37

THE CITY WAS STILL WHITE WHEN HE DROVE SOUTH. METHENY and Haden oozed calm from the CD, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress.

He was blinded for a second as he drove into the tunnel. There was no light. On the way to the darkness at the end of the tunnel, he thought. A horrific thought.

It occurred to him that he’d forgotten to look for the Christmas presents from Angela and Elsa.

Snow lay like cold powder on the fields. Beyond them the sea formed a concave mirror. It wasn’t moving at all.

The Bergorts’ truck was bathing in one of the day’s first sunbeams as he got out of the car. There were Advent candles in two of the windows.

He could smell fresh-brewed coffee as he stepped into the hall.

Kristina Bergort offered him a coat hanger.

“I apologize for disturbing your Christmas Eve,” said Winter.

“But this is important,” she said. “God, it’s awful.”

He could see the open newspaper on the kitchen table: What happened to Micke? The police have no leads.

He could smell the pungent scent of Christmas hyacinths through the living room door. That was the dominant Christmas smell as far as he was concerned, full of memories.

“I just made coffee.”

“Thank you.”

Winter sat down. He could see the illuminated Christmas tree through the door to the living room. Did Elsa have a Christmas tree in Nueva Andalucía? Surely his mother would have dreamed up something. Lights in the palm trees in the garden? That made him think of Bertil. Where was Bertil supposed to be going this morning?

Smedsberg. The other students.

“What’s Maja doing?” he asked.

“She’s watching TV. Kids’ shows.”

“Where can we go?”

“Well, you didn’t want to be in her room, so I thought maybe we could use Magnus’s room. It’s a sort of little office. And sometimes I sit there and do some sewing.”

“OK.”

“Shall I tell Maja?”

“Yes, please.”

The routine, if that was the right word for it, was the same as usual, and the same as at Simon Waggoner’s home: Winter squatting down on the floor and displaying a genuine interest in the child. Being a nice man. Merry Christmas, Maja. I have a little girl just one year younger than you. Her name is Elsa.

She looked down. She’d said her name very quietly when they were introduced.

He led the way into the room.

“So, here we are,” he said.

She didn’t want to follow him.

“Erik just wants to have a few words with you in there,” said Kristina Bergort to her daughter.

The girl shook her head. She was bouncing a little ball that went off course and disappeared into the room. Winter was in there already.

“Aren’t you going to fetch the ball, Maja?”

She shook her head again.

“That’s Daddy’s study,” said Kristina Bergort.

“Where’s Daddy?” asked the girl.

“He has to work, darling. I told you that this morning.”

On Christmas Eve, Winter thought. Is there anybody else in Sweden who needs to work on Christmas Eve?

“Don’t want to,” said Maja.

“We can move to the kitchen,” he said. “Why don’t you bring along some paper and crayons, Maja?” He wanted her undivided attention, but he wanted something else as well.

He set up the camera next to the door.

She was perched on her chair like a bird. The smell of coffee had dispersed, but the hyacinths were still there.

His questions had started to zoom in on her meeting with the stranger.

Winter had started by asking Maja about her favorite colors. They’d drawn something using them, and then something with colors she didn’t like as much. She knew her colors, all of them.

“Did you lose your ball, Maja?”

She looked at the ball on the table between them.

“The other ball,” said Winter. “The green ball.”

“That’s gone,” she said. “I lost the green ball.”

“Where did you lose it?”

“In the car,” she said.

“In what car?”

“The mister’s car.”

Winter nodded.

“Were you sitting in the mister’s car?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“What color was that car, Maja?”

“It was black,” she said, but she didn’t look sure.

“Like this?” said Winter, and he drew a black line.

“No, not that black.”

He drew a blue line.

“No.”

A different blue.

“Yes!”

“So the mister’s car was this color?”

“Yes! Blue!”

Maybe they’d hit the jackpot. But then again, a witness claiming to recognize a color was among the most unreliable pieces of evidence in existence, with the possible exception of car makes. Somebody could swear to God that it was a white Volvo V70 that had driven away from the scene of the crime, but shortly afterward it could be established that it was a red Chrysler Jeep. That sort of thing. It had become more difficult to distinguish between makes of cars since their cloning procedures had become more sophisticated. They all had the same slick design, the same nuances. He’d thought a lot about that. He’d had to.

They tried showing the child various makes of car, but it wasn’t possible to narrow it down.

He took a piece of paper, and drew a car using a blue pencil. It could have been a Volvo, or a Chrysler. In any case, it had a basic outline, and four wheels.

Maja laughed out loud.

“Was this the car?” he asked.

“No, don’t be silly,” she said, but coquettishly.

“Why don’t you draw it, then?”

“I can’t,” she said.

Winter slid his drawing over to her.

“Let’s help each other,” he said. “Why don’t you draw yourself?! Where were you sitting in the mister’s car?”

“It wasn’t that car,” said Maja.

“Let’s pretend that this was the mister’s car,” said Winter.

He took a yellow pencil and drew a head in the front seat. She took a black one, and drew an eye, a nose, and part of a mouth. A profile of a face.

“Where was the mister sitting?” Winter asked.

“We can’t see him,” said Maja.

“What would he have looked like if we could see him?” Winter asked.

She drew a head in black, and on top of it something that could possibly be a cap.

“What’s that?” asked Winter.

“That’s the mister’s hat.”

Before Winter had time to ask his next question, she drew a green dot in front of her portrait of herself sitting in the car.

Her ball, Winter thought. Perhaps it was on top of the dashboard until he took it. Assuming that’s really where it vanished. If any of this really took place.

But he asked even so, pointing at the green dot.

“What’s that, Maja?”

“That’s the mister’s birdie,” she said.

Aneta Djanali met Kalle Skarin for the second time. The first meeting had suggested that something might have been taken from Kalle.

“The car,” Kalle had said.

They had gone through all the things he had at home, and what was missing.

“He usually took it with him,” Berit Skarin had said. “I couldn’t find it, so maybe…”

Now Kalle was playing with a new car on the carpet. Aneta Djanali was sitting beside him. Kalle had proved to be a bit of an expert on cars, and might have identified the abductor’s car as a Japanese make, possibly a Mitsubishi. He had pointed at the Lancer as if he had recognized the car model, but he had been less sure of the colors.

He hadn’t heard any bad words on the radio.

“Did the mister have any toys, Kalle?” asked Djanali.

“Kalle got candies,” said the boy, interrupting his brrrruuumming with the car, which was a Chrysler Jeep.

“Did the mister have candy?” Djanali asked.

“Lots of candy,” said Kalle.

She asked about what kind of candies, what they looked like, what they tasted like. She should’ve conducted this part of the interview in Gothenburg’s best candy shop so that they could compare different ones, but that might have been too distracting.