“Good-bye, Daddy,” Winter said, and hung up.
A female police officer showed him the way out. He walked down the stairs. It was past sundown. Iron clanged against iron in the freight yard across Jyllandsgade. Winter followed the street westward toward his hotel.
He hesitated outside the entrance to the Park Hotel and instead headed left across Boulevarden. No one was standing in the window of the Boulevard-Cafeen this time. He walked up a chipped stairway and opened the door to the beer hall. It smelled at once of alcohol and the smoke that enveloped its two large rooms in a great haze. The few tables by the windows were empty. Winter sat down and saw the hotel’s facade through a windowpane that was smeared in fat. He couldn’t see the window to his room. Few of the windows in the hotel’s facade were lit up.
The bar was located in the far room, and a few old men sitting at a table in front of the counter were in the midst of a sing-along about faith, hope, love, and alcohol. A woman wearing a white blouse and black skirt was sitting at the table, eating a meal. When she saw Winter sit down, she stood and wiped her mouth with a napkin that was fastened to the waistband of her skirt. The old men turned their heads toward Winter and then turned back again in midsong. The woman came up to his table. He ordered a Hof. She went back and fetched a bottle from a large refrigerator behind the bar and returned to Winter with the opened bottle and a glass. He paid the few kroner it cost.
He grabbed the bottle by the neck and drank it like a Dane, and realized as he drank how thirsty he was.
Sitting at a table at the very back of the bar was a man in a brown coat, with a beer and a bottle of aquavit in front of him. He was staring straight at the bottle of liquor and never moved his head except when he drank. Winter saw his elbow rise up at an angle at regular intervals. A professional. When the woman finished eating, she rose and fetched another beer for the man in the coat without his having made any sign that Winter was able to see. Winter finished his beer and stood up. The old men were still singing. No one seemed to pay any attention to him.
Michaela Poulsen called from the lobby. It was shortly past eight. Winter was ready and walked down the steps under the desolate landscapes that hung in frames on the walls.
They followed Boulevarden, which turned into Osteragade. There were a lot of people out. Winter heard Swedish and German. A street troubadour sang about eternal youth in an open square to the left and had just started “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” when they walked past.
The wind tore at Winter’s hair at the intersection of Bispensgade.
“I always feel a strong sense of dread right here,” Poulsen said.
“I can understand that.”
“Come to think of it, I often feel a sense of dread in this job.”
“I know what you mean.”
“Now I’m going to keep looking straight ahead while I speak to you, because I think there’s a guy standing over there by the bookstore who’s more interested in us than he is in the books in the shop window.”
Winter felt he had to make an effort not to turn his head to the left. He looked at the dark stone walls of the bank in front of him. People passed behind them on the sidewalk as they stood with their backs to La Strada.
“Do you recognize him?” he asked.
“It’s hard to tell from here, but I doubt it. They wouldn’t be stupid enough to send a celebrity after us. A celebrity to me, that is.”
They moved a bit to the side and gazed at the Jyske Bank.
“So let’s get back to talking about what we were talking about just now,” Poulsen said. “Do you remember what it was?”
“The strong sense of dread we feel in our work,” Winter said.
They continued looking at the Jyske Bank but in silence.
“I can now inform you that the guy over by the bookstore has gone,” she said. “You don’t have to look, but we can walk over there now. I’m starting to feel stiff from standing here.”
They passed the bookstore. Mannequins stood unclothed in the windows of the Nordjylland fashion house and gazed out with glassy eyes. The bookstore was displaying new books by best-selling Danish authors.
“He’s either been reading Ib Michael or Susanne Brogger,” Poulsen said.
They continued along Bispensgade to the entertainment district around Jomfru Ane Gade. It was difficult to make headway among all the people moving between the restaurants and bars. Music was coming from every direction. Winter thought about the Gothenburg Party. It was the same atmosphere here, filled with an anxiety that was both hard and soft, or of that same old search for calm.
“Shall we grab a table somewhere, seeing as we’ve confirmed that we are being watched?” Poulsen asked.
“Let’s do that.”
“There’s a pretty good brasserie in the next street. Or should we try to force our way into the thick of things right here?”
“Might be best to be in the thick of things,” Winter said. “It’s easier to observe us without our seeing.”
“He’s been walking behind us for the past few minutes,” Poulsen said.
Winter looked around. A hundred brutal neon signs pummeled his eyes: “L.A. Bar,” “Fyrtojet,” “Rock Nielsen,” “Down Under Denmark,” “Cafe Rendezvous,” “Faklen,” “Rock Cafeen,” “Duty,” “Jules Verne,” “Sunrise,” “Dirch pa Regensen,” “Fru Jensen,” “Gaslight,” “Pusterummet,” “Corner,” “Jomfru Ane’s Dansbar,” “Giraffen,” “Musikhuset,” “Spirit of America.”
They went into Sidegaden. The slogan for the place was: “The night belongs to us.”
Poulsen ordered two bottles of Hof, and they squeezed together in front of the bar.
Winter was about to say something but was cut off by his Danish colleague.
“He walked past and now he’s walking past again.”
Winter raised the bottle to his mouth and turned his head slightly. He saw people out on the street and that was it.
“I don’t recognize him,” Poulsen said. “But that bastard’s certainly keeping an eye on us.”
“What conclusions should we draw from that?”
“I suppose you should feel honored. And that this is serious. I think your arrival has stirred up a bit of dust.”
“We’ve gotten closer to something.”
“Yes, and it both frightens and pleases me.”
“Now we’re going to find the last man in the group,” Winter said. “The group that visited the bank.”
“You think he’s still alive?”
“Yes. He killed Helene Andersen and he killed her father.”
Poulsen gripped her half-finished bottle of Hof and looked at him. “After twenty-five years. Why?”
“That’s what I’m trying to work out.”
“He could have done it right away.”
“No. That may have been the intention, but it didn’t work out. Maybe Kim Andersen got in the way.”
“What happened to the mother, then? Brigitta.”
“He killed her too,” Winter said. “He killed Kim Andersen and Brigitta Dellmar and the child was taken to Sweden. The idea was to get rid of any connection.”
“So why kill Helene after all this time?”
“I don’t know. Something happened. Something has happened. She found out something. She got to know who did it. She confronted him. The man who killed her mother and father. I’ve been looking for a single murderer all along.”
“And another child,” Poulsen said. “It’s a horrific situation.” She set her bottle down on the bar. “They’re all possible theories. But the question is still whether our bikers are more than just indirectly involved.”
“Look at the guy following us.”
“Maybe they know,” Poulsen said. “But the question is whether more than just the original gang of five was involved in this from the beginning.”
