“Why don’t you come over here for a bit? It’s been months.”
Yeah, why not. Everything would still be there when he came back. His anonymous gloomy office at the police station was in that sense bigger than life itself. It was here before he showed up and it would remain after he was gone. “Should I bring something along?”
“No. But you are coming, then?”
“Are you alone?”
“Bim and Kristina are out but only for the moment. They really want to see you, Erik.”
Winter thought about his nieces. He was an awful uncle. Awful.
“It’s true,” his sister said. “They haven’t forgotten you.”
He walked down the empty corridors of the homicide department. Someone had forgotten to switch off the lights in the situation room. He stood in front of the board and considered his own vague lines and arrows, circles and Xs. He wrote “Helene” next to the circle that marked the spot where the body was found. He wrote “transport” in the empty field to the right of the map and noted the arrival and departure times for the car he had seen on the video. Beier’s men were studying the footage now. “We’re short on time,” Winter had told them.
He thought once again of the lake, the water. How many people owned boats on Delsjö? Had anyone’s boat been stolen, even for a few hours? Maybe the fishing club knew.
The possibilities were infinite, the disappointments even more numerous. He thought about the child again. She was like something out of a dream or some kind of a message from a distant and frightening land that he had no choice but to visit. We have to find out your name, Helene.
The parking lot was deserted, and he felt dizzy when he emerged from the police station, like a split-second gap in the middle of his thoughts. As if he wasn’t there.
A radio car pulled in, and the man behind the wheel gave him a quick nod. Winter raised his hand and continued over to his Mercedes. The Shell station beyond was an amusement park, a loud glare of neon that gave the surroundings a cheerful tinge. Winter caught a whiff of fried sausages and overheated late summer.
On the other side of the gas station, the traffic was backed up by the cars outside Ullevi Stadium-the whole city was probably gridlocked. Staring stupidly at the keys in his hand, Winter turned back to the front entrance and continued on to the bicycle stand, where he always had a bike parked, in reserve, for situations just like this.
He pedaled past the central train station and on down to the river. Heading west, he had to weave his way through throngs of people milling about the beer tents at Lilla Bommen.
He leaned his bike against the iron fence and walked the short path up to the front steps. It had been months since he was last here, and he’d wondered why that was as he biked through the quiet streets of Hagen, taking in the smell of fresh-cut grass. There were no lights on at the house next door, on the left. Six months earlier he’d investigated the murder of a nineteen-year-old boy who’d grown up there.
The front door of his sister’s house stood ajar. He rang the doorbell.
“Go round the back,” he heard from inside. He guessed that she was sitting out on the terrace.
He made his way back down the steps and through the grass to the rear of the house. She stood and gave him a hug. He could smell twilight and wine. Her hair was shorter than he remembered and maybe a little darker, and she felt thin around her arms and chest. He knew that she was going to be turning forty in two months, on October 18. He wasn’t sure whether she’d be having a party when the big day came around.
“Would you like a glass of wine? Cold. White.”
“I’d love one. And some water.”
“I didn’t hear the car.”
“That’s because I biked.”
“Uh-huh.”
“The city is completely clogged.”
“The party?”
“Yes. Have you been down?”
“Have you?”
“Not for the purposes of pleasure,” Winter said, and smiled.
His sister poured him a glass of wine and left him to fetch some water and two tumblers.
“I bumped into Angela last week,” she said once she had returned and sat down next to him. “In a corridor, after the rounds. She was up from radiology.”
“Oh yeah?”
“I hadn’t seen her in ages. It’s as if she’s taking after you. Some kind of silence or something. Her not saying anything, I mean.”
“About what?”
“About you and her, for example.”
Winter waited for her to continue. His sister worked as a staff doctor at Sahlgrenska, and Angela had recently transferred there from a position at Mölndal Hospital.
“The two most important women in my life are doctors,” Winter said. “I wonder what that means.”
“It means that you’re a basket case,” his sister said. “But then you’re forgetting our mother.”
“Oh right.”
“When did you last speak to her?”
“The last time she called. Two and a half weeks ago maybe. How about you?”
“Yesterday.”
“How is she?”
“I think she’s cut back to two martinis before lunch,” she said, and they laughed together. “No, seriously. I think Dad’s been on her case about it.”
“Dad? You gotta be kidding.”
“When did you last speak to him, Erik?”
Winter emptied his glass. He saw his hand tremble slightly, and he saw that she caught it.
“When they moved-escaped to Spain.”
“I know.”
“Now you’ve had it confirmed a second time.”
“Two years. That’s a long time.”
“He had a choice. He could have done something with his money, for others. And by that I don’t mean me or us. It’s his money. I have my own.”
“Isn’t it a heavy burden to always sit in judgment?”
“I’m not a judge. I’m a policeman.”
“You know what I mean.”
“It was his choice.”
“Mom went with him.”
“She’s not responsible for her actions.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” his sister said, straightening up in her chair.
He reached for the bottle of wine as if he couldn’t hear. “Would you like another glass?”
She held hers out, almost reluctantly.
“They have a choice. They could actually return home and face the music.”
“And what would that change?”
“It’s not about-look, do we have to talk about this now?” Winter said. “Can’t we just sit here for a while and drink some wine?”
13
THE NIGHT SANK SLOWLY INTO STILLNESS, UNTIL WINTER couldn’t read what was written on the wine label. He drank and the wine tasted of metal and earth. He drank again and when he moved his arm he felt as if he was about to lose his balance.
“How long have you been on your feet today anyway?” his sister asked.
“Well, since four this morning.”
“My God.”
“Those crucial first hours.”
“And now they’re over,” she said. “Those crucial first hours.”
“Just about.”
“But the hunt continues.”
“If you can call it a hunt.”
“Want to talk about it?”
He reached for the glass again but then pulled his arm back, sensing that he wouldn’t be able to get another word out if he took another sip of wine. Instead he stood and walked the few steps to the terrace railing and leaned against it. Over by the hedge a playhouse was peeking out from behind a maple tree. Winter had spent endless nights of adventure in there when he was nine and ten, maybe eleven.
Despite a sudden urge to go over there, he stayed where he was. The fatigue was causing him to think of his childhood and its loss. You can have an awareness of a previous life but no more than that, he thought. Soon everything will be plowed into the present.
He turned to his sister. She had pulled a shawl over her shoulders, and it gave her a foreign appearance. A wind from the garden swept through the coarse hairs of his bare legs, but he didn’t feel cold.