“I’ve listened to one rock band. The Clash. Macdonald sent me the album together with the T-shirt.”
“The Clash? What is that?”
“It’s an English word meaning violent confrontation.”
“I mean the band. Can you tell the difference between hard rock and pop?”
“No. But I like this.”
“I don’t think so. Coltrane is your man.”
“I like it,” Winter repeated. “It was recorded back when I was nineteen or something, and yet it’s timeless.”
“Hard rock, you mean,” Ringmar said.
The witness arrived.
The man gave his account. The skin of his face was taut and looked brittle after a night without sleep. His little girl had suffered a severe allergic reaction that had nearly ended tragically.
Winter said something.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you. My mind blanked out there for a second.”
“You said that you were walking behind the men.”
“Yes.”
“How many were there?”
“Three, like I said.”
“Are you sure they were together?”
“Two of them waited while the third-the guy who hit her-they waited for him before moving on together.” The witness ran his hand across his eyes. “I remember that the guy doing the hitting was smaller.”
“He was shorter?”
“It looked that way.”
“And you followed them?”
“As far as I could. Everything happened so damn fast-afterward. I sort of went into shock, couldn’t move. Then I thought, ‘This is heinous. ’ And I followed after them to see where they went, but there were so many people on the square, and then my cell phone rang and my wife started screaming that Astrid couldn’t breathe. That’s our little girl.”
“Yes,” Winter said, and looked at Ringmar, who had children. Winter didn’t have children, but he had a woman who said she didn’t want to wait any longer for him to become mature enough to take responsibility for a child. Angela said that yesterday, before going home to her mother’s to fine-tune her biological clock. When she gets back, Winter had mused as she was leaving, I guess she’ll tell me what time it is.
“It all turned out all right,” the man said, mostly to himself. “Astrid’s going to be okay.”
Winter and Ringmar waited. The air in the room flowed back and forth, past a man dressed in the same shorts and tennis shirt he’d worn the night before. His chin had a thin shading of stubble and his eyes were craters sunken into his skull.
“We appreciate you coming by right after the accident,” Winter said. “From the hospital.”
The witness shrugged his shoulders. “There are so many people who do nothing,” he said. “Going around beating people up. It really makes me angry.”
Winter and Ringmar waited for him to continue.
“It’s like at work, with all that damn talk about immigrants, as if it’s become politically correct to talk about how there are too many immigrants and refugees and blacks in the country.”
“Where exactly did you lose sight of these three men?” Ringmar asked.
“What?”
“The ones who assaulted our colleague. Where exactly did they disappear?”
“When we reached the indoor market, the one sort of facing Kungsportsplatsen. Before you enter the square.”
“Did you hear them say anything?”
“Not a word.”
“You didn’t get any sense of where they were from?”
“Somewhere south of hell as far as I’m concerned.”
“Nothing more precise.”
“No. But they were Swedes, real Swedes you might say.”
They asked him to describe the men’s appearance, which he did.
Once the witness left the office, Winter lit up another cigarillo and dropped ash onto his naked thighs. “Did you notice that Aneta was a refugee in this guy’s eyes?” he said.
“How do you mean?” asked Ringmar.
“People are always going to be looked upon differently for one reason or another, generation after generation. Regardless of where they were born.”
“Yeah.”
“Space refugees.”
“What?”
“There’s an expression for those who journey from country to country without ever being allowed into any of the paradises. They’re known as space refugees.”
“That’s a nice expression,” Ringmar said. “Sort of romantic. But that’s not true of Aneta.”
“No, but once you’ve made it into paradise? What happens then?” He killed his cigarillo in the ashtray he’d suddenly spied behind the curtain.
The sun was high, the blaze heavy out on the square in front of the district police headquarters. Winter had misread the shade from the trees, and the heat in the front seat was nearly unbearable. He adjusted the air- conditioning.
He drove eastward past New Ullevi Stadium and pulled over next to a big house in Lunden. A dog barked like crazy from next door, rattling its running chain.
The entrance to the house was in the shade. Winter rang the doorbell and waited, then pressed it again. But no one opened the door. He headed back down the front steps and turned left and started walking along the stucco wall.
Round the back of the house, the sun glittered in a swimming pool. Winter took in the smell of chlorine and tanning oil. At the pool’s edge was a deck chair with a naked man sitting in it. His body was heavy and evenly tanned, a vivid color that shimmered mutedly against the Turkish towel protecting the chair from sweat and oil. Winter coughed gently, and the naked man opened his eyes.
“I thought I heard something,” he said.
“Then why didn’t you come to the door?” Winter asked.
“You came in anyway.”
“I could have been somebody else.”
“That would’ve been nice.” The man remained lying there in the same position.
His penis lay shriveled up against a muscular thigh.
“Get dressed and offer me something to drink, Benny.”
“In that order? Have you become homophobic, Erik?”
“It’s a question of aesthetics.” Winter looked around for a chair.
The man, whose name was Benny Vennerhag, got up and grabbed a white robe from the footstool and gestured at the water.
“Why don’t you take a dip while you’re waiting?” He sauntered off toward the house and turned around on the veranda. “I’ll bring out a couple of beers. You’ll find swimming trunks in the drawer of the footstool. Nice T-shirt. But who wants to go to London?”
Winter took off his shirt and shorts and dove into the water. It felt cool against his skin, and he swam along the bottom of the pool until he reached the other end. He got out, dove in again, and turned over on the bottom and looked up at the sky, the surface of the water like a ceiling of floating glass. There was a crackling down there from the tiled walls, unless the sound was coming from his eardrums. He stayed under the water for a long time
