“Now you’ve promised. I’ll call later this evening. You can call too.” She told him the number to the clinic. “I’m going to be here the whole time.”
“Maybe you’d better come home soon.”
“I have to go now, Erik.”
He sat with the cell phone in his hand. There was a rapping at the door again. He called out, “Come in,” and Ringmar appeared in the doorway.
“His sister lives on Vastergatan,” Ringmar said, and sat down. “That’s in Annedal.”
Winter checked his watch-nearly six o’clock. Georg Bremer had reluctantly mentioned his one relation, his sister, Greta. Nothing about anyone else. They could keep him for the rest of the evening, and shortly after midnight they’d have to let him go. It was pointless to go to the prosecutor now.
“Seriously, Erik.”
“Seriously?”
“We’ve got to let him go.”
“He can go at midnight. How’s it going with the car?”
“They’re going at it hammer and tongs.”
“I don’t want to speak to him anymore right now,” Winter said. “We let him go home, and the day after tomorrow we haul him back in again.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“No.”
“Want to know what I’ve been waiting to happen for the past month?”
“Tell me.”
“For the girl’s father to get in touch. Christ. His ex is dead and his daughter is missing. We’re searching, and the whole country knows about it. But he doesn’t get in touch.”
“Maybe he can’t.”
“I’ve thought about that, but I’m not sure. He may be dead, sure.”
“Or afraid.”
“Fear feels like a recurring theme in this investigation.”
“Or else he doesn’t know that he has a child.”
Ringmar changed position. “It’s not easy to trace her past,” he said. “It virtually doesn’t exist.”
“There you have it,” Winter said. He sat up straighter. “That’s what this is all about. Her past hadn’t existed, but then all of a sudden it does exist. It comes to her. It becomes part of what later transpires. It precipitates.” He breathed in deeply.
Ringmar was still.
“She comes to this city and her life comes to an end. Her life as an adult. First her understanding of life ended, and then life itself.”
56
“There was a lot of junk in the car,” he said.
“So it’s impossible?”
“I didn’t say that. I just said there was a lot of junk in the car. In the trunk, on the floor, in the glove compartment, et cetera, et cetera.”
“Uh-huh.”
“There were cigarette butts in the ashtrays, and there was also a butt wedged deep underneath the seat struts, and I wonder what it was doing there.”
“Say that again?”
“A small cigarette butt was stuck between the carpeting on the floor and the base of the seat strut, and it took some time to find it. You need professionals to find stuff like that.”
“You mean it was hidden there?”
“Maybe. It’s mostly filter. You don’t know which brand Helene Andersen smoked, do you?”
“No. So it could be hers?”
“I’m just trying to be optimistic here,” Beier said. Anyway, we found it and now it’s on its way over to the National Center for Forensic Science.”
“Jesus Christ,” Winter said. “It’ll take months for them to do a DNA analysis.”
“You want to do it yourself?”
“We have to get top priority on this one. You’re well respected down in Linkoping, Goran.”
“I’ll do what I can,” Beier said. “I am susceptible to flattery. But as you know, you normally have to wait in line.”
“We have something to compare it to, for Christ’s sake,” Winter said. “Tell them that. This isn’t a blind analysis. We don’t need to sit and wait for a prosecutor to issue a warrant for a DNA sample.”
We’ve got a body, he thought. We’ve had it for a long time now.
Winter went back to his room, sat down. Another thought in his head had grown apace with his fatigue that evening. Lately he hadn’t had much time to wonder why Helene had been left where they’d found her. Why in the ditch next to the lake? The dump site was far away from Helene’s apartment. It also lay far away from Bremer’s house. And now Bremer was a suspect. Winter closed his eyes and thought about the dump site, far away from Helene’s house and far from Brem-
He opened his eyes, got up, and left the room. Down the corridor in the situation room, he stood in front of the big map of Greater Gothenburg on the wall. He used a sticker to mark the approximate location of Helene’s apartment in North Biskopsgarden. Then he looked eastward on the map and found Odegard-Bremer’s house. He marked it.
He tagged the dump site by Big Delsjo Lake.
He measured the distance from Biskopsgarden to the dump site. He then measured the distance from Odegard to the same place.
As the crow flies, the distances were exactly the same.
Winter yielded to the streetcar on Vastergatan and walked south between buildings that obscured each other. It was nine o’clock. At the front entrance he punched in the code he’d been given yesterday. The heavy door clicked, and he walked into the stairwell and up to the second floor. The mail slot said “Greta Bremer.” He rang the bell and waited. Steps sounded from inside, and the door was opened cautiously. All he saw was a shadow.
“Yes?”
“My name is Erik Winter. Inspector with the Gothenburg Police Department. Homicide squad. I called yesterday.”
“It’s him,” a voice said inside. “The one who was supposed to be coming.”
The door opened. The woman may have been fifty or somewhat younger. She was wearing an apron. Her hair was hidden beneath a scarf, and in her hand she was holding a little brush that might have been intended for clothes.
She backed up, and Winter stepped through the doorway. Three yards in sat a woman in a wheelchair. In the half darkness Winter couldn’t make out the features of her face. Her hair seemed long. The apartment smelled of the street outside. They’ve just aired it out, Winter thought hastily.
“Well, come in, then,” the voice in the wheelchair said. The woman gripped the wheels with an experienced hand and rolled backward.
Winter followed her into a living room, where the plant detritus on the floor attested to the fact that the room
