Never End

39

Ringmar drove west, past the fairgrounds. It looked to Winter as if the roundabout was spinning, a circle of false light.

Another light started to appear over the horizon behind them, a new day. Winter could feel the pain like sledgehammers pounding away at the right-hand side of his body, from the top down. He had Vennerhag's blood on his knuckles, and could smell his own wild animal-like scent. He was shivering in his wet clothes as Ringmar accelerated on the highway, and the wind rushed in through the open windows.

Have I gone out of my mind? Is this what being crazy is like?

Ringmar was talking over the radio.

"They'll have to wait," Winter said. "We can't go storming in with a whole battalion."

Ringmar kept on talking to Bergenhem and whoever else was there. Winter ran his hands over his shirt.

"There's a sweater in the backseat," said Ringmar, turning to look at him. "How many of them are there?"

"I don't know."

"Didn't he say anything about that?"

"No."

"What did he say?"

"What we needed to know. Where Fredrik is. Turn right at the next exit," said Winter, staring straight ahead. "It'll be quicker."

He watched an airplane climbing into the morning sky, like a dark bird.

The flashing lights on its tail sent a message down to earth. Now he could hear the engines, a muffled rumbling.

They crossed the bridge. The sea looked like a field.

It was darker again on the other side. The light was behind them, over the open water. There were no cars on the road, which was narrower when they came to the island.

"This must be it," said Ringmar. He turned off, and it grew even darker in among the trees. Ringmar glanced at Winter, who was making sure his Sig Sauer had survived the dip in the pool. "How are you feeling, Erik?"

"Be patient with me," said Winter.

"We have to stay calm when we get there," said Ringmar.

"We'll see."

Winter leaned back in his seat and pictured the boy's face.

Cohen had called while he was examining the photographs earlier in the day, a day that seemed like it would never end.

"He wants to say something. Mattias," Cohen had said.

"What?" Winter had asked, holding up a photograph that seemed to be mostly filled with brightly colored balloons.

"I think he wants to tell us the whole story."

Mattias ignored him when he came into the room. He was sitting quietly on the chair in front of them.

"You wanted to tell us something, Mattias?"

He didn't answer.

"Do you want to tell us something?"

"I might."

Winter could see the similarities to his father, now that he knew. The eyes were the same, had that same inner darkness.

"What do you want to tell us, Mattias?"

"Where's my mom?"

Winter had expected the boy to look at him, but he continued staring down at the table.

"I want her to come here," he said.

"What's your mom's name, Mattias?"

"Eh?"

"What's her name?"

He said nothing.

Have I made a mistake? Winter wondered.

Mattias looked at Cohen now, then at Winter.

"Where is my mom?"

"We don't know," said Winter. "We're looking for her too." He leaned forward. "Why can't we find her, Mattias?"

"How should I know?

"When did you last see her?"

"Dunno."

"It doesn't look like you live together."

Mattias didn't respond.

"Where does she live?"

He didn't answer.

"Where is she, Mattias?"

"She lives with him. Samic." He looked at Winter. "It's a long time now. It's been a long time." He stroked his hand across his mouth. "They've been living together for a long time." He rubbed his forehead. "I've told her I don't like it. I've told her before." He gave a sudden, short laugh. "I showed 'em. I showed that bastard! Now it'll never happen again… never again!"

Winter waited. The boy seemed animated, but only for a few seconds.

"I showed him, too," Mattias said. "Just like… them."

"Why did you kill the girls, Mattias?"

The boy was in a different world, seeing things only he could see.

"Th… they shouldn't have been there," he said.

Winter listened to the sound of air circulating around the room. He could feel the sweat on his back. His arm had started to hurt again, badly.

"Th… they had no business being there. I… I told them."

He stared at the wall behind Winter where so many had stared before while being interrogated.

"It was their own fault," said Mattias. "If they hadn't been there, it wouldn't have… been like that."

"Why was it their fault?"

"Jeanette."

"Jeanette? Was she there?"

"Sh… she went with th… them once."

"Was Jeanette at the club?"

Mattias nodded. Winter didn't know what to believe.

"What did she do?"

The boy nodded again. Perhaps he hadn't heard the question.

"What did she do there, Mattias?"

"She was outside."

Winter could see the house in his mind's eye, the street, the lights, the door, the hall, the stairs, the wall.

"Outside?"

"Sh… she was only outside but th… that was enough."

"Enough? Enough for what?"

"Fo… for him to follow her. Follow her and d… do wh… what he d… did."

"Who? Samic?"

Mattias nodded.

"Th… they won't do it again. Never again." He looked at Winter now. His body was crumpled up, as if it had no bones. "He did it."

"Johan Samic?"

The boy shook his head.

"N… not that. The other thing."

"Kurt Bielke?"

The boy nodded. There was a glint in his eye, as if he'd just shared a secret with Winter. There were spots of red in the whites of his eyes and saliva in the corners of his mouth.

"What did Kurt Bielke do?"

"I heard him and Samic talking about it," said Mattias, in a voice that suddenly sounded loud and clear. "He'd done it and could do it again." His voice was lower now. "H… h… he… it was his fault as well. That… Jeanette."

"Could do it again? What do you mean?"

"He'd done it once, hadn't he?"

"Why…?"

"It could have been him the other times as well, couldn't it?" He interrupted Winter's question.

"But it was you, Mattias."

"It could have been him." Mattias raised both hands in the air. "It could have been him."

"Do you know who he is? Who Kurt Bielke is?"

"He's a shit."

"What else is he?"

"They say he's my dad, but I don't believe that."

"What does your mom say?"

"I haven't gotten around to asking her," said Mattias, and he laughed.

She didn't know what her son had done, Winter thought, and when it eventually dawned on her, she was scared. She left him in order to get help, but no help was forthcoming from there. It was even worse there.

And then we arrived. Halders arrived.

Cohen looked at Winter, who hadn't followed up with another question.

"Where is Angelika's boyfriend?" Cohen asked.

"Who?"

"Angelika had a boyfriend, didn't she?"

"He's gone now," Mattias said.

"What do you mean, 'gone'?"

"He was the same as the rest of 'em." Mattias looked up, stared past Cohen and Winter. "And he came to me asking loads of questions. Same as you guys."

Mattias was full of hatred for everybody and everything that had destroyed his life. Something inside him had snapped, and he had gone somewhere from which he could never return.

Ringmar was in third gear and worried about the headlights shining so far ahead.

"I'll turn the lights off," he said.

"Watch out for deer," said Winter.

Ringmar couldn't help smiling. He peered into the faint, uncertain light hovering between day and night over the trees.

"Samic raped Jeanette," Winter said.

Ringmar didn't respond. He was too busy trying to keep the car on a road that was no more than a black line between the fir trees.

"He'd had a hold on Bielke for all those years, a big hold. He exploited it."

"How do you know that?"

"Bielke told us during the latest interrogation." Winter turned to face Ringmar. "The boy said so as well."

"There are a lot of villains in this story," said Ringmar.

"And victims," said Winter. "Most of them are victims."

"Hmm."

"They're all victims in their different ways," said Winter. "That never ends." He tapped the dashboard. "Stop a minute."

Ringmar pulled to the side of the road and turned off the engine. The silence was more distinct in among the trees and stones and bushes. Winter consulted the map again, as he'd done before they left town, once his pulse rate had fallen a little. He shone the flashlight down at the floor.

"It was only a name," he said. Vennerhag had mumbled the name of the cottage, and the direction. He'd managed to do it twice.

"One kilometer, maybe a bit less. There's a fork in the road there, then it's another five hundred meters." Winter dropped the map. "We'll walk from here." He opened the door. "Park the car sideways so that Lars will understand what's going on when he and the others get here. It'll make a roadblock as well." Winter could see that there were deep ditches on either side of the road. He stood up, lost his balance slightly, and automatically supported himself on the side of the car with his injured arm. The stab of pain shot all the way up into his scalp.

"We'd better wait for the others," Ringmar said.

That was the only right thing to do, of course. He could see that. But there was something inside him that said there wasn't enough time.

"There's not enough time for that," he said, feeling the intense pain seeping out of his body. "I'm sure of it."

"We're only talking about half an hour, Erik. Max."

"It's not only that. There'll be too many of us later. All at once."

He set off walking alongside the ditch. Ringmar followed suit. There was a smell of water full of weed, of plants that hadn't yet shriveled up in the sun. The sun didn't penetrate very far into here, and Winter detected smells that seemed to be hundreds of years old.

When all this was over he would go walking in the woods with Angela and Elsa, and creep under the trees and dig up some moss. Mushrooms in the autumn. Wellington boots through damp undergrowth. He shivered again in the thin, knitted sweater that was irritating his shoulders. His deck shoes were sticking to his feet as if glued.

They'd gone as far as the fork. Winter pointed right. He crossed the road and walked through the trees, which were less dense there. He could hear a great northern diver calling in the distance. He knew there was a lake behind the house they were heading for. The bird called again, a lonely cry through the early morning light that was starting to scrape out shapes and contours. The bird sounded close now. Winter could feel the ferns and bracken brushing his shins, and once a sting. His wet shorts clung to his thighs and backside.

"I can see it," Ringmar whispered.

They paused. They could just discern the outline of the house, the pointed roof. They moved closer, and paused behind the fir trees. The house was bigger than Winter had expected. There was a car outside, looking as if it had been hurled against one of the walls. A station wagon. The house was dark in all its windows.

So Halders is supposed to be in there, thought Ringmar. Or under. Under the house, in the ground.

"This is Sarnie's hideaway," Winter said.

"How long had he intended to hide here?"

"Until we came."

"And he has Halders for company?"

"Where else would they put him?"

There are ten thousand burial plots around Gothenburg, Ringmar thought.

People would soon be up and about. The sky was gray and blue now.

Halders saw everything, knows everything. Now we're coming so that you can tell us. He knew that Ringmar didn't think for a moment that Haiders was still alive. Probably not that he was in there, either. But Winter knew Vennerhag. Halders was here alright. He had beaten Vennerhag up because he thought there was still hope for Halders.

Now, standing in front of the silent house by the lake, hope had faded away like the stars over the forest. There was a red shimmer beyond the lake that could be seen glinting in places on both sides of the house. Why go in there in a couple of seconds when they could wait for the army of police officers that would encircle the place and shoot their way in.

"Let's go," said Winter.

Ringmar nodded and set off. It had nothing to do with loyalty. He's not trigger happy. Bertil thinks like me. Now's the moment. He hasn't come with me to wait for Lars and Aneta and sunrise.

They crept between the car and the house. The grass brushed against their knees, but silently. Winter didn't listen for any noise from the grass. A shade was pulled down behind the window to the left of the verandah. A hat was hanging on a hook. A pair of boots stood by the door. There was a tool on the bench to the right, a screwdriver.

And now? Winter tried the door handle, pressed it down, and pushed gently, and the door slid open a few centimeters without creaking. He looked at Ringmar, who was ready. Winter pushed and the door opened and they walked quickly and quietly inside, finding themselves in a hallway with the outline of a staircase straight ahead and the pale rectangles of two doors. I'm too old for this sort of thing, Ringmar thought.

There was a dark hole to the right that might be the entrance to a cellar. Winter took another step forward. Another table along one of the walls with some items of clothing on it. Two chairs. There was a mirror over the table and Winter looked at it and saw the eyes staring at him from the side of the room opposite the entrance and he could see the knuckles in front of the face at the end of the outstretched arm, holding something: a gun, a big gun, and he didn't move a muscle, he heard nothing, no barked command, no breathing, nothing from Ringmar, who was also motionless and staring at the same thing but not through the mirror. Winter waited for the impact of the bullet that would pass right through him and smash the glass and wipe out the picture of Samic who was pointing the gun at them and waiting for the movement that would come and…

The shot broke the odious silence, another shot immediately after the first. Winter was still staring at the mirror, which hadn't been shattered, he hadn't been shattered. Ringmar was just as immobile, with his eyes fixed on something Winter couldn't see, he couldn't drag his eyes away from the mirror and the world inside it.

Sarnie's arm started sinking. Winter could see his eyes, still open. There was no longer a pistol in Sarnie's hand. It was lying on the floor in front of him. Samic grasped hold of the hand that had held the pistol, but he didn't seem to be injured. He fell, slowly, revealing the woman standing diagonally behind him with a gun in her hand. Possibly Halders's Sig Sauer. She had shot the gun out of Sarnie's hand. Samic whimpered. She dropped her own weapon onto his body.

Winter had seen her face before, in profile and full face.

"That's enough," she said. "That's enough now."

Winter finally dragged his eyes away from the mirror. She was wearing a nightdress, angel white. Winter took a step toward her.

"Yes," she said, "I'm Mattias's mother.

Ringmar started moving.

"He's upstairs," she said. She knew they knew who she meant. She was looking straight at Winter.

"Is there anybody else here?" Ringmar asked. "Aside from… our colleague?"

"What do you think?" she said, looking down at her gun lying between Sarnie's legs.

Winter rushed up the stairs. All at once he saw a searchlight through an upstairs window. He could hear Ringmar downstairs talking into a mobile telephone. He could hear car engines outside, doors opening, the rattling of a helicopter in the sky.

There were two doors, both of them closed. He opened the one on the left and saw a double bed, unmade. There were clothes on the floor.

The door on the other side of the landing creaked as he opened it. There was a bed in there, too. The light from the helicopter was swinging around and around as if at some carnival, sending circles of light into the room. There was a figure in the bed, its head tied down with straps of some kind. Winter bent over it.

Halders's face was patchily lit up by searchlights, or maybe it was the rising sun. Winter could hear footsteps downstairs now, voices, car doors slamming.

Halders opened his eyes.