48

Bertil Andréasson had come to the station. It was obvious that he had been worried about how much they were going to ask about his other activities. Winter had tried to convince him that he wasn’t interested in any work he did on the black market, provided he cooperated.

The shop owner gave Winter the latest known address of his two previous employees. Jilna had been working for him for around half a year. Five months, to be exact. She hadn’t yet mastered the Swedish language but she could count and checked to make sure no bastard swapped the price labels on goods. She was also good at refusing to sell beer to young brats.

Winter had continued his conversation with Jilna before leaving the shop, but she hadn’t seen anything or anybody worthy of note. He said that if she recognized any regular customers, he would take her some photographs or plant some of his officers in the shop to wait until she gave a signal when somebody she recognized came in. There are a few, she said. Okay, we’ll put a plainclothes officer there, Winter thought.

Andréasson was unable to help when it came to regular customers.

“I’m not in the shop all that often, you see. I don’t even live around there.”

“Surely you must remember somebody coming in from time to time?”

“No… you’ll do better asking Jilna about that.”

“I already have.”

Halders and Winter met the Elfvegrens again. It was in the same gloomy room. She looked as if she was feeling cold. Winter still couldn’t decide if maybe this only concerned him. The husband. She looked to be in a state of shock.

‘All right,“ Per Elfvegren said. ”We have been there… for coffee. Twice, I think.“

“Why did you lie about it?”

“I don’t know.”

“It’s not usual for people to tell lies if they’ve only been around to have coffee with somebody.”

“I suppose we were… scared,” he said. His wife looked scared to death.

Halders sighed.

“Come on now, tell me the truth,” he said.

Elfvegren didn’t respond.

“You had a relationship, didn’t you?” Halders said.

Elfvegren shook his head.

“We could be forced to give you a blood test,” Halders said.

“Why?”

Halders explained, and Erika Elfvegren turned ashen.

Her husband bit his lower lip hard, and looked at Winter. Winter could see that he’d made up his mind, possibly to tell the truth.

“All right,” he said. “We met them through an advertisement.”

“What kind of advertisement?”

“The personal ads. To make contact.”

“What kind of contact?”

Elfvegren looked at his wife and she nodded, although it was barely noticeable.

“It was an ad in… er… the magazine.”

“The magazine? What magazine?”

“The one we talked about before. Aktuell Rapport.”

“Have I got this right now: you met them via an ad in Aktuell Rapport?”

“Yes.”

“Is that true?” Halders asked, turning to Mrs. Elfvegren.

Her “yes” was scarcely audible.

“Did you place the ad?”

“No, we answered it,” Per Elfvegren said. “It was an ad… their ad… that we replied to.”

“When was that?”

Elfvegren gave an approximate date.

“It’s the only time we’ve ever done it,” she said.

A likely story, Halders thought.

“Did you meet the Martells in the same way?”

“No,” Elfvegren said.

“How did you meet them, then?”

“Through the Valkers. But we… but we…”

“Well?”

“We never had a… relationship.”

Halders said nothing.

“There were only the Valkers.”

“Did the Valkers meet anybody else?” Halders asked.

“What do you mean?”

“When you had… a relationship. Were there other people present as well?”

“Never.”

“Never?”

“Never. I swear to it,” said Per Elfvegren. He looked as if he’d decided to tell the truth and nothing but the truth, but faces can lie.

“Did you hear about any other relationships?”

“No.”

“The Valkers didn’t say anything about other meetings? If they got together… in that way with anybody else?”

Winter admired Halders’s tact now. Halders was growing into the role of occasional interrogator in chief.

“No.”

The woman cleared her throat. She looked at her husband and cleared her throat again. She was about to say something. Halders waited. Winter was barely visible from the table in the center of the room, was not much more than a shadow on the wall.

“There was a… man,” she said. Per Elfvegren looked genuinely astonished. “Louise once told me… about a man they’d met a few times.”

Patrik was trying to read. It was evening. He had spent some time looking at the sky. There was something stirring inside him. Spring is on its way now, he thought. I have to get out more.

He was on the sofa and Ulla sounded in high spirits in the hall as she closed the apartment door behind her and kicked off her shoes. Patrik went to switch off the stereo in the middle of a song, then sat down again.

Ulla came into the room, taking two steps back in order to manage one forward.

“Where’s Dad?” he asked.

“I dunno,” she said, flopping down on the sofa some three feet away from him. He moved. “I left.” She shook her head, slowly, from side to side. “He was making such an awful scene.” She turned to look at Patrik, trying to focus. “You’re a nice boy, Patrik. You’re not like him.”

Not like you either, he thought. Patrik stood up and she grabbed hold of his arm, hanging on to it.

“Can’t you sit here for a bit and talk?” she said.

“I have to go.”

“Just sit here for a bit.” She was holding harder now. She started humming a tune, then suddenly burst out laughing. Oh no, the bitch was as drunk as a skunk. “Come and sit here next to Auntie Ulla and we can have a little chat.” She tugged at his arm, pulling really hard now. The sleeve of his sweater grew a foot and a half longer. He could smell the familiar stench of stale liquor topped up with fresh stuff.

She gave another heave and he lost his balance, falling on top of her.

The apartment door was flung open. As he fell he could hear the sound of his father staggering through the hall.

“What the hell…” He heard his father’s voice and felt him grab hold of his arm and pull him up. It was his arm now and not his sleeve. It hurt and he screamed. He felt like his head would explode.

Maria was baking a sponge cake. It felt like two thousand years ago. Hanne watched the girl spraying flour all around her in the kitchen. A few years ago it was the only thing she did for a while. Sponge cakes. All right by me. Two thousand, one after another.

She went back to the living room, sat down on the sofa, and picked up her book again. The sky had turned dark blue, almost black, but the promise of spring was still in the air outside. Or is it just my imagination? she wondered. Or a dream about the light. We start hoping before winter has even started to go away.

There was a clattering in the kitchen. She loved that sound. A siren was howling from the direction of Saint Sigfrids Plan. A long, rising note that could well be from a police car. She’d learned to distinguish between sirens since starting work at the police station. She heard the sound once more, then it was cut off abruptly. Somebody breaking the speed limit, or maybe a crash. She thought of Simon Morelius and his awful road accident. He couldn’t shake it off. The memory was too strong for him, painful. It could lead to him leaving the force. She didn’t know of anybody else who’d made such a decision for reasons like that.

He kept repeating the horrific details, as if by describing them often enough he could make them go away. But the result was the opposite. She could recite them herself by now. But she hadn’t been there, hadn’t seen it all. The last time, he’d said…