through the glass. Mrs. Bergman opened the window, but Sohlberg said nothing to her about the rent having been paid. Perhaps she wanted to keep the mystery alive a little longer for the old lady. Maybe I want to keep it alive for myself too, she thought.
Now she stood in front of the notice board and wrote down the phone numbers for the district CID’s homicide department.
At the window, Mrs. Bergman had said she wanted to write a letter to the police. Could the young lady help her?
“If you would like to contact the police, Mrs. Bergman, then maybe you can call them,” Sohlberg had answered. “I could help you.”
“I don’t like the telephone. Nothing gets said.”
28
The shouts from the children sounded far away. Sohlberg could see them moving in the playground like blurred little splotches of color. When the rain came, the colors came too, she thought, and turned away from the window toward Mrs. Bergman. “What should I write, then?”
“Write that we’re wondering where the mother is, and her little girl.”
“Perhaps we should mention the notice about the dead woman.”
“You can write that we read it on the bulletin board. And that the mother is fair haired.”
“Yes.”
“Don’t forget to put down which courtyard it is.”
“No.”
“You don’t need to put down my age.”
Karin Sohlberg smiled and looked up from the sheet of letter paper Mrs. Bergman had taken out of a beautiful writing desk in her living room. “No, we don’t need to write your age.”
“You can write down the age of the mother and daughter.”
“I’ll start now.”
“Don’t forget to say they’ve been gone since well before the rains came.”
“Maybe we don’t really-”
“I know what you’re trying to say. But I know that to be the case.”
“Yes.”
Karin Sohlberg thought to herself, What right did she actually have to write her way into Helene Andersen’s private life? Maybe she wanted to be left in peace. That was normal. And the girl wasn’t old enough that she had to be in school.
It occurred to her that she could ask around to find out if the girl had been attending day care or nursery school in the area. But was that her job? Or was she just curious?
“You can sign it with your own name if you want,” Ester Bergman said.
“Why would I do that, Mrs. Bergman?”
“You’ll do a better job of talking to the police when they come here in their cars.”
“But you’re the one who’s most convinced that they’ve been gone a long time.”
“I still say you’ll do a better job of talking. And I don’t like it when too many people come here in their cars and with their dogs. Or horses, for that matter.”
“I don’t think there’ll be that many. Maybe just one or two, asking a few questions. And it might take a while before they come. If they come at all.”
“Why wouldn’t they?”
Sohlberg didn’t know what to say. She looked outside, as if hoping the mother and her red-haired girl would walk past holding hands. “How about we say that I’ll be with you when you speak to the police? I can sit next to you, Mrs. Bergman.”
“I guess we could say that.”
“Then I’ll seal this and send it.”
“Read it to me again.”
As she read she thought about how it would end up at the bottom of some pile. The police must receive hundreds or thousands of tips like this about missing people.
Winter pulled a report from the increasingly voluminous preliminary investigation, a pile of papers that grew on his desk. He sat wearing his blazer and worked with the window open.
There was a grand total of 124 white Ford Escort 1.8 CLX three-door hatchbacks dating from ’91 to ’94 with license plates beginning with the letter
He’d sat again for a long time in front of the blurred video footage and was sure the first letter on the plate was an
One of the cars on the new list was the car on the screen. What had it been doing there?
It really wasn’t a manageable number, 124, even if he had, along with the plate numbers, the name, address, and personal identity number of all the owners.
Of the 124 cars, 2 had been reported stolen at the time of Helene’s murder. One had been found, badly parked with a bone-dry gas tank, in the parking lot in front of Swedish Match. There was no sign of the other.
Questioning people about their whereabouts at certain times in their lives was always a process of elimination-of listening and, on the basis of what was said, deciding who was lying and how much and, possibly, why.
The most problematic were those who lied, not because they had done anything illegal-their actions may well have been immoral, unethical, or deceitful toward someone close to them, yet nothing that was against the law- but because under no circumstances did they want to reveal what they had done in secret. They’d rather let murderers go free.
He felt restless. He wanted to wander out into the field again but instead played Coltrane on his portable Panasonic perched on a bench by the window. Still, “Trane’s Slo Blues” brought him no peace. He tapped the rhythm against the edge of the desk with the middle finger of his left hand and looked through the files while Earl May busted out his bass solo from a studio in Hackensack, New Jersey, on August 16, 1957. Winter had never been there. You have to save some things for later.
His thoughts drifted to “Lush Life,” and for a few seconds he became absorbed by the powerful melody. Janne Mollerstrom stepped into the room just as Red Garland began his piano solo.
“Well, isn’t this cozy,” Mollerstrom said.
“Yes.”
“What is it?” Mollerstrom nodded toward the CD player.
“The Clash.”
“What?”
“The Clash. A British rock-”
“That’s not the Clash, for Christ’s sake. I’ve got the Clash.”
“Just yanking your chain. Can’t you hear who it is?”
“All I hear is some nice piano. And here comes a trumpet. Must be Herb Alpert.”
Winter laughed.
“Tijuana Brass,” Mollerstrom said. “My dad liked it too.”
“Really.”
