had indeed just been aired out. The windows opened inward. The woman who had opened the door for Winter excused herself.
“That’s my home helper,” Greta Bremer said. “When you can barely move, you can’t manage without a home helper.”
Winter could see her face now, or parts of it. She wore dark glasses that were more brown than black. He could just make out her eyes, but that was it. Her hair was gray and a little tousled. Her skin was thin and delicate, as if made up of cracks that had healed irregularly over a long period of time. Winter guessed that she was seventy, maybe older, but the illness she suffered from may have added many extra years to her face. He still didn’t know her age.
“So you’re here about my brother,” she said without looking at Winter. “Have a seat first.” She hadn’t yet turned her face toward him. She behaved as if she were blind, and Winter wondered if maybe she was. He didn’t want to ask. She would tell him. “You want to ask me questions about my brother. I doubt I can answer a single one of them.”
“I would like-”
“We haven’t seen each other in many years.”
“Why not?”
“Why not?” She turned her face toward Winter, but he still couldn’t see her eyes. “How should I put it? We have nothing to say to each other. It’s best not to meet up when you have nothing to say.”
Her voice was impassive, which made it even more awful, Winter thought. There was no bitterness, only a voice that could just as well have come from the wall as from a living person.
“What happened?”
“Do I have to tell you that? It has nothing to do with what you’ve come here for.” Her profile was lit up by the window. “Why are you here, Inspector?”
“I mentioned a bit about it on the telephone.”
He explained a little more now-told her about the few leads they had and felt how tenuous it all sounded.
“I have nothing to say about all that,” she said. “I know nothing about him.”
“When did you last see each other?”
She was silent, but Winter couldn’t tell whether she was considering his question.
He repeated it.
“I don’t know,” she answered.
“Is it more than ten years ago?”
“I don’t know.”
Winter glanced toward the entrance hall, where the home helper wasn’t quick enough pulling her head back into the shadows. She’s curious, thought Winter. I would likely have done the same.
“He’s been in prison,” Greta Bremer said. “But of course you know that.”
Winter nodded.
“Must you come here asking questions I can’t answer? Aren’t there any computer lists you can ask today? Don’t you have files?”
“We have files,” Winter said. This conversation is becoming increasingly bizarre, he thought to himself. She doesn’t want to say anything more, or else she can’t.
“I haven’t seen him in many years and I thank God for that,” she now said. She hadn’t moved.
“Have you visited his house?” Winter asked.
“Yes. But, like I said, that was a very long time ago.”
“When was it?”
“There’s no point in your asking. Ask the archives.”
Winter got up and walked closer, but Greta Bremer remained in the same position. He touched the wheelchair cautiously. “Is this one of the newer models?”
“What difference does it make?”
“I noticed that you had no trouble maneuvering it on your own.”
“It’s easier than having someone else push it. Try it out yourself and you’ll see how heavy it is to walk behind.”
Winter stood behind the chair and released a brake. Her hair moved below him. There were strands of it on the fabric and on the thin, broad pillow she had to support her back.
“Try pushing it around a little,” she said.
Winter rolled it back and then two yards forward into the room.
“Heavy, isn’t it?”
“Very,” he said.
“You can put me in the hall,” she said. “I assume you’re going to leave now.”
When he left, he saw the woman from the home-help service standing in the kitchen with her back to him, bent over the sink.
Busy on the phone, Ringmar waved to the chair in front of his desk. Winter waited, and the conversation came to a close.
“As far as we’ve been able to determine, they are brother and sister,” Ringmar said. “The documentation checks out. She’s sixty-six years old. Too old to be a suspect.”
“Sibling love,” Winter said.
“What? Yeah, well. There are many fates,” Ringmar said. “Must have been an odd conversation you had.”
“She seemed very distant.” Winter held up the copy of the slip of paper they’d found in the dress in Helene’s basement storage room. “But this is what I came in for. If I’ve read correctly, this was found on Helene when she was brought into Sahlgrenska Hospital?”
“Yes. Meticulous beyond the call of duty, they took it and put it in an envelope with her other possessions, which consisted of little more than a pair of pants, a shirt, and a dress.”
“And she’s had it with her throughout her life.”
“What are you getting at?”
“I don’t know. But I can’t let go of it, as you can see. I have it with me, here in my hand. And there’s something else.”
“Yes?”
“I’ve been thinking about this code-but let’s leave that for a moment. I’ve also looked at these lines that might just be some kind of map.” Winter leaned forward and showed Ringmar.
“After we drove out to Bremer’s, I studied the big map in the situation room and compared it to the lines here on this one. You see? If you turn off at Landvetter township and drive parallel to the highway-on the old road-and turn left where we turned left, and assuming that the crossroads in the forest looked the same back then as they do now, then I’ll be damned if it doesn’t match up with Bremer’s house. It’s even marked, there in the upper-left corner, after the last cross.”
“And you’ve compared it to the map?”
“Carefully. I’ll show you later so you can see for yourself.”
“Well. I don’t know what to say.”
“You’d like to say that I have an active imagination. But that comes in handy sometimes.”
Winter considered the slip of paper again. “I don’t know what to say either. But it all tallies up. The
“And the
“Maybe.”
“A place to meet up again? Wouldn’t verbal instructions have sufficed?”
“If you speak the same language,” Winter said. “This was probably meant to be destroyed afterward.”
“But it didn’t turn out that way.”
“No. Helene’s fingerprints as a child are on it. That’s conclusive.”
“Jesus Christ.” Ringmar looked at the letters and the numbers.
“But what about the rest?”
