Northern Square is deserted and covered in a blanket of snow. In its center stands the statue of Gustav Adolf, as yet incomplete and still concealed under frozen wrappings, awaiting an unveiling that has already been two years delayed. It is said that it will be the first equestrian statue in the realm. Winge stops in front of it and studies the shapeless form, a ghostly silhouette that looms threateningly above the square, as if it belonged to the reaper that Johannes Balk wants to let loose in the City-between-the-Bridges. On Winge’s right hand is Princess Sofia Albertina’s palace and, on the left, the Opera. Each building is the other’s mirror image, one lit by the pale morning light, the other still in shadow. He lingers a little while longer, his gaze flitting between the two, before he turns around and walks through the jail gate. When he has reached the correct door and had it unlocked for him, Winge is forced to steady himself against the doorpost before stepping over the threshold. The cell is not Johannes Balk’s.
This cell is only a few doors down and cannot be differentiated from Balk’s in any way except for its occupant, who pulls back as the door is unlocked and Winge enters.
“Dear Lord, what is wrong with you? You look like a phantom, a living skeleton. You frighten me. Is this death itself come for me?”
“You have nothing to fear from me. Quite the opposite. My name is Cecil Winge and I am with the police. That is, in a way, although it is not by their authority that I seek you out at this time.”
“I’ve seen you before. Your pale face has passed outside my door. Each time I thought it was a skull floating past.”
“May I sit down? My legs are not as steady as they once were.”
The man, who has crawled up onto his cot in the far corner of the room, shrugs. Winge sits down on the stool, which is exactly like the one next to Balk’s bed. He takes a closer look at the condemned man. A normal man with an ordinary face, now starting to be obscured by a day-old beard. He wears a simple linen shirt, soiled by the days spent in the cell, and worn leather breeches untied at the knee. He has wrapped his blanket and a brown jacket around him. Winge waits until he has caught his breath before he speaks again.
“Your name is Lorentz Johansson. Isn’t that so?”
“I make no secret of it.”
“Your profession?”
“I used to make barrels.”
“Tomorrow the cart will come and take you to the gallows at Hammarby.”
The man sighs and shudders.
“Yes, that is so. Master Höss will cut my head off. The best I can hope for is that he is sober enough to sharpen the blade tonight, and sound enough to hit the target with his first blow come dawn.”
“Has the pastor been here?”
“Yes, he was early. He was dressed in his finery, the devil. You don’t have to be any smarter than me to realize he was on his way to more enjoyable things on a Friday evening. He could hardly consign my sinner’s soul to the hereafter fast enough before he had slipped out the door again. I heard him humming as he passed under my window on his way towards the Royal Garden.”
“Would you like to tell me how you came to be here?”
“What could I say that’s not common knowledge?”
“I would like to hear it in your own words, if you please.”
Johansson shrugs his shoulders again.
“By all means. My story is as short as it is sad, and the hours are passing by slowly enough as it is. I killed my wife, Mr. Winge. That’s all there is to it. Our marriage became less happy with every passing year, I’d drunk a few that night, and we started in on the same old quarrels that had plagued us forever. And then I lost it.”
“Did you have any children?”
“None that saw more than their first year.”
Winge nods thoughtfully.
“I am of the opinion that there are murderers and then there are murderers, Lorentz Johansson. What do you have to say about that?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I think that a person who commits a crime in a given situation doesn’t necessarily do so in another. Would you have killed your wife if she had been an unknown person who you had never met before?”
“Why would I? And if she had had more sense to marry a better man she would still be alive and I free as a bird.”
“Do you regret what you did?”
Johansson thinks about it.
“She was a hateful woman, Mr. Winge, always quarreling and fighting. I grew to detest her over the years. But I loved her too. The fact that I regret it doesn’t change anything. I’ll pay for what I’ve done between the block and Master Höss’s dull steel and that’s all there’s to it. If my death could give her her life back, I’d be happy, but such is not the way of things.”
Winge gazes at Lorentz Johansson for a long time.
“Were you good at making barrels, Lorentz Johansson?”
“Among the best. A mere year from becoming a burgher, perhaps less.”
“And if you could choose between celibacy and death, which would you choose?”