The Shadow Woman

burglaries.

GB: Was that yesterday?

GC: It was yesterday. You confirmed that you were a member of an organization.

GB: Not a member. I’ve never been a member of anything.

GC: That’s what you said yesterday.

GB: Then I used the wrong word. I didn’t mean member.

GC: Are you in the habit of driving around town in your car?

GB: What kind of a question is that?

GC: Are you in the habit of driving around town in your car for no reason?

GB: I still don’t understand.

GC: Some people just go driving around in their cars. As a form of relaxation. I’ve done that myself.

GB: I may have done that on occasion.

GC: Are there any particular places you drive to?

GB: No.

GC: You can’t name any places?

GB: I don’t know what the point of this is. A few times I guess I may have driven out to the shore. Looked at the sea. I don’t know, when you live in a forest maybe you want to see the sea sometimes.”

Winter saw how Bremer gazed at the wall to his right, as if there were a window there through which he could see the sea. His face was stiff and featureless.

GC: Do you remember that we said people had seen you driving in your car with passengers?

GB: Yes.

GC: Do you admit that you’ve had passengers in your car?

GB: Who are these people? It’s not true.

Winter knew Cohen would start to turn up the heat now; that is, if it was possible to do that in the world where Bremer currently found himself.

GC: Why don’t you admit it?

GB: What?

GC: Why don’t you admit that you drove Helene Andersen and her daughter, Jennie, in your car?

GB: I didn’t.

GC: It’s not a crime to give someone a ride.

GB: I know.

GC: Then say it.

GB: What am I supposed to say?

GC: That those two individuals rode in your car. That they were at your house.

GB: They weren’t at my house. I’m the only one at my house.

Winter tried to study Bremer’s bowed face. There was something in his eyes that he’d also seen in his sister’s. A dull sheen, but something else besides. A sadness or knowledge-or was it simply fear?

The home helper waited in the hall for the conversation to begin. There was no door, and Winter couldn’t exactly lock the woman in the kitchen if there were one.

Greta Bremer looked even more frail this afternoon, the day gone and her face lit by a dim floor lamp. “What is it you want, now that you’ve forced your way in here?”

“Just to ask you a couple of questions. About your brother.”

“He always gets by,” she said. “You know all about his past, I assume?”

“Excuse me?”

“You’ve checked in your files, haven’t you?”

She looked at him or at the home helper that Winter knew was listening in the gloom of the hallway.

“We’re searching,” Winter said. He waited as the streetcar rattled past outside. “Do you know if Georg ever used to travel to Denmark?”

“Denmark? What would he travel to Denmark for?”

“I’m talking about way back. Twenty-five, thirty years ago.”

“I don’t know what he was doing back then. Break-ins, that’s what he was doing. And other things.”

“What do you mean by other things?”

“I don’t know. Maybe you know.”

“I’m asking you, Miss Bremer.”

“He broke into people’s houses.”

“In Denmark?”

“You know better than I do.”

“How do you mean?”

“You’re a policeman, aren’t you? You know.”

The courts couldn’t find sufficient grounds to bring charges against Bremer. “A free man. Fucking courts,” Halders had said during the investigation briefing that afternoon. “They ought to go out there and see for