The Shadow Woman

“How did you tie her, Brigitta Dellmar, to the robbery?” Winter asked. “It wasn’t just because of the child, was it?”

“In part, of course. She was critical. But we followed the usual procedure when we got the call from Denmark. Started checking through our list of known criminals over here. She was among them, after all, though not one of the worst, you understand. A ways down the list, and I guess we hadn’t made it down that far when we were contacted by Sahlgrenska.”

“And you knew, of course, that there was a child involved over there. In Alborg.”

“Well, it was in the report,” Borg said, “but it was by no means certain. In any case, the neighbors got in touch when they recognized the girl, and then we got right on it.”

“I see,” Ringmar said.

“Then, of course, it took a while to make the connection with the robbery in Denmark.”

“Yes,” Ringmar said.

“And by then she’d disappeared, of course,” Borg said.

“Yes,” Ringmar said.

“Executed,” Borg said.

“What?” Ringmar’s face had gone pale.

“Executed, of course,” Borg said. “Or possibly scared out of her wits. Or, as a third alternative, dead from injuries that we didn’t know about, but that she might have sustained during the robbery.”

“How was it that there were police on the scene,” Winter asked, “so soon after the robbery?”

“Something to do with the bank’s alarm system going off before the whole thing had really started. Something strange having to do with a short circuit or one of the employees-no, it was something technical. You’d better check about that with the Danes too, if need be. But a patrol car arrived on the scene just when the whole thing began, and the rest, as they say, is history. One hell of a history.”

“So what you’re saying is that she could have been killed by one of the other robbers?”

“Why not? Two of them escaped with her. They had the money. Then they dropped off the kid, because maybe there were certain things they weren’t willing to do. I don’t know. But I do know she never got in touch. She had a kid, after all, right?”

Ringmar nodded.

“You know those hard-core biker gangs were really staking out their territory big time around then, after a bit of a soft start. We never managed to prove it, but there’s no doubt they were the ones behind it.”

“I read about that in the file,” Winter said.

“That Dellmar woman had those sorts of contacts,” Borg said. “We did what we could to follow her sad life back in time, and she’d flirted a bit with the local bikers. How innocent it was then, I don’t know.”

Ringmar nodded again.

“But she wasn’t there later, as far as we could tell. The Danes worked at it from their end, but she was gone. Just vanished. And then this fairly well-known biker thug pops up in Limfjorden, or wherever the hell it was, and when the bank cashier gets a look at him, she says she’s sure that he’s one of them!”

“You have a good memory, Sven,” Ringmar said.

“There’s nothing wrong with the circulation in my head,” Borg said. “It’s getting clearer now as I’m thinking about it.”

“But no one ever managed to tie that guy to the robbery?”

“I don’t know. No. But we knew. Deep down we knew. He was Danish and disappeared at the time of the robbery and eventually turned up floating facedown in the water, like a dead fish.”

“Yeah.”

“Well. Then the kid ended up here in Gothenburg, and we had good reason to suspect that she had actually been along when it happened. There was a reason to try to speak to the girl. A number of reasons. So we did.”

“We read the transcripts,” Winter said.

“Well, then you’ve seen it for yourself. She didn’t actually say anything. She was clearly distressed by what had happened, that was obvious. But what exactly that was-you’ll have to talk with a psychiatrist about that. We had one sitting in back then. Have you spoken to him?”

“No,” Winter said.

Borg stretched out his left leg and massaged it. The sun had gone behind a cloud and the dust moving about the room disappeared with it.

“But you’ve read it yourself. There’s a section in there where she may have been trying to talk about how she’d been in some house or in a particular room. Maybe a basement somewhere for a while. The Danes talked about a house where they’d been.”

“They?” Winter asked. “The robbers?”

“Who else are we talking about?” Borg said. “I’m talking about the robbers. They had been in some house outside town. Preparing. Planning. You’ll have to ask the Danes about that.” Borg started to rub his leg again. “Could be that’s where they hid out again afterward. The ones who were still alive, that is. A little while longer. Maybe the child was along. I don’t know. Maybe the mother. We never found out.”

“You found out a fair bit,” Ringmar said.

“Most of what I’ve said you could have read in there yourselves. But you’ve got to speak to the Danes again.”

“Yeah.”

“Maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to go over there.”

“Yeah,” Winter said. “I’m starting to see that.”

“There’s one more chilling aspect to this, if you guys want to torment yourselves some more. At least I think there is. But I guess you’ve already seen it.”

“What are you talking about, Sven?” Ringmar leaned forward.

“In my day there was no such thing as video cameras, but back when this whole thing was going on we were testing out filming the questioning sessions in Super 8. That footage should still be lying around somewhere. Have you checked it out?”

“There’s a film?” Winter said.

“Of the questioning session. Tapes get recorded over, I guess, but maybe that film of us speaking to little Helene is still there.”

“There’s no mention anywhere,” Ringmar said.

“That we were filming? Or that we saved the film?”

“Neither,” Ringmar said. “This is the first I’ve heard of it in connection with this case.”

“Well, you weren’t with us back then,” Borg said. “I guess someone was sloppy and forgot to enter it or something, or else the film was simply discarded. That kind of thing does happen, far too often, unfortunately.”

They found the film among a group of cassettes containing stuff that had been transferred from Super 8 to video and then forgotten. There was an index, but not with the Dellmar case file.

They took the cassette into Winter’s office and popped it into the VCR. Ringmar made a gesture that looked like he was crossing himself. Winter felt a hood of steel slowly being screwed tight around his head.

Borg entered the frame, younger and with better circulation. The room could’ve been any in the station, at any time. Not much had changed.

The child sat across the table with barely more than her face visible. She said a few words and looked straight down at the table and then up and directly into the camera, and at Winter and Ringmar. The pressure around Winter’s head mounted. That was perhaps the most appalling thing about it-sitting there with the answer sheet, knowing how things had turned out, and making this awful trip back in time, clutching the answer sheet like some kind of bridge spanning the long divide.

He thought about Helene’s face on the gurney.

“I don’t know if I can fucking handle this,” Ringmar said.

Winter saw the girl get up from the chair, and he wished that the tape had been destroyed.

Ringmar stood up.