“What are we waiting for?” she repeated. “I want to throw out those damn pills.”
He couldn’t answer. Anything he might say could end up wrong, so he unfolded himself from the bed. “I’m going to get something to drink.”
“Get back here!”
“I’ve got to have something.” He pulled on his shorts by hopping on one leg at a time, then stepped out onto the balcony to fetch glasses and bottles. The wind from the early evening was gone. It felt as if it had grown warmer, warmer, almost, than inside the room.
He raised his gaze and the sky was empty. It might have been one o’clock or two. He could blame work and cycle home, but that would be cowardly. To say that he wanted to spend an hour hunched over the PowerBook, basking in its pleasant electronic glow, would be true in a way, but it sounded insane.
He carried two glasses filled with equal parts white wine and water into the kitchen, but there was no ice left in her freezer, so he walked back to the bedroom and handed one to Angela.
“So tell me what we’re waiting for,” she repeated. “I’m tired of this arrangement.”
“What arrangement?”
“Everything.” She drank thirstily. “I don’t want to live apart anymore.”
“It was your idea from the beginning.”
“I don’t care whose idea it was. And that feels like years ago, back when we were both young urban professionals.”
“We still are.”
“You’re thirty-seven, Erik. You’re nearly forty. I’m thirty.”
He drank and heard a car driving at high speed down on Kungsgatan, going toward Rosenlund. Could be a taxi or a private car on its way down to the hooker strip along Feskekorka. Sometimes the johns produced a heavy flow of traffic below her window, but tonight had been quiet. He wondered why. The conditions were perfect.
“It may sound silly, but playtime is over,” she went on. “You know I didn’t make any demands before, but I am now.”
“Yeah.”
“Is there something wrong? We’ve been together for almost two years and at our age that’s a long time for an LAT relationship.”
“You want us to move in together?”
“You know what I want, but that would be a start.”
“You and me, in an apartment?”
“That is what moving in together usually involves.”
He had to let out a giggle, like a little kid. The situation was untenable, awful. He was being held to account for his desire to live on his own and have her within comfortable reach, within biking distance on a warm evening. She was right; it was as she said. Playtime was over.
“You have to choose sometime,” she said softly, as if to a child that can’t make up its mind. “This is no surprise to you, Erik.”
“We could always see more of each other.”
“So you’re not ready?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“This is the only chance you’ll get.”
21
Angela waved from the balcony as he turned down the hill. He had been given time to think it over, but that was really the wrong way to describe it. He couldn’t think of the right way, so he didn’t.
“She hasn’t gotten in touch,” Ringmar said after morning prayer. “Should we go over there?”
Winter thought for a moment. As the head of the investigation, he had the discretionary authority to “bring in a person of potential interest for questioning.” They couldn’t just barge into somebody’s house, but they could bring someone in for questioning who was important to the preliminary investigation and hadn’t come in voluntarily. He looked in his papers. Andrea Maltzer lived on Viktor Rydbergsgatan. Nice address.
“Okay. Let’s go over there.”
They drove across Korsvagen. Someone merging into the traffic circle in a hurry had not paid proper attention. Two damaged cars stood at a nasty angle, and a uniformed officer was sorting out who was at fault together with two men whom Winter guessed were the drivers. The police sergeant was a man in his fifties, and he looked up as they edged past, then nodded in greeting. Ringmar raised his hand through the window.
“Sverker,” Winter said.
“We did a lot of shifts together,” Ringmar said. “Sweet youth in uniform.”
“I haven’t seen him for a while.”
“He was sick. Cancer in one of his legs, I think.”
“I may have heard something about that,” Winter said, and drove up the hill at Eklandabacken.
Winter scanned the facades along the street, once they’d passed the church, and pulled up in an empty parking spot opposite Andrea Maltzer’s address. The building was tall and the street was in shade. The entryway was broad and austere, the air inside cool from stone and marble. A statue at the foot of the steps depicted a naked woman pointing upward with one finger.
“Looks even nicer than your lobby,” Ringmar said.
The locksmith was waiting for them in a rattan armchair by the front door and stood to say hello.
“Second floor,” Winter said. “Let’s take the stairs.”
The polished tropical hardwood and the lush plants on pedestals made him feel like he was wandering through a managed jungle.
The locksmith got everything ready.
“I’ll ring the doorbell first,” Winter said.
He rang again and heard footsteps and thought they were coming from somewhere else. The doors were massive-impossible to hack your way through with an axe. You’d need a chainsaw and battering ram, with Fredrik at the front.
There was a rattling inside, and the door was opened by a woman who could be the same age as Angela.
She’s calm, Winter thought. This is a surprise for her. She’s simply exercised her right to have a private life and disappeared for a few days.
“Yes?” the woman asked.
“Andrea Maltzer?”
“What’s this about? Who are you?”
“The police,” Winter said, and produced his ID card. She studied it. The locksmith eyed Winter, who gave him a nod, then disappeared down the stairs.
“What do you want?” Andrea Maltzer repeated.
“Could we come in for a moment?”
“Are you also a police officer?” she asked Ringmar.
“Sorry,” Ringmar said, and showed her his ID.
She gave his badge a quick glance and looked at Winter again. She had a face sprinkled with freckles that had grown in number this summer, he guessed. She looks young and fresh, more or less like Peter von Holten when he’s not throwing up all over my desk. Can’t she find someone who isn’t already married? She looks tired, but not worn out.
“Would it be all right?” Winter nodded toward the apartment.
