The Shadow Woman

THE WIND BEAT AGAINST HER FACE AS SHE STOOD ON DECK. The sun was low in the sky, a line on the edge of the earth. It was the final voyage. Suddenly the rain came, but she only noticed when she shifted her gaze from the day slipping down behind the horizon. There was a lightning flash, and then another, like her own flashes of memory that came just as suddenly and then left behind great gaps in her thoughts, as if she had surged out of a dream and woken up in another life. The shouts remained in her head like echoes.

Seek out evil in order to destroy it. There was a voice inside her. It came back and told her things. Told all!

The courtyard was in darkness. Behind the window stood the old lady, who lifted her hand like a bird raising its wing. She heard a noise from the swings.

The first few days she had paced in circles around the living room table. It was hot, but she didn’t open the windows. She had been in the basement and come back upstairs. She couldn’t be there.

The sun was here; then it was gone. Everything happened at the same time. I’m cold, Mommy. It’ll be better soon. It smelled of night and rain, and then it became easier to move around again.

She had sat with Mommy a long time. She had slept for a while in the backseat and then crawled up front. It was cold there, and Mommy started up the car and let it run for a while and then turned it off again. Mommy hadn’t answered when she had asked, and she asked again and Mommy’s voice was hard. Then she went quiet. He stood close to her. He had taken the scissors out of her hands. She had one question left and then no more. The cuckoo called. His hands held her. She heard the cuckoo and its wings beating against the wind. There was a scream from the sky.

55

HALDERS DROVE AND ANETA DJANALI SAT NEXT TO HIM. WINTER was in the back. They turned off the highway and made their way through the forest.

The clear-cut was in the process of growing back, until the next time. Old growth survived in narrow reserves. They came to yet another crossroad.

“That’s the last one,” Halders said, and turned to the left. After about half a mile, or a little less, the road opened out onto a slope and ended in front of the house, which was crooked but stable. Winter thought he recognized it. The garden consisted of the hillside in front, and behind the house Winter could see the forest and parts of a field. Now he heard the gloomy sound of hooves against the earth. Horses were running somewhere back there, perhaps startled by the sound of Halders’s Volvo. They’d parked next to Bremer’s Escort. It was covered in mud, hardly pearl white anymore beneath the crud, since it was being driven on forest roads in late October.

Winter couldn’t make out the license plate.

To the left of the house, ten yards away and an equal distance from the edge of the forest, stood a windmill.

It was yellow and the vanes weren’t moving. It was about four and a half feet high.

Halders knocked on the door, which had a window with a curtain. No one opened up.

They hadn’t called ahead.

“What is it?” The man had stepped out from behind the house. “You again.” He approached them and pointed. “The car’s standing right there, in case you’re wondering.” He looked at Aneta Djanali and Halders. “I recognize you.”

Winter shook his hand. Bremer was tall and his hand dry. His eyes looked past Winter. He was wearing rubber boots, and Winter saw that one of them had a gash above the foot. Winter knew that beneath the knitted cap on his head the sixty-nine-year-old was bald. His mustache was dark. He was skinny and wizened, as Aneta had said in the car on the way out.

“May we come in for a moment?” Winter asked. He looked up at the sky, low above the glade. “Looks like it’s starting to rain.”

“A little rain never hurt anybody,” Bremer said. “But sure, we can go inside.”

Aneta Djanali met Winter’s eyes as they stepped up onto the porch. The hall inside was dark. Bremer took off his boots, and the police took off their shoes and followed him into a room with windows facing the back of the house.

Winter looked out, and the horses were gone. He turned toward Bremer and took a step forward. “It’s about your car again,” he said. “And a few other things.”

“What about my car?”

“We’re talking to all the owners of this kind of car. To see if maybe they can remember anything else that might help us.”

“Help you with what?”

“Aren’t you aware that we’re investigating a murder?” Winter asked. “And a disappearance in connection with that murder?”

Bremer looked at Halders. “He mentioned something about it.”

“Is that all you’ve heard of it?” Winter asked.

“Maybe something on the radio or TV. I don’t know. I mind my own business.”

Winter made up his mind when he saw the horses emerge from the bushes. They were moving in perfect symmetry, floating above the high grass.

“Do you know Jonas Svensk?”

“Svensk? Well, he owns the repair shop where I leave my car when it’s acting up. Why do you ask?”

“We’re in the process of looking into any potential connections here,” Winter said, expressing himself as cryptically as he could.

“What connections? What’s my car got to do with it?”

“I didn’t say anything about that.”

“You didn’t? You were talking about the auto repair shop.”

Winter took a breath. “I’d like you to accompany us back to the police station so we can discuss this further.”

“What’s this all about? If you think I’m using my car to move around stolen goods or something, you’re welcome to take a look.”

Winter didn’t answer.

“You think you can go around harassing people like me just as you please, huh? I’ve behaved myself ever since I got out. Ask anyone, you’ll see. Is it Svensk? He hasn’t done anything. Is it that shoot-out? Is that why you’re here?”

“We’d like you to come with us,” Winter said.

Bremer looked at Halders and Aneta Djanali as if they had the authority to reverse Winter’s decision. He took another step and stopped. It’s as if his body is shrinking, Winter thought. His skin is sinking inward.

“For how long?” Bremer asked, suddenly resigned to it.

Maybe he was resigned to it all along, thought Djanali.

Winter didn’t answer.

“Six hours,” Bremer said, but not to anyone in particular.

Six plus six, Djanali thought. If not more.

Ringmar was waiting. He entered Winter’s office when they’d left Bremer alone for a moment.

Winter held up his hands. “I’m just exercising my legal authority.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“The car’s still at the house, along with Aneta. I want you to send someone out there straightaway to pick it up and pull it apart.”

“I won’t ask if you think they rode in that car.”

“Now let’s look at the tape.” Winter inserted the cassette with the footage of the traffic on Boråsleden.

The car drove past and then came back. There and back.

“If that is him, then he shouldn’t be driving toward town but toward his house,” Ringmar said.

“He was visiting someone,” Winter said. “No. He drove to her apartment.”

“Whoever it is,” Ringmar said. “After all, they weren’t Bremer’s prints we found in her apartment.”

“It won’t be that easy,” Winter said. He froze the frame. He pressed play again and froze it again. “There’s still a guy sitting in there and it’s still a Ford.”

“Now we have a car to compare it to,” Ringmar said. “That could give us something. We’ll have to take apart this film as thoroughly as we’re taking apart the car.”

“I want everything on Svensk,” Winter said. “Everything.”

“I want everything about the biker brotherhoods,” Ringmar said. “Everything.”

“I want to know where Jakobsson is,” Winter said.

“Do you want us to search Bremer’s house?”

Winter shook his head.

“Too early?”

“We’ll wait. I want a search warrant first, and then we’ll tear the place apart.”

Michaela had been quick, as quick as the photographer and the copyist. The photos were flown to Copenhagen and on to Landvetter.

Winter closed his eyes, wanting to put off opening the envelope for half a minute. He took a drag and stubbed it out. Maybe for good. There was no room for smokers in a modern world.

He lit a fresh cigarillo before he stood and went over to the wall where the drawings hung.

Landvetter. As they were leaving Bremer’s, a Boeing jet had roared through the space barrier above Bremer’s house. Bremer hadn’t shown the slightest reaction.

He’d seen it in one of Jennie’s drawings-in her diary. It wasn’t hanging on the wall. He went to the desk where the drawings lay sorted into piles, and in the third one from the left, the one containing all kinds of vehicles, there were two drawings with a long cylindrical object floating above the forest and the house. It was a good drawing. Winter could almost hear the roar as the airplane cut through the rain and sunshine.

He sat back down in his chair and opened the envelope. There were five photos. The top one showed the two people level with the house, on their way in. The woman was holding the child by the hand. They were looking straight ahead. You couldn’t see their faces.

In the second, they had moved closer to the house. The child was turned toward the camera or in that direction. Perhaps she’d seen the photographer. It was Helene. You still couldn’t see the woman’s face.

The third photograph was taken closer to the two figures. The girl became more distinct. The woman was in profile. He wanted to put a name to that profile, but he wasn’t certain.

There was something else that made him go cold and still. Between the woman and the door was a window, and in that window he could discern a third figure. Winter shut his eyes and looked again, sharpened his gaze. The contours of the figure were still there, behind a thin curtain: a face and an upper body.

He studied the contours. Had they picked up on this in Denmark? Of course they had. Winter rummaged through the envelope and found the accompanying letter, a single sheet that had gotten stuck inside. He read it quickly. She had written about the figure in the window. “We don’t know who it is.”

The fourth photo was taken seconds later, when the woman and the child had reached the door. The figure in the window was gone. Winter saw the backs of the pair outside.

The fifth showed the house and was the most enlarged of the prints, rough and grainy. It must have been taken about a minute later, maybe, the local photojournalist having taken a break in his coverage of future land partitions. Then he had pressed the shutter release one last time. In the window a man had pulled aside the curtains in order to be able to see more clearly what was going on outside. He did it without thinking, exposing himself.

The man could have been a young Georg Bremer. He had a mustache, a cap pulled down over his brow.

The phone rang. It was his mother.

“Your father’s ill,” she said.

“I’m sorry to hear that.” He slipped the photos back into the envelope and filed the accompanying letter in a folder inside the desk drawer. “What’s happened?”

“He was feeling a bit under the weather this afternoon and we asked Magnergår-he’s a doctor who lives in the area-to come over, and he thought that we ought to take him to the clinic in town.”

Winter tried to imagine Marbella but failed. He had only seen a map of the city on the Internet.

“What’s the matter with him?”

“That’s where I’m calling from right now. The doctors have examined him and done an EKG, but it didn’t show anything.”

“He’s probably just overexerted himself,” Winter said. On the golf course, he thought. He tried to think light thoughts, but the nausea was growing.

“He hasn’t overexerted himself,” his mother said. “We haven’t done anything out of the ordinary.”

“No.”

“I’m worried, Erik. If something happens, you have to come down.”

He didn’t answer. Someone rapped on the door. He called out, “Just a minute,” and listened again.

“What is it?” she said.

“Just somebody at the door.”

“Are you at the office? Well, I guess you must be since it’s only evening.”

“Yes.”

He heard footsteps walk away outside his door. She said something.

“Sorry, Mother. I didn’t hear what you said.”

“If something happens, you have to come down.”

“Nothing’s going to happen. You’ll just have to take it easy for a while, that’s all. No more spur-of-the-moment trips to Gibraltar.”

“You promise, Erik? You promise you’ll come if he gets worse? I spoke to Lotta, and she also thinks you should come. You both have to come.”

“I promise,” he said.

“Now you’ve promised. I’ll call later this evening. You can call too.” She told him the number to the clinic. “I’m going to be here the whole time.”

“Maybe you’d better come home soon.”

“I have to go now, Erik.”

He sat with the cell phone in his hand. There was a rapping at the door again. He called out, “Come in,” and Ringmar appeared in the doorway.

“His sister lives on Västergatan,” Ringmar said, and sat down. “That’s in Annedal.”

Winter checked his watch-nearly six o’clock. Georg Bremer had reluctantly mentioned his one relation, his sister, Greta. Nothing about anyone else. They could keep him for the rest of the evening, and shortly after midnight they’d have to let him go. It was pointless to go to the prosecutor now.

“Seriously, Erik.”

“Seriously?”

“We’ve got to let him go.”

“He can go at midnight. How’s it going with the car?”

“They’re going at it hammer and tongs.”

“I don’t want to speak to him anymore right now,” Winter said. “We let him go home, and the day after tomorrow we haul him back in again.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“No.”

“Want to know what I’ve been waiting to happen for the past month?”

“Tell me.”

“For the girl’s father to get in touch. Christ. His ex is dead and his daughter is missing. We’re searching, and the whole country knows about it. But he doesn’t get in touch.”

“Maybe he can’t.”

“I’ve thought about that, but I’m not sure. He may be dead, sure.”

“Or afraid.”

“Fear feels like a recurring theme in this investigation.”

“Or else he doesn’t know that he has a child.”

Ringmar changed position. “It’s not easy to trace her past,” he said. “It virtually doesn’t exist.”

“There you have it,” Winter said. He sat up straighter. “That’s what this is all about. Her past hadn’t existed, but then all of a sudden it does exist. It comes to her. It becomes part of what later transpires. It precipitates.” He breathed in deeply.

Ringmar was still.

“She comes to this city and her life comes to an end. Her life as an adult. First her understanding of life ended, and then life itself.”

56

A FEW MINUTES AFTER MIDNIGHT, BREMER DROVE HIS CAR off into the night. He said nothing, and Winter didn’t accompany him to the garage. Beier came down to homicide in person. He’d remained at the station the whole time.

“There was a lot of junk in the car,” he said.

“So it’s impossible?”

“I didn’t say that. I just said there was a lot of junk in the car. In the trunk, on the floor, in the glove compartment, et cetera, et cetera.”

“Uh-huh.”

“There were cigarette butts in the ashtrays, and there was also a butt wedged deep underneath the seat struts, and I wonder what it was doing there.”

“Say that again?”

“A small cigarette butt was stuck between the carpeting on the floor and the base of the seat strut, and it took some time to find it. You need professionals to find stuff like that.”

“You mean it was hidden there?”

“Maybe. It’s mostly filter. You don’t know which brand Helene Andersén smoked, do you?”

“No. So it could be hers?”

“I’m just trying to be optimistic here,” Beier said. Anyway, we found it and now it’s on its way over to the National Center for Forensic Science.”

“Jesus Christ,” Winter said. “It’ll take months for them to do a DNA analysis.”

“You want to do it yourself?”

“We have to get top priority on this one. You’re well respected down in Linköping, Göran.”

“I’ll do what I can,” Beier said. “I am susceptible to flattery. But as you know, you normally have to wait in line.”

“We have something to compare it to, for Christ’s sake,” Winter said. “Tell them that. This isn’t a blind analysis. We don’t need to sit and wait for a prosecutor to issue a warrant for a DNA sample.”

We’ve got a body, he thought. We’ve had it for a long time now.

Winter went back to his room, sat down. Another thought in his head had grown apace with his fatigue that evening. Lately he hadn’t had much time to wonder why Helene had been left where they’d found her. Why in the ditch next to the lake? The dump site was far away from Helene’s apartment. It also lay far away from Bremer’s house. And now Bremer was a suspect. Winter closed his eyes and thought about the dump site, far away from Helene’s house and far from Brem-

He opened his eyes, got up, and left the room. Down the corridor in the situation room, he stood in front of the big map of Greater Gothenburg on the wall. He used a sticker to mark the approximate location of Helene’s apartment in North Biskopsgården. Then he looked eastward on the map and found Ödegård-Bremer’s house. He marked it.

He tagged the dump site by Big Delsjö Lake.

He measured the distance from Biskopsgården to the dump site. He then measured the distance from Ödegård to the same place.

As the crow flies, the distances were exactly the same.

Winter yielded to the streetcar on Västergatan and walked south between buildings that obscured each other. It was nine o’clock. At the front entrance he punched in the code he’d been given yesterday. The heavy door clicked, and he walked into the stairwell and up to the second floor. The mail slot said “Greta Bremer.” He rang the bell and waited. Steps sounded from inside, and the door was opened cautiously. All he saw was a shadow.

“Yes?”

“My name is Erik Winter. Inspector with the Gothenburg Police Department. Homicide squad. I called yesterday.”

“It’s him,” a voice said inside. “The one who was supposed to be coming.”

The door opened. The woman may have been fifty or somewhat younger. She was wearing an apron. Her hair was hidden beneath a scarf, and in her hand she was holding a little brush that might have been intended for clothes.

She backed up, and Winter stepped through the doorway. Three yards in sat a woman in a wheelchair. In the half darkness Winter couldn’t make out the features of her face. Her hair seemed long. The apartment smelled of the street outside. They’ve just aired it out, Winter thought hastily.

“Well, come in, then,” the voice in the wheelchair said. The woman gripped the wheels with an experienced hand and rolled backward.

Winter followed her into a living room, where the plant detritus on the floor attested to the fact that the room had indeed just been aired out. The windows opened inward. The woman who had opened the door for Winter excused herself.

“That’s my home helper,” Greta Bremer said. “When you can barely move, you can’t manage without a home helper.”

Winter could see her face now, or parts of it. She wore dark glasses that were more brown than black. He could just make out her eyes, but that was it. Her hair was gray and a little tousled. Her skin was thin and delicate, as if made up of cracks that had healed irregularly over a long period of time. Winter guessed that she was seventy, maybe older, but the illness she suffered from may have added many extra years to her face. He still didn’t know her age.

“So you’re here about my brother,” she said without looking at Winter. “Have a seat first.” She hadn’t yet turned her face toward him. She behaved as if she were blind, and Winter wondered if maybe she was. He didn’t want to ask. She would tell him. “You want to ask me questions about my brother. I doubt I can answer a single one of them.”

“I would like-”

“We haven’t seen each other in many years.”

“Why not?”

“Why not?” She turned her face toward Winter, but he still couldn’t see her eyes. “How should I put it? We have nothing to say to each other. It’s best not to meet up when you have nothing to say.”

Her voice was impassive, which made it even more awful, Winter thought. There was no bitterness, only a voice that could just as well have come from the wall as from a living person.

“What happened?”

“Do I have to tell you that? It has nothing to do with what you’ve come here for.” Her profile was lit up by the window. “Why are you here, Inspector?”

“I mentioned a bit about it on the telephone.”

He explained a little more now-told her about the few leads they had and felt how tenuous it all sounded.

“I have nothing to say about all that,” she said. “I know nothing about him.”

“When did you last see each other?”

She was silent, but Winter couldn’t tell whether she was considering his question.

He repeated it.

“I don’t know,” she answered.

“Is it more than ten years ago?”

“I don’t know.”

Winter glanced toward the entrance hall, where the home helper wasn’t quick enough pulling her head back into the shadows. She’s curious, thought Winter. I would likely have done the same.

“He’s been in prison,” Greta Bremer said. “But of course you know that.”

Winter nodded.

“Must you come here asking questions I can’t answer? Aren’t there any computer lists you can ask today? Don’t you have files?”

“We have files,” Winter said. This conversation is becoming increasingly bizarre, he thought to himself. She doesn’t want to say anything more, or else she can’t.

“I haven’t seen him in many years and I thank God for that,” she now said. She hadn’t moved.

“Have you visited his house?” Winter asked.

“Yes. But, like I said, that was a very long time ago.”

“When was it?”

“There’s no point in your asking. Ask the archives.”

Winter got up and walked closer, but Greta Bremer remained in the same position. He touched the wheelchair cautiously. “Is this one of the newer models?”

“What difference does it make?”

“I noticed that you had no trouble maneuvering it on your own.”

“It’s easier than having someone else push it. Try it out yourself and you’ll see how heavy it is to walk behind.”

Winter stood behind the chair and released a brake. Her hair moved below him. There were strands of it on the fabric and on the thin, broad pillow she had to support her back.

“Try pushing it around a little,” she said.

Winter rolled it back and then two yards forward into the room.

“Heavy, isn’t it?”

“Very,” he said.

“You can put me in the hall,” she said. “I assume you’re going to leave now.”

When he left, he saw the woman from the home-help service standing in the kitchen with her back to him, bent over the sink.

Busy on the phone, Ringmar waved to the chair in front of his desk. Winter waited, and the conversation came to a close.

“As far as we’ve been able to determine, they are brother and sister,” Ringmar said. “The documentation checks out. She’s sixty-six years old. Too old to be a suspect.”

“Sibling love,” Winter said.

“What? Yeah, well. There are many fates,” Ringmar said. “Must have been an odd conversation you had.”

“She seemed very distant.” Winter held up the copy of the slip of paper they’d found in the dress in Helene’s basement storage room. “But this is what I came in for. If I’ve read correctly, this was found on Helene when she was brought into Sahlgrenska Hospital?”

“Yes. Meticulous beyond the call of duty, they took it and put it in an envelope with her other possessions, which consisted of little more than a pair of pants, a shirt, and a dress.”

“And she’s had it with her throughout her life.”

“What are you getting at?”

“I don’t know. But I can’t let go of it, as you can see. I have it with me, here in my hand. And there’s something else.”

“Yes?”

“I’ve been thinking about this code-but let’s leave that for a moment. I’ve also looked at these lines that might just be some kind of map.” Winter leaned forward and showed Ringmar.

“After we drove out to Bremer’s, I studied the big map in the situation room and compared it to the lines here on this one. You see? If you turn off at Landvetter township and drive parallel to the highway-on the old road-and turn left where we turned left, and assuming that the crossroads in the forest looked the same back then as they do now, then I’ll be damned if it doesn’t match up with Bremer’s house. It’s even marked, there in the upper-left corner, after the last cross.”

“And you’ve compared it to the map?”

“Carefully. I’ll show you later so you can see for yourself.”

“Well. I don’t know what to say.”

“You’d like to say that I have an active imagination. But that comes in handy sometimes.”

Winter considered the slip of paper again. “I don’t know what to say either. But it all tallies up. The L would stand for Landvetter and the H for Härryda.”

“And the C for cabin,” Ringmar said.

“Maybe.”

“A place to meet up again? Wouldn’t verbal instructions have sufficed?”

“If you speak the same language,” Winter said. “This was probably meant to be destroyed afterward.”

“But it didn’t turn out that way.”

“No. Helene’s fingerprints as a child are on it. That’s conclusive.”

“Jesus Christ.” Ringmar looked at the letters and the numbers.

“But what about the rest?”

“I don’t know. It could be the number of people, sums, dep-”

“What is it?” Ringmar asked.

“I was thinking-that 23 followed by a question mark. Could that be a departure time? The departure time for a ferry, for example?”

“They couldn’t have been stupid enough to think they could just drive onto the ferry after committing one of Denmark’s biggest bank heists ever?”

“No. But maybe someone else was going to take it. Someone who wasn’t along for the robbery or who wasn’t counting on being recognized. Can you check with the Stena Line to see if there were ferries leaving from Frederikshavn at around 2300 back then?”

A new enlargement arrived from Denmark later that afternoon. The figure in the window was a man who looked like he could have been a young Georg Bremer. It would never be enough to convince a prosecutor, much less to stand up in a court of law. But a court had nevertheless given the go-ahead. Winter got the news when Michaela Poulsen called.

“It was the enlargements that did it,” she said. “We’re going in this afternoon. There’s a guy here from the National Center of Forensic Services at the moment, so we won’t need to send things over there for analysis. If we find something, that is.”

“There could be several layers of wallpaper,” Winter said.

“The NCFS guy just shook his head. Stuff like that only makes you more determined as an investigator, right?”

Halders came running in, out of breath. It was like a confirmation. It was a confirmation.

“Let’s bring him in again,” Winter said.

57

GEORG BREMER SAT BENEATH THE INTERROGATION LAMP WITH his head bowed over the table. He didn’t want to have a lawyer present. He hadn’t said a word since he’d been taken back into custody. Winter had decided to conduct the interrogation himself. Cohen had agreed. Gabriel Cohen wasn’t territorial like that.

EW: We’ve asked you to come back here to answer some more questions.

G B: Yeah, that’s obvious.

EW: We’re really trying here. We’re doing all we can to understand what happened.

G B: Good luck, that’s all I can say.

EW: That’s all you can say?

GB: That’s it. What else can I say? I’m someone who minds his own business.

EW: I see. But you must have some acquaintances, some people who know you. That’s where we need your help. If you could ask one of your acquaintances to speak to us.

GB: I have…

EW: I didn’t catch your answer.

GB: There was no answer. I didn’t answer anything.

EW: If one of your acquaintances could tell us what you were doing on the evening in question, it would be a big help to all of us.

GB: I told you, I was alone.

EW: Were you at home the whole evening?

GB: Yes.

EW: Do you ever lend your car to anyone?

GB: What?

EW: Do you ever lend your car to anyone?

GB: Never. How would I be able to leave the house?

EW: You own a motorbike.

GB: It doesn’t run. It’s always taken apart. If I’m going to drive anywhere, I have to put it together and that takes weeks.

EW: Are you a good mechanic?

GB: I can take apart a motorcycle and put it back together again.

EW: How long have you had a motorcycle?

GB: Long time. Since I was young, and that’s a long time ago.

EW: When you were doing break-ins, did you drive a motorbike then?

G B: I may have. But I paid my debt.

EW: You weren’t alone then. There were more of you driving around on motorbikes doing break-ins.

GB: I don’t know anything about that. I got my punishment. I’ve lived on my own ever since and before that too.

EW: But you still have friends from that time.

GB: No.

EW: You left your car with a friend, Jonas Svensk.

GB: He’s not a friend.

EW: What is he, then?

GB: He’s a mechanic. A Ford mechanic. He fixes cars.

EW: We spoke about your car before. It was seen in the early hours of the morning on the eighteenth.

GB: Like hell it was. Where?

EW: You deny that your car was seen on the morning of the eighteenth?

GB: I was at home, asleep in bed. If my car was seen, then somebody stole it and put it back again before I woke up.

EW: Witnesses saw your car out on the road on the night in question.

GB: What witnesses? Must be you guys in that case. The police become witnesses whenever necessary.

EW: What do you mean by that?

GB: I mean that you’re trying to frame me.

EW: Have you had any visitors to your home in the past three months?

GB: Three months? Maybe I have.

EW: Who’s visited you?

GB: Some neighbor passing by. That happens on occasion.

EW: The closest farm is a mile and a half away.

GB: Well, it doesn’t happen often.

EW: So who have you invited inside?

GB: No one. I haven’t invited anyone inside.

EW: Witnesses say they saw you driving home with a woman and a child in the car with you.

GB: That’s a lie. That never happened.

EW: We have people who claim that it did.

GB: Would that be neighbors claiming that? What did you say yourself just now? That the closest neighbor is a mile and a half away? They must have very good eyesight in that case.

EW: There are houses close to the road.

GB: None that anybody lives in.

EW: There are people living in houses close to the road.

GB: Oh yeah? Well, I’ve never seen any.

EW: You were seen.

Bremer had been seen. Halders and Djanali had started by tracking down everyone who had a house or a vacation home around Bremer’s. Mostly, the houses lay south and west of there.

“I’ve seen the old guy drive past a few times. A couple of times with people in the car.” The man was recently divorced and had been allowed to rent the shed for a cheap price, and he had sat there and thought about how grief affects you. He’d had a bit to drink and staggered around in wide circles through the forest in a nervous and hungover state of mind that sharpened his powers of perception. “You can’t see the road from my place, but it’s no more than a few hundred yards away. Once I was up at his house. It must have been his, because I recognized the car parked outside.”

“Did you see anyone else there?”

“No, not then. But a few times I saw the car pass by with people in it. I know that one of the passengers was a child and maybe a woman. Could have been a guy. The hair was pretty long and fair.”

“Do you remember approximately when this was?”

“Last summer, but I don’t know exactly. I’m divorced-bah, fuck it. It was warm anyway. July, August. A ways into August. Before the rains came.”

“Are you still living in the cabin?”

“Sometimes, but not often.”

“Have you seen this man since the summer? Say, after August.”

“Sure.”

“Has he had any people there with him? Any visitors?”

“There have been people in there. Not often, but people have driven there. Cars, motorbikes.”

“Motorbikes too?”

“Well, he owns a motorbike. Right? Seen him driving on one at some point anyway. A couple of times. There have been people up there on motorcycles.”

“Would you recognize any of the riders if you saw them again?”

“Not a chance. I ran off as soon as I saw the gang.”

“How about this child you saw and that person who may have been a woman-when did you last see them?”

“It was a long time ago. Last summer, like I said.”

“When it was hot?”

“When it was hot as hell.”

Winter met Vennerhag at a nondescript location. They could see ships and hear the sounds from the bridge above the car they were sitting in.

“Don’t come to my house anymore,” Vennerhag said. “It doesn’t look good.”

“Yeah, what will the neighbors say?”

“The mood out there right now is very tense, and I don’t want to be fingered as a fucking snitch.”

“You are an informant, Benny. And my brother-in-law, almost.”

“Is that how it is now?”

“What do you want?” Winter asked.

“There are rumors floating around that Jakobsson got whacked. He was small fry, so everybody’s surprised. His brother’s been kicking up a real stink about it. He must have been to see you at the station.”

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s what I wanted to say. Jakobsson. But it’s a rumor.”

“Where from?”

“Don’t know. You know how it is with rumors.”

Winter didn’t answer. He wondered briefly if the BMW they were sitting in was stolen, maybe even from another country. The chorus from the bridge overhead rose higher when the streetcar drove over it, toward Hisingen. There were parked cars all around them, and Winter guessed that 10 percent of them were stolen and had been dumped here when the gas had run out or when the junkies had stolen new ones to drive the stretch between the Femman Mall, right next door, and the projects in the northeast. Halders knew.

“The Hells Angels have split again and a new brotherhood has emerged,” Winter said, after a minute’s silence. “Do you know anything about it?”

“I don’t know anything about those psychopaths.” Vennerhag squirmed uncomfortably in his seat and looked at Winter. “Absolutely nothing. You know better than that.”

“No rumors from that quarter? Or about them?”

“I would cover my ears if I heard anything. It’s dangerous. Believe me. The less you know the better, and all that.”

“There aren’t many who do know,” Winter said.

“That’s part of the business plan.”

“Just like they’re part of society, huh?”

“Well, you’re part of society,” Vennerhag said. “Law enforcement is part of society just like the alternate power is part of society.”

“You’re quite the philosopher, Benny.”

“And yet your sister still didn’t want me.”

“You too are part of society, after all.”

“Gee thanks.”

“What for? I wasn’t talking about a very nice society.”

“No. If it was a nice society, there would only be room for cops. But I’ll tell you something, Erik. We’re both just as replaceable. Just as pathetic.”

“You can go to hell.”

“Too close to home for you?”

Winter didn’t want to listen. He saw a radio car drive past, over by the Shell station. Maybe they’d already taken down the plate number of the car he was sitting in.

“If you don’t know anything about the Angels, you have to help me with Georg Bremer.”

“I told you-he’s nothing. If he says he’s been clean since he got out of prison, then that’s the truth. I haven’t heard anything anyway. I hadn’t even heard of him before you mentioned his name.”

“I’m talking about your business contacts. Someone might know something. He doesn’t need to have done anything-petty stuff or whatever it might be. I just want to know where he’s been. If anyone’s seen him. Anywhere. And if he knew Jakobsson.”

58

PROSECUTOR WÄLLDE DECIDED TO ARREST BREMER IN THE morning. He could be held in custody at police headquarters for up to four days before charges had to be filed.

“Do your best,” Winter said. What he meant was that Wällde should give the clock a chance to run out, ignore the directive stating that he should “expeditiously determine whether charges shall be filed.”

“It doesn’t feel like there’s probable cause even for an arrest,” Wällde said.

“And yet you did it.”

“That was for your sake, Inspector. And maybe some good will come of it.”

“Hand on your heart, Erik. Do you think the girl is still alive?”

Winter looked around, as if someone had snuck into his office and was waiting for his answer.

“No. I think that’s out of the question.” He saw that Ringmar was also convinced. Ringmar’s fifty-year-old face was pale and looked decayed in the dim light that had settled over the cityscape like a prelude to winter. “We can find her body if we get Bremer to talk. Or someone else.”

“Or someone else.”

Winter ran his left palm over his face. He squeezed his eyelids together and turned to Ringmar. “She hid that butt there on purpose,” he said.

“What?”

“I think it’s Helene’s cigarette butt. She knew that something was going to happen. She stuffed it in there as far as it would go-where nobody could find it unless they really went looking for it like Beier and his team.”

“We’ll know if it’s her saliva on it when the NLFS people are done.”

Before Winter pushed through the decision to issue a search warrant, he spoke to Beier. The head of forensics was under pressure and tired of shouting at the lab in Linköping.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Beier said. “Prints after twenty-five years. So you want us to tear off wallpaper and expose God knows how many layers-three maybe, or five-to see if there are any prints left underneath or in between?”

“Yes. There may only be one layer. The top one. Then there’s no problem.”

“Don’t forget that we have to go through the entire house.”

“Yeah, sure. But if. I’m saying if. Could there be anything still there? Traces of fingerprints?”

“The wallpaper glue will have destroyed everything, I think. Especially after such a long time. It’s damp and it penetrates the paper.”

“But you can’t swear that that’s the case?”

“I seldom swear.”

“Then I’d like to give it a try. Would you give it a try, Göran?”

“Okay. We’ll give it a try.”

“The Danes are doing the same.”

“What?”

“Haven’t they been in touch with you yet? If not, then they will be at any moment. They’re removing the layers of wallpaper at that summerhouse in Blokhus.”

“What do they want to find exactly?”

“Evidence from back then,” Winter said. “We know Helene was there. What if our Georg Bremer was also? What if we can prove it? What if we can prove that Helene Andersén was in Bremer’s house as a child? Or as an adult?”

“Then we’ll get invited to the FBI in Washington and lecture on it,” Beier said. “That is, I will.”

The winds swept in a circle around Ödegård, howling along its walls, which shuddered inside. The sky was black in the middle of the day. Night in the middle of the day, Winter thought, standing in front of the windmill. The vanes were spinning in all directions, aimlessly. The forest had moved in closer since they were last here; it loomed over him and everyone else who had come looking for clues. One of those who stood looking on was Birgersson. He’d come out here together with Wellman, and that was a sensation.

“How did you manage to stop the press from stomping around out here among the technicians?” Wellman asked.

“I thought that was your doing,” Winter said.

Wellman let Winter’s answer fly off with the wind around the lot and glade. He looked around. “One hell of a disturbing place, Ödegård.”

There was the loud crack of snapping floorboards coming from inside the house. A saw was being used. Perhaps shovels.

“Someone’s been digging in the basement,” Birgersson said.

“What did you say?” Wellman asked.

“The dirt in the basement has been dug up recently.” Birgersson looked up at the sky as a plane swooped down over them on its way to landing. “Jesus Christ. Am I dreaming or am I still awake?”

“I’ll ride in with you,” Birgersson said, when Winter headed toward the car. Wellman had already returned to the office.

They drove through the forest. Winter could only see it depicted in crayon, naturalistically, as it really was.

“You know we can’t hold this bastard if we don’t find something new,” Birgersson said. Winter kept to the right on the dirt road when they met a radio car on its way out to Ödegård.

“Part of the job of an investigator is also to rule out suspects,” Winter said. “I learned that one from you, Sture.”

“Are you trying to prepare yourself mentally for a failure?”

“That’s a big part of the job.”

“You’re in the process of putting together a very sleek chain of circumstantial evidence, but it’s still thin.”

“That was nicely put.”

“Come on, Erik. For Christ’s sake.”

Winter merged onto the highway, and Birgersson rolled up his window when they reached high speed. As the fog thickened across the fields in toward town, the cars were visible only by their low beams. Winter was overtaken by the airport bus. It careened along past them as if it were straining to take to the skies itself.

“I questioned Bolander yesterday,” Winter said. “The member of the brotherhood who is set to go on trial for the shoot-out at Hising-”

“I know who he is. I am your boss, you know.”

“Of course he didn’t give away anything, but there’s still a connection to the gangs. I’ve tried to focus on that as I’ve read through everything. Several of the names that have come up in this case have had some kind of connection.”

“To what?”

“To those organizations. I say ‘those’ because there are several of them.”

“Yeah?”

“That’s it. We can’t get any further. You’ll get all that in writing later, so you can file it away, Sture. We can see a possible connection but that’s about it. We’ve sent all the files back and forth and searched back in time-well, you know with Brigitta Dellmar and Denmark and the threats against me. The possible threats.”

Birgersson seemed to sink deeper into his seat. As they approached the Delsjö junction, he looked down at the lake and the parking lot beneath them. “The press is starting to lose interest in the girl,” he said. “It’s disturbing. Although it’s always disturbing where the press is concerned. When an investigation begins, it’s like going around with a boil on your ass, having them breathing down your neck all the time, and when the investigation plateaus and they start to lose interest, you realize you may never solve the case.”

“We will solve this case,” Winter said. “And the media interest has picked up again. After Bremer.”

“I’m counting on your being right, Erik.”

Winter rang Bremer’s sister’s doorbell unannounced. A streetcar passed by with the sound of water being flung by a powerful force. The fall had rained its way into November. He felt the dampness on his forehead and hands.

He pushed the bell again. No sound came from inside the apartment, so he rang it a third time and something shuffled inside. The lock cylinder turned. The door opened and he saw her face. She looked him over for a few seconds.

“You again?”

“I’d just like to ask a few more questions,” Winter said.

It sounded as if the old woman was sighing deeply. She hadn’t moved in her wheelchair.

“I was asleep,” she said. “I usually take a nap in my chair when the home helper is off looking after other worthless old geriatrics.”

“May I come in?”

“No.” She didn’t move. “If all you have is a few more questions, then you can ask them now.”

“There are some things regarding your brother-about his past.”

“It’s pointless.”

“It’s important,” Winter said. “I’ll come back later. I’ll call and we can set up a time.”

A day and a half passed. Winter questioned Georg Bremer again, but it felt pointless-lifeless words passed back and forth. He read the transcripts from the past few months. He waited.

Then Beier called, from Ödegård.

“There’s a second layer, and I don’t know how old it is, but it’s got prints. They could be from Bremer, if he put up the wallpaper, in which case we’re, well, back to square one. But they could also be from somebody else. It’s not much. And they’re small.”

“Small?”

“Small. That’s all I can tell you right now. Could be because of how much time has passed, the glue, moisture. But now you know, so stay off our backs for a bit. We’ll work quickly, I promise. But don’t get your hopes up.”

“This could take you to Washington,” Winter said. “Think about it.”

59

WINTER WAS ON HIS WAY TO THE DAY’S QUESTIONING SESSION with Bremer when Michaela Poulsen got in touch. Her voice was neutral.

“The layer of wallpaper underneath may have had prints, but the technicians say that time and wallpaper glue have destroyed everything.”

“Our glue isn’t as high quality as the kind you use in Denmark. They’ve found something here.”

“Really?” Now he detected a hint of excitement in her voice. “What have they found?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“I should add that they’re not quite done here yet. Now they’ve brought in the heavy guns, and by that I mean heavy. Heavy metals. White lead. Its powers of adhesion on greasy surfaces, for example, are truly awesome.”

Winter sat a bit away from the table and listened while Cohen handled the questioning. Bremer seemed to be in another world-his own, which perhaps he created a long time ago.

GC: Yesterday you told us you worked with others when you carried out those burglaries.

GB: Was that yesterday?

GC: It was yesterday. You confirmed that you were a member of an organization.

GB: Not a member. I’ve never been a member of anything.

GC: That’s what you said yesterday.

GB: Then I used the wrong word. I didn’t mean member.

GC: Are you in the habit of driving around town in your car?

GB: What kind of a question is that?

GC: Are you in the habit of driving around town in your car for no reason?

GB: I still don’t understand.

GC: Some people just go driving around in their cars. As a form of relaxation. I’ve done that myself.

GB: I may have done that on occasion.

GC: Are there any particular places you drive to?

GB: No.

GC: You can’t name any places?

GB: I don’t know what the point of this is. A few times I guess I may have driven out to the shore. Looked at the sea. I don’t know, when you live in a forest maybe you want to see the sea sometimes.”

Winter saw how Bremer gazed at the wall to his right, as if there were a window there through which he could see the sea. His face was stiff and featureless.

GC: Do you remember that we said people had seen you driving in your car with passengers?

GB: Yes.

GC: Do you admit that you’ve had passengers in your car?

GB: Who are these people? It’s not true.

Winter knew Cohen would start to turn up the heat now; that is, if it was possible to do that in the world where Bremer currently found himself.

GC: Why don’t you admit it?

GB: What?

GC: Why don’t you admit that you drove Helene Andersén and her daughter, Jennie, in your car?

GB: I didn’t.

GC: It’s not a crime to give someone a ride.

GB: I know.

GC: Then say it.

GB: What am I supposed to say?

GC: That those two individuals rode in your car. That they were at your house.

GB: They weren’t at my house. I’m the only one at my house.

Winter tried to study Bremer’s bowed face. There was something in his eyes that he’d also seen in his sister’s. A dull sheen, but something else besides. A sadness or knowledge-or was it simply fear?

The home helper waited in the hall for the conversation to begin. There was no door, and Winter couldn’t exactly lock the woman in the kitchen if there were one.

Greta Bremer looked even more frail this afternoon, the day gone and her face lit by a dim floor lamp. “What is it you want, now that you’ve forced your way in here?”

“Just to ask you a couple of questions. About your brother.”

“He always gets by,” she said. “You know all about his past, I assume?”

“Excuse me?”

“You’ve checked in your files, haven’t you?”

She looked at him or at the home helper that Winter knew was listening in the gloom of the hallway.

“We’re searching,” Winter said. He waited as the streetcar rattled past outside. “Do you know if Georg ever used to travel to Denmark?”

“Denmark? What would he travel to Denmark for?”

“I’m talking about way back. Twenty-five, thirty years ago.”

“I don’t know what he was doing back then. Break-ins, that’s what he was doing. And other things.”

“What do you mean by other things?”

“I don’t know. Maybe you know.”

“I’m asking you, Miss Bremer.”

“He broke into people’s houses.”

“In Denmark?”

“You know better than I do.”

“How do you mean?”

“You’re a policeman, aren’t you? You know.”

The courts couldn’t find sufficient grounds to bring charges against Bremer. “A free man. Fucking courts,” Halders had said during the investigation briefing that afternoon. “They ought to go out there and see for themselves-then they’d understand.” His eyes were bigger than Winter had ever seen them before.

“It was the judge himself who made the decision,” Ringmar said. Winter said nothing.

He seems to be in his own world, thought Aneta Djanali.

Another day passed and Winter called Spain, ready for his father to answer. He didn’t. It was his mother’s voice.

“How are things now?”

“Much better, Erik. It’s nice of you to call. We’re back home, as you already know.”

“Was it an inflammation?”

“Mostly overexertion, like I thought. Your father’s not a young man anymore.”

“I’m glad it’s better.”

“You sound a little tired, Erik.”

“I am a little tired. Not very.”

“When all this is over, you must come down here and rest up a little. Your father would be so happy.”

Winter mumbled an answer and said good-bye. He put down the receiver and stood up. It was definitely November outside. The cars’ headlights swept light across the field. Soon Christmas would be here. Angela had night duty. And I may not have Angela anymore, he thought. Should I start preparing myself properly for that?

He walked up to Beier’s laboratories and found Bengt Sundlöf hunched over a microscope. The fingerprint expert was so focused on his patterns of loops, arches, and whorls that he didn’t hear Winter enter. It was only when Sundlöf looked up to peer into another microscope that he saw that he had company.

“How’s it going?”

“Well, there are similarities, but I can’t say as yet if we can make it up to twelve points. Or even ten.”

“How many do you have now?”

“I’d rather not answer that yet. But I’ve got a special feeling, sitting here working with this one.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, the fact that it’s even possible. I have to admit that I never thought it would be.”

“Is it really from a child?”

“Looks like it. I have the two different sets here and I’m comparing them to the woman’s prints-and those of her as a girl.”

Winter turned around.

“Makes you think, doesn’t it?” Sundlöf said.

Winter gave a jolt in bed. The phone was ringing. His reading lamp was on and he was still holding the file in his hand. The alarm clock said it was three in the morning. The phone rang and rang.

“Yes, hello?”

“It’s Göran. Time to get up.”

“What is it?”

“Two things. The NLFS is done with the DNA analysis. Mogren owed me a favor and called me half an hour ago. It’s hers. Helene’s. She’s had that cigarette butt in her mouth.”

“We knew that, didn’t we?”

“We never know anything until it’s been proven,” Beier said. “Now it’s been proven. And there’s something else that’s also been proven. Sundlöf is standing right here, so it’s better he tells you himself.”

Sundlöf’s voice came through the receiver. “I have a definite match. We made it to twelve points.”

Winter’s face felt like it had been dipped in fire. It was as if his hair was no longer there.

“You’re sure?”

“I’m damn sure, Winter. We have fingerprints here that show conclusively that she-Christ, I’m getting them mixed up-Helene, that is, that she was in that cabin as a child.” Sundlöf went silent in order to breathe. “The old coot wiped everything clean that was on the top layer of wallpaper, but he couldn’t get rid of what was underneath.”

“No.” Winter’s head was still on fire. “He couldn’t get rid of everything.”

“I’m handing you back to Göran.”

“I’ve got the whole team together up here,” Beier said. “Are you going out there right away?”

“You better believe it.” Winter now started to feel the coolness in the room from the wind slipping in through the half-open balcony door and on down the hallway into his bedroom.

“I’ll come with you,” Beier said.

Halders drove. Winter had called him immediately, and Halders had called Aneta, who was now sitting next to him in the front seat. Winter and Ringmar were in back. Beier rode in the radio car behind them.

The forest was without color at four thirty in the morning. No planes slicing through the air above them. No lights as far as the eye could see. A starless void. The glow from the city didn’t make it out here.

A dim lamp was burning above the porch, and Bremer’s Ford was parked as if the driver had been in a hurry. The car shone mutedly in the light from the porch that was shrouded in fog.

“What was that?” Djanali said, when they had climbed out of the car.

“It’s the horses beyond the trees,” Winter said. “They’re nervous.”

“That’s nothing compared to what I am,” she said.

The radio car pulled up behind them, and Beier and the uniformed officers climbed out. A proper police state, thought Winter. Pick them up in the dead of night.

The police prepared themselves. Winter banged on the door, and the sound resonated through the house with a hollow echo. He banged again with his knuckles, but no one came to the door in their nightshirt. He felt for the handle and pressed down. The door opened inward. Winter called out Georg Bremer’s name but nobody answered.

“Stay down, for Christ’s sake,” he heard Halders hiss behind him to Aneta or someone else. Ringmar stood next to him.

“Let’s go,” he said to Ringmar and the others behind. “Bertil and I will go inside. Two men go round the back, and Fredrik and Aneta wait down here.”

They stepped into the hall. The rooms smelled of earth, maybe of horse.

“Christ it’s cold,” Ringmar said in a low voice.

It was cold. Not as cold as out there, but cold like a house that hasn’t been heated for days.

In the kitchen Winter touched the wood-burning stove, which felt ice cold. Through the window he could see the field behind the house. The sky was bigger there and tinged with light. Morning was on its way.

“He’s not down here.”

“Maybe he’s not here at all,” Winter said.

Ringmar didn’t answer.

“Let’s go upstairs,” Winter said, and went back to inform the others.

“I’ll go with you,” Halders said.

They climbed the steps. Every third one creaked. “Georg Bremer,” Winter called out. He held his gun in his hand. Steel glinted in Halders’s hand too, as they stood in the hallway at the top of the stairs, and suddenly a moonbeam shot between them and lit up their weapons. Winter followed the beam with his eyes, from right to left. It shone a few feet down the hall and in through a door a bit farther on and came to rest on two bare feet that floated in the air above the floor.

“Damn it!” Ringmar shouted, and set off down the hallway and in through the door ahead of the others. Winter ran and saw him lift the feet and legs and body in the darkness of the room.

“Where’s the light switch?” Halders yelled, fumbling at the door.

The room exploded in light from a bulb dangling from the ceiling. Winter blinked and forced his eyes to see. Ringmar held up the body hanging by a rope from a thick iron eyebolt that had been drilled into the ceiling next to the light fixture.

Halders tried to lift the rope over Georg Bremer’s blackened face, but he couldn’t. He took out his knife and cut it through, and together Winter and Ringmar laid the body down on the floor. Only now did Winter register the smells in the room. He saw that Halders sensed it too, his face set as if in plaster, his stubbled head a skull in the harsh light. Ringmar’s face was invisible, bent over the body, until he glanced up at Winter and pointed. Winter looked and saw the A4 sheet of paper that Bremer had fastened with pins through his shirt and into the skin of his chest. One of the pins had come off when they’d lowered the corpse, and the sheet of paper rested loosely against the body. Winter had to tilt his head in order to read what was written in capital letters with black marker: “I KILLED THE CHILD. GOD HAVE MERCY ON MY SOUL.” He read it twice without really understanding. Then he heard Ringmar’s high-pitched wheezing. He heard Halders’s stomach revolt onto the threshold of the room. He read it again and closed his eyes. Voices sounded from the ground floor below. He saw figures in the darkness outside the room. He saw Aneta Djanali lean over Halders, who was sprawled across the threshold with his head out in the hallway. He heard Ringmar speak to someone about something. He heard the words a second time: “Send down more units and machines. We have to dig. We have to dig up this place.”

60

THE MACHINES ROARED AT ÖDEGÅRD. THEY FOUND THE CLOTHES beneath the concrete floor in the basement. Everyone tried to prepare themselves, mentally and otherwise.

When he drove between the cabin and the city, it was as if the world had lost all depth and become a shallow shroud of fog between life and death. Ödegård was death and the other was life. You could just make out the lights of the city, ten miles off through the drizzle of the gray morning, like urine on dirty snow.

He went upstairs to Beier once he’d read the message on his desk. It was the last time.

Winter drove home and parked the car in the garage. He walked over the hill and rang the doorbell. Nobody opened. It was like last time. He pressed it again, and the door clicked and he saw her eyes glimmering inside, down low. He hadn’t heard the wheelchair.

“You again,” she said.

“You’ll have to let me in this time.”

“Why should I do that?”

“It’s over now, Brigitta.”

“That makes it a bit less conclusive,” Beier had said.

“But it’s enough, isn’t it?” Winter had asked.

“Yes. Otherwise the test wouldn’t be so expensive and take so much time.”

“How many have they done?”

“Don’t ask me. Come back when they’ve set up a database. That could happen this year, by the way.”

She rolled ahead of him into the room that shook from the streetcars outside. It wasn’t a room to live in. Maybe she doesn’t, Winter thought. Live. She lives, but hardly a life.

“What was it you called me?”

“Your real name. Brigitta.”

“Never heard of it.”

“I said it’s over now. You don’t need to feel afraid anymore.”

She didn’t answer. Her face bore a faint shadow from the day.

“Do you hear me, Brigitta?”

“Why are you calling me that?”

“That’s your name.”

“I mean, why are you suddenly calling me Brigitta? What makes you think that-”

“I don’t just think it,” Winter said. “I know.”

“How?”

“It’s not the falsified documents identifying you as Greta Bremer,” he said. “They’re excellent forgeries.”

She nodded. He thought it looked as if she nodded.

“And your appearance. You couldn’t possibly be the fifty-five-year-old Brigitta Dellmar.”

“There, you see? I can barely move, after all.”

“I wanted to believe that you were Brigitta,” Winter said. “But it felt impossible. And I found nothing to support that theory.”

She now turned her face toward him for the first time.

“Well? How do you know then?”

Winter took a step closer and came up next to her in the wheelchair. He slowly reached out and plucked something from the pillow behind her back.

“This,” he said, and held up a strand of hair that may have been visible in the light of the window.

“What is that? My hair?”

“A strand of your hair,” Winter said. “Ever heard of DNA?”

“No.”

“You’ve never heard of DNA?”

“Sure.”

Winter let the strand of hair drop from his hand and sat down in one of the armchairs.

“You took a strand of hair the first time you were here,” she said. “You stood behind me while I was sitting here.”

“Yes. I saw an opportunity.”

“This damned wheelchair.”

“You are Brigitta Dellmar?”

“You already said I am.”

“I’d like to hear it from you.”

“Does it make any difference?”

“Yes.”

She rubbed her deformed legs.

“I am Brigitta Dellmar,” she said. “I am Brigitta Dellmar, but that doesn’t do anyone any good.”

“And Georg Bremer isn’t your brother.”

“He isn’t my brother.”

“Why did he tell us that you were his sister?”

“He thought that he could scare me. And I’ve passed for his sister all these years, without actually being it. I’ve had to play that role. It was their decision.” She looked straight at Winter. “But he couldn’t scare me.”

The telephone rang, and she lifted the receiver on the third ring and said yes and listened. She said, “Wait,” and turned to Winter. “Is this going to take long?”

Winter didn’t answer that insane question.

“I’ll call you back,” she said, and hung up.

“You called Bremer’s house two days ago,” Winter said.

“How do you know it was me?”

“Wasn’t it?”

“Yes, it was me. I called him after he’d returned from the police, the last time.”

“Didn’t you realize that we’d see who had called him?”

“Maybe.”

“Why did you call him?”

“It was time for him to die. He had lived for too long. He killed my baby,” she said, and her face cracked in front of him. She slumped to the side in her wheelchair and lay as if dead, with her ruined visage facing downward. She turned a hundred years old in front of Winter. She said something, but it was muffled by the fabric and stuffing.

She sat up again, and Winter saw the tears smeared across her face.

“I told him that he had killed my child. That I knew. He didn’t know I knew,” she said, and now she cried out, a soft wail that came from deep within and intensified. “He didn’t know that it was all my fault.” She fell silent and looked at Winter.

I can only wait, he thought.

She sat with her chin against her chest, then raised her head again.

“I told him that he had killed his own child. I said that!”

Winter was silent. A streetcar passed by outside without sound. The clock on the wall had stopped.

“I told him that he had killed his own child, that Helene was his child.” She looked straight at Winter. “There is nothing more heinous than killing another human being. What does it mean, then, to kill your own child?”

“You told him that Helene was his daughter?”

“Yes.”

“Was she? Was it true?”

“No.”

“But you said it to him?”

“I wanted him to suffer for what he had done. He hadn’t suffered. He doesn’t know what suffering is. He doesn’t know. He didn’t know.”

“What do you mean when you say that it’s all your fault?”

“She was my girl,” Brigitta Dellmar said now, lost in another time. “Helene was my girl. She wasn’t like anyone else. We were never like anyone else.”

“She is your girl,” Winter said.

“She’s had it so tough.” Brigitta Dellmar suddenly reached out and grabbed hold of Winter’s hands with hers. “She’s suffered, and it’s been all my fault, and in the end I couldn’t stop myself from telling her. I told her.”

“What did you tell her? That you were her mother?”

“What? That I…? She knew I was her mother. She knew that I was her mother.”

Winter felt her fingers grasp at his. Her grip was hot and cold, and he could feel her pulse.

“When did she find out?” Winter leaned forward. “When did she findo out?”

“She’s always known. She’s always… Ever since she was a little girl.”

“But she was a foster child for many years,” Winter said. “She was alone when she came back here.”

“She knew,” Brigitta Dellmar said. “Inside she knew. When she came back here and was a big girl she found out again.”

Winter asked, and she told him everything. She had been wounded. They had kept her hidden, and then she had kept herself hidden away from the world for such a long time that she had ceased to exist. She didn’t know how many years. They had let her keep some of the money and created a new identity for her and she had returned to Sweden, to her so-called brother. Ha-ha!

When the girl tried to make a life of her own, and bore a child, she was there. Suddenly she was there.

“Who is Jennie’s father?” Winter asked.

“Nobody knows.”

“Not even you?”

“It was as if she wanted me to be the last to know.”

“Why?”

She shrugged her shoulders. Winter’s breathing now started to return. The hairs on the back of his neck were damp with sweat.

“It was all my fault. I contacted her again. She had been having a difficult time connecting with other people, and now it became impossible. She turned in on herself more and more.”

“How often did you see each other?”

“Just occasionally. I helped her to get her memory back, and that was the death of her.”

“Excuse me?”

“Her memory. It caused her death.”

“How do you mean?”

“I told her things she didn’t know anymore. And things she never knew and yet thought a lot about. What happened.”

Winter nodded.

“Bremer murdered her father. He carried it out.”

“Her father?”

“Kim. My Kim.”

“Kim Andersen? You mean Kim Andersen? The one who was also known as Kim Møller?”

“Bremer murdered him.”

“You told Helene that?”

“I told her everything. I told her everything. And she went to see him. I knew where he was. She made several trips down there. In the end she knew enough that she told him. But he thought she was lying. He was sure that he was her father. I was afraid, terribly afraid. Helene seemed to be beside herself with fear when she found out what had happened to her father, Kim. That Bremer had murdered him. What had happened to her…” Brigitta Dellmar dropped her head forward. She seemed exhausted from having spoken for so long. “I wanted my money too, and it scared me, but I needed… Helene needed… We had a right to our money. And Jennie too.”

Winter breathed harder, steeled himself.

“Where’s Jennie?”

She looked at him, past him. Her gaze had melted away. “He could murder again. He did it.”

“He did it? He murdered Jennie?” Winter’s mouth was so damn dry he couldn’t hear whether he had uttered the words.

“He could do it again,” Brigitta Dellmar said. “He was crazy. He killed Oskar. Poor Oskar. That was also my fault. He must have done it.”

“Oskar? Oskar Jakobsson? Bremer killed Jakobsson?”

Winter couldn’t tell how much of her was actually there in the room with him. She had started to move her head back and forth.

“Did Bremer kill Jakobsson?” Winter repeated.

“He must have. Oskar was still a threat. Just like Helene. Helene got in touch with Bremer, but I’m not sure exactly when. He must have regretted that he hadn’t-”

“Regretted what? What did he want to do? What did he regret?”

“She wanted to know. That was it. She just wanted to know. She wanted what she had a right to. She told me, but not much. Then it was too late.”

“What was too late?”

“I don’t know what happened,” Brigitta Dellmar said.

“Where is Jennie?” Winter asked again. “You’ve got to answer me.”

“Poor Oskar,” Brigitta Dellmar said. “He knew nothing. He was nice. They knew each other. Didn’t you know that? They were old acquaintances.”

“There were a lot of old acquaintances,” Winter said.

Bremer gave Jakobsson the money to pay the rent. Perhaps to make us think that it was Jakobsson. No. For some other reason. Maybe so that we would eventually find him and punish him for what he had done to the child he thought he was the father of.

“I didn’t have the courage myself,” she said. She was suddenly here again; her eyes had regained their sharpness. “I didn’t have the courage. I don’t have the courage. I have my own guilt. They know. They see.”

“Who are they?”

“You know.”

“We know and we don’t know. We can’t prove anything.”

“That’s how it’s always been,” she said. “No one is ever free.”

“Bremer is dead,” Winter said.

“He’s finally dead? Is it true?”

Winter realized that she didn’t know.

“We haven’t made it public yet,” he said. “But he’s gone. He hanged himself.”

“He listened to me,” she said.

“Where’s Jennie?” Winter asked yet again.

“I tried to protect her,” Brigitta Dellmar said. “I tried to protect her when I knew that Helene wanted to know everything.”

“Protect her? From whom?”

“From him. From everyone. I tried to protect her.” She looked at Winter. “She was also alone. She needed protecting.”

“Why didn’t you report that she was missing? You could have done it anonymously.”

“I didn’t know.”

“You didn’t know that she was gone?”

“Not at first. Not then. We had broken off contact then. I hadn’t seen her for a long time. It was like that with her. Suddenly she didn’t want anything to do with me. And of course I can understand that.” She looked at Winter, right into his eyes. “Maybe it’s all a dream,” she said. “A fairy tale.” She moved her damaged body. “Maybe it never happened. None of it.” She sat up. The telephone rang. “Let it ring,” she said. “Do you have a car? Can you carry me?”

She directed him south, down onto the Säröleden highway. They could see the sea. She didn’t say a word. Winter drove two miles, past Billdal. She gestured for him to take the next exit on the right.

The paved road soon gave way to dirt. Winter thought about Ödegård again, but the road here ran across coastal land. Seabirds took off in long lines. Feeling as if his breath was being thrust out of his lungs, he rolled down the car window. The smell of damp salt grew stronger in the air the closer they got to the sea.

She pointed to the left. The road narrowed. She made a call from his cell phone. The road turned into a glade. The clouds were suddenly gone, the sun distant yet still there. The house lay in a depression with a fence around it, and a man came up to the car when it pulled up in front of a robust gate. The man was armed. Brigitta Dellmar nodded. They drove into the yard, and Winter parked in front of the house. The sea’s presence was even stronger now, a murmuring in the mind, and the sun had begun to sink into it. Brigitta Dellmar sat still next to Winter in the car. She pointed to the west. Winter got out and took a few steps from the car, and she gestured again with her hand. She’s insane, he thought. I’m insane. The man stayed by the gate with his weapon, a machine gun, as Winter approached the gable end of the house. He walked up the slope and saw the fields open up toward the water. The sun was right in his eyes. He heard voices and cupped the palm of his hand over his eyes to see. The girl was on her way toward him from the sea. The woman was walking next to her. The girl was holding something. They came closer. The woman was blonde. They were twenty-five yards away. They drew closer. Winter saw only the contours of the woman’s face, outlined against the sun.

They stood before one another. Jennie was holding pebbles in her hand, and long strips that might be seaweed. Winter was blinded by the sun and the wetness in his eyes, by the salt that ran down his face. He squatted down in front of the girl. The woman remained standing there. She didn’t move. He closed his eyes, and when he opened them again she was gone, as if dissolved into the haze. Winter cautiously reached out with his hand and touched the girl’s shoulder. It was like brushing against a little bird. She wasn’t afraid.

“Who are you?” she asked.