“Yesterday. It went out with the trash, in case you’re wondering.”
Winter nodded. It wasn’t hard for someone to stay out of sight if they wanted to. It was even their right.
“I had a few vacation days left.”
Winter nodded again. He wanted to leave, but they weren’t done yet.
“Anything else you’d like to know?” she asked when neither Winter nor Ringmar spoke.
“What you saw, if you saw anything,” Winter said.
“I was going to think about that in the kitchen,” she said.
“That’s right,” Winter said.
He looked around after she left the room. Two framed photographs stood on a paint-stripped cabinet. No picture of Peter von Holten. One of them was of a wedding couple, possibly her parents-the picture looked like it had been taken thirty years ago. Classic matrimonial attire though. No sign of flirting with that era’s flower power.
The other photo was a black-and-white outdoor scene with no people in it-a house somewhere in the archipelago. The house might have been red and it was situated a short distance above a rocky shoreline. He could make out portions of an out-of-focus jetty in the foreground. There were no clouds behind the house. To the left was a sign warning of an underwater cable. There was a stonework stairway, as if carved from the rock, leading from the jetty up to the house.
He recognized it. He had seen this cabin himself, from the sea. You could sail around the promontory to the left and into an inlet three hundred yards farther on and hike up a hill lined with wind-battered juniper trees. Just behind the hill, on the lee side, was another house, which had belonged to his parents when he was a kid. He was twelve when they sold it, and he had sailed past it a few times since then but rarely gone ashore. He missed it now.
Andrea Maltzer had returned to the room and saw him in front of the photo. She said the name of the island.
“I thought it looked familiar,” Winter said. “My parents had a house there, but that was a long time ago.”
“My parents bought the place a few years back.”
“I guess that explains why I didn’t recognize you,” Winter said, and turned around. A tray stood on the table, and she had sat down and was eyeing him strangely. “I mean, there were no little kids there back then.”
She smiled but said nothing. Winter sat opposite her. She gestured toward the tray and Ringmar did the honors. Winter suddenly felt impatient, even more restless than usual. The photograph from the island had affected him. There was no room in his head for personal memories right now. Something had led him here too. He didn’t believe in coincidences, never had. Many crimes were solved by chance, or what might be referred to as coincidences, but Winter didn’t believe in them. There was a purpose. Chance had a purpose.
“That’s my refuge,” she said. “That’s where I am when I’m not here. Like yesterday.”
“Do you remember anything from the night we’re talking about?” Ringmar asked.
“I remember that I saw a boat,” she said. “Out on the lake.”
“A boat,” Ringmar repeated.
“A white boat or beige. Plastic, I assume.”
“Was it far out?”
“It was a ways out on the lake. I saw it when I climbed out of the car-when I decided that I’d borrowed Peter’s car for the last time.”
“Describe exactly what you saw,” Winter said. “As best you can.”
“Like I said. A boat out on the water that appeared to be lying pretty still. I didn’t hear anything. No motor.”
“Did you see an outboard motor on it?”
“No. But if there had been an outboard, I wouldn’t have seen it in the dark anyway.” She put down her cup.
“No sound of rowing? You heard nothing?”
“No. But I could see that there was someone sitting in the boat.”
“Someone? One person, on their own?”
“It looked that way.”
“You’re not sure?”
“It was too dark to be sure.”
“Would you recognize the boat if you saw it again?”
“Well, I don’t know. But I remember the shape of it, the size more or less.”
“What did you do then?”
“What do you mean?”
“How long did you stand there?”
“Five minutes maybe. I guess I didn’t think much about it; people go out fishing at night too, don’t they?”
“I don’t know,” Ringmar said. “I don’t fish.”
“And the boat stayed out there while you were standing by the car?” Winter asked.
“It seemed to be lying there completely still.”
“Can we just go over the times again, as precisely as possible?” Winter said.
22
THE PUBLIC APPEAL BORE FRUIT. PEOPLE CALLED IN AND JANNE Möllerström was one of the ones who took the calls. Many had seen something, but no one had been in the vicinity. That’s just how it was. “There’s somebody out there somewhere,” as Möllerström expressed it. Winter liked that kind of optimism. It was in line with his spirit.
Winter had drawn up the text, and they’d printed posters that would hang in the residential neighborhoods until they were ripped down. No photograph. The caption read, “Police seeking information!” The copy explained that a murdered woman had been found on Thursday, August 18, at 4:00 a.m., in the vicinity of Big Delsjö Lake and Black Marshes. It gave a description of her and the standard, “The police are interested in speaking to anyone who…,” et cetera; and a little farther down, “If you have any further information, please call the telephone number listed below.” And farther down stilclass="underline" “Let the police determine what may be of interest.” A strange sentence, if taken out of context, but Winter left it there. He signed it, “District CID, homicide department,” in order to avoid any misunderstanding, and at the bottom added, “Grateful for any tips!” The prose had an exuberant quality to it, which he disliked. But maybe that meant the poster would have an effect.
“Find anything in the boat?” Halders asked.
“Beier says it’s the same kind of paint,” Erik Börjesson said. “And it could have been daubed there at approximately the same time.”
“Anything else?” Winter asked.
“No footprints in the bilge water, but a hell of a lot of fingerprints, which it’s going to take time to go through. And that’s putting it mildly, as Beier expressed it.”
“Prints from many hands?”
“Seems the boys were only too happy to lend out their boat. Or rent it out, but they’re not telling.”
“I’ll talk to them again,” Winter said.
“There were a lot of fish scales too,” Halders said. “Seems there are fish in that lake.”
“They haven’t found any footprints up along the gunwale of the boat?”
“What’s that?” Börjesson looked at Winter.
“When you jump ashore, you step off the edge or gunwale. Sometimes anyway.”
“I’m sure Beier has checked that.”
“Speaking of checking,” Halders said. “Stockholm hasn’t been in touch? From missing persons?”
“Nothing from Stockholm,” Ringmar said. “No report that fits the description.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Halders said. “There ought to be loads of them right now. Thirty-year-old housewives who’ve had enough.”
“Had enough?” Sara Helander said.
“Who’ve left the stove,” Halders said. “Who’ve gone off to find the meaning of life.”
Winter and Ringmar had been sitting in Winter’s office, talking cars, and they returned to this when their colleagues left. Ford Escort 1.8i CLX three-door hatchback, a ’92 or ’93. Or possibly a ’94. Or a ’91, a 1.6i. The Road Administration had done a plate search via the National Police Board’s central office, beginning with the letters HEL or HEI. It took twenty-four hours. They’d received lists of all Ford Escorts with those letter combinations, as well as the earlier models, the primitive, flatter ones that were revamped and made more bulbous after ’91. They’d also requested a search of all Escort models that didn’t have those letter combinations. Beier wasn’t certain about the letters-he’d spoken of a possible “optical illusion.” No one was certain, not even the kennel guy as it turned out.