Strangulation. The woman had been murdered. She had defensive wounds on her arms, her chest, and her face from a sharp instrument. A knife, a screwdriver, anything. There was no evidence of needle marks on her body, but in some of the photographs he could see lacerations in the skin.
Winter thought about what he’d just read. She had had a child, but it was impossible to say when. Nursery school? Day care? School? Babysitter? Playmates who talked about why a friend didn’t come out to play anymore? Was there even a child anymore? Or was the child a teenager?
Her body had no scars from operations, but there were small scars on her face, around the ears, and she had at some point in her childhood gotten second-degree burns on the inside of her left thigh. Winter hadn’t noticed that in the blue light of the autopsy room.
She was a smoker. Her liver was normal. He had to wait for the results from toxicology. The lab would find any traces of alcohol or drug use there might be.
He was also waiting to hear from the missing persons department of the National Criminal Investigation Department in Stockholm. If she had been reported missing anywhere in the country, Stockholm would identify her.
They hadn’t managed to find her among the local missing person reports or criminal-records databases.
The clothes she had been wearing didn’t have brand labels. Winter thought of the H &M posters he saw every time he walked down the street and of the poster he might have to put up himself.
She hadn’t been wearing any shoes. The police at the body disposal site had found shoes and a whole bunch of other odds and ends from times gone by, but not her shoes.
Her short white tube socks had been wet, or at least very damp. From the grass? It had been relatively dry. From the water? He saw a boat gently gliding through the water, oarlocks wrapped in cloths to muffle the sound.
He rose and stretched his tall body. Fatigue had taken hold of him while sitting.
He walked across the floor to a cabinet and took down a can of shaving cream and a razor from the top shelf and went to the bathroom, where he wet his face and spread the cream on. The light was dim and his eyes glowed in his face, which was like a mask. He leaned in closer and saw that the whites of his eyes had cracked into small red threads.
But the shave perked him up and back in his room he switched on the VCR and TV with the remote. The light of the first film sequence was dim and grainy, and he tried to use the contrast button on the remote to compensate.
The film looked like a photo negative, with the darkness cast in a false silvery hue by the camera’s night vision. You could see everything, but the subject took on a surreal quality.
Two cars drove past in the foreground. They came along the road and had not pulled out from the Kalleback recreation area. The time was displayed in the lower corner of the screen: 2:03 a.m. Another car passed in the foreground, moving toward town. No motion on the other side. The officer who was holding the camera was standing near the top of the hill, hidden from the sparse traffic, with the lens pointing east. Winter could see the side road that led down toward the Delsjo Lake area, but the visibility was poor. The tape kept rolling but no vehicles appeared heading east. Then suddenly a car emerged at the extreme right of the screen, but as soon as he registered the movement, the screen went blank.
He backed up the tape and watched the sequence again. There a car appeared, driving along. There he saw the outline of it. There it went blank.
Winter watched the clip four more times without really seeing anything more than he had to begin with. He removed the tape and inserted the other one into the VCR. Four seconds in, two cars came driving along at high speed from Molnlycke. He wondered if the drivers were about to be pulled over.
Now he saw a car drive by on the other side and continue beyond the turnoff. Ten minutes had passed since the first time code on the previous cassette.
The camera moved and then stabilized again. The road was empty in both directions. There was a flicker in the right-hand corner of the screen, and a car passed by driving east. Winter saw a turn signal come on, and the car turned off toward Delsjo Lake. He couldn’t make out what the make was. He waited and another car appeared on the highway and also turned off to the right. It looked like one of the smaller Ford models, but he was far from certain.
The time ticked away at the bottom of the screen. Several cars passed by from the left, heading toward the city. The camera was steady. Maybe he had a tripod, thought Winter.
Another flash of movement at the bottom of the screen and a car came out from the recreation area. Winter waited until the road was clear again and then rewound the tape.
The car had driven past at three minutes to three, in the direction of town. He studied the sequence again. It could be the same car he had seen coming in toward Delsjo Lake earlier. That was fourteen minutes before. It didn’t take more than a minute to drive from the turnoff to the parking lot, one and a half, tops. Just as long to drive back, maybe a little less. That would give someone at least eleven minutes down by the lake: to open the car door, walk to the back of the car, haul out the body, carry it fifty yards, lay it in the ditch, look around, and go back the way he came.
He watched the whole tape through to the end but saw nothing more of interest, so he returned to the sequences where the same car seemed to drive off the highway and back on within the space of fourteen minutes.
“You’re still here?” Ringmar had opened the door.
“Come here for a minute, Bertil.”
Ringmar walked up to Winter, who pointed at the TV.
“Look at this. Wait a minute. See the car across the road?”
“Is this the tape from Kalleback?”
“Yes. See the car driving up the hill?”
“I’m not blind. Despite this light.”
“Now. See how it turns off toward Delsjo Lake? I’ll back it up.”
Neither of them said anything while Winter fiddled with the remote. The car came back into view.
“Can you make out what kind of car it is?”
“Well… Can you freeze-frame it?”
Winter pressed pause, and the car stopped and jiggled on the highway.
“It could be a Ford. Maybe,” Ringmar said.
“That’s what I was thinking. Are you sure? You know more about cars than I do.”
“No, I’m not sure. But it looks like an Escort. Fredrik knows more about cars than anyone.”
“It comes back later on,” Winter said, and fast-forwarded the fourteen minutes.
“It’s closer, but it’s no easier to tell what make it is from this angle,” Ringmar said.
“There’s someone in the front seat.”
“If there weren’t, that would be pretty sensational.”
“You can just about make out the face.”
“You’re gonna have a harder time with the tags.”
“It’s hard but not impossible,” Winter said. He turned toward Ringmar.
Ringmar saw a strange light in his eyes. Could be the reflection of the screen.
“Someone was in the vicinity of the disposal site after the body was put there. Or shortly before-or at the same time.”
“We’ll have to track down that car,” Ringmar said. But that went without saying, so he continued, “How sophisticated is our equipment for making this footage visible?”
“You mean crystal clear?”
“I mean clear enough to see a few numbers or letters or facial features. And we’ll have to speak to the uniform behind the camera. The cameraman.”
“We’ll have to speak to Beier,” Winter said, and just at that moment the phone rang and it was Beier.
