If they limited the Gothenburg area to Greater Gothenburg plus Kungsbacka to the south, Kungälv to the north, and Hindås to the east, there were 214 Escorts from between ’91 and ’94; that is to say, cars that closely resembled each other. That was a lot of cars.
“As always, it’s an issue of priorities,” Ringmar said.
“You mean this isn’t the top priority? Thanks, I know.”
“But you feel strongly about this?”
“It is a good idea, admit it.” Winter looked up from the lists that lay in shallow piles on his desk.
“It could be worse,” Ringmar said. “We could be looking for one of the most common models of Volvo.”
“It could be a lot better too,” Winter said. “A Cadillac Eldorado.”
“Why not a Trabant?”
“Fine by me.”
“We can put two guys on it,” Ringmar said after a pause. Two police officers could go into the vehicle registration database and pull up every single owner. “And we’ll start with all the ones currently on the road.”
“Who steals a Ford Escort nowadays?”
“We could always ask Fredrik. His specialty is stolen cars.”
“We can take the rentals first.”
“And the company cars.”
“A Ford Escort? You gotta be kidding me.”
“Small businesses,” Ringmar said, and Winter smiled. “Sole proprietor.”
“And after that, the private individuals,” Winter said.
“Of course, there are some you can discount right from the start.”
“We’ll assign two investigators,” Winter said. “Okay. Let them get started.”
Winter was thinking of nothing when he knocked gently and stepped inside the office of the district chief.
The asphalt in front of Ullevi Stadium was empty, a sea of black glittering from all the bits of trash that had been chucked from the cars along Skånegatan.
“I just thought I’d find out how things are going,” Wellman said. “Or how things are, rather.”
“We’re doing everything in our power,” Winter said, and considered whether he should mention the search through the vehicle registration database.
“Have you read this?” Wellman reached for the newspaper before him. “ ‘Police have no leads,’ it says.”
“You know how it is, Henrik.”
“You-We do have some leads, don’t we?”
Winter saw a big bus drive across the sea of asphalt and come to a stop. No one got out. He couldn’t tell whether the engine was turned off. “Absolutely,” he said. “Surely I don’t have to submit a report on that, do I? To you.”
“No no. But there’s a press conference this afternoon.”
“As if I didn’t know.”
“And of course it’s really all bullshit,” Wellman said. “All this damn commotion.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t like it when we don’t have a name. When we have a name, it’s a hell of a lot easier to manage everything. Like a straightforward drug deal or an aggravated assault or a hit-and-run driver.”
“You much prefer that kind of thing?”
“You know what I mean.”
“If we have more answers from the start, it’s easier to come up with leads.”
“W-What?”
“You mean that it’s easier if everything is easier from the start.”
“Now you’re parsing words, Erik.”
“Was there anything else, Henrik?”
“No. You know your business.”
“As long as I don’t get disturbed all the time,” Winter said.
Still no one had emerged from the bus. Winter saw a woman walk up to it and stop next to the driver’s window. It looked as if she was speaking to the driver. He saw how she suddenly took a few steps backward and then turned around and started running away, out toward Skånegatan and across the parking lot toward the police station-straight for the building in which he was standing-and he saw how her features became more distinct. She disappeared beneath him. She had looked horrified.
“Excuse me,” Winter said, and left the room and took the elevator down to the lobby.
23
THE WOMAN WINTER HAD SEEN RUN ACROSS SKÅNEGATAN WAS hanging halfway through the glass window in reception. Winter could see the precinct commander, with a contingent of five or six men around him, on his way forward. A couple of homicide detectives were loafing next to them. Otherwise the hall and waiting room were filled with the usual mix of bicycle messengers, uniformed patrol officers, reception staff, lawyers, and their clients-a mixture of high and low: junkies on their way up or down, whores, car thieves, shoplifters from all social classes, half-drunken petty criminals, deputy directors who’d been tossed out of bars and returned later with a crowbar, hungover female executives who in frustration had violently resisted the police. Then there were the ones who’d just come by to fill out a form, who were applying for a passport and had lost their way, who’d been missing someone long enough, or who’d just wandered in there, God knows why.
The woman pointed at the bus outside Ullevi. Winter moved closer. He wasn’t doing anything just then anyway.
She explained that there was a man sitting in the bus with a little boy and that he was threatening to shoot the child and himself and at the same time blow up the bus. He had shown her the weapon and a string or something that he said he could pull and then the bus would explode.
“Cordon off the area,” the PC said to a uniformed woman standing next to him.
Winter could see the order getting passed on, the movement intensifying in the cramped space next to the reception desk, and the police officers preparing to go outside and join up with their colleagues who had been called back from elsewhere in the city. He saw the bus, now from a different perspective. It looked smaller, as if the sun had shrunk it as it stood unprotected out there in the empty square.
“Contact Bertelsen at immigration,” Winter heard the PC shout to someone who was already heading off into the bustle. He had now heard enough to know that sitting in the bus was a desperate man who’d finally made a choice, when he no longer had any choice. He guessed it was yet another man who wasn’t welcome in Sweden, about to be sent out into orbit around the world, if he survived that long. Yet another space refugee, a stateless human being circling the planet in rusting hulks that never put into port-or in cattle cars that clattered through all the marshlands and deserts of the earth without ever stopping at any its oases. He might shoot himself and the boy, Winter thought. It wouldn’t be the first time.
Skånegatan was quickly cordoned off and the traffic redirected. The curious were congregating, as if the tragedy had already been beamed out by the fastest media. And maybe it had. The police station’s tasteful lobby was teeming with reporters.
Winter walked out. Onlookers came from all directions and had to be forcibly removed since the police officers hadn’t yet managed to get all the cordon tape put up. The Gothenburg Party has been replaced by a new spectacle, and I’m no better than all the other bystanders, he thought, and walked back inside and rode the elevator up to his office, which faced the canal.
He glanced out the window and saw people coming across the grass, a sudden accretion of matter where there had previously been nothing but wind and heat. It was like someone crumbling a loaf of bread in the middle of the empty sea and thousands of seagulls suddenly shrieking down from the sky.
The phone on Winter’s desk rang.
“Yes?”
“Bertil here. There are some people shooting at each other over at Vårväderstorget.”