“Okay,” Bergenhem said.
“He’s still here,” Winter said. “I think he’s still here. One of the female officers has taken up position outside the doors to Konsum. I want you to go into the department store and see if you can spot him. And if you do, call me and go outside and wait there with the others.”
He looked at Helander. “You come with me.”
She didn’t answer as he hurried her out of the post office.
“You circle around the edge of the square, to the left, and we’ll meet up at the corner over there,” Winter said.
He entered the savings bank and came out again. The man in the cap wasn’t in the flower shop, nor was he in the Bella Napoli Pizzeria. Not in the real estate office on the corner.
“Nothing,” Helander said when they met.
They walked down the pedestrian tunnel. They walked past the newly built high school and stood in front of the cultural center. To the left Winter could see a bridge over a stream. The path forked in two after the bridge, and then again farther on, and once more after that. He thought about the fingerprint, his heart pounding.
They entered the cultural center and continued through the library and the other public spaces. They saw two teenagers wearing caps.
“He was at least forty,” Helander said.
“Yes.”
They went out and the wind hit them from the left. They continued into the wind, half-running. Up ahead lay the bus station. Winter could see the back entrance to the supermarket and the parking lot below, toward the street. Fredrik and Aneta-back on duty-moving around among the cars. Halders’s scalp was self-illuminating.
There were police officers standing by the buses. He could make out Ringmar speaking to Borjesson. Bergenhem approached from the arcade next to Konsum and shook his head when he saw Winter. We’re all here, thought Winter, the whole hardworking team, but what good is it?
He continued west across the bus station. On the other side of the road was the health clinic, and in front of him was yet another big parking lot. As he drew closer he saw a man, thirty yards away, leaning forward to unlock a red Volvo 740. He was wearing a black cap with white text and a green oilskin coat that Winter could only see the upper part of since the man was standing on the other side of the car. Winter started to run.
The man looked up, black cap pulled down over his brow. He was wearing a red scarf. It’s like watching a black-and-white film transform into color, Winter thought as he ran.
The man saw him and turned around to see if anything was happening behind him, and that’s when the others approached. A police car tore out from the bus station and accelerated toward him. The blond guy in the leather jacket sprinting toward him was now shouting something. He threw himself into the car and jammed the key into the ignition, and the Volvo roared to life. When he sent the car surging backward, the guy in the leather jacket clung to the door, but then flew off when he popped the clutch and shot forward. It would have worked if the back end of a cop car hadn’t smashed right into his front on the exit ramp and then been dragged halfway across the damn street on the hood of his Volvo before he finally came to a stop. He couldn’t get the door open, so he threw himself to the passenger side and stepped out onto the asphalt, which was when that goddamn skinhead came at him and barreled into his stomach skull-first, and the air just exploded out of him and he crumbled to the ground after two steps, and the skinhead flew onto him again.
“You okay?” Halders asked.
“Just a little scratch,” Winter said, peering at his elbow through the hole in his leather jacket. “Nice work, Fredrik.”
“So that’s him,” Halders said, and looked at the man sitting in the backseat of one of the radio cars.
“He’s the one who paid the rent.”
“Has he said anything?”
“Not a word.”
“Guess we’ll have to torture him,” Halders said. “This is just the beginning. Aren’t you happy, Winter?”
“Happy?”
“It could have all gone to shit.”
“We’ll have to wait and see.”
“Come on, this is a big breakthrough for homicide. Look at him. He knows he’s going to come clean.”
“Nice takedown there,” Winter repeated. “I’m going to have a quick chat with Sara before we head back.”
Halders nodded and walked toward Aneta and the car. It looked as if he were going for a stroll.
Helander was waiting by the station building.
“I was negligent,” she said. “Criminally negligent.”
“We should have practiced a bit,” Winter said. “But there’s no guarantee it would have turned out differently anyway. There were a lot of people in there and he was quick.”
“Bullshit.”
Winter lit up a Corps. It tasted good. “Okay. But we had a preparedness that worked.”
“He wasn’t suspicious,” Helander said. “Not even when you came running toward him. Isn’t that strange?”
“We’ll have to see what he says and who he is,” Winter said. “If his name matches what his driver’s license says-that is, if he’s got one.” He took a drag and studied the smoke that followed the wind up toward the sky.
39
THE MAN’S NAME WAS OSKAR JAKOBSSON AND HE HAD HIS own registration number at the station. They’d pulled the fingerprints from the slip and compared it to the ten-print database and the system found a match. Oskar Jakobsson had a criminal background. Nothing big.
He’d done time for larceny and battery against friends and had been convicted of car theft, and he had done stuff they didn’t know about, Winter thought as he sat in front of Jakobsson, who looked worried but not desperate. He was prepared for a detention lasting twelve hours and maybe longer, but not a lot longer. He claimed that he knew what he had done, but not why.
“Of course you help someone out when they ask you. Of course you do.”
Beneath the baseball cap his hair was dark brown and disheveled. Jakobsson had declined the offer of a comb, but had said yes to coffee. He had a scar above his chin, like a proper criminal who’s had broken bottles shoved in his face in his time.
“You’re happy to lend a hand?” Winter asked.
“People help me out.”
“Tell us again from the beginning.”
“From when?”
“From when you were asked if you’d be willing to help out.”
The tape recorder was turning on the table between them. The interrogating officer, Gabriel Cohen, sat next to Winter and was silent. No one else was in the room. There were no windows. The ventilation system droned from the walls. When Jakobsson asked if he could smoke, Winter said no.
“I’d just parked,” Jakobsson said.
Winter wondered how the man had managed to drive a car around for months without getting stopped. He’d never had a driver’s license. The car belonged to his brother, who seldom drove.
“When was that?”
“When was it I parked? Last month. Unless it was the end of the month before that. At the same spot in the parking lot where I was standing this time. Maybe a luck-”
“What were you going to do?”
“Do? I was going to do some shopping.”
“Where?”
“At the Terningen supermarket. My brother wanted some
