"Sun and Shadow" - читать интересную книгу автора (Edwardson Åke)

18

The room quickly filled up. Winter had sat alone in his office for ten minutes, watching the snow falling outside. Somebody had put a vase of flowers on the table, but there was no card accompanying it. As he was about to leave for the meeting, there was a knock on the door and Ringmar came in. He’d been home to get some pills to ease his tonsillitis. He had looked far from well when he turned up at the apartment, taken one look at the dead bodies, started coughing, and gone back into the hall.

“You ought to be in bed,” said Winter.

“Yes.”

“Do you have a temperature?”

“Yes.”

“Go home.”

‘After the meeting.“

“We can’t risk you infecting all of us, Bertil. The bottom line is that I don’t want you here.”

“Erik…”

“If you really have to work, take the photographs and all the rest of the stuff and do some thinking as you lie in bed, if it’s possible to think with the infection you’ve got.”

“All right, all right.” Ringmar was in the middle of the office now. “This is a fine welcome-home for you.” He looked at Winter, who had retreated behind his desk. “What a goddam mess!”

They went to the meeting. Winter started by summarizing what they knew. The photographs were passed around.

He hasn’t got much of a tan, thought Aneta Djanali. That wasn’t why he went to Spain. Aneta Djanali didn’t have much of a tan herself, although she was very black. She was born in Gothenburg, to parents who had had to leave the troubled African nation of Burkina Faso for political reasons. But “leave” was not quite accurate; they had fled for their lives.

When Aneta became a police officer, her father had mixed feelings, having had his tough experiences with the police of Ouagadougou. His daughter kept telling him it was different here, though sometimes she wasn’t so sure.

Fredrik Halders listened to what Winter had to say. He looked at the photograph in his hand. How are we going to approach this? What shall we tell people?

“What are we going to tell people about this?” he said, holding up the photograph. “How much detail should we… reveal?”

“What do you mean?” asked Sara Helander, who was sitting two chairs away from Halders.

“What’s happened to them,” Halders said. “How much should we say about what they look like?”

“We have a couple who have been murdered in their apartment, that’s what we’ll say,” said Winter. “There’s no reason why we should give any more information at this stage.”

“Is there ever?” Djanali said, but Winter ignored the question.

“Christian and Louise Valker,” said Winter. “Married for four years. He was forty-two, she was thirty-seven. No children. Christian Valker worked as a computer salesman-hardware-and Louise Valker worked part-time as a hairdresser.” He glanced at his notes. “They had been living in the apartment in Aschebergsgatan for two and a half years, roughly. Tenancy rights. High rent.” We might well have seen each other in Vasaplatsen. At the supermarket, in the street, in the garage, perhaps. The garage was big, hundreds of square yards, under all the apartment buildings. We’d better check if they rented a garage space. “They had previously lived in Lunden, two rooms and kitchen, sublet. Before that, Christian lived on his own in an apartment in Kålltorp. Louise moved to Gothenburg seventeen years ago from Kungsbacka and started work at a hair salon in Mölndalsvägen. She lived in Ran nebergen then, on her own. Neither had been married before. No criminal record either. Not in Sweden, at least. We’ll check with Interpol. No relatives in Gothenburg, as far as we know. Christian Valker grew up in Västerås, Louise in Kungsbacka.”

“He came to Gothenburg to seek his fortune,” muttered Halders to Djanali, who was sitting next to him.

“Shut up, Fredrik,” she said.

Winter signaled to the probationer in charge of the slide projector. The lights were turned off. It was dark enough outside not to draw the curtains.

“You can see for yourselves the wounds on their bodies. Here and here. Any one of the blows could have killed them. They were made with extreme force.”

“A serrated blade,” Halders said.

“We don’t know that for certain,” Ringmar croaked.

“He obviously sawed them,” said Halders. “He must be hellish strong.”

Helander closed her eyes momentarily. She had never seen anything like it. She heard a familiar noise behind her, and somebody jumped up and ran out of the room. The young officer had knocked some chairs over when he had thrown up. Winter could smell it from where he was standing.

Ringmar had been standing at the side of the room, watching the bodies glittering on the slides. It made him think of somebody slinking into a cinema showing pornographic films and staring, transfixed. Like a compulsion. But this was worse. These bodies were exposed for all to see. Looking at them seemed obscene.

The murderer knew we’d be standing here, looking at the fruits of his labor, Ringmar thought as the smell of vomit wafted as far as his corner. All this is a stage setting. It’s a message.

There was another picture on the screen now. The same scene, but from another angle, closer. Winter had approached the screen and raised his hand toward the bodies, but it seemed to Ringmar that he was hesitating. Winter thinks like me. He also feels a sort of shame.

Winter said something, but Ringmar couldn’t hear what it was. He felt as if he had cotton wool between his ears, as if his infection had got worse during the time he’d spent in this room. Someone turned the lights on.

‘And this is what we heard when we entered the room,“ said Winter, switching on a tape recorder. Music filled the room, louder than Winter had intended and he lowered the volume. It seemed to get louder again of its own accord when the song started. Song? thought Winter. This is something new for me.

The crime unit officers listened, and looked at each other. Somebody grinned, somebody else put their hands over their ears. Winter could see no sign of recognition; none of the younger officers raised a hand. He switched it off.

“Damn,” Halders said.

“You’re saying that’s what they had on?” Djanali asked.

“Yes. According to the caretaker there’s been music coming from the apartment for some time.”

“That particular music?” asked Möllerström, the registrar.

“He says he’s not an expert,” said Winter drily, “but it sounded very like that.”

“What the hell is it?” asked Halders.

“I’ve no idea,” said Winter. “That’s why I’m playing it for you now. Does anybody know?”

Nobody responded. After a few seconds Winter saw a hand go up. One of the younger officers. Setter. Johan Setter.

“Johan?”

“Er… are you asking for the name of the band? The band that’s performing the stuff?”

“I’m asking what it is. If anybody can tell me what band it is, then bingo. But, well… I haven’t a clue about this.”

“Well… it’s some kind of trash metal,” said Setter. “Not really my thing, but it’s metal all right. Death metal, I’d say. Or black metal.”

“Death metal?” Winter said, gaping at Setter, who looked unsure of himself. “Death metal?”

Somebody giggled.

“An appropriate name,” Halders said.

“What on earth is death metal?” asked Ringmar.

“You’ve just heard it,” Halders said. “Quite a beat to it.”

“Zip it, Fredrik,” muttered Djanali.

“It’s pretty popular,” Setter said. “Well… more popular than you might think.”

“Popular with whom?” asked Halders. “The Swedish Nazis? The Liberals?”

“Popular with the Valkers?” Möllerström wondered.

“We don’t know,” said Winter, looking at Halders. “We haven’t got around to examining the CD collection in the apartment yet.”

“So it wasn’t a record?” Helander asked.

“No, an unmarked cassette tape. BASF. CE Two Chrome Extra. Ninety minutes.”

“Fingerprints?”

“The forensic boys are busy with that now. What you’ve just heard was a copy we had made.”

“Did they have a lot of cassettes?” Halders asked.

“Apparently none at all,” said Winter. “At least, we haven’t found any yet.”

“Where’s Bergenhem?” asked Halders. “Lars listens to all kinds of peculiar shit.”

“He’s off sick,” Ringmar said.

“Send this crap to his place for him to listen to.”

“Will do,” Ringmar said.

“It could be a message, then,” said Djanali. “A message to us. Or am I jumping to conclusions?”

“You could be right,” Winter said. “At least the murderer left the tape running.”

“For how long?” one of the younger officers asked.

“How the hell could we know?” Halders said. “If we knew that we’d have won half the battle.”

“So this is the music the caretaker heard, is that right?” asked Helander.

“We don’t know,” Winter said. “But I know what you’re getting at. If we can get him to remember when he first heard it, we might be on to something.”

“How long have they been dead?” Djanali asked. “Have we heard from the pathologist?”

“Could be fourteen days,” Winter said. “Could be longer.”

“Oh, hell,” said Halders.

“Can a tape run for as long as that?” Möllerström asked. “Can it keep going on repeat for two weeks?”

“Evidently.”

“It’s called auto-reverse,” Halders said, looking at Möllerström. “When the tape comes to the end it turns around and goes back to the beginning. It keeps going back and forth until it’s switched off. Or the tape breaks.”

“There is another possibility, though.”

Ringmar nodded. He was standing next to Winter now.

“What’s that?” Setter asked.

“That the gentleman responsible sneaked back a week or so after the murder and put some music on to improve the atmosphere,” Halders said. Somebody giggled again.

“So what are we going to do with this?” Helander asked.

“Well, it’s been suggested that Bergenhem should listen to the cassette, and that thought had occurred to me as well,” said Winter. “But we’ll have to check with anybody who might be able to help us with this. Record shops, including ones that sell secondhand stuff. Bands here in Gothenburg. If this music is so popular, somebody must recognize it. Recording studios. Check with rock critics working for newspapers, radio, television.” He looked around those present. “Johan. Can you look after that? You’ll get some help. Take the cassette around to Bergenhem’s place, then see where you go from there.”

Setter nodded.

“There’s one more thing,” said Winter, signaling to the rookie. A new picture appeared on the screen. It showed the wall in the room where the two dead victims had been sitting. There was something on the wall. Everybody could read it, the letters were a couple of feet tall and covered a large part of the wall:

“And that was there when you got to the apartment?” Djanali asked.

“Yes. We’re waiting to hear how long it’s been there.”

“As long as that couple have been sitting on the sofa,” Halders said.

Winter made no comment.

“A message,” Djanali said. “That’s not exactly a wild guess.”

“Is it red paint?” Halders asked.

“No.”

“ ‘Wall,’ ” said Ringmar. “Is the murderer trying to tell us that he’s writing on a wall?”

“Assuming it was the murderer,” Winter said. “But this doesn’t look as if it’s a single word. I don’t quite get it. A circle around the W. What does that indicate? A gap between the W and all.”

“All,” said Ringmar. “It could mean he took all of them.”

“All two?”

“All who come after.”

“Pack it in, Bertil. Go home to bed now.”

‘Are we all going to be off sick? All?“

“Bergenhem will be back tomorrow.”

“Have you spoken to him?”

“Half an hour ago.”

“Had Setter been with the tape?”

“Yes. Not Bergenhem’s cup of tea,” he said.

“Okay. Anyway, this is another message for us, as well as the music. He’s trying to tell us something.”

“Does he want to be caught?” asked Winter.

“Or is he playing with us?”

“It took a lot of time to write… to prepare this. To fix… the paint. He had to go backward and forward.”

“He used a paintbrush.”

“Yes.”

“Did he have a paintbrush with him?”

“He? You’re saying ‘he’ all the time.”

“Do you think it’s a she?”

“No.”

“The question is whether he had a paintbrush with him.”

“One of the questions,” Winter said. “Another is: where is it now?”

“I hate this kind of thing,” Ringmar said. “Riddles.”

“Isn’t that what we’re always dealing with?”

“Riddles within riddles, then. I hate it. It makes me upset. It makes me angry. So angry that I can feel my infection dissipating.”

Winter was alone in the apartment in Aschebergsgatan. He had gone back.

The smell was still there in the room. The pictures he recalled from that morning, the real thing he’d seen first, then the photographs. I saw it live, he thought. I saw death live and I heard the sound track. What am I thinking about? The sound track?

The sofa was empty now, stained. The roar from the music seemed still to be there. The text on the wall was lit up by the sun coming in through the window. The clouds had cleared as Winter walked across the street, and now the bright light was streaming in through the window and the shaky letters seemed to be starker, more powerful. Winter stared at the circle around the W. What did it mean?

How can you classify degrees of lunacy?

Is it as simple as that?

Or is this a sick act by a sane man?

I’ve only seen one thing before that comes anywhere near matching this. But I never thought I’d have to encounter such human brutality again.

He could see the bodies in his mind’s eye, each on a chair of its own. Was that three years ago now?

But it’s continuing.

Water was running along a pipe somewhere in the building. It was a noise he recognized. This building was similar to the one he lived in: a stone block built in the old-fashioned way. He might have been standing in his own apartment. He suddenly thought of Angela.

Angela and her stomach, which had now become a part of him as well. That’s how it was.

This apartment even had the same layout as his own. He hadn’t thought of that when he first entered it yesterday evening, he’d been concentrating on other things. But he could see it now. The rooms radiated from the hall and kitchen, the big living room, where he was standing, the bedroom next to it, another room. A toilet and a separate bathroom.

The forensic officers were working their way through every little thing, but he wanted some time in the apartment to himself. Go and get yourselves a cup of coffee, boys. Give me half an hour.

There were clothes everywhere. It had started in the kitchen and finished on the sofa. When had they started getting undressed? In the kitchen? Why? Had the clothes been put where they were afterward? It should be possible to establish that. Was there a pattern to it? Was there another accursed message? Another riddle? He thought of Ringmar, and his sudden cure.

All the blood was in the living room. Nothing in the hall, or in the kitchen. There didn’t seem to have been any blood left in the bodies. Christian and Louise Valker. At least her eyes had been closed.

They had been sitting in the kitchen. Winter couldn’t know, but he was sure the dried-up drops of wine in the glasses and the dregs in the bottle were from then. He vaguely recognized the label, from the glass-covered shelves at the System liquor store on the Avenue. One of the cheaper Spanish brands.