The Man From Beijing

by Henning Mankell

  ‘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.

  The torch went out. She shook it, but couldn’t bring it back to life. Even so, she started to fill the bag with letters and the diaries. One of the bundles of letters slipped out of her hand, and she spent ages fumbling around on the cold floor until she found it.r />
  Then she hurried away, back to her car. The receptionist stared at her in astonishment when she got back to the hotel.

  She was tempted to start reading right away, but decided it would be best to get an hour or two of sleep. At nine o’clock she borrowed a magnifying glass from the front desk and sat down at the table, which she had moved to the window. The advertising crowd was saying its goodbyes before tumbling into cars and minibuses. She hung the DO NOT DISTURB sign on her door handle, then turned her attention to the diary she had started reading. It was slow work – some words, and even some sentences, she couldn’t work out.

  The author gave no name, only the initials JA. For some reason he never used the first person when referring to himself, but always the initials JA. She remembered the second letter she had found among her mother’s papers. Jan August Andrén. That must be him. A foreman on the railway construction moving slowly eastward through the Nevada desert, who described in great and meticulous detail his role in the venture. How he readily submitted to those above him in the hierarchy, who impressed him with the power they wielded. His illnesses, including a persistent fever that prevented him from working for a long time.

  In places his handwriting would become shaky. JA described ‘a high temperature, and blood in the frequent and painful vomiting that afflicts me’. Birgitta Roslin could almost feel the fear of death that radiated from the pages of the diary. As JA didn’t date most of his entries, she was unable to judge how long he was ill. On one of the subsequent pages he wrote his last will and testament: ‘To my friend Herbert my best jackboots and other clothing, and to Mr Harrison my rifle and my revolver, and I beg him to inform my relatives in Sweden that I have passed on. Give money to the railway priest in order to enable him to arrange a decent burial with at least two hymns. I had not suspected that my life would be over so soon. May God help me.’

  But JA didn’t die. Abruptly, with no evident transitional stage, he is fit and well again.

  So JA appears to have been a foreman with the Central Pacific Company, which was building a railway from the Pacific Ocean to a point in the middle of the continent where it would meet up with the line from the East Coast. He sometimes complains that the workers ‘are exceeding lazy if he doesn’t keep a close watch over them. The ones who annoy him most are the Irish, because they drink heavily and are late starting work in the mornings. He calculates that he will be forced to dismiss one out of every four Irish labourers, which will create major problems. It is impossible to employ American Indians, as they refuse to work in the required way. Negroes are easier, but former slaves who have either been liberated or run away are unwilling to obey his orders. JA writes that ‘a workforce of decent Swedish peasants would have been much more preferable to all the unreliable Chinese labourers and drunken Irishmen.’

  Birgitta Roslin was finding that interpreting the text was straining her eyes, and she frequently needed to lie down on her bed, close her eyes and rest. She turned to one of the three bundles of letters instead. Once again, it is JA. The same, barely legible handwriting. He writes to his parents and tells them how he’s getting on. There is a glaring difference between what JA notes down in his diary and what he writes in his letters home. If what’s in his diary is the truth, the letters are full of lies. He wrote in the diary that his monthly wage was eleven dollars. In one of the first letters he writes home, he says that his ‘bosses are so pleased with me that I’m now earning 25 dollars a month, which is about what an inspector of taxes earns back home’. He’s boasting, she thought.

  Birgitta Roslin read more letters and discovered more lies, each one more astonishing than the last. He suddenly acquires a fiancée, a cook named Laura who comes from ‘a family well placed in high society in New York’. Judging from the date of the letter, this was when he was close to death and wrote his last will and testament. Perhaps Laura appeared in one of his delirious dreams.

  The man Birgitta Roslin was trying to pin down was slippery, somebody who always managed to wriggle away. She started leafing through the letters and diaries all the more impatiently.

  Between the diaries she found a document she assumed was a payslip. In April 1864 Jan August Andrén had been paid eleven dollars for his labours. Now she was certain that this was the same man who had written the letter she found among her mother’s papers.

  She looked out of the window. A lone man was shovelling snow. Once upon a time a lone man named Jan August Andrén emigrated from Hesjövallen, she thought. He ended up in Nevada, working on the railway. He became a foreman and didn’t seem to have been too fond of those in his charge. The fiancée he invented might just have been one of the‘loose women who gravitate towards the railway construction sites’, as one entry detailed. Venereal disease was rife among the workforce. Whores who followed the railway were disruptive. It wasn’t just that VD-infected workers had to be fired: violent fights over women were a constant source of delay.

  In one instance, JA describes how an Irishman named O’Connor had been sentenced to death for murdering a Scottish labourer. They had been drunk and ended up fighting over a woman. O’Connor was now dueto be hanged, and the judge who travelled to the camp in order to preside over the trial had agreed that the hanging didn’t need to take place in the nearest town, but could be carried out on a hill close to the point the railway track had reached. Jan August Andrén writes that‘I like the idea of everybody being able to see what drunkenness and violence can lead to’.

  He describes the Irishman as young, with ‘barely more than down on his chin’.

  The execution will take place early, just before the morning shift begins. Not even a hanging can result in a single sleeper car or even a single coach bolt being fitted behind schedule. The foreman has been instructed to make sure that everybody attends the execution. A strong wind is blowing. Jan August Andrén ties a bandanna over his nose and mouth as he goes around checking that his team has left its tents for the hill where the hanging will take place. The gallows is on a platform made of newly tarred sleepers. The moment O’Connor is dead the gallows will be dismantled and the sleepers carried back down to where the track is being laid. The condemned man arrives, surrounded by armed guards. There is also a priest present. Andrén describes the scene: ‘A growling dissent could be heard from the assembled men. For a moment one might suppose the grumbling was directed at the hangman, but then one realised that all present were relieved not to be the one about to have his neck broken. I could well imagine that many of them who hated the daily toil were now feeling blissful delight at the prospect of being able to carry iron rails, shovel gravel and lay sleepers today.’

  Andrén writes like an early crime reporter, Birgitta Roslin thought. But was he writing for himself, or possibly for some unknown reader in the future? Otherwise why use terms like ‘blissful delight’?

  O’Connor trudges along in his chains as if in a trance, but suddenly comes to life at the foot of the gallows and starts shouting and fighting for his life. The unease among the assembled men increases in volume, and Andrén writes that it is ‘terrible to watch this young man fighting for the life he knows he will soon lose. He is led kicking and screaming to the rope, and continues bellowing until the trapdoor opens and his neck is broken.’ At that moment the growling ceases, and according to Andrén it becomes ‘totally silent, as if all those present have been struck dumb, and felt their own necks breaking’.

  He expresses himself well, Roslin thought. A man with emotions, who can write.

  The gallows is dismantled, the body and the sleepers carried off in different directions. There is a fight between several Chinese who want the rope used to hang O’Connor.

  The telephone rang. It was Sundberg.

  ‘Did I wake you up?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Can you come down? I’m in reception.’

  ‘What’s it about?’

  ‘Come down and I’ll tell you.’

  Vivi Sundberg was waiting by the open fire.


  ‘Let’s sit down,’ she said, pointing to some chairs and a sofa around a table in the corner.

  ‘How did you know I was staying here?’

  ‘I made enquiries.’

  Roslin began to suspect the worst. Sundberg was reserved, cool. She came straight to the point.

  ‘We are not entirely without eyes and ears, you know,’ she began. ‘Even if we are only provincial police officers. No doubt you know what I’m talking about.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘We are missing the contents of a chest of drawers in the house I was kind enough to let you into. I asked you not to touch anything. But you did. You must have gone back there at some time during the night. In the drawer you emptied were diaries and letters. I’ll wait here while you get them. Were there five or six diaries? How many bundles of letters? Bring them all down. When you do, I shall be kind enough to forget all about this. You can also be grateful that I went to the trouble of coming here.’

  Birgitta Roslin could feel that she was blushing. She had been caught in flagrante, with her fingers in the jam jar. There was nothing she could do. The judge had been found out.

  She stood up and went to her room. For a brief moment she was tempted to keep the diary she was reading just then, but she had no idea exactly how much Sundberg knew. Her seeming uncertainty about how many diaries there were was not necessarily significant – she could have been testing Roslin’s honesty. She carried everything she had taken down to reception. Vivi Sundberg had a paper bag into which she put all the diaries and letters.

  ‘Why did you do it?’ she asked.

  ‘I was curious. I can only apologise.’

  ‘Is there anything you haven’t told me?’

  ‘I have no hidden motives.’

  Sundberg eyed her critically. Roslin could feel she was blushing again. Sundberg stood up. Despite being powerfully built and overweight, she moved daintily.

  ‘Let the police take care of this business,’ she said. ‘I won’t make a song and dance about you entering the house during the night. We’ll forget it. Go home now, and I’ll carry on working.’