Never End (14 page)

“Only one,” said Hansson. “I’m waiting for the rain to run down this windowpane.” He pointed. “It can’t make up its mind.”

Winter nodded, as if he understood.

“What is it?” Hansson asked.

“Some photos,” said Winter. “I’d like you to take a look at them.” He gestured toward the hall. “In Angelika’s room.”

“I’m not going in there.” Hansson tore his eyes away from the windowpane. There was a smell of both heat and dampness in the room, like the air outside. The wind was making the trees sway. It was like dusk both inside the room and in the garden on the other side of the glass, which was streaked with rain. “I haven’t been in there since it happened.”

“I’ll bring them here,” said Winter, going out and returning with the photographs. He handed them to Hansson. The man looked at them, but didn’t seem to take them in.

“What’s this?” he asked.

“I don’t really know,” said Winter. “Some kind of a bar. A restaurant, maybe. Don’t you recognize it?”

“Recognize what?” asked Hansson, looking at Winter.

“The place. The wall in the background. Or anything else. Angelika’s sitting there after all, and I wondered if you knew where it is.”

Hansson took another look at the photo he was holding in his hand.

“No,” he said. “I’ve never been there.”

“Angelika was there,” said Winter. “There were a few pictures in her desk drawer taken there.”

“I have no idea where it is,” said Hansson. “And . . . does it make the slightest difference?”

“I don’t know,” said Winter.

“I mean, she used to go to several different places, the way young people do. I never kept a check on them.” He looked at the picture again. “Why should it be important to know where that brick wall is?”

“It depends on who else was there,” Winter said.

“Angelika was obviously there,” said Hansson. “Maybe she was alone.”

“Somebody must have been holding the camera,” said Winter.

“Timer control,” said Hansson, producing a series of coughlike chuckles. It sounded like an explosion in the enclosed room. “Sorry,” he said, when he finished.

“She was there not long ago,” Winter said.

Hansson seemed too tired and far too desperate to ask how Winter could know that.

“Other people might have seen her,” said Winter. And seen other people as well, he thought.

He had another idea. He went back to Angelika’s room and got the pictures of the graduation party, passing them to Hansson, who reached out a hand in a way that seemed almost apathetic.

“It’s her graduation party,” Hansson said.

Winter nodded. “Could you help me by identifying the people in the picture?”

Hansson studied the photograph.

“Even the ones with their backs to the camera?”

“If you can.”

Hansson pointed at the photograph.

“That fatty over there on the left,” he looked up at Winter, “that’s Uncle Bengt. My brother, that is. He’s looking the other way and chewing at a turkey leg or something.” He held up his hand to his mouth. “Compulsive eater.”

“Who else do you recognize?” Winter asked.

Hansson named them one after the other, sticking his index finger into their faces.

When he’d finished, there were still four left.

“Never seen them before,” he said.

“Are you sure?”

“Why the hell shouldn’t I be?”

Winter looked at their faces. Three men and a woman. Two of the men looked about forty. One was dark and the other blond, with a beard and glasses. There was something vaguely familiar about him. The third was a boy of around Angelika’s age. The woman looked around forty too, maybe a bit younger. She was on the outside, as if about to step out of the picture. She was looking away, in another direction. One of the men was standing next to the boy. The man looked like the boy, or maybe it was the other way around. Southern European appearance, dark and yet pale, pale faces. The man with glasses and beard was holding a balloon and laughing, just as Angelika was laughing. Winter tried to think where he might have seen him before. He didn’t recognize the face. Maybe it was his bearing, leaning forward slightly.

“Never seen them before,” Hansson repeated.

Winter felt his flesh creep. Something was happening right now, right there. Something’s happening. He looked at the four people with the unknown faces. It was as if the others standing around the girl were known to him, now that Hansson had identified them. But these four were strangers. They could have been sent from some unknown place. Something was happening.

“Isn’t that a little strange?” he asked.

Hansson shrugged. “There were a lot of people at the school hall, you can see that for yourself.” He pointed at one of the pictures. “I guess these people I don’t know got in this photo by mistake.”

“Is that likely?” Winter nodded toward the picture. “They look like they’re . . . part of it. Like they know Angelika.”

“Well, I don’t know them, in any case.”

“You didn’t speak to them?”

“I just said I don’t know who they are, for Christ’s sake.”

“OK.”

Neither of them spoke. Winter could no longer hear any rain pattering against the windows. He could hear a car driving past, the sound of the tires on wet asphalt.

“What the hell were they doing there?” said Hansson suddenly, looking again at the photo. “I didn’t invite them.” He looked at Winter again. His expression had changed. “I didn’t notice them at the time. I suppose I should have.”

“There were lots of people there, as you said yourself.”

“They couldn’t have been there,” said Hansson.

“What do you mean?”

“They showed up . . . afterward.” He looked at the photo again, then up at Winter, who could smell his sweat and the odor of fear and despair. “Don’t you understand? They showed up later! They’d been sent to that goddamn party but nobody could see them!” He stared into Winter’s eyes like a blind man. “Nobody saw them. Angelika didn’t either. But they came with a message. A message from Hell!”

He continued staring right through Winter’s head like a blind man.

“And they’ve gone back!” he shouted.

He needs counseling, thought Winter. Or he may be right, but in a way I don’t understand.

Hansson’s expression changed again. He shook his head and stared at the photograph in his hand. “You’ll never find this group,” he said.

“So you think they belong together? Like a . . . group?”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Hansson. “They don’t exist.”

HALDERS HAD CHOSEN TO PLAY LED ZEPPELIN AT THE FUNERAL,
toward the end. Aneta Djanali recognized the tune, of course. It was something new for Winter, who was sitting in the third row with Angela and Elsa. The music sounded big in the little church.

Hanne Östergaard conducted the service. She had been working part-time as a vicar for the police for several years. Somebody to talk to after disturbing experiences.

I must admit that she’s been a rock since Margareta died, Halders thought.

“Led Zep was her favorite band,” Halders had told Djanali an hour before the funeral. “She has memories associated with that tune, as I do.” Then he’d said: “That’s something we share. Memories.” He’d looked at her. “Do you think it’s inappropriate? The choice of music?”

“No. People often choose their own music at funerals nowadays.”

“I haven’t been to one in ages.”

“Led Zeppelin is good,” she said.

“It’s only a song, anyway.”

 

 

Halders stood beside his children as the soil was scattered over the coffin. No cremation. It was raining, but that would probably ease off during the day.

He spoke to people afterward, but didn’t register what they said. The children stayed close to him.

“Is Mommy in heaven now?” Magda asked.

“Yes,” he said.

Magda looked up and the clouds seemed to part in all directions. There was blue in the middle.

“Look, a hole!” she shouted, pointing upward. “Mommy can pass through that hole!”

He tried to look at the sky, but all he could see through the tears was a blur.

“Can you see the hole in the sky, Hannes?” Magda turned to look at her brother.

“There’s no hole,” he said. “It’s just space.” He looked down at the ground, which was wet.

“Oh, yes there is,” she said, taking down her hand and grasping her father’s hand tightly. “Oh, yes there is.”

 

 

They were driving to the rocks south of Gothenburg. It was twice as hot now, after the rainy days. Angela was driving. Elsa was in the car seat in the front. Winter was in the back, looking out over the fields glistening in the sunshine. He asked Angela to turn off the air conditioning and rolled down the window, so that he could appreciate the smells.

They parked the car. He carried Elsa on his shoulders as they walked over the field. They paused to look at a foal resting in the grass. The mother was standing by its side, nuzzling her offspring.

There was nobody else in their little inlet. Winter changed quickly, walked down to the water’s edge with Elsa, and kept dipping her into the sea. Angela took over, and he swam out. It was calm. He lay on his back and watched Angela and Elsa on their blanket on the rocks.

The oppressive feeling he’d experienced earlier sunk down through his body and under the surface of the water. There was not much of it left when he turned over and swam even farther out. He lay on his back again, and gazed at his family, who had become smaller.

Halders had looked as if he were sinking after the funeral. Winter didn’t know when he’d come back to work. Tomorrow, or never. Impossible to say.

During the funeral Winter had felt like stone. It had been hard to raise his heavy body from the pew. Earlier memories came back to him, from recently, when Angela had been so close . . . when Elsa . . . when what was Elsa . . . when he’d stood outside that door as if frozen fast to the floor, as heavy as stone. He’d felt his own life falling, faster and faster, down into the bottomless depths.

He closed his eyes and felt the sun on his face. A boat passed by, a hundred meters out into the creek, but he kept his eyes closed. Gulls cried. A voice came floating over the water. There was a smell of gas, wafted toward him from the boat by the slight breeze.

 

 

“You almost turned into a dinghy out there,” said Angela when he walked up, wetter than he’d ever been. “Firmly moored.”

“I didn’t know I was that good at floating.”

“I know the reason,” she said, poking him in the stomach, which was just a little bit rounded.
He
couldn’t see any sign of a potbelly when he looked down. Elsa poked him as well, several times. She almost hurt him.

“All that needs is just one fifteen-k jog,” he said. “Come to think of it, I could run back home.” He had his sneakers in the trunk. It was a lot more than fifteen kilometers to the center of town. Perhaps too much more? No.

“Do you dare eat that?” she said, nodding in the direction of the baguette with chicken salad he had just picked up.

“Yes,” he said, and Angela suddenly burst into tears. She wiped her eyes. Winter put down his sandwich and leaned over the blanket to hug her. Then Elsa started crying. He included her in his embrace as well.

Elsa tunneled between them and crept out. Angela wiped her face again and gazed out into the bay, where boats of various sizes were sailing.

“I was so sad when I saw Fredrik and the children,” she said.

“Yes. I took it pretty hard too.”

“I hope it turns out alright.”

“He’s going to try to keep going.” Winter fumbled for his packet of cigarillos. “He doesn’t want to take time off. Not much, at least.”

“I hope it turns out alright,” Angelika said again.

They drove home as dusk started to fall, when the red of the traffic lights mixed with the red glow of the sunset. No running home this time. Elsa was asleep in her seat. Her head was to one side, and a stream of dribble hung down from her mouth and onto her sweater. Angela drove fast and well, better than he did. He relaxed into his seat. His body was warm from the sun and salt, dry, his skin stiff in a pleasant way.

It was quiet in Vasastan, but not deserted. There were lots of people sitting at the sidewalk cafés.

Angela parked in the basement garage. Elsa was still asleep when they put her into her stroller.

“Let’s have a beer,” Winter said.

They sat in the nearest sidewalk café with an empty table and ordered two glasses of draft beer. There was a smell of cooking, and of heat from the day wafting along between the high stone buildings.

“Are you hungry?” he asked.

Angela shook her head.

“Well, I am,” he said, and ordered a grilled salmon steak. Angela changed her mind. The food was served, they ate, and Elsa slept in her stroller next to the table. There were several parents there with children asleep in their carriages. Three teenage girls walked by and started laughing when one of them said something into her mobile telephone; Winter thought of his three girls, at that very moment, and for the first time that’s exactly how he thought of them,
his three girls
, and he pushed his plate away and ordered another beer when the waiter came by; he glanced at Angela, but she didn’t want any more.

“I’m driving out to Påvelund tomorrow morning,” he said. “To the Wägners’.” She didn’t react, and adjusted something next to Elsa’s face. Several more teenage girls walked by.

 

 

By ten o’clock the next morning he was with Bengt and Lisen Wägner. It was Saturday.

“I apologize.”

“For God’s sake, don’t do that,” said Bengt Wägner. “You can come and live here if that’s what it takes to find out what happened to Beatrice.”