The Shadow Woman

PART 2

HE HEARD THE SOUNDS OF THE FOREST, BUT THEY WEREN’T like they were before. Nothing was like that former calm. He barely heard the wind anymore.

She had stepped out of the past like a greeting from the devil. He’d tried to fend her off during that first call. You’ve got the wrong number, miss.

That voice. Like something that wasn’t supposed to exist anymore, that wasn’t meant to be heard.

He had done what he could to forget. The others who could talk were gone.

Afterward, while he could still hear her voice, he had looked down at his hands and shut his eyes, and still those hellish visions taunted him. The house and the wind from the sea that blew right through that damned house. He had done what he had to. Though he’d planned it, he’d thought it wouldn’t be necessary-but then he understood that he had to do it. His hands did it.

This was the second time he’d driven to the bus stop and picked them up. It wasn’t the closest stop, but she understood why. Perhaps she was the one who’d suggested it. He was afraid now. He hadn’t been able to hang up when she called again. Come alone, he’d said. She refused.

No no no-who said anything about that? he’d asked. She eyed him with a crazed look that he recognized in himself. Terrified of what was going to happen, he’d looked up at the ceiling, thought about how he had one way out. It had been there the whole time. One option. Fear had stopped him.

There was screeching above their heads. It was the second time she’d come alone, and he didn’t know if she knew everything. As they walked through the field down to the other glade, animals ran off into the trees. She’d turned her face toward him, but he hadn’t wanted to look into her eyes. A shout came from far away and suddenly he wanted the child there. Next time she’d bring the child with her.

The sweat running down into his eyes blinded him, and he couldn’t hear any cars on the road. It never got really dark. He tried to blink away the sweat. Her arms…

When he turned around, he saw a white boat floating on the surface of the lake, without sound, as if it were waiting. She seemed to be following it with her eyes, her head turned to the side, but the boat lay still, trapped in the late-night fog. He couldn’t see anyone in the boat, and when he turned around again, for the last time, the surface of the water was empty and black.

34

THE APARTMENT WAS LOCATED IN A BUILDING WITH A VIEW out toward Black Marshes. There was nothing outside to suggest that it housed a private day care with three rooms and a kitchen.

The architecture struck Winter as frozen music, crystallized chords, which carried a rough beauty within its walls but kept everything confined within. Nature was right up alongside it, but apart.

He’d received instructions from Karin Sohlberg, but she didn’t want to accompany him. He walked in through the building’s front entrance and rang the doorbell of the apartment to the left in the stairwell on the first floor. The door, covered with children’s drawings, was opened by a man who could have been seventy years old or eighty. He was wearing a brown khaki shirt and broad suspenders fastened to gray trousers that were big and comfortable. He had a white mustache and thick white hair, and Winter thought of a Santa Claus who had shaved off his beard and descended to live among humans for good. The old man was holding the hand of a little boy who was sucking his thumb and staring wide-eyed at the long-haired blond police officer in a black leather jacket.

“Hello,” Winter said, as he bent down a few inches toward the boy, who started to cry.

“There, there, Timmy,” the white-haired man said, holding his hand. The boy stopped crying and pressed his face against the man’s pant leg.

“Well, good afternoon,” Winter said, and held out his hand. He introduced himself and his reason for being there. The search for a missing person. Two missing persons, he thought. A child and a murderer.

“Ernst Lundgren,” the man said. He was tall and slightly bent forward. He must have been nearly seven feet tall when he was young, Winter thought.

“Could we speak for a moment?” he asked.

Lundgren turned around. Winter had heard children and adult voices, and he now saw several elderly people busy helping the children put on their coats.

“We’re just on our way out, as you can see,” Lundgren said. “In ten minutes or however long it takes, it’ll be quiet in here. If you can wait that long.”

“Certainly,” Winter said.

“We couldn’t just sit here and do nothing, seeing how difficult things are for them,” Lundgren said. “The young mothers, that is.”

Winter nodded. They sat in the kitchen. Through the window he could see the little troop move across the road and in among the trees. It might have been ten children and four adults.

“There are a lot of single mothers with small children living around here,” Lundgren said. “They have no jobs and no child care and hardly even any friends. Many are stuck in their loneliness and never get out of it.”

Winter nodded again.

“It’s dangerous,” the day-care manager said. “Nobody can survive for very long under those conditions.”

“How long have you been running this day care?” Winter asked.

“About a year. We’ll see how long we can keep it going. It’s not really a proper day-care center, in the strict sense of the word, if by that you mean an institution.”

“So what is it, then?”

“It’s a few old fogies trying to help the young and desperate, to put it bluntly.” Lundgren nodded toward the coffee machine. “Would you like a cup?” Winter accepted the offer, and Lundgren stood and prepared coffee for himself and Winter, then sat back down at the table. “Some of these poor girls don’t know which way to turn. They need, well, for want of a better word I guess I’d have to say alleviation. We try to provide them with a little alleviation in their daily lives.”

“Uh-huh.”

“That means a young mother can leave her child here with us for a few hours and go off to the hairdresser or into town to be by herself for a bit. Or just go home and take it easy.”

“Yes,” Winter said. “I think I understand.”

“Having the chance to be by themselves for just a little while a couple of times a week,” Lundgren said. “Can you imagine what it’s like never to have a moment to just be by yourself?”

“No,” Winter answered. “I’m more familiar with the opposite.”

“What did you say?”

“The opposite. Spending too much time by myself.”

“Aha. But you see that’s also a problem these girls face. They don’t get to socialize with anyone their own age.” Lundgren rolled up one sleeve of his khaki shirt, and Winter saw that the hair on his arm grew like white moss all the way down to the middle of his knuckles. “And don’t forget that some of them have more than one child.”

“Are there many wanting to come here?”

“A few, but we can’t handle any more. We’d need a bigger apartment and there’d have to be more of us, but we’re already dependent on charity as it is. No doubt the municipal authorities see us as pirates. Fine by me.”

“You’re doing a good job,” Winter said.

“You gotta do something before you die. And it’s fun. It’s the most fun I’ve had for a long time.”

Winter finished his coffee. It was still warm.