Bergenhem woke up with a headache. He seemed to have been resigned to it even in his sleep, and made himself ready.
He heard a little cry from the foot of the bed and saw Ada trying to climb onto their double bed. He could hear her struggling. He could also hear Martina working in the kitchen, and the screech of a lone seagull flying past the window.
Martina came into the bedroom and gave Ada a little shove so that the girl did a forward roll onto the bed and squealed in delight.
“Is it the usual again?” Martina asked.
“Yes.”
“You have to go to the doctor.” She reached out to prevent Ada from falling off the bed. “You said you would if it kept coming back.” ‘ She put Ada in the middle of the bed and Bergenhem sat up, took the girl’s hands, and lifted her up. It was like lifting a pillow.
“I know, I know.”
“Is it still behind one of your eyes?” She reached out to touch him. “The left one?”
“Stop it,” he said, pushing her hand away, perhaps too brusquely. He looked at her and took hold of her hand. “I’m sorry. But I seem to get so damned edgy with this.”
“You’ve been… edgy for a long time.”
“I know, I KNOW”
“Is there anything else?”
“Meaning what?”
“Is there something wrong between us?” she said, and he could see that she was trying to avoid looking at Ada.
“No, no.”
“Can’t you go to the doctor’s? You’ll have time tomorrow before nine.”
“All right. I’ll go.”
He reached for Ada and lifted her up, and again she squealed in delight. When he looked up at her everything turned black for a tenth of a second and he put her down again, fumbling almost like a blind man.
“What’s the matter, Lars?”
“I suddenly felt dizzy.”
“Good grief, you really must go to the doctor’s.”
“I bet it’s just migraine.”
“You’ve never had migraine before.”
“What sort of a comment is that? Say that to somebody who’s getting MS.”
“That wasn’t funny.”
“Well, stop nagging me.”
He got out of bed and strode from the room.
“Coffee’s ready,” she called after him, but he didn’t answer.
Angela had put on her overcoat, pulled on her leather boots, and left the apartment, and he wouldn’t have been able to hold her back by force.
He picked up the letter. It felt like a wet leaf. The letter heading was a disaster. Just as the conversation had been a disaster. The quarrel.
She came back after seven minutes, but she wasn’t carrying a bag of Danish pastries. She kicked off her boots and went to the living room, where he was still standing with the letter in his hand. She hadn’t taken her coat off, as if to signal that this was going to go on all evening. Backward and forward.
“Rereading it, are you?”
“No…”
“You’d damn well better have a good explanation.” She ripped off her coat and threw it on the floor. “A true explanation.” She took a couple of paces toward him. “Do you understand, Erik? I want to know the truth. No spin and no goddamn lies.”
“You don’t need to swear like that.”
“I’ll swear as much as I damn well want.”
‘All right, ALL RIGHT.“ He looked around the room, then put the letter on the coffee table. ”Should we keep standing, or should we sit down?“
She went to the sofa and sat down. He followed her.
“Listen now,” he said to her profile. She was staring out at the electric-blue sky. It was fine weather, like most evenings. She’d only been out a few minutes, but her cheeks were flushed. “This woman was an interpreter at the police station. I met her when I reported the theft of my wallet.”
“Terrific.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“A great way to meet.”
“Do you want me to explain this, Angela?”
“Yes, please.” She was still staring straight ahead.
“Anyway I met her again when I got the money from the bank. It was pure coincidence. We just bumped into each other outside the bank.”
“Maybe she was following you? Shadowing you?”
“Angela, don’t get paranoid.”
“Paranoid? Is that the chief inspector’s diagnosis?” She moved her head for the first time and looked at the letter on the coffee table: it had started to dry out and was curling up. A papyrus roll, Winter thought. The Dead Sea Scrolls. You can read about the past there. It can be true or false, depending on how you interpret it.
“And then you never left each other’s side until I arrived,” she said.
“Angela, that’s not true and you know it.”
“What is true, then? I’m still waiting.” She nodded at the letter again. “That wasn’t about a chance meeting outside a bank.”
Winter closed his eyes, then looked out the window and saw only the evening, the night.
“That evening… that night… after my dad died. And afterward as well. I felt so… disconsolate. Sad. I went back to my room quite late. It was the night before you arrived. I sat on my bed and it felt so… so hard in a way as if I’d made a mistake that I couldn’t put right. Or as if we’d all made a mistake. Or both of us.” He looked at her and saw that she was listening. “I don’t really know what I thought. But it felt impossible just to sit there on the bed staring at the picture of the Madonna on the wall and emptying the whisky bottle. If there’d been a television set… I don’t know. Spanish football or some stupid talk show. I don’t know. But I couldn’t just sit there. I went out for a walk, up to the Old Town.”
“And she was sitting there, waiting for you?”
“It wasn’t like that at all. It was another coincidence.” She turned to look at him and he continued, quickly. “It WAS a coincidence. She was sitting in a little square with some friends.” It had been a coincidence, he told himself. When he’d seen her in the square that first time, it had been a coincidence. Then something twitched in his legs and he went back there. The sorrow, his thoughts. Perhaps the shame. “I said hello, and joined them, and had a drop of wine.”
“And that was all?”
“That was it, really”
“REALLY?”
“Yes. I went back home with her and drank a drop more wine and that was all. Mainly lots of taxi rides and an early sunrise over Torremolinos.”
“Torremolinos?”
“That’s where she lives.”
“And you went back there with her to watch the sun rise? You really are a pushy tourist, Erik. Forcing your way into a stranger’s apartment or whatever you did in order to watch a new sunrise.”
“Angela… I know. I should never have gone back with her and I… didn’t want to. It wasn’t ME… but all those other things. But I swear to you that nothing happened.”
“You said a few minutes ago that one shouldn’t swear.”
“Angela…”
“Can you give me one good reason why I should believe all this?”
“Because it’s true.”
“Ha.” She stared out of the window again. “Ha, ha.”
“I don’t know what I can do to get you to… We can contact her if you like.”
“Don’t be stupid.”
“I really am telling you the truth. I promise. We got to her place and drank a glass of wine and I slept for a while in the living room. She didn’t make any passes and neither did I.”
“Real gentlemen, both of you.”
He stood up and could feel the sweat pouring down his back. He didn’t know what to do now, or what to say.
“It was just my… restlessness,” he said.
“I think it was more than that.”
“What do you mean?”
“This, among other things,” she said, pointing to her stomach.
“For Christ’s sake, Angela!”
“Now you’re swearing again.”
“You mustn’t say things like that.”
“It could well be true. We’re supposed to be telling the truth, aren’t we? Perhaps you’re not the kind of man who should have a family.”
“You’re wrong. You’re so wrong.” He sat down again, tried to take her hand, but she wouldn’t let him. “I’m so pleased about it. I’m so pleased about everything.” He was holding her hand now. “You’ve got to believe me, Angela.”
“Everything, you say?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you simply throw that letter away, then?”
“That’s a good question. I meant to. I don’t know. Maybe because I find it difficult to throw any papers away. Everything is documentary evidence as far as I’m concerned. Evidence. Reports. Well, you know.”
“Have you reported back?”
“Eh?”
“Have you replied to the letter?”
“No. Of course not.”
“And you expect me to believe that as well?”
“It’s the absolute truth.”
He was getting into the part. No, not the part, the situation. It was an interrogation. She was the opposition and he was the suspect. He was the suspect and she was conducting the interrogation, and she was good. She’s better than me, he thought.
So this is what it was like. Searching for the truth in the gaps between the words of what the suspect said. There might be fragments of the truth in those gaps. But he was telling the truth. It was the truth. In all important and essential points it was the truth, and he was forced to convince a skeptical interrogator of that. He wouldn’t be able to do it yet. It would take a long time.
Aneta Djanali could feel the sun in her eyes. Beams were targeting the highway and dazzling the drivers. Before long there’ll be a massive crash and we’ll be in the middle of it, she thought. She could smell the familiar aroma of newly baked bread when they passed Pååls. Halders was staring forward, into the white glow, as if to guide her along the right path.
She turned off at the Järnbrott exit and it was like getting her sight back.
“So, here we go again,” Halders said, pointing at the snow piled up three feet high by the side of the road. “Snow,” he said, turning to Djanali. “It’s called snow.”
Here we go again, she thought.
Halders liked to remind Djanali of her African origins. I was born in the East Gothenburg Hospital, but that doesn’t seem to be good enough for Fredrik, she thought as she turned west.
“Christmas tree,” Halders said, pointing at a dressed Christmas tree at the entrance to a garage. “There are lots of them around,” he said, pointing to lots of them. “It’s a Nordic symbol for light and the celebration of joy”
“You don’t say”
They drove past all the little detached houses and parked in front of the Elfvegrens’ hedge. The houses had been built in the 1950s, when people used to live in cramped homes but had large gardens.
There was snow everywhere, but no sign of footprints. Djanali noticed tracks made by rabbits and cats.
“Lynx tracks,” she said, indicating the track to her left.
“Lion,” Halders said. “They’ve moved a long way north this year.”
“This one was born at the Borås zoo.”
“How can you tell?”
“Its claws are pointing inward,” she said, ringing the Elfvegrens’ doorbell.
The phone rang. Angela didn’t want to answer, although she was nearer.
“Erik here.”
It was Lotta Winter.
“Have you spoken to Mom?”
“I’ll pick her up from Landvetter.”
“That’s the day after tomorrow.”
“Yes.”
“Only three days until Christmas. Time flies.”
“Hmm.”
“I’m expecting you and Angela here on Christmas Eve.”
“Of course.”
“Have you gotten around to buying Christmas presents yet?”
“Only Mother’s gin.”
“Stop joking now.”
Winter looked at Angela’s profile. Always Angela’s profile. He wasn’t joking.
“It’ll be last-minute. Apart from a few things,” he said.
“You got Bim’s and Kristina’s lists, I assume?”
“By e-mail. They were big.”
“Just like they are now.”
“No doubt they’ve grown an inch or two since I last saw them.”
A sudden wind had eliminated some of the lion tracks outside the Elfvegrens’ house by the time Halders and Djanali left again. It looked as if the animal had backed away and taken its paw marks with it.
“We’d better watch our step,” Halders said once they were outside.
Erika Elfvegren closed the door behind them. Djanali felt the cold sinking down inside her fur collar.
They got into the car and drove off.
“They had two copies of Aktuell Rapport under the sofa,” Halders said as they negotiated the roundabout.
“Aktuell what?”
“Aktuell Rapport. The men’s magazine bought by more people than any other in Sweden. Or maybe I should say, it sells more.”
“Really?”
“I wonder why.” He said it again. “I wonder why.”
“So you recognized the magazines, did you?”
“I recognized the spine. Half an inch of red at the top. And I could see a bit of the logo.”
“You have a skill for recognizing men’s magazines.”
“True. But if you think I buy crap like that, you have another think coming.”
“I don’t think anything.”
“Is it usual for people to have pornographic trash in their homes?” wondered Halders, mainly to himself.
“I’ve no idea,” Djanali said.
“I think it’s getting more common. The spirit of the times. The collapse of the old order. People read pornographic magazines and watch pornographic films on Channel Plus and TV One Thousand.”
“You may be right.”
“They’re advertising sex toys now every evening on one of the major channels. Every night. Every damn night. And they’ve been doing it for over a year.”
“How do you know?”
“Eh?” Halders looked at Djanali as if he’d just woken up from a dream.
“How can you be so sure about that?” Djanali asked with a smile.
“Because I keep a check on it, of course. Always keep a check on things, that’s the way to go about it, isn’t it? I check for two seconds and I get so annoyed and that makes my day.”
“Make my day.”
“I’d have loved to ask them,” Halders said.
“What?”
“That ever-so-nice couple, the Elfvegrens. I’d have loved to ask them what their favorite reading was.”
“You might get a few more opportunities.”