“Erik Winter here.”
“I was busy.”
“You still are.”
“What?”
“You’re busy with this conversation with me now, Walter. And I’ll get straight to the point. I need to know if you had any cameras out around Borasleden last night, by the Delsjo junction, or anywhere in the vicinity. Early in the morning. While it was still dark.”
“Speed check?”
“You’d know that better than I would.”
“What’s this about?”
“Haven’t you heard about the murder yet? We got a strangled woman this morn-”
“Oh sure, I know about it. Despite the communications in this place, I might add.”
Winter waited for him to continue. He could feel the sweat around his eyes and where the telephone pressed against his cheek. He sat on the car seat in the shade and wiped his forehead with the back of his right hand.
“You want to know if we were filming in the vicinity, when it was dark. Well, it’s possible. Normally we don’t have that kind of equipment, but we got some in on loan from the boys in the copter unit to test it out a bit. Heat- sensitive cameras. I’ll have to check with the local precinct in Harlanda.”
“Can you do that now?”
“Well, I guess I’d better if you’re going to have any chance of seeing the footage. If they’ve been there, that is.”
“How do you mean?”
“Don’t you know how it works, Chief Inspector? The officers in the video cars peruse the tapes and then rewind them, and then somebody else takes over.”
“The tapes are usually recorded over?”
“Sure. We don’t exactly have infinite resources over here in the traffic department.”
“Then call them, please.”
“Where can I reach you?”
Winter told him and hung up, then rose from his seat and walked across the asphalt to the bus timetable. The first departure of the day was at 0500 hours. The final one left at 2343. Yet another lead to add to all the others in the investigation. An investigation is a great big vacuum cleaner that sucks in everything: witness statements and forensic evidence, sound ideas and crazy hunches, most of it completely irrelevant to the case. Eventually you find things that fit together. Then you can formulate a hypothesis.
The phone in his breast pocket rang. He answered with his name.
“It’s Walter here again. That was good thinking, Winter. It turns out that they were out last night and this morning in the video cars in the eastern part of town.”
“Okay,” Winter said. “Were they set up along the Borasleden?”
“You bet. And a couple of the cameras that were used last night haven’t been reused since.”
“Is that all the cameras?” asked Winter.
“I’m not following you.”
“You said that there were a couple of cameras. Were there more than that being used in the area we’re talking about?”
“No, not as I understood it.”
“I need to see those tapes.”
“Where?”
“Can you get them over to homicide by this afternoon?”
“Absolutely. We have special courier cars set aside just for that kind of thing,” Kronvall said, and Winter gave a short laugh.
“Thanks for your help.”
“If this solves the case, then we want credit.”
“Of course.”
“Chief Walter Kronvall of the traffic department provided the crucial assist. Something like that.”
“Here at homicide we don’t forget our friends,” Winter said, then hung up and lingered next to the timetable.
He thought once again about the woman who just a short time ago lay so close by and had been carried there like a slaughtered animal. A victim-and perhaps quarry. Her nameless body was itself a message about what happened. Why? He thought of her half-open mouth and exposed teeth. Like a silent plea. A distant cry.
Winter drove back to the area where the woman was discovered. The grass in the ditch still looked flattened from the weight of her body. He turned around and followed his own tracks with his gaze. It was a long way to carry someone, dead or alive. A dead body was heavy but offered no resistance.
Whoever carried her need not have been a giant. Fear of discovery could make a murderer strong, assuming that he even cared, that is. Or had several people walked there in the sparse light of dawn? More people filled with madness, rage, adrenaline.
She could have been carried over the rough fields, through the fog. Why not?
The police tried to work their way through the terrain within a reasonable radius, but they couldn’t go stomping around haphazardly. If there were too many of them, everything became haphazard.
A shot made Winter start. Another shot shattered the early afternoon silence of the forest and disturbed the low drone of the cars driving alongside. The hard sounds sent echoes above the birch trees and across the water beyond. The shooting ranges were back in use.
“And the sun also rises,” Ringmar said, knocking on the open door before Winter had had a chance to wring his shirt dry.
“I like the sun.”
“When you’re ready, the gentlemen of the press are waiting.”
“It’ll have to be quick. I want to look at these tapes as soon as I’m done.”
Winter explained the videocassettes to Ringmar as they walked down the corridors. The representatives of the media looked like they were on their way to the beach: shorts, thin shirts, someone in sunglasses. Cool guy, Winter thought, and took his place in front of a lectern at the far end of the room.
“We don’t know who she is yet,” he answered to the first question. “And we may need your help to find that out.”
“Do you have a photo?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Hans Bulow from the
“We’ve taken photos of the victim’s body. We don’t usually release pictures like that to the public, as I’m sure you’re aware.”
“But if you have to?”
“We’ll get back to you on that.”
“But she was murdered?”
“I can’t answer that yet. It could be suicide.”
“So she took her own life and then drove out to Delsjo Lake and lay down in a ditch?” said a woman from the local radio news.
“Who said anything about her dying anywhere else?” he said.
The woman looked at Hans Bulow out of the corner of her eye. The latest issue of
“We have not yet been able to determine the exact sequence of events leading up to the… death,” Winter said.
“When will we know whether she’s been murdered?”
“Later this afternoon I will be getting a report from the medical examiner.”
“Are there any witnesses?”
