"That's about the age she was when we adopted her," said her father. "Five or six weeks."

"Shut up!" shouted his wife, who left the room in a huff.

He's so full of sadness, Halders thought. There are so many ways of dealing with sorrow.

When he spoke again, his voice sounded hollow. He looked at Djanali. "Were you born here?"

"I was, actually," Djanali said. "In East General Hospital. But my parents are from Africa."

"Where exactly?"

" Upper Volta. That's what it was called when they came here. It's called Burkina Faso now."

"Hmm." Hansson was staring down at the table, then he looked up at her. "Have you ever been there?"

"Yes."

"What was that like?"

"Well… I'd expected to feel more than I did." This interview is turning out a bit different from what I'd expected. But what the hell? "I'm glad I went, though."

"Angelika wanted to travel as well," said Lars-Olof Hansson, just as his wife re-entered the room.

"That's enough, Lasse." She gave him a look like nothing Djanali had ever seen. He suddenly looked completely helpless. Like a drowning man, she thought.

"To Uganda," he said. And that was all he was capable of saying about Angelika Hansson's origin, or Aneta Djanali's.

"We have a few problems figuring out how Angelika was making her way home that night," Halders said.

"What can I do about that?" Lars-Olof Hansson was standing now. leaning against the wall by the verandah door. "I've told you everything. Everything I know."

"Why was she alone in the middle of Gothenburg for several hours?"

"You are the ones who should be telling me that."

"Nobody we've spoken to was with her for nearly four hours that night. Or evening."

"I've told you everything I know," said Lars-Olof Hansson.

"But what was she doing?" asked Halders.

"I don't know, I've told you already."

"Did she have a job?"

"What do you mean, a job?"

"A job. A summer job." Halders persisted.

"She would have told us if she did."

"Did she ever go out on the town by herself?"

"Would that be so bizarre if she did?"

"Did she?"

"I didn't follow her."

Halders waited. He could tell there was more to come.

"She thought a lot about… about her origins," he said. "She became a little… confused, I guess you might say." He looked at his wife, but she didn't respond. "It seemed to get worse. Yes. I suppose she might have gone off and thought a lot about that. I don't know."

"Was she depressed?"

"I don't know." He thought about it. "I don't have a goddamn clue."

"What about boyfriends?" Djanali asked. Ann Hansson looked up. Djanali turned to face her. "You must have thought about that these last few days."

The woman nodded. Her face lost all vestige of character, just like that of her husband a few minutes before. Precisely the same kind of helplessness.

Djanali waited. She wanted to be able to offer her leads. Prompt her. But she didn't have any.

"There weren't any boyfriends," Ann Hansson said. "Not that we knew about, at least."

"Did you talk about it?" Djanali asked.

"Talk? Me and… Lasse?"

"You and Angelika."

"Well… what can I say… Of course we talked about it. But she didn't have a… steady relationship," said Ann Hansson, beginning to weep, silently, for the first time since they'd visited her. "This business of the pregnancy-it's absolutely incomprehensible. It's like… like a nightmare inside a nightmare."

"This is no nightmare," said her husband. "This is reality." He looked at his wife. "Come on, we've got to face it."

Bergenhem was in Winter's office. It was ten-thirty in the morning. The air conditioning was clattering away. Bergenhem was tanned after many hours spent on the sun-drenched cliffs to the northwest of Gothenburg. He looks stronger than he has for ages, Winter thought. Calmer.

"I suspect she did have a boyfriend," Bergenhem said. "I spoke to a friend of hers, Cecilia, who just got back from Paris yesterday, and she thought she'd seen Angelika with a guy. Several times." Bergenhem consulted his notebook, then looked up. "Twice, in fact. You've got the report, written up immediately after the interview."

"Just one guy, then."

"Yep. She'd seen Angelika and this guy twice: once at a café where they'd arranged to meet, and once when she passed them in a streetcar." Bergenhem looked up. "That time at the café the young man was on his way out, and she just said hi to him."

"She's only seen him those two times?"

"Yes."

"Never on his own? Or with anybody else?"

"It seems not."

"What had Angelika said about him?"

"They never discussed it."

"Hmm."

"She'd asked, of course, but Angelika kept quiet."

"In what way? Did she laugh it off? Or look worried or frightened or annoyed or disappointed-or what?"

"I don't know," Bergenhem said.

"Find out."

"Yes. Of course."

"And this friend of hers-she didn't recognize the guy at all?"

"No."

"Are you planning to question her again?"

"Later this morning. I just wanted to have a word with you first."

"OK. Bertil and you can talk to her." Bergenhem nodded.

"I want this guy tracked down, and soon," Winter said. "He's out there somewhere."

But they couldn't find him. They had several conversations with the girl but got no further, and it looked as if the only chance they had of finding the missing boy was if Angelika's friend Cecilia happened to see him again in town.

She had given them a description of him.

Another day passed. They had hoped to make a public appeal. But the information was so vague. They didn't have a face yet.

"If he's in the country he would have been in touch by now," Bertil Ringmar said at the morning meeting.

Winter's right-hand man, older than he was, was sitting on a chair at the edge of the group. There will be fewer and fewer of us for every week that passes, Winter thought, for every week with nothing to show, but we won't know for certain until we can come up with something resembling a key to it all.

"Have we covered everybody she knew?" Bergenhem asked.

"We've interviewed everybody we know about, yes," said Ringmar. "Those that are around, that is, and we're pretty sure we've seen the whole group. We're not so sure about those who are abroad."

"It might just have been a casual acquaintance," said Djanali. "It might not even have been the same boy on both occasions. Cecilia might have been mistaken."

"Why didn't Angelika say anything about him?" Bergenhem asked.

The phone rang after she'd dozed off. She answered sleepily.

"Yes… Hello?"

"I hope 1 didn't wake you."

"Well, you did." Anne sat up. It was almost dark outside, which meant it must be the middle of the night. There was a smell of flowers and seaweed through the half-open window.

"Sorry about that."

"What do you want?"

"Can you work tomorrow? Just one more time." "I told you that I don't want to." "Anne." "No." "OK, OK."

"Don't call here anymore." "I might."

She felt afraid now. It was in her voice. She knew that he knew. "You don't need to be scared of anything," he said. "But I want you to come here tomorrow."

"I don't want to work. And I'm not scared. What should I be scared of?"

"Just come. We have to talk."

"There's no point. I told you."

"Hmm."

"A thousand times."

"See you, then."

He hung up.