“Yeah, what will the neighbors say?”
“The mood out there right now is very tense, and I don’t want to be fingered as a fucking snitch.”
“You are an informant, Benny. And my brother-in-law, almost.”
“Is that how it is now?”
“What do you want?” Winter asked.
“There are rumors floating around that Jakobsson got whacked. He was small fry, so everybody’s surprised. His brother’s been kicking up a real stink about it. He must have been to see you at the station.”
“Yes.”
“Well, that’s what I wanted to say. Jakobsson. But it’s a rumor.”
“Where from?”
“Don’t know. You know how it is with rumors.”
Winter didn’t answer. He wondered briefly if the BMW they were sitting in was stolen, maybe even from another country. The chorus from the bridge overhead rose higher when the streetcar drove over it, toward Hisingen. There were parked cars all around them, and Winter guessed that 10 percent of them were stolen and had been dumped here when the gas had run out or when the junkies had stolen new ones to drive the stretch between the Femman Mall, right next door, and the projects in the northeast. Halders knew.
“The Hells Angels have split again and a new brotherhood has emerged,” Winter said, after a minute’s silence. “Do you know anything about it?”
“I don’t know anything about those psychopaths.” Vennerhag squirmed uncomfortably in his seat and looked at Winter. “Absolutely nothing. You know better than that.”
“No rumors from that quarter? Or about them?”
“I would cover my ears if I heard anything. It’s dangerous. Believe me. The less you know the better, and all that.”
“There aren’t many who do know,” Winter said.
“That’s part of the business plan.”
“Just like they’re part of society, huh?”
“Well, you’re part of society,” Vennerhag said. “Law enforcement is part of society just like the alternate power is part of society.”
“You’re quite the philosopher, Benny.”
“And yet your sister still didn’t want me.”
“You too are part of society, after all.”
“Gee thanks.”
“What for? I wasn’t talking about a very nice society.”
“No. If it was a nice society, there would only be room for cops. But I’ll tell you something, Erik. We’re both just as replaceable. Just as pathetic.”
“You can go to hell.”
“Too close to home for you?”
Winter didn’t want to listen. He saw a radio car drive past, over by the Shell station. Maybe they’d already taken down the plate number of the car he was sitting in.
“If you don’t know anything about the Angels, you have to help me with Georg Bremer.”
“I told you-he’s nothing. If he says he’s been clean since he got out of prison, then that’s the truth. I haven’t heard anything anyway. I hadn’t even heard of him before you mentioned his name.”
“I’m talking about your business contacts. Someone might know something. He doesn’t need to have done anything-petty stuff or whatever it might be. I just want to know where he’s been. If anyone’s seen him. Anywhere. And if he knew Jakobsson.”
58
“Do your best,” Winter said. What he meant was that Wallde should give the clock a chance to run out, ignore the directive stating that he should “expeditiously determine whether charges shall be filed.”
“It doesn’t feel like there’s probable cause even for an arrest,” Wallde said.
“And yet you did it.”
“That was for your sake, Inspector. And maybe some good will come of it.”
“Hand on your heart, Erik. Do you think the girl is still alive?”
Winter looked around, as if someone had snuck into his office and was waiting for his answer.
“No. I think that’s out of the question.” He saw that Ringmar was also convinced. Ringmar’s fifty-year-old face was pale and looked decayed in the dim light that had settled over the cityscape like a prelude to winter. “We can find her body if we get Bremer to talk. Or someone else.”
“Or someone else.”
Winter ran his left palm over his face. He squeezed his eyelids together and turned to Ringmar. “She hid that butt there on purpose,” he said.
“What?”
“I think it’s Helene’s cigarette butt. She knew that something was going to happen. She stuffed it in there as far as it would go-where nobody could find it unless they really went looking for it like Beier and his team.”
“We’ll know if it’s her saliva on it when the NLFS people are done.”
Before Winter pushed through the decision to issue a search warrant, he spoke to Beier. The head of forensics was under pressure and tired of shouting at the lab in Linkoping.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Beier said. “Prints after twenty-five years. So you want us to tear off wallpaper and expose God knows how many layers-three maybe, or five-to see if there are any prints left underneath or in between?”
“Yes. There may only be one layer. The top one. Then there’s no problem.”
“Don’t forget that we have to go through the entire house.”
“Yeah, sure. But if. I’m saying
“The wallpaper glue will have destroyed everything, I think. Especially after such a long time. It’s damp and it penetrates the paper.”
“But you can’t swear that that’s the case?”
“I seldom swear.”
“Then I’d like to give it a try. Would you give it a try, Goran?”
“Okay. We’ll give it a try.”
“The Danes are doing the same.”
“What?”
“Haven’t they been in touch with you yet? If not, then they will be at any moment. They’re removing the layers of wallpaper at that summerhouse in Blokhus.”
“What do they want to find exactly?”
“Evidence from back then,” Winter said. “We know Helene was there. What if our Georg Bremer was also? What if we can prove it? What if we can prove that Helene Andersen was in Bremer’s house as a child? Or as an adult?”
“Then we’ll get invited to the FBI in Washington and lecture on it,” Beier said. “That is, I will.”
The winds swept in a circle around Odegard, howling along its walls, which shuddered inside. The sky was black in the middle of the day. Night in the middle of the day, Winter thought, standing in front of the windmill. The
