Never End

31

It was quiet again in the street. The man had disappeared into the remarkable house. Helander had never seen Kurt Bielke before.

Night was starting to turn into day. She could see the lights from the night's last ferry from Denmark on its way to the dock on the other side of the river.

Halders got out of the car.

"What are you going to do?" she whispered.

"Take a look at this place."

"Isn't that a little risky?"

"We'll soon find out."

"Should I call for backup?"

"Good God, no. I'm only going to take a little look."

"Don't do anything silly, Fredrik. I'll check on you every twenty minutes." The mobile phone would vibrate in Halders's pocket, but there would be no sound.

"I'll call you," said Halders. "But if you do call and I can't answer, I'll turn it off to signal that everything's OK."

"Twenty minutes."

He didn't reply, but left without a word. She never saw him cross the street, but shortly afterward thought she might have seen a shadowy figure in the garden behind the house.

Halders stood under one of three trees ten meters from the house. There were lights in two of the windows, but he couldn't see anybody. There was no sound coming from inside.

Now what?

There was no door leading down to the basement. That would have been too easy.

The two windows on the left were dark. He moved swiftly over the lawn. Both windows were the old-fashioned sash type and appeared to be closed, but the left-hand one didn't close quite flush. Halders guessed there would be a latch that he couldn't see, and he took a thin chopstick, which he'd taken from Ming's that same afternoon, from his inside pocket. He inserted it into the narrow crack, located the latch, and unfastened it. It wasn't easy, as the window was almost two meters from the ground.

He opened the window and put the chopstick back in his pocket.

He looked around. There was a cistern at the gable end a few meters to the left. He went up to it to test how heavy it was, and found it was fairly light, as there had been no more than one or two short thundery showers for ages. It wasn't difficult to carry it to the window.

He climbed onto it and peered in: furniture outlined in the murky darkness, a door looking grayish-white at the back of the room. Nothing animate in there.

Halders clambered through the window, and looked back, but saw nobody racing up with a machine gun. Nobody came barging in through the door.

He could hear the usual sounds of night from outside.

Now what?

He went to the door and listened. No footsteps. A mumbling sound coming from somewhere, music perhaps. He could see there was no light on the other side of the door, so he opened it.

He found himself in a hall, empty. There were a couple more doors. A Chinese box, he thought. Go in through one door, and you find another one. Go in through that, go in through the next one. You always go in, but never out.

There was a light behind the door to the right, at the end of the hall, but a weaker light under the door to the left. As if it were coming from farther away. He walked quickly and quietly to this one and took hold of the handle. He opened the door carefully and saw a staircase leading down to the light.

Helander expected Halders to come back at any moment. The idiot. I was supposed to be playing the heroic part in this drama. I found the house. It should be me creeping around inside.

She knew that she would never do that.

A car approached from behind and passed. She'd heard something but not seen it until it drove past and parked outside the house. It had been moving slowly with no lights on. A shiver ran down her spine. Had they seen her sitting in the car?

Nobody got out. She ducked down but was able to see the silhouette of somebody in the driving seat. Their arm was bent. Whoever it was might be on the phone. Maybe talking about the occupied car not far away.

This is dangerous, she thought. More dangerous than we anticipated. I'll call as soon as I can. More than twenty minutes has passed.

Halders went down the stairs. He crept down. He felt as if he were acting in a film. Normally he never crept. When had he last crept? When he reached the fourth step he suddenly thought about his children. He could see Margareta. My whole life is passing before my eyes. Does that mean I'm dying? Huh. We're all dying. Nobody lives forever. Am I scared? No. I have my Sig Sauer in its holster, and I'm strong. It's definitely stupid of me, coming in here. There's a woman I think I'm in love with.

He was at the bottom. This was the basement. There was another door in the Chinese box, and it wasn't closed. Ten meters to go. He could walk that without casting a shadow. There was music. He could see a shadow himself. The music was some awful disco rubbish from the lunatic seventies. He went closer and the music came closer. He saw that the door led into another hall, or a narrow corridor. Somebody was moving in there. Halders took out his gun, which was cold and comradely in his hand. What am I getting into? he thought. He could hear a voice, a woman's voice, and then a man's voice, shouting, or bellowing, no, something different, sobbing now, Good God, the voice was rising and falling, the awful music bounced down the brick-lined corridor, which felt narrower and narrower the farther he went. He could see the woman gyrating to the music; she was wearing a G-string, nothing else: she was chewing gum, thinking about something else, and Halders was closer, there was a pane of glass between her and the man who was on all fours in front of her and baying to the moon, wearing nothing but a dog leash around his neck. Kurt Bielke was staring at everything and nothing without seeing, it was him, and Halders saw his body starting to twitch, like a religious fanatic in a state of ecstasy at some religious cult meeting, a cult meeting, Halders repeated to himself. I'll shoot that filthy bastard right between the eyes. Bielke swayed backward and forward and Halders had seen all he needed to see for the time being, thank you very much, and took a step backward, then another, and felt the blow, actually felt it, saw it with the eyes in the back of his head, as if it were coming at him in slow motion, as if it were all over before it actually smashed into his skull.

A dog started barking on the other side of the street but stopped abruptly, as if it had been beaten. Winter got out of the car and crossed the street in his shirt and shorts. The shirt felt tight around the collar. He'd spoken to Angela on the phone, and she'd sounded… flat. Tomorrow they'd try to get down to the beach, in the evening. He'd have to get some sleep first, but he didn't know when. "It's too hot in the apartment," she'd said. What she'd actually said was that houses are cooler. Still, before long all this heat would be over, and they wouldn't have another summer like it until the next millennium, and by then they'd all be very, very old in their apartments or houses.

The front door was open, as were all the windows Winter could see. Benny Vennerhag was outside in the back, as always. The pool shone: black water. Vennerhag turned to face him.

"Take a midnight dip."

Why not?

Afterward he dried himself on the bath towel Vennerhag had brought him, and pulled on his shorts without underwear, which he'd wrapped inside his shirt: he didn't intend to wear that again tonight.

"Would you like to borrow a shirt?"

Winter shook his head.

"Enjoy that?"

Winter nodded.

"How about a beer?"

"Yes, please."

Vennerhag stood up with difficulty, swayed unsteadily, and disappeared into the house. He came back with two beers and sat down again, heavily.

"Are you drunk?"

"A little bit." Vennerhag opened the bottles and handed one to Winter. "An intimate little dinner here at home with lots of decent drinks."

"Nothing to eat?"

"Cotriade." Vennerhag saluted with the beer bottle. "What do you say to that, you snobby bastard? You thought I gobbled egg 'n' bacon morning, noon, and night, didn't you, eh?"

"I never said anything like that."

Vennerhag took another drink, yawned, and looked at Winter over the bottle neck.

"Couldn't this have waited until tomorrow?"

A telephone rang inside the house, possibly several, as the sound was so clear. Winter looked at Vennerhag's mobile on the plastic table under the umbrella, but it was turned off. No compromising conversations in front of the chief inspector.

"I have to ask for your help in finding out more about the boy," said Winter. "Do you have any good contacts among the new Swedes?"

"New Swedes? I like that expression."

"What do you prefer, niggers?"

"No, no, I'm just as politically correct as the next man."

"This has nothing to do with that. Politically correct is a negative term used by cowardly types who try to hide their own sloppiness by accusing others of being politically incorrect."

"Of course, of course."

"Can you do this or can't you?"

"The answer's obvious, isn't it?"

The telephone rang again, ring after ring after ring. Vennerhag didn't stand up, looked at the silent mobile but didn't touch it. The ringing continued in the house, making a racket like a car alarm. Vennerhag had renounced answering machines at an early stage, which according to him meant he had a better chance of living longer.

"Aren't you going to answer, Benny?"

"Not at this time of night. Only fools call now."

"The fools seem to want to talk to you."

"I'm also being polite to you as my guest. By not answering."

Winter bowed.

"Are you dry now?"

"That was also considerate. What you really mean is: get out."

"In my own way, yes."

The telephone rang again. Vennerhag looked at Winter, at his mobile. The foolish calls are piling up, Winter thought, getting to his feet.

"I'd better give you an opportunity," he said.

"I won't answer later, either," said Vennerhag.

"I admire you."

Winter walked through the house, which was silent now. He noticed the smell of high-class cooking that persists in a house for hours.

Had Benny kidnapped a cook?

As he drove off, he heard the telephone ringing yet again, through Vennerhag's open door and windows.

Vennerhag stayed by the pool. He thought he could still hear Winter's car sweeping down the hills. He drank the rest of his beer and reached for his mobile. There were four messages, and he listened to all of them: they were all from the same caller, and all said the same thing. He suddenly felt sick.

The telephones in the house started ringing again. He stood up, swayed unsteadily, went inside, and picked up the nearest receiver.

"Why aren't you answering?"

"I just listened to your messages. What happened?"

"Father-in-law's disappeared."

The man was using the prearranged code. Vennerhag had always thought it was silly, but it was necessary. His house wasn't bugged, and he couldn't believe his phones were tapped, not by the police at least, but it was too easy to trace old calls nowadays. Not to mention mobiles.

"I had a visit from a good friend of mine. He just left," said Vennerhag.

"What about Father-in-law?"

"I'll come now. At Mom's place?"

"Yes."

"I'll be there as fast as I can," said Vennerhag, and Johan Samic heard a pang! as Vennerhag slammed down the receiver.

Sara Helander waited. Two cars came and went. One stopped outside a house farther down the road. She called Halders's mobile but there was no reply. Nobody turned it off.

She checked her watch. He'd been gone for a long time. Fredrik was an idiot, but not that much of an idiot.

She waited. A station wagon drove by and went around the corner, but she thought she could still hear it through the open window.

It was hot in the car. It wasn't much cooler outside. She thought she could make out a long shadow at the back of the house. The trees were gray and black. Was that something moving there? A seagull cried. It would soon be a new day. Soon she wouldn't be able to see lights in the windows.

How many times have I sat in a car like this so far? she wondered. Stakeouts. But this is different, and we must get out of here. It'll soon be daylight.

There were vibrations over her right breast. At last.

"How's it going?" asked Winter.

"Oh, I thought it was Fredrik."

"Isn't he there?"

"He… went closer to the house to… check."

"Check what?"

She didn't answer. She didn't know what to say.

"When was that?" Winter asked. His voice sounded tired, like a rasp from his vocal cords.

"When he left?" She spoke softly. A young woman came out of the house and got into a car that had driven up. It made a U-turn. She ducked down.

"Sara?"

"I just ducked down a bit. Er… it was almost an hour ago."

"An hour?!"

"Fredrik knows what he's doing. And it's been less than an hour actually."

"How long, then?"

"An hour."

"And he hasn't called?"

"No. I've called him several times, but there's been no answer."

"I'm coming there," said Winter.

"It's starting to get light." "Yes, of course it is." "So I don't know if…"

"Screw the light," said Winter. "I'll see you there. Stay in the car, but you don't need to hide. Check to see if anybody comes or goes." "I've been doing that the whole time." "I'll park in front of the house," Winter said. "Then you can get out."