In the kitchen he placed the package with the small fillets on the counter and took olive oil, garlic, and a potato out of the pantry. He peeled the potato and cut it into small pieces. He opened the Alsace wine and drank a first glass. It was cool and calming, as though someone he trusted had placed a hand on his forehead. As though everything would work out in the end.
It smelled good in the kitchen as he grilled the fish with sliced garlic in the olive oil. He tossed in a small handful of chopped parsley and squeezed in half a lemon. He ate the fish with the creamed potato, which tasted of butter and coarse salt, and a few fresh string beans. He drank two glasses of wine with his meal and brought the bottle into the living room when he’d cleared the table.
There still wasn’t anyone down on the lawn of Vasaplatsen. He smoked on the balcony, but didn’t see anyone doing the same on the balcony across the park. Dusk was falling fast. Many people were waiting for streetcars down there under his window. The tracks ran together under him. The whole city had its intersecting point down there, its breaking point. Everyone in the city passed under his window at some point in their lives. If they looked up they would see him.
He went in and sat down in the easy chair. He poured a glass of wine and clicked his laptop on. He searched his way through the files. The light from the screen was the only light in there.
The phone rang.
• • •
“I think it was two years,” Lorrinder said.
“You’ve known each other for two years?” Halders asked.
She nodded.
“But I told the other officer that.”
“I know.”
“And you’re still asking?”
“Where did you usually hang out? Aside from at church?”
“Oh . . . at some café. The movies, sometimes. The bar, once in a while.”
Halders nodded.
“Sometimes at the Friskis & Svettis gym.”
“Which one?”
“The one on Västra Hamngatan.”
“Is there really time to hang out there?” Halders asked.
“What do you mean by that?”
“Well, there’s so much huffing and puffing.”
Lorrinder almost laughed.
“There’s a small café there, too,” she said.
“And you met up there?”
She nodded.
“How did it happen?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Were you alone?”
“Yes.”
“Every time?”
“Yes.”
“Was she in shape?”
“Does that really matter?”
Halders didn’t know. Did it? No one else knew, either.
“I’m just trying to learn as much as I can about Paula,” he said.
“I don’t know if I . . . did,” she said. “Know her very well, I mean.”
“Why not?”
“She . . . didn’t seem to want to let anyone get very close, I guess.”
“Why not, do you think?”
“She . . . was just that kind of person, I guess.”
“What kind of person?”
“Oh . . . withdrawn, maybe. Or a bit reserved.” Lorrinder looked straight across the table at Halders. “Not everyone is the same.”
“No, certainly not.”
“I guess she mostly wanted to be by herself.”
“But she went to Friskis & Svettis,” Halders said.
“You can be by yourself there, too, for the most part, like you said yourself just now.”
“The huffing and puffing.”
“Exactly.”
“Everyone fighting for himself.”
Lorrinder didn’t seem to hear that last part. All of a sudden she looked like someone deep in thought.
“How often did the two of you work out?” Halders asked.
“Uh . . . what did you say?”
Halders repeated the question. Lorrinder seemed lost in her thoughts. Her gaze was far away.
“Are you okay?” Halders asked.
“I thought of something . . .”
Halders waited.
“When you asked if we sat in the café alone.”
“Yes?”
“I think she met someone at the gym.”
Halders didn’t say anything. He just nodded.
“A . . . man.”
Lorrinder seemed to be staring into the past so hard that it would help her remember. She closed her eyes, as though to make herself see more clearly. She opened her eyes. They were clearer now.
“I might be wrong.”
“Just keep going.”
“She talked to someone a few times.”
“Where.”
“When we . . . at the gym. In the fitness studio.”
“Is that so unusual?”
“For Paula it was.”
“In what way?”
“She just didn’t talk to people. Not like that.”
“Maybe she wasn’t the one who started it. Maybe he stepped on her foot and apologized. Maybe it happened several times.”
“I don’t know . . .”
“Maybe that’s one of the ways to pick someone up at Friskis & Svettis.”
“Is it?”
“Isn’t that one of the city’s biggest pickup locations?”
“I don’t actually know. I haven’t thought about it.”
“But you noticed that Paula was talking to someone.”
“Yes.”
“Enough for you to think about it,” Halders said. “Remember it.”
“Maybe it doesn’t mean anything.”
“What else do you remember? About Paula’s encounter.”
Lorrinder closed her eyes again. She was really trying. Halders could almost see the thoughts moving inside her forehead. A nerve
began to twitch. She tucked her hair back over one ear. Her temple continued to twitch.
She opened her eyes again.
“It was like she knew him.”
• • •
Winter lifted the receiver of the phone, simultaneously looking at the clock.
It was Torsten Öberg.
“It might be late,” he said, “but I thought you’d want to know. A girl at SKL was working overtime and she thought I’d want to know, too.”
“What have we learned, then?”
“It’s blood, and it’s hers,” Öberg said.
“What?”
“Something of a disappointment, isn’t it?”
“But wasn’t the fleck old?”
“Yes. They can’t say exactly how old, but more than a month.”
“So she brought the rope herself,” Winter said.
“That I don’t know,” Öberg said. “That’s your job.”
“And no other traces? On the rope?”
“No other traces.”
“We don’t know if she tied the noose herself,” Winter said.
“No. The fleck could have ended up there at any time.”
“Damn it. I’d had high hopes for this.”
“You’re not the only one.”
Winter heard the streetcar outside. It was no later than that. It was a lumbering sound, homey, calming. When the streetcars stopped running for the night, the city became a more troubled place.
“Could we have missed anything in that room?”
“Is that an insult, Erik?”
“I was talking to myself.”
“Not quietly enough.”
“Come on, Torsten. Talk to yourself a little, yourself.”
“Could we have missed anything in that room?” Öberg said.
“Could we?”
“Missed what, Erik? Clues? Marks? Flecks? Don’t think so. I would like to say that in all probability, I don’t think we did. But there’s no way I can know.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“It was a neat room. A clean room. That makes it harder.”
S
o that bastard might have leapfrogged next to her!”
“Leapfrogged?” Ringmar asked.
“Or whatever the hell kind of exercises they have at Friskis & Svettis,” Halders continued.
He had called Winter right after he spoke to Lorrinder.
“It’s probably time for you to see for yourself,” Winter said.
“That’ll be interesting.”
“How specific is the description?” Bergenhem asked.
“Vague,” Halders answered.
“She can’t have been mistaken?” Ringmar said.
“Mistaken, mistaken, everyone can be mistaken.” Halders stretched his arms backward, as though he were already at the gym. “But she saw Paula talking to someone, apparently several times. She got the idea that they’d met before, somewhere else. And Nina Lorrinder doesn’t seem to be an airhead.” Halders brought his arms down. “I had to pry all of this out of her with pliers.”
“We like that kind of witness,” Ringmar said.
“Once they start talking, sure,” said Halders.
Ringmar changed position in his chair, and changed position again. Halders’s arm motions were contagious. Soon they would all start doing aerobics in the conference room.
“Could be anyone at all,” Ringmar said.
“That’s what we’re going to rule out, isn’t it?” Halders stretched his arms out behind him again. His joints cracked like dry wood being snapped. “Or vice versa.”
“You really need the gym,” Bergenhem said.
“Phys ed with team sports and games,” Halders said. “I was always best.”
“At which one?”
“You’re too young to understand, kid.”
“I’m confused.”
The door opened. Djanali came into the room and closed the door behind her.
“Back already?” Halders said.
She sat down beside him without answering and took out her notebook and looked up.
“I showed the pictures to the staff at Leonardsen and at Talassi, and everyone agrees that it’s Ecco.”
“You’ve only been to
two
stores?” Halders asked.
“No, but I wanted to give you an idea of what things look like.”
“What do things look like, then?”
“How many have they sold?” Winter filled in.
“If we’re talking about size ten or eleven . . .” Djanali read from her notebook, “seven pairs at Leonardsen and ten at Talassi. That’s this year.”
“Last year, then?” Bergenhem asked.
“The shoe wasn’t for sale there last year.”
“Why not?”
“No doubt they thought that no one wanted them anymore. That they could offer other brands.”
“That the Ecco Free era was over,” Halders said.
“How many used charge cards?” Winter asked.
“All but two.”
“Those are the two we’re after,” Halders said.
“I’m not so sure of that,” Ringmar said.
“Should we bet on it?” Halders said.
“The shoes we saw in the video might not have anything to do with the case,” Ringmar said.
“Should we bet on that, too?” Halders said.
“Let’s go with what we have right now,” Winter said. “Get going.”
• • •
Christer Börge didn’t look scared as he sat in the interrogation room. He looks like he’s been here before, Winter thought. But he hasn’t.
The interrogation room had a small window that let in the September light. There was a microphone on the felt tabletop. It was like a microphone in a studio. And the room functioned as a studio.
“Why are we sitting here?” Börge asked. He hadn’t asked that before. He hadn’t said much when Winter called and asked him to come in.
“It’s calm and quiet,” Winter said.
At first he hadn’t wanted to conduct the interrogation. He was no interrogator yet. It took experience. But Börge wasn’t a suspect. And Winter had talked to him more than anyone else had. That could be an advantage. At least, that’s what Birgersson had told him before he’d walked into the interrogation room.
Börge turned toward the light from the window. Suddenly it looked like he was starting to feel cold. He rolled down the sleeves of his shirt and then placed his hands on the table. His hands were very white against the green felt surface in the faint light inside the room. Winter thought they looked like they’d never been exposed to sunlight. They looked like white plastic, or plaster.
After the formalities, he prepared himself for the questions. Börge looked at the window. There was only sky outside. No trees reached up this high. Winter cleared his throat one time.
“Do you believe Ellen will come back?”
Börge turned his face toward him.
“What kind of question is that?”
“Try to answer it.”
“Does it make any difference what I
believe
?”
Faith can move mountains, Winter thought. But a policeman can’t think like that. A pastor can think like that.
“Sometimes it makes a difference in how you handle the shock.”
“What do you know about it?”
“What was the last thing she said when she left home that afternoon?” Winter asked.
“I don’t remember.”
“Try.”
“Would you remember what your wife said when she went to buy a magazine?”
“Think about it.”
“About what?”
“About what I just asked. What Ellen said when she left.”
“She probably didn’t say anything.”
“Was that how it usually was?”
“I don’t understand what you’re trying to get at.”
Winter didn’t answer.
“Are you trying to get at that she said some kind of good-bye or something?”
“I’m just trying to help you,” Winter said.
“Help
me
?”
“To remember.”
“But what if there’s nothing to remember?”
There’s always something, Winter thought. If you want to remember. You don’t want to. And I want to know why.
“Earlier, you said that you had an argument before she left.”
Börge didn’t say anything.
“That that’s why she went out.”
“Surely that’s not what I said.”
“That it wasn’t the first time.”
“Wait a minute now,” said Börge. “Take it easy now.”
Winter took it easy. Börge had taken it easy, until now. His answers might have seemed aggressive when one read the transcribed interrogation, but his attitude wasn’t aggressive. In that sense, a transcription of an interrogation was inadequate. The words were only one component. Sometimes, the words were the least significant part. Everything ought to be on film, Winter thought. In the nineties, we’ll film everything.
“Did Ellen ever threaten to leave you?”
Börge gave a start. His eyes had sought the window again but had only gotten halfway.
Now they were back on Winter.
“No. Why would she do that?”
“She wanted to have children. You didn’t want to have children. Isn’t that a reason?”
“No.”
“You don’t think that’s a reason for divorce?”
“You don’t understand,” Börge said. “Have you been divorced yourself?”
“No,” Winter answered. He had made up his mind not to answer any questions, because he was the one who was supposed to ask them. When the person being interrogated started asking the questions, the interrogation had gone in the wrong direction. An interrogation was one-way communication disguised as a conversation. An interrogator must never give anything. Never let anything go. Never say anything that revealed himself. It was always take, never give. Listening. And at the same time, it was about forming trust. Listen to the story, Birgersson had said: Everyone has a story they want to tell; it wants out of them and in the end they can’t stop it.