Death Angels by Åke Edwardson Read Free Book Online

Celluloid . . . Hmm . . . No . . . Hmm . . . Yep . . . Ten minutes.”
    The rattling sound again, and the shoes stood still with their toes pointing straight at him.
    What next? he thought.
    It was as quiet as it gets in an apartment building when all the tenants are away. He heard a car swish by and the streets fall silent again.
    Is he thinking about something, or is he staring down at the bed? If those shoes come much closer, I’ll throw caution to the wind and roll out on the other side.
    He got ready, his body taut.
    The shoes retreated toward the hall, then through the doorway. The light went out and the door closed.
    He lay there for twenty minutes soaked in sweat.
    He won’t actually look under the bed when he vacuums, or is that just wishful thinking? What difference would it make if he realized that someone has been here? What do you do now? Besides never coming here again. What if he’s still out there in the hall? How long can you lie here? Wait a little longer. Okay.
    Covered with dust like a thin layer of dirty snow, he tumbled out and scrambled to his feet. He tiptoed out of the room, picking up the clumps of dust that fell to the floor as he moved. Leaving the apartment, he listened for any signs of life, took a deep breath and soundlessly made his way down the stairs.

    There was a draft from the balcony door. Winter stood up from his desk to close it, but then opened it all the way instead and stepped outside. He shivered, catching a whiff of the city below. A patch of fog from beyond the channel drifted through the park and across Nya Allén Street. When the clammy air reached him, he went back inside and shut the door.
    He had been poring over the terse memo from the London police. There was an eerie similarity between the two murders. He couldn’t remember anything like it. Not only that, but there was something peculiar about the way the murders had been committed. The British investigators had found little marks in the dried blood that might turn out to match those in the dorm room here in Gothenburg.
    He had come home from the office and immediately begun searching the Internet for similar cases, finding what seemed at first like clear patterns, but they were mostly in the realm of the imagination, an illusion. He saw photos that were evocative of his own case, yet they could just as well have been in a dream. He looked for clues in the depths of the electronic night and browsed through several American databases. A surprising number of these kinds of offenders came from Texas or California. Too much sun and sand drives people mad, he thought.
    The cell phone on the desk began to ring. He extended the antenna and put the phone to his ear.
    “Erik!” crackled a voice at the other end.
    “Hi, Mom. You were just on my mind.”
    “I’ll bet I was.”
    “I was thinking about the sun and sand and what they do to people.”
    “Marvelous, isn’t it?” She mumbled something, and he saw in his mind’s eye how she turned around in the little open-plan kitchen and fixed her fourth martini of the evening while glancing at her profile in the mirror. Dear old Mom.
    “How was golf today?” he asked.
    “We never made it to the course.”
    “That’s too bad.”
    “It’s been raining all day, but now—”
    “Didn’t you move there to escape all that?”
    Her sigh echoed in the receiver. “The grass is always greener.” She laughed and it reminded him of unoiled brakes.
    “Erik?”
    “Yes, Mom.”
    “I was planning on calling Karin and Lasse.”
    “Now?”
    “It’s not that late, is it?”
    It’s four dry martinis and half a white Rioja too late, he thought. Maybe mañana. “They’re going through an awful lot right now,” he said. “Wait until morning.”
    “You’re probably right. I always said you had a good head on your shoulders.”
    “For a cop, you mean.”
    “That’s what you had your heart set on.” He heard her turn on a mixer with her free hand. “You’re the youngest