Never End

12

Hannes was waiting in his teacher's office. Halders hugged him. The teacher was standing next to them. She removed her hand from Hannes's shoulder after a while.

"Magda wants to stay until the end of classes," the boy said. "I asked her."

Halders hugged his son even tighter.

"Can we go now, Dad?"

They drove home through the rain. It had started raining during the afternoon.

"I hope you aren't angry with me, Dad."

"Why should I be angry?"

"Because you had to leave work and get me before classes were over."

"If you don't want to be there, you don't have to be there," said Haiders, giving his son's shoulder a squeeze with his right hand. "And I don't need to be at work either."

The boy seemed satisfied with that reply, and said nothing for the rest of the drive home. Halders parked the car, and they went in. He'd moved some of his things there from his apartment. He wasn't at all sure where his home was now, apart from with his children.

"I'm tired," Hannes said.

"Go and lie down for a while. I'll be here in the living room."

"Do you get more tired when you're sad, Dad?"

"Yes." The thought had never occurred to him before, but now he knew it was true. He knew now. He was damn well certain of it. "Let's both take a nap before we go pick up Magda."

"I don't know exactly what she was doing every second of the night," said Kurt Bielke. "I've never kept track of her that way."

There's something fishy about her father, Halders had said. Jeanette's dad. Or between them. Something funny going on there. Can you be any more specific? Winter had asked. There are several points on which their stories don't agree, Halders had replied. That night when she came home. After it happened.

"But you're sure that she was back home before three?"

"Around then. I've said that lots of times now."

"Not two hours later?"

"No. Who says that?"

"We have witnesses who saw Jeanette come home."

"Really? They must be mistaken."

They were sitting in the living room. It was very light, despite the heavy rain outside.

"You've spoken to my wife as well. Jeanette got home about three, and I can't understand why the hell you are trying to suggest otherwise."

He glared at Winter. "She's told you that herself, hasn't she? Why on earth should she lie? It's absolutely ridiculous."

"Tell me again about the telephone call you got that evening," said Winter.

Kurt Bielke sighed loudly.

"Inspector Winter, I'm doing my best to be patient. But you must forgive me if I start to get a bit impatient. Or become reluctant to answer your questions. We're a family that's been dealt a heavy blow… Jeanette has had a shattering blow… And you come here and start quibbling with me about my statement."

"We are investigating a serious crime," said Winter.

"You almost make it sound as though I'm guilty," said Bielke.

"Why do you say that?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Why do you say it sounds as if you are guilty?"

"Because that's the way it does sound, almost."

"Tell me about that telephone call."

"She called at about eleven to ask whether anybody had called her," Bielke said.

"Anybody in particular?"

"No, just anybody."

"And had anybody?"

"No."

"She'd borrowed a friend's mobile," Winter said.

"That's what you tell me."

"You couldn't hear the difference?"

"No. But I do remember that there was a different sort of background noise," Bielke said.

"She said she was outdoors."

"Yes."

"Anything to confirm that?"

"The call only lasted a few seconds."

Her own mobile was being repaired. Winter had had that confirmed.

"It's not clear who lent her a mobile," Winter said.

"Does it matter?"

"We're not clear about where Jeanette was for a few hours that night," said Winter. "Maybe even longer."

"You'll have to ask her. Again. 1 don't like it, but if you have to, you have to."

"I'm asking you, now."

"Wrong person."

Winter noticed that the man had changed during the course of the conversation. Or the interrogation. And he noted how much Bielke had changed since they'd met for the first time. He'd become… more aggressive. That could be due to Winter, or to Halders. Or it could be due to something entirely different.

"Don't you want to know?" Winter asked.

"What do you think?"

Winter didn't reply. He'd heard something from upstairs, footsteps, soft footsteps, even a stumble. Perhaps she'd been listening, but he would have noticed in that case. At that point Jeanette came into the room from the kitchen. It had been somebody else up the stairs. Irma Bielke wasn't at home, according to what Bielke had said when Winter arrived.

It was raining outside. Harder now. The garden was a mass of wet greenery. The temperature had fallen, but it was still warm. The sound of waves breaking against the rocks could be heard from the west.

Winter drove southward. He'd have to change his passenger-side windshield wiper. His vision to the right was blurred and greasy, like looking at houses and trees through a thin layer of jelly.

He had to wait at a crossroads where a section of road was being paved. His thoughts were faster than the efforts of the workmen.

The girls had been to the same place. Beatrice and Angelika. That's where they'd been found, where they'd been murdered. Or within a few meters of there. And that's where Jeanette had been attacked. She'd said it was there. And why doubt her?

What did it mean? What was the significance of the location?

He'd been delving into the case backward… to Beatrice… but had somebody else been doing the same thing? Was there a copycat? He hated the word. But what had happened to Beatrice was no secret. Nor where it had happened. Was that knowledge being exploited by somebody? A copycat? Was he approaching the case from the wrong point of view? Should he be looking forward instead of backward?

One of the workmen waved him on, past the vehicle that looked like a field kitchen for an army battalion, or something out of a Mad Max film. The hot asphalt was simmering in the rain, giving off steam. It smelled like an infantry attack coming through the car windows.

They had traced the three girls' last hours in as much detail as they could. He was including Jeanette in this aspect of the investigation. There was another peculiarity. She was still alive, but what had happened to her that evening before the crime was hardest of all to work out. There were fewer witnesses. Several couldn't remember.

He'd spent ages poring over the map, trying to figure out if they'd followed the same route to the park, to the rock, the opening, the bushes. Maybe there was a common route, or something that amounted to the same thing. If you added up all the evidence from friends about where they'd been and what they'd done and what they were going to do that night, there was something like a route that Beatrice, Angelika, and Jeanette might have taken before they came up against the rapist. It started to the north of the city center, and everybody knew where it ended.

North of the city center. What had they been doing there? It must have been near the river, the old harbor, or around the opera house. Or on the other bank, perhaps? Winter had read the case notes backward and forward and over and over again, but hadn't found a place mentioned where they might all have started off on the same journey. Was it all a coincidence? He didn't know, but he would keep at it. He would force his way into the reality of the map, into the very spot.

He'd been looking for some connection between the cases, and here one was-extremely vague at the moment, but even so. What else was there for him to do?

Winter turned left. Angelika Hansson's father was at the door waiting for him, just like last time.

"Leave me on my own in here for a while," said Winter, and Lars-Olof Hansson closed the door on him. Winter started looking around Angelika's room. He needed to start from the beginning all over again. He opened the left-hand door of the wardrobe.