Sun and Shadow by Åke Edwardson Page B

had finished and was followed by a commercial for diapers. A baby was rolling around on a blanket and was then lifted up by his smiling mother.
    “What a nice mom,” Bartram said.
    “As long as the cameras are there, at least.”
    “A nice mom,” Bartram said again. He chewed, swallowed, and poured on some more soy sauce.
    “Your rice is black now,” Morelius said. “Black rice.”
    ‘A nice lady,“ Bartram said. ”A nice lady. A nice mom.“
    Morelius tried not to listen, to concentrate on something else. The wall. The next commercial. The wall again. The last greasy lump of chicken. Bartram kept on and on.
    “Nice ... lady,” Bartram said.
    “Put a sock in it now.”
    “What’s the matter?”
    “Put a sock in it.”
    “But for Chrissakes ... What have I said?”
    “PUT A GODDAM SOCK IN IT!” screamed Morelius, standing up and walking over to the sink, where he threw his foil tray into the bin. He wished he could have stuffed Bartram inside at the same time.
    Morelius hurried out of the room, into the bathroom, and sat down on the seat. Images were flashing through his head. Bits of conversation intruded, movements, faded, there again. The conversation he’d had with Hanne ... when was that? Weeks ago? Two weeks? It had been a mistake to go to her. It was only a few of the young cops who went to see the vicar, and then only when ... when ...
    “I can’t stop thinking about it,” he’d said.
    “It takes time,” Hanne Ostergaard had said.
    “I have to be patient, is that it?”
    “That’s not the word I would use.”
    “I try not to think about it, but sometimes it’s too ... hard.”
    “Is there nobody you can ... talk to about ... your experiences?”
    “No. You mean, am I living with somebody? No.”
    “What about your colleagues?”
    Morelius thought about Bartram and Vejehag. Neither had been with him at the time. They wouldn’t understand. The others? The ones who arrived on the scene later? No. They’d been too late.
    “No,” he said again. “I was with a new recruit and he was useless after no more than a minute. Just leaned against the car and threw ... didn’t feel well.” He looked at her. “I don’t know why I didn’t do the same.”
    “We all react in different ways,” she’d said.
    “I had a job to do,” was his reply.
     
    He really did have a job to do.
    They’d arrived at the scene just a couple of minutes after the crash. It was another occasion, not the one in the tunnel.
    Glass and metal thrown fifty yards in all directions. Sleet, early for the time of year. Slippery road surface. His colleague had stood on a foot as he got out of the car. Just one foot. In a shoe. Rendered him totally incapable of anything. He’d radioed in and could hear the ambulances and fire engines in the distance even before he’d finished the call.
    Somebody might have been screaming from inside the pile of twisted metal on the highway. Screaming louder and louder. Louder than the ambulances that still hadn’t arrived. Where the hell were the ambulances? This was their job. He couldn’t do anything, but he’d rushed over to the screams to see if he could help. Then he couldn’t hear them anymore.
    The nearest car had been hit head-on and the driver thrown out. Possibly across the road and behind the protective barrier. Morelius couldn’t see any bodies in the wreck.
    Next to it was a smaller car wedged between the others and it had been sliced in two. There was no roof. Two people sat in the front seats.
    That was the image. That was the image he couldn’t stop thinking about. He kept waking up in the middle of the night with a freight train plowing through his brain and he was still dreaming about the bodies in that sliced-through car.
    He told Hanne all about it. Tried to.
    At first he wasn’t sure what he was seeing. He’d moved closer, but from behind, to see why they were lean ... why they were leaning so strangely. A man and a woman. You could see that from behind