Never End

5

Halders’s forehead was red where his hairline had once been. He shut the door and ran his hand over his bald spot.

"The heat out there's breaking all the records," he said, sitting down opposite Winter. His ears were also red. They stuck out prominently and gave his face a softness, despite the hardness of his other features.

"Have you been sunbathing?"

"You could say that," said Halders, scratching his forehead. "With Jeanette Bielke. At her favorite spot out on the rocks." Halders looked at Winter and stroked his left ear. "Although it doesn't seem to be her favorite anymore."

"Did she say anything?"

"We talked about her boyfriend."

"And?"

"Or her ex-boyfriend. Though he doesn't seem to be able to grasp that. Mattias Berg. His name's Mattias Berg."

"I know."

"He doesn't want to let her go, but she's made up her mind to ditch him."

"Not exactly unusual," Winter said.

It's happened to me, Winter thought. A long, long time ago. I once stood banging away on a door that refused to open. At the time it seemed a matter of life and death.

"No," Halders said. "Not unusual. But I want to have a word with the kid."

"Of course," said Winter, standing up and walking to the sink. He took a glass from a shelf and filled it with water. "Would you like some?"

"Yes, please," Halders said. He reached over the desk when Winter held the glass out to him. He could see the forensic report on Angelika Hansson.

"I just received it," Winter said.

Halders nodded and drank.

"It wasn't a consummated rape."

"Just a murder."

"He tried. Or so it would seem."

"Couldn't get it up," said Halders.

Winter shrugged.

"So we're waiting to hear from SKL."

SKL, Winter thought. He'd waited for reports from the Swedish criminology lab in Linkoping before. DNA analyses that had produced the goods; analyses that hadn't. It was always worth waiting. His work involved waiting, and the hard part was finding new roads to go down while doing the waiting. Not being totally reliant on technical and chemical analyses to solve all the problems. He'd had technical solutions to riddles that explained how and who and where, but not why. He'd been left with the big why. As a memory impossible to forget.

"SKL can tell us if it's the same bastard," Halders said. He took another gulp of water, spilling a little as he changed his position in the chair. "Do you reckon it's the same guy? Who attacked both girls, I mean."

"Yes."

He hadn't intended to reply at all, but the "yes" slipped out, like a subconscious desire to have something to get right to work on.

"And the next question: the same bastard that murdered Beatrice Wägner?"

"I don't know," Winter said.

"I asked what you thought."

"I can't answer that yet," said Winter, picking up Pia Froberg's report. What I can say is that Angelika Hansson was definitely pregnant. Probably seven weeks along."

'That sounds early," Halders said. "Seven weeks."

"It is early. But she should have known herself by the fifth week."

"Always assuming she suspected anything," said Halders. He stood up, went to the sink and refilled his glass. Winter could see that the back of his neck was red too.

"I had a word with Pia," Winter said. "She says the girl hadn't had a period after the fifth week, so that she must surely have suspected something."

"Some people repress that kind of thing," said Halders.

"Her parents didn't know, so neither did she-is that what you mean?"

"I don't know. But she hadn't said anything, that's for sure. If she did know, she kept it to herself."

"Maybe not completely to herself," said Winter.

"You mean the father of the child?"

"Exactly."

The father, thought Halders. Probably some pale nineteen-year-old without a clue where his life is taking him. Unless he's something much worse, and the one we're looking for.

Winter thought about the father. They had so many people they could cross-question-friends, acquaintances, classmates. Family. Relatives. Witnesses. All kinds of witnesses. Taxi drivers who used to be good witnesses but were now useless because they'd seen nothing and heard nothing- because they shouldn't have been on that road that evening because they shouldn't have been driving at all because they were being employed illegally. And so on and so on.

"Perhaps he doesn't know," Winter said. "If she didn't know herself, then he can't know either. Or maybe she did know… had just found out, but kept it to herself, and was intending to keep it that way. If you get my meaning."

"Abortion," Halders said.

Winter nodded.

"But in any case, he knows she's dead," said Halders. "That couldn't have been kept a secret. He couldn't have missed hearing about that."

"Assuming he's in Sweden."

"Well, then he'll come to us when he gets back. If we don't get a name before then." He looked at Winter. "We need a name. We're going to get a name."

"Yes."

"If he doesn't come forward, he's in serious trouble."

Maybe more trouble than we realize right now, Winter thought.

Halders's mobile rang in his breast pocket. Winter glanced at the clock: just after four in the afternoon. He suddenly had the feeling he wanted to get away from there, longed to be with Angela and Elsa, yearned for a hot bath and something to give him hope. He wanted to get away from all these hypotheses about death and lives cut short. Angelika Hansson's life was like the first chapter in a book, and her unborn child was-

"I'm having trouble hearing you," said Halders in a loud voice, rising to his feet. His forehead was striped white when he frowned. "Say that again, please."

Winter could see Halders's expression change as he began to understand what the voice was telling him.

"Wh-" said Halders. "What the hell…"

His face twitched as if he'd lost control of his muscles. It was unnerving. Winter could tell that something serious had happened. Something unconnected with the investigation.

"Yes… Yes, of course," said Halders. "I'll go there right away." He hung up and looked at Winter with a new expression on his red face, which had turned pale. Almost gray.

"It's my ex-wife," he said in a voice Winter had never heard before. Halders was still staring at him. "My ex-wife. Mar- Margareta. She was run over and killed an hour ago. On the sidewalk."

He ran his hand over his head, scratched the red patch on his brow again; it was as if the last time he did it had been in another age. Nothing would be the same again.

"On a goddamn sidewalk. On a sidewalk outside a supermarket in Lunden." He gestured toward the window. "That's just down the street." His face muscles were twitching again, out of control.

"What happened?" asked Winter. He had no idea what to say.

"Run over," said Halders, still in the strange voice. "Hit and run." He stared past Winter into the beautiful afternoon light. "Of course, it would be hit and run."

"Is it… definite? That she's… dead?" Winter asked. "Who called?"

"What?" said Halders. "What did you say?"

"Where are we going?" said Winter, getting to his feet. Halders stood motionless. His face still twitching. He tried to say something, but no words came. Then he looked at Winter, his eyes became fixed.

"East General," he said. "I'm going now."

"I'll drive," said Winter.

"I can manage," Halders said, but Winter was already halfway out the door. They jumped into the elevator and hurried into the parking lot. Haiders sat beside Winter without a word, and they drove off in an easterly direction.

A cruel message, Winter thought. Couldn't they have said that she'd been badly hurt? Who was it that had given Halders the news?

He'd once heard a joke on this theme. He suddenly thought of it as the car was plunged into the shadows cast by the tall buildings on either side of the road.

The joke was about a man who is traveling abroad. He calls home and his brother says right out: Your cat's dead. The man calling from abroad tells him you shouldn't come out with such cruel news in such a direct manner. You could say the cat was on the roof… yes, that the fire brigade had arrived, and that the police and everybody had done all they could to get the cat down, and in the end they managed to capture it but it wriggled out of their grasp and jumped and landed awkwardly and they took it to the animal hospital and a team of vets operated throughout the night but in the end they had to concede that it was impossible to save the cat's life. That's the way you should tell somebody about a tragic event like this. Tone it down a bit. His brother says he understands now, and they hang up. A few days later the man calls home again and his brother says a tragic event has just taken place. What? wonders the man. His brother says, Mom was on the roof…

Winter didn't laugh. Halders said nothing. They came to a roundabout and turned off for the hospital. Winter could feel the sweat gathering at the base of his spine. Traffic was dense, with vacationers returning after a day on the rocks on the big islands to the north, or by the lakes to the east.

"The children haven't been told yet," Halders said.

Winter waited for him to elaborate as he drove into the hospital parking lot. The shadows were sharp and long.

"I have two children," Halders said.

"I know."

They'd talked about it, but Halders had forgotten.

"They're at their after-school clubs now. For God's sake!" Halders suddenly blurted out.

Winter parked. Halders was out of the car before it had even stopped moving, and started half running toward one of the hospital buildings.

He was a stranger to Winter, and yet like a member of the family at the same time.

That's exactly what Winter thought as he watched Halders hurry over the asphalt through the sunlight, then into darkness as he came to the Emergency Room entrance. Halders had become more distant, and yet more close, simultaneously. Winter had a new feeling of unreality, like he had entered into a dream. He could no longer see Halders, and didn't know what to do.

He'd been here just the other day, had accompanied the Hansson girl from Slottsskogen Park to her postmortem. Now he was here again.

Halders stood by the stretcher. Margareta's face was just as he remembered it, from the last time he'd seen her.

Only three days ago. Sunday. He'd been to Burger King with Hannes and Magda, and Margareta had opened the door with a smile, and he'd muttered something, then left without even going in. Not this time. Not that they weren't on friendly terms. It was all so long ago. So long ago that he'd been an idiot. He was still an idiot, but back then he'd been one in a different way.

He couldn't see the rest of her body underneath all that white, and he didn't want to, either. He thought about Hannes and Magda as he thought about Margareta. He thought about the dead girls, too, and that was sufficient to make him start slumping toward the floor, lose his balance, recover it, hold on to the stretcher, bend down toward Margareta's face, cling to the moment that he knew would be the last.

Now it's happened to me, he thought. Hit me with full force. This is no dipping into somebody else's misfortune. This is my very own.

He stroked Margareta's cheek.

There had been a first time.

Damn the thought. He'd been nineteen… no… yes, nineteen. He'd been like the girls he and Winter had been talking about only half an hour ago.

Then he was twenty-two, soon to be a fully qualified cop.

He stroked her cheek again.

The divorce hadn't meant anything. Not in that way. It didn't come between them in that way.

Somebody spoke. He wasn't listening and kneeled by the side of the stretcher, intended doing so for a long time. He felt a hand on his shoulder and looked up to see Winter.

It was as light as day when Winter got home that evening. Light shone into the flat. There was the smell of food in the hall, but he wasn't hungry anymore.

He'd called Angela some hours earlier.

He went in to Elsa and wondered about waking her up, but contented himself with smelling her, and listening.

Angela was waiting in the kitchen with a glass of wine.

"I'll have a whiskey," said Winter, and went over to the countertop, took one of the bottles, and poured several inches into a chubby glass. This wasn't the time for a delicate malt whiskey glass.

"Oh, dear."

"You can have the rest if I can't drink it all."

"Just because I've finished breast-feeding doesn't mean I'm ready to become an alcoholic."

"Cheers," said Winter, taking a swig. Angela raised her wineglass.

"Are you hungry?"

Winter shook his head, felt the punch of the whiskey reverberate through his body, sat down at the table, and looked at Angela, who was a little flushed. It was hot in the kitchen.

"How's Fredrik?" she asked.

Winter absently waved his hand: Halders is still with us. He hasn't broken down altogether.

"What'll happen to the children?"

"What do you mean?"

"What I said. How are the children?"

"You said, 'What'll happen to the children?' That's obvious, surely. They're with Halders."

Angela said nothing.

"Don't you think he can handle it?"

"I didn't say that."

"That's what it sounded like."

Angela didn't reply. Winter took another swig.

"They're in the house in Lunden," he said. "Halders thought that was best. For the time being."

"I agree."

"He was resolute, I suppose you could say." Winter said. "When we left the hospital. Drove to their school."

Angela took a sip of wine, thought about the children.

"It was horrific," Winter said. "A horrific experience. A teacher stayed with them in the school until we got there." He took another slug of whiskey. It didn't taste of anything anymore, apart from alcohol. "It happened while they were still in class and so… well, they were still there."

"Did you drive them home?"

"Yes." Winter looked at the clock. "It took a few hours."

"Of course." She stood up, went to the stove, and switched off the fan. There was a different kind of silence in the kitchen. Winter could hear sounds from the courtyard. Glasses. Voices. "But they're not alone there now, I take it?"

"Hanne's there," Winter said. He'd called the police chaplain, Hanne Ostergaard. She was good at talking to people. Consoling them, perhaps. He didn't know. Yes. Consolation. "Halders didn't object when I suggested it." He could hear the voices again, a bit louder, but no words that he could make out. "Hanne was going to call for a psychologist, I think. They talked about it, in any case."

"Good."

"And Aneta came."

"Aneta? Aneta Djanali?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Halders phoned her. She came right over."

"Do they work together a lot?"

"Nearly all the time."

"Don't they have kind of a strained relationship?"

"Where do you get that idea from?"

Come on, Erik! We've spent some time with them. You've said the occasional thing…"

"Oh… that was just the kind of thing you say." He raised his glass and saw to his surprise that it was empty. He stood up and went over to the bottle. "He evidently needs her now." He poured. Three quarters of an inch. "It's not good to be alone. With the children."

"No relatives?"

"Not in Gothenburg, it seems."

Angela looked out of the window when he sat back down. It was beginning to get dark out there, with yellow lines over the sky above the rooftops. She could hear voices and the clink of glasses from the courtyard.

"I can't stop thinking about the children," she said, turning to face Winter again. "Were they completely devastated?"

"No. Not superficially at least. Very quiet. The shock, I suppose."

Somebody burst out laughing in the courtyard below, others joined in. He stood up and went to the window. Four stories down a group of friends was making the most of the summer's night. He closed the window but stayed where he was.

What would happen now? He needed Halders, but he wouldn't dwell on that for a single minute if Halders decided to stay at home. It was up to him. Winter was not going to lean on him. We're people before anything else, after all.

He went back to Angela and his whiskey.