The Man From Beijing (11 page)

Her mobile phone rang. She switched it off and looked expectantly at her visitor.

Roslin told her story without getting bogged down in details. She had often sat on the bench and thought about how a prosecuting or defending counsel, an accused or a witness, ought to have expressed themselves. She was an expert in that particular skill.

‘Perhaps you already know about the Nevada incident,’ she said when she had finished.

‘It hasn’t come up at our briefings yet.’

‘What do you think?’

‘I don’t think anything.’

‘It could mean that the murderer you are looking for is not a madman.’

‘I shall evaluate your information the same way I do every tip and suggestion. And believe me – there are masses of them here, phone calls, letters, emails. You name it, we got it. Who knows, something may turn up.’

She reached for a notepad and asked Birgitta Roslin to repeat her story. When she had finished making notes she stood up and escorted her visitor to the exit.

Just before they came to the glass doors, she paused.

‘Do you want to see the house where your mother grew up? Is that why you’ve come here?’

‘Is it possible?’

‘The bodies are gone. I can let you in, if you’d like to. I’ll be going there in half an hour. But you must promise me not to take anything away from the house. There are people who’d be only too pleased to rip up the cork tiles on which a murdered person has been lying.’

‘I’m not like that.’

‘If you wait in your car, you can follow me.’

Vivi Sundberg pressed a button, and the glass doors slid open. Birgitta Roslin hurried out into the street before any of the reporters who were still gathered in reception could get hold of her.

As she sat with her hand on the ignition key, it struck her that she had failed. Sundberg hadn’t taken her seriously. It was unlikely they’d look into the Nevada lead, and if they did it would be without much enthusiasm.

Who could blame them – the leap between Hesjövallen and Nevada was too great.

A black car with no police markings drew up beside her. Vivi Sundberg waved.

When they reached the village, Sundberg led her to the house.

‘I’ll leave you here, so that you can be alone for a while.’

Birgitta Roslin took a deep breath and stepped inside. All the lights were on.

It was like stepping from the wings onto a floodlit stage. And she was the only person in the play.

8

Birgitta Roslin stood in the hall and listened. There is a silence in empty houses that is unique, she thought. People have left and taken all the noise with them. There isn’t even a clock ticking anywhere.

She went into the living room. Old-fashioned smells abounded, from furniture, tapestries and pale porcelain vases crammed onto shelves and in between potted plants. She felt with a finger in one of the pots, then went to the kitchen, found a watering can and watered all the plants she could find. She sat down on a chair and looked around her. How much of all this had been here when her mother lived in this house? Most of it, she suspected. Everything here is old; furniture grows old with the people who use it.

The floor, where the bodies had been lying, was still covered in plastic sheeting. She went up the stairs. The bed in the master bedroom was unmade. There was a slipper lying halfway under the bed. She couldn’t find its mate. There were two other rooms on this upper floor. In the one facing west, the wallpaper was covered in childish images of animals. She had a vague memory of her mother having mentioned that wallpaper once. There was a bed, a wardrobe, a chest of drawers, a chair and a heap of rag rugs piled up against one of the walls. She opened the wardrobe: the shelves were lined with newspaper pages. One was dated 1969. By then her mother had been gone for more than twenty years.

She sat in the chair in front of the window. It was dark now, the wooded ridges on the other side of the lake were no longer visible. A police officer was moving around at the edge of the trees, lit up by a colleague’s torch. He kept stopping and bending down to examine the ground, as if he were looking for something.

Birgitta Roslin had the feeling that her mother was near. Her mother had sat in this very place long before Birgitta had ever been thought of. Here, in the same room at a different time. Somebody had carved squiggles into the white-painted window frame. Perhaps her mother. Perhaps every mark was an expression of a longing to get away, to find a new dawn.

She stood up and went back downstairs. Off the kitchen was a room with abed, some crutches leaning against a wall and an old-fashioned wheelchair. On the floor next to the bedside table was an enamel chamber pot. The room gave the impression of not having been used for a very long time.

She returned to the living room, tiptoeing around as if afraid of disturbing somebody. The drawers in a writing desk were half open. One was full of tablecloths and napkins, another of dark-coloured balls of wool. In the third drawer, the bottom one, were some bundles of letters and notebooks with brown covers. She took out one of the notebooks and opened it. There was no name in it. It was completely filled with tiny handwriting. She took out her glasses and tried to make sense of what looked to be a diary. The spelling was distinctly old-fashioned. The notes were about locomotives, coaches, railway tracks.

Then she noticed a word that gave her a start: Nevada. She stood stock-still and held her breath. Something had suddenly begun to change. This mute, empty house had sent her a message. She tried to decipher what followed, but she heard the front door opening. She replaced the diary and closed the drawer. Vivi Sundberg came into the room.

‘No doubt you’ve seen where the bodies were lying,’ she said. ‘I don’t need to show you.’

Birgitta Roslin nodded.

‘We lock the houses at night. You ought to leave now.’

‘Have you found any next of kin of the couple who lived here?’

‘That’s exactly what I came to tell you. It doesn’t seem like Brita and August had any children of their own, nor any other relatives apart from the ones living in the village who are also dead. The list of victims will be made public tomorrow.’

‘And then what will happen to them?’

‘Maybe that’s something you ought to think about, as you are related to them.’

‘I’m not actually related to them. But I do care about them.’

They left the house. Sundberg locked the door and hung the key on anail.

‘We don’t expect anybody to break in,’ she said. ‘Just now this village is as well guarded as the Swedish royal family.’

They said their goodbyes on the road. Powerful searchlights illuminated some of the houses. Once again, Birgitta Roslin had the feeling of being on a stage in a theatre.

‘Will you be going back home tomorrow?’ asked Vivi Sundberg.

‘I suppose so. Have you thought any more about what I told you?’

‘I shall pass on your information tomorrow when we have our morning meeting.’

‘But you must agree that it seems possible, not to say probable, that there is a connection.’

‘It’s too early to answer that question. But I think the best thing you can do now is to let it drop.’

Birgitta Roslin watched Vivi Sundberg get into her car and drive away. She doesn’t believe me, she said aloud to herself in the darkness. She doesn’t believe me – and, of course, I can understand that.

But then again, it annoyed her. If she had been a police officer, she would have given priority to information that suggested a link with a similar incident, even though it had taken place on another continent.

She decided to speak to the prosecutor who was in charge of the preliminary investigation.

She drove far too quickly to Delsbo and was still upset when she came to her hotel. The advertising executives’ ceremonial dinner was in full swing in the dining room, and she had to eat in the deserted bar. She ordered a glass of wine to accompany her meal. It was an Australian Shiraz, very tasty, but she couldn’t make up her mind if it had overtones of chocolate or liquorice, or perhaps both.

After her meal she went up to her room. Her indignation had subsided. She took one of her iron tablets and thought about the diary she had glanced at. She ought to have told Vivi Sundberg what she had discovered. But for whatever reason, she hadn’t. There was a risk that the diary would become yet another insignificant detail in a wide-ranging investigation overflowing with evidence.

Good police officers had a special gift for weeding out links in a mass of evidence that to others might seem haphazard and chaotic. What type of police officer was Vivi Sundberg? An overweight middle-aged woman who didn’t give the impression of being all that quick-witted.

She immediately withdrew that judgement. It was unfair. She knew nothing about Vivi Sundberg.

She lay down on the bed, switched on the television, and heard the vibrations from the double basses in the dining room.

Birgitta’s mobile phone rang and woke her up. She glanced at the clock and saw that she had been asleep for more than an hour. It was Staffan.

‘Where in the world are you? Where am I calling?’

‘Delsbo.’

‘I barely know where that is.’

‘Hudiksvall, just to the west. If my memory isn’t playing tricks on me, people in the old days used to talk about brutal knife fights featuring farmhands in Delsbo.’

She told him about her visit to Hesjövallen. She could hear jazz playing in the background. He most likely thinks it’s good to be on his own, she thought. He can listen as much as he wants to the jazz I don’t like at all.

‘What happens next?’ he asked when she had finished.

‘I’ll decide that tomorrow. You can go back to your music now.’

‘It’s Charlie Mingus.’

‘Who?’

‘You mean you’ve forgotten who Charlie Mingus is?’

‘I sometimes think all your jazz musicians have the same name.’

‘Now you’re offending me.’

‘I didn’t mean to.’

‘Are you absolutely sure about that?’

‘Meaning what?’

‘Meaning that you have nothing but contempt for the music I like so much.’

‘Why should I?’

‘That’s a question only you can answer.’

The conversation came to an abrupt end. He slammed the phone down. That made her furious, so she rang him back, but he didn’t answer. She gave up. I’m not the only one who’s weary, she thought. He no doubt thinks I’m as cold and distant as I think he is.

She got ready for bed. It was some time before she could fall asleep. Early in the morning, while it was still dark, she was woken up by a door slamming somewhere. She remained lying there in the dark, recalling what she had dreamed. She’d been in Brita and August’s house. They had been talking to her, both of them sitting on the dark red sofa, while she was standing on the floor in front of them. She had suddenly noticed that she was naked. She tried to cover herself up and leave, but couldn’t. Her legs seemed to be paralysed. When she looked down she saw that her feet were enclosed by the floorboards.

That was the moment she had woken up. She listened to the darkness. Loud, drunken voices approached and faded away. She glanced at her watch. A quarter to five. Still a long time to go before dawn. She settled down to try and go back to sleep, but a thought struck her.

The key was hanging from a nail. She sat up in bed. Obviously, it was forbidden and preposterous. Going to get what was in the chest of drawers. Not waiting until some police officer might just possibly happen to take an interest in what was there.

She got out of bed and stood by the window. Still, deserted. I can do it, she thought. If I’m lucky I might be able to ensure that this investigation doesn’t get stuck in the mud like the worst case I’ve ever come across, the murder of our prime minister. But I’d be taking the law into my own hands, some zealous prosecutor might be able to convince a stupid judge that I was interfering in a criminal investigation.

Even worse was the wine she had drunk. It would be disastrous to be arrested for drink-driving. She worked out how many hours it was since she had dinner. The alcohol should be out of her system by now. But she wasn’t sure.

I shouldn’t do this, she thought. Even if the police on duty there are asleep. I can’t do it.

Then she dressed and left her room. The corridor was empty. She could hear noises from various rooms where after parties were still carrying on. She even thought she could hear a couple making love.

Reception was clear. She caught a glimpse of the back of a light-haired woman in the room behind the counter.

The cold hit her as she left the hotel. There was no wind; the sky was clear; it was much colder than the previous night.

Birgitta Roslin began to have second thoughts in the car. But the temptation was simply too great. She wanted to read more of that diary.

There was no other traffic on the road. At one point she braked hard when she thought she saw a moose by the piled-up snow at the side of the road, but it was only a tree stump.

When she came to the final hill before the descent into the village, she stopped and switched off the lights. She kept a torch in the glove compartment. She started walking carefully along the road. She kept stopping to listen. A slight breeze rustled through the invisible treetops. When she reached the crest of the hill, she saw that two searchlights were still shining, and there was a police car parked outside the house closest to the trees. She would be able to approach Brita and August’s house without being seen. She cupped her hand around the torch, went through the gate into the garden of the neighbouring house, then crept up to the front door from behind. Still no sign of life from the police car. She fumbled around until she found the key.

Once inside the house, Birgitta Roslin shuddered. She took a plastic carrier bag from her jacket pocket and cautiously opened the drawer.