Never End

29

Winter tried to read something in Andy's face. It was a map showing different directions.

"On which side of the river?" Winter asked.

"I don't follow."

"There's a bar there, isn't there? That Anne went to sometimes?"

Andy's face indicated that he thought it was nothing to do with Winter, that it was irrelevant.

"It's very important," Winter said.

"Eh?"

"Can't you get it into your head that this bar is relevant to her death?"

You little shit head.

Ringmar could see what Winter was thinking. His face was a map now, too.

Winter put the photographs on the table. Andy took his time.

"I don't recognize either of them," he said.

"They're both dead," said Winter.

Andy was silent.

"In the same way as Anne."

"I still don't recognize them," Andy said.

"Is there anything else you recognize, then?"

Andy turned to look Winter in the eyes.

"What do you mean?"

"The place. The surroundings."

"No."

"Take as much time as you need."

"I don't recognize it."

Winter didn't speak, just sat. He could hear faint noises of summer. They were in an interrogation room containing nothing of all the things outside. There were no colors in here. Sounds were muffled, filtered through the air-conditioning, flattened to a buzz that could be anything.

Winter felt for the pack of cigarillos in his breast pocket. He could see the sweat on Andy's brow despite the low temperature in the room.

Maybe it would happen now.

"I don't recognize it," Andy repeated.

Then he said it.

"I've never been there."

Winter was holding the pack halfway out of his pocket.

"I beg your pardon?"

"I've never been there."

"Where?"

"There," said Andy, waving his hand at the photographs on the desk.

"Where is it, Andy?"

"Where… where they used to go."

"They?"

"Yes, they. There are several of them, aren't there?"

Winter waited. A car set off on an emergency call, he could hear it. A voice shouted, more loudly than usual. Or maybe it was at normal volume in the thin air.

"You know where it is, Andy."

No response.

"Where is it, Andy?"

He looked at Winter. His face changed, then changed again.

"What does it matter?"

"Have you still not gotten it through your head?"

"I'm just thinking of… of her."

Winter nodded.

"Do you understand?"

"You can help her now."

"It was so… innocent."

"What was innocent, Andy? What?"

"The… the dancing."

"The dancing," Winter repeated, as if he'd been waiting to hear those words all afternoon. As if everything had been leading up to those words: the dancing. A dance for a murderer?

"Tell me about the dancing," Winter said.

"It was just an extra job on the side."

"Tell us about the extra job on the side."

"I don't know exactly what it was."

"Just tell us about the dancing, then."

"Some stripping," Andy said. "It was… nothing much."

"Some stripping? Striptease?"

Andy nodded.

"She was a stripper. Is that what you're saying?"

"Yes… that's what she told me, anyway."

Winter held his eyes. Why hadn't Andy said anything right at the beginning? From the first minute he knew what had happened to Anne. Dancing naked wasn't the end of the world, not even to old men like… like him, like Winter, an old man of forty-one, knocking forty-two. It wasn't the most desirable summer job, but it didn't mean eternal damnation.

But had it meant eternal death for Anne? And for the others? Had the other girls also had summer jobs as strippers?

Winter wasn't shocked to hear that young girls of about twenty earned extra cash at strip clubs. It wasn't exactly news. It was rather an increasingly wearisome fact. He felt more angry about the unknown prostitution young girls could be led into. Not so much in the clubs, they had a pretty good check on those. But over the Net. The Internet, which was supposed to spread happiness and socially useful information to mankind.

At the very beginning of the case he'd ordered a check on the shady places they knew about in the seamier parts of town and by the railway line running east. They thought they knew more or less all there was to know about them. And the girls who worked there. Some had only just started secondary school.

Winter looked at the photographs of Angelika and Beatrice. Had they been there? Had they wiggled and waggled to kitschy disco music in front of that brick wall?

He thought. Then something dawned on him. Something quite different. It wasn't a club, not a restaurant, not a strip joint, not a bar.

It was a home. Somebody's private house.

If so, that would mean they'd have to start searching in a new way. A new way that wasn't possible. It could be anywhere. Any house. Any dirty old man at all.

"You said before that you didn't know exactly where it was," Winter said.

"Yes."

"But roughly?"

"I know which part of town."

It was an entirely different part from what Winter had expected. Not at all where he'd tried to find a common… starting point. Where the trails started. A different part of town altogether. Over the river and in among the houses. Over the hill, through the viaducts, under the highways. A far larger area than the one he'd expected. If Andy was right, that is. He'd already decided to hold Andy for six more hours. He didn't think he'd be contacting the prosecutor after that, or even during it. But what he thought now was of no significance.

"Did you ever go with Anne?" Winter asked.

"No."

"Why not?"

"She didn't want me to."

"And that was enough?"

He nodded. "And it wasn't all that often anyway."

"What wasn't all that often?"

"Her doing it. Dancing."

"Was that all she did? Dance?"

"What… what are you implying by that?"

"I'm just wondering why it's taken you so long to tell me this, Andy."

"It hasn't."

"Maybe you know more than you've told us so far?"

"What? What else am I supposed to know?"

Winter said nothing.

"I don't know any more," Andy said.

"About the other girls."

"I've never seen them before."

"About where this… establishment is."

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

"Why didn't she say where it was?"

"Why should she?"

"Was she ever scared?"

"Eh?"

"Was she ever scared, Andy?"

"Let's forget Samic for the time being," Ringmar said. "In any case, I don't think he'll lead us to where we want to go."

"I guess you're right," said Winter. "Will you speak to Sara?"

"I've already broached the subject. She didn't seem too pleased."

"Let her continue for another night, then."

"Is that an order?"

"No."

"What would Birgersson say?"

"No, probably."

"Well, then."

"What she does in her spare time has nothing to do with us," Winter said.

"So you're prepared to exploit your staff until they drop, are you, Erik?"

"Of course."

Ringmar rubbed his brow. He had only a light tan, suggesting that he'd been hard at work, mainly indoors, crouching over databases and printouts.

"Mind you, Samic deserves to be shadowed by everybody there is, and charged, and sentenced." Ringmar scratched his stubble, which was two days old by now, and would probably still be there when he went on leave two days from now. "He's a nasty piece of work."

"Meaning what? Do you think we should jail people for not being nice?"

Ringmar scratched his stubble again. Rehearsing for his vacation. No doubt it would start pouring rain the moment he set foot outside the police station. That would be OK. The farmers could use a drop.

"The way things are now, Kurt Bielke would be a better bet."

"Why's that?" Winter had a good idea why, but he wanted to hear Ringmar's view. "What's he done?"

"Nothing."

"Why are you linking the rape of his daughter with this business?"

"Reasonable suspicion."

"Proof?"

"Zilch."

"Evidence?"

"Zilch."

"That sounds like a pretty convincing starting point."

"Could he have raped his own daughter, Erik?"

Winter lit another cigarillo, the eighteenth today. The smell from the cigarillo mixed pleasantly with the evening air. The sounds coming through the open window were pleasant. The lights were pleasant, soft in the blue dusk. He could see two couples walking over the river, and they looked pleasant. The river was flowing: pleasantly.

But Bertil Ringmar's question was far from pleasant. His own thoughts five minutes previously had not been pleasant. Nothing they'd been talking about had been pleasant, nothing they were working on was pleasant. If there was a polar opposite to the concept of "pleasant," they'd found it in their everyday work.

"There's a lot of tension in that family, but that might be fairly normal," Winter said.

"Normal for whom?"

"Normal for them."

"Or it might blow up," said Ringmar. "Explode."

"And the results, if it does?" Winter wondered.

Ringmar didn't answer.

"Should we maybe bring Bielke in and have a talk with him?" Winter said.

"Better just to see what he's up to."

"Why not do both?"

"Or neither," said Ringmar.

Winter gestured to the heap of paper on his desk. He yawned, tried to keep his face straight, could feel the tension in his jaw, a warning of a cramp.

"I'll try to read through this little bit again tonight," he said. "Then we'll see. We can discuss it tomorrow."

"Will you be staying here?" Ringmar asked.

"Yes, what do you mean?"

"Well…"

"Instead of doing it at home, is that it?" Ringmar sort of nodded. "It's quieter here," Winter said. "For whom, Erik?"

Winter sat down, picked up a piece of paper with his left hand, and looked up at Ringmar, who was still there.

"I thought you were on your way home, Bertil."

Sara Helander was on her way home. Drop Samic? Oh no, not after last night. The date-rape swine was under arrest, would be charged within four days.

She'd gone home, still thinking that she was an idiot, and thought about Samic. But perhaps even more about the woman standing beside him in the boat, looking expensive. Hair flying, and the half profile making it impossible to make out her features.

There was something there. Something to do with Samic. She'd find out what it was. She was no fool. Nor was she foolhardy. But she… needed something, needed to do something. Not some dashing heroic deed, that wouldn't be professional. But something… clever. Leading to a breakthrough.

It was nearly nine o'clock. The sky was a concert of shades. The sun was on its way to the other side of the world. Down Under. Her sister had been to Sydney. Waded through the junkies crawling around King's Cross. Hmm. It had been uplifting as well. Sunny, beautiful, like here. Distances that seemed bigger the farther away you got from the cities. The red earth. The dead heart. She'd received a postcard from Alice Springs labeled "A Town Like Alice," but hadn't gotten the point until she showed it to Aneta, who explained about the book. Oh, I see.

She went to the harbor known as Lilla Bommen. There were hundreds of people there now, in the boats, on the wharf, in the cafes, in front of the ice cream stand. The Opera House was basking in the final rays of the sun that pierced the abandoned cranes on the other side of the river.

She turned the corner. Not as many people. More boats lined up, all of them motorboats as far as she could see. A few sails in the distance. It was just as hot here. A couple was sitting on a bench, looking at the water. People coming and going. Engines spluttering over the water. Pennants fluttering halfheartedly in the warm breeze: Swedish blue and yellow, Norwegian, Danish, one German. Something blue with a red, white and blue cross pattern in the top corner-wasn't that Australian? Had some tough customer sailed all the way from Down Under?

She strolled along the wharf, as if winding down after work. Which was what she was, in fact, doing, in a way. No. That wasn't true, no way. She looked for the motorboat she'd seen Samic steering, and hesitated between two, or three. Was it that one, or that, or that?

She remembered a badge to the left of the name on the stern, some kind of decoration. There was a light above it, helping her see it. It was like a flower, in a dark color.

One of the boats had a lily next to its name, Nasadika. It had a motor in the back and a ship's wheel. She knew nothing at all about boats. It looked expensive, but they all did.

There was a Swedish flag at the stern. She stood on the wharf, looking down at the boat.

"Can I help you?"

She turned around and hoped the person who'd spoken to her hadn't noticed her start.

"Er… I'm… I'm sorry," she said, trying to adjust her feet and ensure that she didn't topple over backward into the water.

The woman seemed to be smiling. Her face was tanned, but not too much. Blond hair. Perhaps it could fly in the slipstream. It might be the woman from last night.

"You're sort of standing in the way of the steps," the woman said.

"Oh… I'm sorry." She moved along a few paces.

"Thank you," said the woman.

"I'm looking for a boat that belongs to a friend of mine," said Sara Helander. "I'd just established that it's not around here." She pointed toward the guest marina. "I think I'd better start looking over there instead."

The woman nodded and climbed nimbly down onto the deck. She might be forty, or she might be fifty-five. No younger, maybe older. She looked fit. Sara Helander got a good look at her now, her face. Her face in profile. She recognized it from the picture taken at the graduation party that Winter had shown her. She had a handsome nose that somebody should have remembered. They'd asked around.

I recognize her, Helander thought. I recognize her now.

Was it tension or excitement she was feeling?

The beach party had been changed to the evening. Winter felt as if Christmas had come early as he biked southward with Elsa in the child seat. Angela was pedaling away ten meters ahead of them. He was thinking mainly about wind and sun as they rode around the bay and parked alongside thirty more bikes, then clambered down to the beach.

Somebody had started the barbecues, and one of the men handed Winter a beer. Anders Liljeberg, the first time he'd seen him for months. He hadn't seen several of the people milling around since the early summer, and he was glad to be here now. He drank his beer and settled down on the sands. Angela took Elsa to the water's edge. He leaned back and let all the voices buzz over him. He could smell the grills. He could smell the sand. He raised himself on an elbow and finished off the beer. Angela and Elsa were splashing around in the water. Liljeberg had donned a grass skirt. It looked dark brown through Winter's sunglasses. Liljeberg started dancing his version of the samba, and others joined in. Winter stood up and took off his shirt. Somebody passed him another beer. The music was Caribbean, and the evening was just as hot as the music.