The Man From Beijing

by Henning Mankell

  Höglin raced out of the house. He couldn’t get away fast enough. He dropped his camera when he reached the road but didn’t stop to pick it up. He was convinced that somebody or something he couldn’t see was about to stab him in the back. He turned his car and sped away.

  He stopped when he reached the main road, then dialled the emergency number, his hands shaking uncontrollably. As he raised the phone to his ear, he felt a sharp pain in his chest. It was as if somebody had caught up with him and stabbed him.

  He could hear someone speaking to him on the phone, but he was incapable of answering. The pain was so intense that all he could manage was a faint hiss.

  ‘I can’t hear you,’ said a woman’s voice.

  He tried again. Once more nothing but a faint hiss. He was dying.

  ‘Can you speak a bit louder?’ asked the woman. ‘I don’t understand what you’re saying.’

  He made a supreme effort and produced a few words.

  ‘I’m dying,’ he gasped. ‘For God’s sake, I’m dying. Help me.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  But the woman received no reply. Karsten Höglin was on his way into the endless darkness. In a desperate attempt to escape from the excruciating pain, like a drowning man trying in vain to rise to the surface, he stepped on the accelerator. The car shot over to the wrong side of the road. A truck on the way to Hudiksvall carrying office furniture had no chance to avoid a head-on collision. The truck driver jumped down from his cab to check on the driver of the car he had crashed into. Höglin was prostrate over the steering wheel.

  The truck driver, from Bosnia, spoke little Swedish.

  ‘How is you?’ he asked.

  ‘The village,’ mumbled Karsten Höglin. ‘Hesjövallen.’

  Those were his final words. By the time the police and the ambulance arrived, Karsten Höglin had succumbed to a massive heart attack.

  It was not at all clear what had happened. Nobody could possibly have guessed the reason for the sudden heart attack suffered by the man behind the wheel of the dark blue Volvo. It wasn’t until Karsten Höglin’s body had been taken away and tow trucks were trying to extricate the badly damaged furniture van that a police officer bothered to listen to the Bosnian driver. The officer’s name was Erik Huddén, and he didn’t like talking to people who spoke bad Swedish unless he was forced to. It was as if their stories were less important if they were unable to articulate them properly. Naturally, the officer began with a breathalyser. But the driver was sober, and his driver’s licence seemed to be in order.

  ‘He tried saying something,’ said the truck driver.

  ‘What?’ Huddén asked dismissively.

  ‘Something about Herö. A place, perhaps?’

  Huddén was a local, and shook his head impatiently.

  ‘There’s nowhere around here called Herö.’

  ‘Maybe I hear wrong? Maybe it was something with an s? Maybe Hersjö?’

  ‘Hesjövallen?’

  The driver nodded. ‘Yes, he said that.’

  ‘And what did he mean?’

  ‘I don’t know. He died.’

  Huddén put his notebook away. He hadn’t written down what the driver said. Half an hour later, when the tow trucks had driven off and another police car had taken the Bosnian driver to the station for more questioning, Huddén got into his car, ready to return to Hudiksvall. He was accompanied by his colleague, Leif Ytterström, who was driving.

  ‘Let’s go via Hesjövallen,’ said Huddén out of the blue.

  ‘Why? Has there been an emergency call?’

  ‘I just want to check up on something.’

  Erik Huddén was the older of the two officers. He was known for being both uncommunicative and stubborn. Ytterström turned off onto the road to Sörforsa. When they came to Hesjövallen Huddén asked him to drive slowly through the village. He still hadn’t explained to his colleague why they had made this detour.

  ‘It looks deserted,’ said Ytterström as they slowly passed house after house.

  ‘Hang on. Go back,’ said Huddén. ‘Slowly.’

  Then he told Ytterström to stop. Something lying in the snow by one of the houses had attracted his attention. He got out of the car and went to investigate. He suddenly stopped dead and drew his gun. Ytterström leaped out of the car and drew his own gun.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  Huddén didn’t reply. He moved cautiously forward. Then he paused again and bent over as if he had suddenly been afflicted by chest pains. When he came back to the car Erik Huddén was white in the face.

  ‘There’s a dead man lying there,’ he said. ‘He’s been beaten to death. And there’s something missing.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘One of his legs.’

  They stood staring at each other without speaking. Then Huddén got into the car and picked up the radio and asked for Vivi Sundberg, who he knew was on duty that day. She responded immediately.

  ‘Erik here. I’m out at Hesjövallen.’

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘I don’t know. But there’s a man lying dead in the snow.’

  ‘Say that again.’

  ‘A dead man. In the snow. It looks as if he’s been beaten to death. One of his legs is missing.’

  They knew each other well. Sundberg knew that Erik Huddén would never exaggerate, no matter how incredible what he said seemed to be.

  ‘We’ll be there,’ said Sundberg.

  ‘Get the forensic guys from Gävle.’

  ‘Who’s with you?’

  ‘Ytterström.’

  She thought for a moment.

  ‘Is there any plausible explanation for what’s happened?’

  ‘I’ve never seen anything like this before.’

  He knew she would understand. He had been a police officer for so long that there was no real limit to the suffering and violence he was forced to face up to.

  It was thirty-five minutes before they heard sirens approaching in the distance. Huddén had tried to persuade Ytterström to accompany him to the nearest house so that they could talk to the neighbours, but his colleague refused to move until reinforcements arrived. As Huddén was reluctant to enter the house alone, they stayed by the car. They said nothing while they waited.

  Vivi Sundberg got out of the first car to pull up beside them. She was a powerfully built woman in her fifties. Those who knew her were well aware that, despite her cumbersome body, she was very mobile and possessed considerable stamina. Only a few months earlier she had chased and caught two burglars in their twenties. They had laughed at her as they started to run off. They were no longer laughing when she arrested the pair of them after a chase of a few hundred yards.

  Vivi Sundberg had red hair. Four times a year she visited her daughter’s hairdressing salon and had the redness reinforced.

  She was born on a farm just outside of Harmånger and had looked after her parents until they grew old and eventually died. Then she began educating herself, and after a few years applied to the police college. She was amazed to be accepted. Nobody could explain why she had got in, given the size of her body; but nobody asked any questions, and she said nothing.

  Vivi Sundberg was a diligent, hard-working police officer. She was persistent, and outstanding when it came to analysing and following up on the slightest lead.

  She ran a hand through her hair and looked hard at Erik Huddén.

  ‘Well, are you going to show me?’

  They walked over to the dead body. Sundberg pulled a face and squatted down. ‘Has the doctor arrived?’

  ‘She’s on her way.’

  ‘She?’

  ‘Hugo has a sub. He’s going to be operated on. A tumour.’

  Vivi Sundberg momentarily lost interest in the body lying in the snow. ‘Is he ill?’

  ‘He has cancer. Didn’t you know?’

  ‘No. Where?’

  ‘In his stomach. Apparently it hasn’t spread. Anyway, he has a sub from Uppsala. Valentin
a Miir’s her name. If I’ve pronounced it right.’

  Huddén shouted to Ytterström, who was drinking coffee by one of the cars. He confirmed that the police doctor would be here at any moment.

  Sundberg started examining the body closely. Every time she was confronted by a corpse, she was overcome by the same feeling of pointless-ness. She was unable to awaken the dead, the best she could do was to expose the reasons for the crime and send the killer to a prison cell or to an asylum for the mentally ill.

  ‘Somebody has gone berserk,’ she said. ‘With a long knife. Or a bayonet. Possibly a sword. I can see at least ten wounds, nearly all of them potentially fatal. But I don’t understand the missing leg. Do we know who the man is?’

  ‘Not yet. All the houses appear to be empty.’

  Sundberg stood up and looked around the village. The houses seemed to return her attentive gaze.

  ‘Have you been knocking on doors?’

  ‘I thought I should wait. Whoever did this might still be around.’

  ‘You’re right.’

  She beckoned to Ytterström, who threw his empty cardboard cup into the snow.

  ‘Let’s go in,’ she said. ‘There must be people around. This isn’t a ghost town.’

  ‘There’s been no sign of anybody.’

  Sundberg looked again at the houses, the snowed-over gardens, the road. She drew her pistol and set off towards the nearest house; the two men followed. It was a few minutes past eleven.

  What the three police officers discovered was unprecedented in the annals of Swedish crime and would become a part of Swedish legal history. There were bodies in every house. Dogs and cats had been stabbed to death, even a parrot had had its head cut off. They found a total of nineteen dead people, all of them elderly except for a boy who must have been about twelve. Some had been killed while asleep in bed; others were lying on the floor or sitting on chairs at the kitchen table. An old woman had died with a comb in her hand, a man by a stove with an overturned coffee pot by his side. In one house they found two people locked in an embrace and tied together. All had been subjected to frenzied violence. It was as if a blood-laden hurricane had stormed through the village just as the old people who lived there were getting up. As the elderly in the country tend to rise early, Sundberg assumed the murders had taken place close to sunrise.

  Vivi Sundberg felt as if her whole head was being submerged in blood. She shook off her outrage, but felt very cold. It was as if she were viewing the dead disfigured bodies through a telescope, which meant that she didn’t need to approach too closely.

  And then there was the smell. Although the bodies had barely turned cold, they were already giving off a smell that was both sweet and sour. While inside the houses, Sundberg tried to breathe through her mouth. The moment she stepped outside, she filled her lungs with fresh air. Crossing the threshold of the next house was like preparing to face something almost unbearable.

  Everything she saw, one body after another, bore witness to the same frenzy and the same wounds caused by a very sharp weapon. The list she made later that day, which she never revealed to anybody, comprised brief notes on exactly what she had seen:

  House number one. Dead elderly man, half naked, ragged pyjamas, slippers, half lying on the staircase. Head almost severed from body, the thumb of the left hand three feet away. Dead elderly woman, nightgown, stomach split open, intestines hanging out, false teeth smashed to pieces.

  House number two. Dead man and dead woman, both at least eighty. Bodies found in a double bed on the first floor. The woman might have been killed in her sleep with a slash from her left shoulder and through her breast towards her right hip. The man tried to defend himself with a hammer, but one arm severed, throat cut. Remarkably, the bodies have been tied together. Gives the impression that the man was alive when bound but the woman dead. No proof, of course, just an immediate reaction. Young boy dead in a small bedroom. Might have been asleep when killed.

  House number three. Lone woman, dead on the kitchen floor. A dog of unknown pedigree stabbed to death by her side. The woman’s spine appears to be broken in more than one place.

  House number four. Man dead in the hall. Wearing trousers, shirt; barefoot. Probably tried to resist. Body almost cut in two through the stomach. Elderly woman sitting dead in the kitchen. Two, possibly three wounds in the top of her head.

  House number seven. Two elderly women and an elderly man dead in their beds upstairs. Impression: they were awake, conscious, but had no time to react. Cat stabbed to death in the kitchen.

  House number eight. Elderly man lying dead outside, one leg missing. Two dogs beheaded. Woman dead on the stairs, hacked to pieces.

  House number nine. Four people dead in the living room on the first floor. Half dressed, with cups of coffee, radio on, station one. Three elderly women, an elderly man. All with their heads on their knees.

  House number ten. Two very old people, a man and a woman, dead in their beds. Impossible to say if they were aware of what was happening.

  Towards the end of her list she no longer had the mental strength to record all the details. Nevertheless, what she had seen was unforgettable, a vision of hell itself.

  She numbered the houses according to the discovery of the bodies. That was not the same order as their locations along the road. When they came to the fifth house during their macabre inspection, they found signs of life. They could hear music coming from inside the house. Ytterström thought it sounded like Jimi Hendrix.

  Before going inside they called in two other officers as backup. They approached the front door – pistols drawn. Huddén banged hard on it. It was opened by a half-naked, long-haired man. He drew back in horror on seeing all the guns. Vivi Sundberg lowered her pistol when she saw he was unarmed.

  ‘Are you alone in the house?’

  ‘My wife’s here as well,’ said the man, his voice shaking.

  ‘Nobody else?’

  ‘No. What’s going on?’

  Sundberg holstered her pistol and gestured to the others to do the same.

  ‘Let’s go inside,’ she said to the half-naked man, who was shivering with cold. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Tom.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Hansson.’

  ‘Come on, Tom Hansson, let’s go inside. Out of the cold.’

  The music was at full volume. Sundberg had the impression there were speakers in every room. She followed the man into a cluttered living room where a woman in a nightdress was curled up on a sofa. He turned down the music and put on a pair of trousers that had been hanging over a chair back. Hansson and the woman on the sofa were about sixty.

  ‘What’s happened?’ asked the woman who, clearly scared, spoke with a broad Stockholm accent. Probably they were hippies left over from the sixties. Sundberg decided not to beat about the bush; there was no time to waste – it was possible that whoever had been responsible for this outrage might be on the way to carry out another massacre.

  ‘Many of your neighbours are dead,’ Sundberg said. ‘Horrendous crimes have taken place in this little village overnight. It’s important that you answer our questions. What’s your name?’

  ‘Ninni,’ said the woman. ‘Are Herman and Hilda dead?’

  ‘Where do they live?’

  ‘In the house to the left.’

  Sundberg nodded.

  ‘Yes, I’m afraid so. They’ve been murdered. But they’re not the only ones.’

  ‘If this is your idea of a joke, it’s not a very good one,’ said Tom Hansson.

  Sundberg lost her composure briefly.

  ‘I’m sorry, but we only have time for you to answer my questions. I can understand that you think what I’m telling you seems incredible, but it’s true – horrific, but true. Did you hear anything last night?’

  The man sat down on the sofa beside the woman.

  ‘We were asleep.’

  ‘Did you hear anything this morning?’

  They both shoo
k their heads.

  ‘Haven’t you even noticed that the place is crawling with police officers?’

  ‘When we play music loudly, we don’t hear anything.’

  ‘When did you last see your neighbours?’

  ‘If you mean Herman and Hilda, yesterday,’ said Ninni. ‘We usually run into each other when we go out with the dogs.’

  ‘Do you have a dog?’

  Tom Hansson nodded in the direction of the kitchen.

  ‘He’s pretty old and lazy. He doesn’t even bother to get up when we have visitors.’

  ‘Didn’t he bark during the night?’

  ‘He never barks.’

  ‘What time did you see your neighbours?’

  ‘At about three o’clock yesterday afternoon. But only Hilda.’

  ‘Did everything seem to be as usual?’

  ‘She had back pains. Herman was probably in the kitchen, solving crosswords. I didn’t see him.’

  ‘What about the rest of the people in the village?’

  ‘Everything was the same as it always is. Only old people live here. They stay indoors when it’s cold. We see them more often in spring and summer.’

  ‘There aren’t any children here, then?’

  ‘None at all.’

  Sundberg paused, thinking about the dead boy.

  ‘Is it really true?’ asked the woman on the sofa. She was frightened.

  ‘Yes,’ Sundberg said. ‘It could well be that everybody in this village is dead. Apart from you.’

  Huddén was standing by the window.

  ‘Not quite everybody,’ he said slowly.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Not quite everybody’s dead. There’s somebody out there on the road.’

  Sundberg hurried over to the window and saw a woman standing in the road outside. She was old, wearing a bathrobe and black rubber boots. Her hands were clasped in prayer.

  Sundberg held her breath. The woman was motionless.

  3

  Tom Hansson came up to the window and stood beside Vivi Sundberg.

  ‘It’s only Julia,’ he said. ‘We sometimes find her outside in the cold without a coat on. Hilda and Herman usually keep an eye on her when the home help isn’t here.’