They checked the number for the dental office, and it was identical to Helene’s except for one number.
“Check up on her,” Winter had said to Mollerstrom.
The pile of Jennie’s drawings had become smaller, and Winter continued to go through them. He could see that some were more accomplished or more detailed. It wasn’t clear whether this had to do with age. Perhaps sometimes the girl just grew tired of drawing.
There were recurring elements: boats and cars, faces in a window a few times. A forest or just a few trees. A road that was brown or sometimes black. Sun and rain, nearly always sun and rain. Always outside. Winter had yet to see a single drawing of an interior.
He held up a drawing depicting a house with a pointed roof and a Danish flag on top.
A Danish flag, thought Winter. White cross on a red background. The house stood in a field indicated by a few green lines. The house had walls that were white like the paper.
Over the next half hour he worked his way through the rest of the pile of drawings, and found another with a Danish flag.
Two drawings with a Danish flag.
More than twenty of a boat on water.
Three drawings of a car driven by a man with a black beard that grew straight out from his chin.
He laid the two Danish flag pictures next to each other on the desk and studied them, one at a time. He searched for the signature “jeni” and suddenly stiffened. The drawing on the left was signed “helene.” He looked for the signature on the other. It was in the lower right-hand corner: “helene” again. He swallowed and started to go through the piles in front of him. One of the drawings of the car was signed “helene.” You couldn’t tell it apart from the other two. Five of the drawings depicting boats were signed “helene” in the same childish scrawl as “jeni.” The motifs were the same, their execution seemingly identical.
This is one of the spookiest things I’ve ever experienced, thought Winter.
In the back of his mind was something else that he had noticed as he’d sorted through the drawings over the past half hour-something recurring, something he hadn’t reacted to, like a spot in a corner that you only vaguely register but don’t ascribe any importance to.
He went back to one of the desks with the sorted drawings. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven… There. It was the path that went from the bottom of the page to the top. It was possible that it was a road, since it gently wove its way past a few trees before ending up at a house that had a door and a window but no roof.
The pages felt stiff in his hands as he sifted on. There: The road leading up from the bottom of the page. The house with no roof, a window to the left of the door. To the right of the house-like a vertical rectangle with an
Winter looked at the first drawing again. The same little barely visible box in a dead corner, with diagonally crossed lines.
A windmill, he thought. It could be a little windmill that she’s drawn.
Both drawings were signed “jeni.”
“I brought along a basket,” Angela said, and held it up for him to see.
“Is it Friday?” Winter asked.
“Friday evening, eight o’clock.”
“Then I can’t leave you standing out here on the doorstep.”
“You could come outside.”
“And miss the trumpet solo? Here it comes now.”
“Sweet.”
“Well, come inside, then, before it’s over.”
“You weren’t surprised, were you?”
“No, it’s just that I was-”
“Sitting and working? Or thinking? Forgot that I was coming?”
He didn’t answer, took the basket and set it down on the floor and helped her with her coat, which was heavy and smelled divinely of her and pungently of the street along Vasaplatsen.
“I haven’t been here for a long time,” she said as they stood in the living room.
“Me neither.”
“So I’ve realized.”
“May I?” Winter grabbed hold of her and pulled her out onto the wooden floor, which bounced varnished reflections from the glow of a lamp over by the windows.
She bent her face a little backward and looked at him. “What’s this?”
“Donald Byrd.”
“I mean
“Life’s full of surprises.”
“What’s gotten into you? Have you been drinking?”
“Quiet now and follow my lead,” Winter said.
He swung her around, in a right turn, when Trane came in after Byrd’s solo, and then Byrd came back and he drew her more tightly to him and continued the right turn.
They danced. She couldn’t remember when they had last done that. It was nice. It was just a good way to start a Friday evening. Dancing and the wine she had brought along and the langoustine and white…
They continued to dance until the music ended, then moved to the kitchen. She took out the food while Winter prepared dry martinis in a shaker.
“When did you last have a dry martini?” she asked.
“Was it five years ago?”
She looked at him. His face seemed sort of chipped along the edges, paler than the last time they had seen each other. His shirt was open at the collar, and she could see the sinews in his neck. He looked up from his shaking and smiled.
“Are you celebrating something, Erik?”
He stopped moving the ice-colored cylinder and set it down on the kitchen counter.
“More the opposite really.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I felt that I needed something else.”
“Something other than that awful case you’re working on?”
“Well, yes, something that glittered and sparkled a little differently. Like that,” he said, and nodded at the shaker.
“Well, pour it up,” she said. “Here are the glasses.”
He poured and they drank.
“Shall we set the table and sit down and talk about this past week?”
“Let’s do yours,” Winter said.
“You’re probably the one who most needs to talk,” she said.
41
IT WAS SUMMER AGAIN WHEN HE STEPPED OUT THE FRONT DOOR before eight o’clock, the shadows from the houses still bearing traces of the past night’s darkness. A street cleaner dragged itself along the asphalt on the other side of Vasaplatsen and sucked the last of the morning haze into its rotating bristles. A van delivered fresh bread to the Wasa Kallare restaurant. Winter took in the smells. He was hungry. He’d drunk a cup of coffee and that was it. Angela had continued sleeping.
He walked across Kungstorget. The market stalls were being set up for the day. Crates of vegetables and fruit were carried out from trucks to their spots on the stands. He went into a shop on the other side of Kungsportsplatsen and ordered a cafe au lait and two French rolls with butter and cheese. He sat down by the window and watched the tabloid paper’s city office across the square opening for the day. A young lady had put up
