“What did you do when you found the boat?” Winter asked.
“We rowed back here and put the motor on, and then we went out fishing.”
“You didn’t notice anything strange or out of place in the boat when you found it?” Halders asked.
“No. Like what?” the boy said, but Winter could see what he was thinking.
“Anything that didn’t belong there,” Halders said.
“Not that we could see.”
“Nothing lying around, no leaves or anything?”
“We probably didn’t check that carefully. But the boat’s right over there,” the boy said, and nodded toward the path and the boat beyond.
“I’m sure you understand that we have to borrow your boat for a while and examine it,” Winter said, and thought of all the time that had passed.
“No problem,” the boy said enthusiastically, as if he were on the verge a great adventure.
They walked back to the boat. The bottom of the plastic skiff was covered in four inches of water.
“Have you bailed out any water since you found it?” Halders asked.
“No.”
“Good. Where are the fish, by the way?”
The boys looked at each other again and then at Halders.
“We threw them back ’cause we felt sorry for them this time.”
“Good.” Sports fishermen lie in a thousand different ways, Halders thought. Even the young ones are damn inventive. He bent forward and peered along the inside of the gunwale.
“What’s that under the oarlock?” he said, and pointed. “Come closer so you can see. There. The left one, four inches above the water.”
The boys looked, but neither of them said anything.
“It’s not something you recognize?” Halders asked.
“It looks like some kind of sign,” one of the boys said, acknowledging the little red spot of paint on the boat’s dirty yellow interior. “Or something. But it wasn’t there before.”
16
THERE WERE NO WINDOWS DOWN THERE, AND SHE DIDN’T KNOW if it was morning or evening. The light from the lamp sort of stopped halfway up in the air and then a little bit fell on her. She could barely see her hand when she held it in front of her.
She wasn’t cold anymore because she had been given two blankets and warm water that they had made sweet. After she drank the sugar water she must have fallen asleep, and when she woke up it was as if she didn’t know if she had been asleep. It was so strange, but it was also good because she wasn’t scared when she was sleeping. You couldn’t be scared because you weren’t there.
Now she was there again and she heard a noise from up on the roof. She would have liked to scream out “I want my mommy!” But she didn’t dare. Maybe the man would come with more sugar water, and then she’d sleep again.
Nobody had hit her again. She didn’t think about that at all. Now she thought about the summer and that it was warm under your feet when you walked on the street or in the sand. They had walked in the sand when they came over on the boat. When they had driven onto the boat it made such a terrible clanging sound, and some men waved to them to drive deeper into the boat’s belly. Then she had walked in the sand-it wasn’t long after-and Mommy had sat with her awhile, and then she had gone swimming, and Mommy had stood there at the edge of the water, and then Mommy had gone and bought something to drink from a man who was standing on the beach. It was a funny small bottle and the drink tasted like lemon.
It was ugly down here, she could tell. There were no tables or chairs, and she sat on a mattress that smelled bad. She had first tried to hold her nose up and turn away, but that had been hard, and now it didn’t smell anymore, or only when she thought about it.
Now she crinkled the slip of paper a little inside her pant pocket. She didn’t dare take it out and look at it but she had it, like a secret, and that was scary but it was good too.
Then she thought that her mommy was dead. She’s dead and I’ll never get to see her again. Mommy would never be away for this long without saying anything, or calling, or writing a note that the men could show her and read to her.
Her whole body gave a start when the door up above creaked open.
Now she saw the legs of the man as he came down the stairs. She kept her head down and only saw his legs even when he came up to her and the mattress.
“We’re leaving.”
She looked up but she couldn’t see the man’s face because the light was shining right on him. She tried to say something, but it came out like a squawk from a crow.
“Get up.”
She pushed off the blankets and first rose to her knees and then stood, and one of her legs hurt because it had been underneath the other one and had fallen asleep.
Now she tried to say something again. “Are we going to Mommy?”
“You don’t need to bring that with you,” the man said, and took away the blanket that she had under her arm. “Let’s go.”
He pointed toward the stairs, and she started walking, and he followed behind her. She had forgotten how high the steps were, and she almost had to use her hands and feet to ascend them, like a mountain climber. Her eyes hurt from the sunlight that poured through the open door. She closed them and then looked again, and it became darker and easier to see because someone was standing in front of the light in the doorway.
17
STURE BIRGERSSON HAD BEEN DISCREET. HE’D STAYED IN THE background, as usual, and directed his gaze upward, for vertical contact with the powers above. But now the department commander was calling on his deputy.
Winter knew Sture had delayed his trip into the unknown: when he took off on vacation he always disappeared somewhere, but nobody knew where. Many wondered, but Birgersson himself never said a word. Winter had a telephone number, but he would never even consider using it.
With the window open, the boss’s smoke drifted outside and polluted the area all the way to the Heden recreation grounds. His face was carved out of stiff cardboard, spotted by the sun where the light came in from the left. His desk was empty except for the ashtray. It’s just as fascinating every time I come here, Winter thought. Not a single shred of paper. The computer is never on. The cabinet looks like it can’t even be opened anymore. Sture sits there smoking and thinking. It’s gotten him far.
“I’ve finished reading it now,” Birgersson said. “There are a lot of leads.”
“You know how it is, Sture.”
“I can only remember one previous case where we didn’t know the victim’s identity within the first twenty-four hours.”
Winter waited, pulled out his cigarillos, lit one, and took a first drag while Birgersson looked like he was searching through memory files in his brain. You can’t fool me, Old Man, Winter thought. You know damn well if there’s been one case or more than that.
“Maybe you know better than I do?” Birgersson said, looking his immediate subordinate in the eyes.
Winter smiled and leaned forward over the desk and tapped off the ash from his Corps. “There’s only one case, as far as we can tell.”
“In living memory, I mean,” Birgersson said.
“If we’re both thinking about that guy at Stenpiren, I hope that was a one-of-a-kind event,” Winter said.
A man had fallen into the water and drowned, and when they tried to find out who he was, they discovered he hadn’t been reported missing anywhere in the country. He’d been wearing a tracksuit, had no money in his pockets, no keys, no ID card, no ring with an inscription-nothing. They barely managed to get his fingerprints after all the time he’d spent in the water, but that didn’t do them any good either. He was, though buried now, still unknown to the world.
“That one also took place during the Gothenburg Party,” Birgersson said. “Reason enough alone to pull the plug on the damn thing, stop the madness.”