“What is that?” Ringmar asked.
Winter stood with his knees bent and slowly lifted his face and peered through the windows of the car. Thirty yards ahead, on the asphalt, lay a uniformed police officer, and he was the one who was screaming-more like shouting now. He’s probably been shot, Winter thought, since he seems unable to move. Unless he has chosen to lie still. But he was shouting. Winter saw no blood, but the man was lying at a strange angle with his leg pointing straight out. Now he moved an arm, in a kind of wave. He fell silent.
“Good God, it’s Jonne,” Sverker said, also looking through the windows. “He moved forward when it seemed like they’d stopped shooting. It’s Jonne Stalnacke.”
“Do you have a megaphone?” Winter asked.
“In the car. I’ll get it.” Sverker cautiously opened the door. “We’ve still got this one from a traffic accident the other day. It ought to be standard equipment.”
Winter took the megaphone and called out, “THIS IS THE POLICE. WE HAVE A WOUNDED OFFICER WHO NEEDS IMMEDIATE MEDICAL ATTENTION. THERE MAY BE OTHER INJURED PEOPLE HERE. PUT DOWN YOUR WEAP-”
And then there was another explosion, and Winter dived headlong onto the street and scraped the hand that was holding the device. Someone fired again, from above. The shot seemed farther away, like the one he’d heard before. Maybe they’re pulling back, Winter thought. The enemy is retreating. Or was that just one of them? They had been shooting at each other, after all.
He raised the megaphone again and saw that he was bleeding from the knuckles and fingers of his right hand.
“THIS IS THE POLICE. PUT DOWN YOUR WEAPONS IMMEDIATELY. THERE ARE PEOPLE INJURED HERE. THIS IS THE POLICE. PUT DOWN YOUR WEAPONS AT ONCE. WE HAVE INJURED PEOPLE IN DESPERATE NEED OF EMERGENCY MEDICAL ATTENTION. PUT DOWN YOUR WEAPONS IMMEDIATELY.”
On the road behind him, an ambulance whined its way closer. Two ambulances. He turned around. The cars had stopped twenty yards away. People were standing along the other side of the road, by the thousands it looked like. Around him lay police officers and civilians who’d happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or the right place but the wrong ti-
Another shot, but now in the distance like a New Year’s firecracker in another neighborhood. The injured police officer mumbled something. He’s in shock, Winter thought. He could die.
“We have to go get Jonne,” Sverker said. “There could be more people lying out there.”
“THIS IS THE POLICE. PUT AWAY YOUR WEAPONS. WE ARE GOING TO STAND UP NOW AND MOVE OUT ONTO THE SQUARE. WE’RE GETTING UP NOW. THIS IS THE POLICE. PUT DOWN YOUR WEAPONS. THERE ARE A LOT OF PEOPLE HERE. WE HAVE TO BRING UP AN AMBULANCE. THERE ARE INJURED PEOPLE HERE.”
The ambulances behind Winter honked their horns, backing up his words. People all around gazed at him and at the long and narrow square, the roofs, the shop signs. Sverker held his service weapon in his hand.
“Put that away,” Winter said.
Jonne cried out again. No one was shooting anymore. Winter tried to see if there was anyone on the rooftops, but the sun stung his eyes and made the buildings look like they were being corroded by a chalk white light.
“THIS IS THE POLICE. WE’RE GOING TO MOVE OUT ONTO THE SQUARE AND THEN AN AMBULANCE IS GOING TO FOLLOW. WE’RE MOVING FORWARD NOW.”
He stood up and, holding the megaphone, slowly walked around the car. Clever idiot. He took a few steps forward, as if walking on thin ice, and continued over toward the injured police officer. Jonne Stalnacke lay still, but Winter could hear a low murmur, as if he were talking to himself.
Winter bent down over Jonne, dropped to his knees. Jonne’s face was white like the sky around the sun. His lips were invisible. His groin area was soaked in blood-they hadn’t been able to see this when they were crouching behind the car. Winter thought about how clean Jonne’s socks and shoes were. The leather shone like a mirror. Sverker jolted up and waved vigorously to the ambulance, which popped the clutch and screeched toward them. It was like a signal to everyone else who was lying down. People stood, but many of them were shaking so badly they had to sit right back down again. Winter heard crying. An entire square in shock. He caught a whiff of excrement from a man who tried to walk toward the street. More ambulances arrived on the scene. A streetcar passed by, as if it had emerged from another world. Uniformed police officers took care of people and looked to see if there were any more injured along with the paramedics and doctors. Stalnacke was carried into the ambulance and driven off. Winter suddenly felt terribly thirsty.
It was so hot, so it was strange that the little girl didn’t come outside for a dip in the wading pool. Many days had passed. It had been hot for such a long time now, but she didn’t know when she had last seen the girl. Nor the mother, but she wasn’t so far gone as not to realize that she couldn’t quite keep track of time the way she used to. Elmer wasn’t around anymore. He used to wind up the clock or say when it was getting on toward evening. It was hard to know what time it was when it took so long for it to get dark. But now it went quicker because the skies were turning toward fall.
Ester Bergman heard the children’s voices through the window she’d cracked open. She didn’t believe in keeping the windows wide open when it was hot. It just made it hotter inside. She had a good temperature in there.
The children jumped into the water, but there wasn’t much water to speak of. So close to the sea and still they couldn’t go there. Perhaps they didn’t want to, but nor could they; she understood that much. Perhaps there wasn’t any sea where they came from. Desert maybe, mountains and such.
The girl didn’t have black hair, and not all the children in the courtyard did either.
She thought the girl lived in one of the units to the left, on the short end of the yard, but she hadn’t seen her go in or out of it, because the gable blocked the entrance from view. Maybe it was because the girl had red hair that she remembered her and wondered where she was. A few of the other children had light hair, but none of them had red hair.
The girl had walked past her window on the way to the playground. She never ran.
The girl’s mother had light hair and always sat by herself. Perhaps that was another reason why she remembered the girl, because the mother never spoke to anyone. They were never in the courtyard for very long. After a while the mother would take the girl, and they would go back inside again or leave the building altogether. She had wondered several times where it was they went. But what business is it of mine? she had thought.
The mother had smoked, and she hadn’t liked seeing that. There weren’t many other mothers in the courtyard who smoked, as far as she could tell.
A couple of times over the past week she had thought she’d seen the girl, but it wasn’t her. She didn’t know what her voice sounded like. And she’d never heard the mother speak to the girl either.
I guess I miss that little moppet, she thought. They must have moved out, but I didn’t see any moving van.
24
She coughed. She felt hot in her face and on her body.
Where did the dress come from? It wasn’t hers, but it didn’t look new. It didn’t smell of anything.
The man wasn’t there. She had the slip of paper in her hand. Was it because they were looking for the slip of paper that she had to take off her pants? They hadn’t said anything. She looked around, but there was no place where she could put the slip of paper. She felt inside the dress for a pocket and found one. She’d had a dress before, so she knew to look for it.
She pulled the dress over her head. If she crumpled up the paper a little, it fit right into the pocket and she could sort of put a flap of the fabric over it. She patted it on the outside and couldn’t feel the paper.
