The Shadow Woman

the door handle, he heard the postman’s trudge outside and the mail crashed down onto his feet.

Included in the pile, along with the latest issue of Police and a couple of envelopes from the bank, was a notice for a heavy envelope, weighing over a kilo, which could be picked up at the post office on the Avenyn.

The heat was so thick that the square at Vasaplatsen rippled before him like the dazzle of glass filament. A handful of people were standing in the shade of the streetcar shelter, their bodies black silhouettes from across the park.

He fetched his bicycle from the basement and rode along Vasagatan, up past Skanstorget. His shirt was wet before he reached Linneplatsen, and that was a nice feeling. He decided to keep heading south instead of biking to Langedrag and pedaled in the stark light all the way out to the beach at Askimsbadet. There he took a break and drank a can of soda water and after that continued past the golf course at Hovas and down past Jarkholmen, parking among the other bicycles along the path. Then he climbed down to the little beach and plunged into the water as quickly as he could.

He lay in the sun and read, and when it got to be too hot, he went back into the water. It was his vacation.

2

ANETA DJANALI HAD HER JAW SMASHED IN THE MINUTES JUST after midnight. She’d been walking southward on Ostra Hamngatan, and there were people all around her. She wasn’t on duty, but even if she had been it wouldn’t have made any difference, since homicide detectives didn’t wear a uniform on the job.

She’d been accompanied by a girlfriend, and the two women had caught sight of an assault in progress a ways down on the darker Kyrkogatan: three men punching and kicking someone lying on the ground. The men looked up when Djanali called out and took a few steps into the side street. Seconds later one of them hit her in the face as he passed, a single blow; she felt no pain at first and then suddenly it filled her entire head and spread down toward her chest. The men persisted as she lay on the ground, the one who first hit her shouting something about the color of her skin. This was the first time she’d been subjected to violence because of it.

She never lost consciousness. She tried to say something to her friend but nothing came out. Lis looks paler than I’ve ever seen her before, she thought to herself. Maybe it’s a bigger shock for her than for me.

The Gothenburg Party continued around them, people wandering back and forth between the various beer tents and stages. The hot evening was thick with the smell of charcoal grills and people-the streets stinking of booze, and bodies of sweat. The voices were loud, all mixed together, and somewhere in the cacophony of cries Lis had disappeared. This was the third time they’d strolled past that spot this evening. Third time lucky, Djanali thought, aware of the rough asphalt against her cheek. Her head didn’t hurt so much anymore. She saw many bare legs and sandals and boating shoes, and then she was lifted up and carried into a vehicle, which she understood to be an ambulance. She felt someone touch her gently, and then she passed out.

Fredrik Halders received the news when he arrived at the police station at seven thirty the following morning. He was a buzz-cut police detective who busted chops whenever he got the chance, preferably with Aneta Djanali and preferably about her skin color and background. He sometimes came across as unintelligent and was called a racist and a sexist, but he let it run off his scalp.

Alone following a divorce three years before, he was forty-four and always pissed off-a violent man with a hell of a lot of festering, unresolved issues, though he’d rather jerk off in public than see a shrink. The nervous energy surging through his body could lead him into a very dark place-he knew that already-and this only intensified when he heard what had happened to Djanali.

“No witnesses?” he shouted.

“Yeah, they-,” Lars Bergenhem said.

“Where are they?”

“The girlfr-”

“Let me at ’em! Nah, fuck it.” He made for the door.

“Where are you going?”

“Where the hell do you think?”

“She’s sedated. Or at least she was when they were setting her jaw.”

“How do you know that?”

“I just got off the phone with Sahlgrenska Hospital.”

“Why didn’t they call me? When have you ever been on assignment with her?”

“They don’t know that,” Bergenhem said quietly.

“What about the witnesses?”

“I’ve been trying to tell you that Aneta’s girlfriend should be coming up here in,” he checked his watch, “about fifteen minutes.”

“Was she there?”

“Yes.”

“Nobody else?”

“You know there’s a party going on there. There were masses of people, which, of course, means nobody saw a thing.”

“Christ al-fucking-mighty.”

Bergenhem didn’t answer.

“You like this city?” Halders asked. He’d sat down, stood up, and sat down again.

“It’s a modern city. Entering a new, more nuanced age.”

“More nuan-What the hell does that mean?”

“There are good things and bad things,” Bergenhem said, instantly aware that he’d let a worn-out phrase slip from his tongue. “You can’t tell a whole city to go to hell.”

“Two people go for a walk along Hamngatan. Some bastard comes up and smashes one of their heads in. There’s your nuanced city for you.”

Bergenhem said nothing. How many violent provocations had they had over the past month? Fifteen? It was like gearing up for war. A guerrilla war between all the tribes of Gothenburg. And yesterday there was a melee.

“Who’s gonna talk to the girl?” Halders’s voice sounded far away. “The girlfriend?”

“I am and you can too, if you want.”

“You do it,” Halders said. “I’ll get over to the hospital. How’d it go for that other poor bastard, by the way?”

“He’s alive.”

Halders drove impatiently, didn’t even notice that the air coming through the AC vent was hotter than the air in the car.

Aneta Djanali was sitting up in bed when he came in, or rather she was propped up with pillows. Her face was covered in bandages.

She’s just woken up and I shouldn’t be here, he thought, pulling a chair to the bed and sitting. “We’re gonna get them,” he said.

She didn’t move. Then she closed her eyes, and Halders wasn’t sure if she had fallen asleep.

“By the time you wake up we’ll have cuffed those bastards,” he said. “Even the black citizens of this city deserve to be able to walk the streets safely after dark.”

She didn’t respond to that either. The mountain of pillows behind her looked uncomfortable.

“In a situation like this you gotta think it would have been better if you’d stayed back in Ouagadougou.” It was