The Man From Beijing

by Henning Mankell

  ‘I apologise.’

  ‘You have already.’

  Sundberg left the hotel and got into the police car waiting outside. Birgitta Roslin watched it drive away in a cloud of snow. She went up to her room, fetched a jacket, and took a walk along the shore of the ice-covered lake. The wind came and went in chilly gusts. She bowed her head. She felt slightly ashamed.

  She walked all the way round the lake and was warm and sweaty when she returned to the hotel. After a shower and a change of clothes, she thought about what had happened.

  She had now seen her mother’s room and knew that it was her mother’s foster-parents who had been killed. It was time to go home.

  She went down to reception and asked to keep the room for one more night. Then she drove into Hudiksvall, found a bookshop and bought a book about wines. She wondered whether to eat again at the Chinese restaurant she’d visited the previous day, but chose an Italian place instead. She lingered over her meal and read the newspapers without bothering to see what had been written about Hesjövallen.

  She drove back to the hotel, read some pages of the book she had bought, went to bed early.

  She was woken up by her phone ringing. It was pitch dark. When she answered nobody was there. There was no number on the display.

  She suddenly felt uncomfortable. Who had called?

  Before going back to sleep she checked to make sure the door was locked. Then she looked out of the window. There was no sign of anybody on the road to the hotel. She went back to bed, thinking that the next day she would do the only sensible thing.

  She would go home.

  9

  She was in the breakfast room by seven o’clock. The windows looked out over the lake, and she could see that it had become windy. A man approached, pulling a sledge with two well-bundled children as passengers. She recalled the days when she had spent so much time and effort dragging her own children up slopes that they could sledge down. That had been one of the most remarkable periods of her life – playing with her children in the snow, and at the same time worrying about what judgement to pass in a complicated lawsuit. The children’s shouts and laughter contrasting with the frightening crime scenes.

  She had once worked out that during the course of her career, she had sent three murderers and seven people guilty of manslaughter to prison. Not to mention several more sentenced for grievous bodily harm, who could count themselves lucky that their crimes had not resulted in murder.

  The thought worried her. Measuring her activities and her best efforts in terms of people she had sent to prison – was that really the sum of her life’s work?

  As she ate she avoided looking at the newspapers, which were naturally wallowing in the events at Hesjövallen. Instead she selected a business supplement and leafed through the stock market listings and discussons about the percentage of women represented on the boards of Swedish companies. There were not many people at breakfast. She refilled her coffee cup and wondered if it might be a good idea to take a different route home. A touch further west, perhaps, through the Värmland forests?

  She was interrupted in her thoughts by somebody addressing her. A man sitting alone at a table several feet away.

  ‘Are you talking to me?’

  ‘I just wondered what Vivi Sundberg wanted.’

  She didn’t recognise the man and didn’t really understand what he was asking about. Before she had a chance to reply, he stood up and walked over to her table. Pulled out a chair and sat down.

  He was in his sixties, red-faced, overweight, and his breath was foul.

  ‘I’d like to eat my breakfast in peace.’

  ‘You’ve finished eating. I just want to ask you a few questions.’

  ‘I don’t even know who you are.’

  ‘Lars Emanuelsson. Freelance journalist. Not a reporter. I’m better than that lot. I’m not a hack. I do my homework and what I write is thoroughly researched and stylishly written.’

  ‘That doesn’t give you the right to prevent me from eating my breakfast in peace.’

  Lars Emanuelsson stood up, and sat down on a chair at the next table.

  ‘Is that better?’

  ‘A bit. Whom do you write for?’

  ‘I haven’t made up my mind yet. First I need to get the story, then I’ll decide where to offer it. I don’t sell my work to just anybody.’

  She was irritated by his self-importance. She was also repulsed by his smell – it must have been a very long time since he had last taken a shower. He came off as a caricature of an intrusive reporter.

  ‘I noticed that you had a chat with Vivi Sundberg yesterday. Not an especially cordial exchange of views, I would say. More like two cockerels, marking their territory. Am I right?’

  ‘You are wrong. I have nothing to say to you.’

  ‘But you can’t deny that you spoke with her?’

  ‘Of course I can’t.’

  ‘I wonder what a judge from another town is doing up here. You must have something to do with this investigation. Horrible things happen in a little hamlet up north, and Birgitta Roslin comes rushing up from Helsingborg.’

  She became even more cautious.

  ‘What do you want? How do you know who I am?’

  ‘It all boils down to methods. We spend our whole lives searching for the best way of getting results. I take it that applies to judges as well. You have rules and regulations. But you choose your own methods. I don’t know how many criminal investigations I’ve reported on. I spent a full year – or, to be more precise, three hundred and sixty-six days – following the Palme investigation. I realised early on that the murderer would never be caught because the investigation ran aground before it had even been launched. It was obvious that the guilty party would never appear in court because the police and the prosecutors were not trying to solve the murder; they were more interested in appearing on prime-time television. Many people assumed then that the culprit was Christer Pettersson. Apart from some sane and sensible investigators who realised that this accusation was wrong, completely wrong. But nobody paid any attention to them. Me, I prefer to hover around the periphery, see things from the outside. That way I notice things that the others miss. For instance, a judge being visited by an investigating officer who can’t possibly have time for anything else but the case she’s busy with from morning till night. What was it that you handed over to her?’

  ‘I’m not going to answer that question.’

  ‘So I interpret that as meaning you are deeply involved in what has happened. I can see the headline now: “Scanian Judge Involved in the Hesjövallen Drama.” ’

  She drank the rest of her coffee and stood up. He followed her into reception.

  ‘If you give me a tip, I can repay you in spades.’

  ‘I have absolutely nothing to say to you. Not because I have any secrets, but because I know nothing that could possibly be of any interest to a reporter.’

  Lars Emanuelsson looked depressed. ‘Not a reporter, a freelance journalist. Let’s face it, I don’t call you a shyster.’

  ‘Was it you who called me last night?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘So it was. At least I know.’

  ‘You mean to say that your mobile phone rang? In the middle of the night? When you were asleep? Is that something I ought to follow up?’

  She didn’t answer, but pressed the button to summon the lift.

  ‘There’s one thing you ought to know,’ said Lars Emanuelsson. ‘The police are suppressing an important detail. If you can call a person a detail.’

  The lift doors opened; she stepped in.

  ‘It wasn’t only old people who died. There was a young boy in one of the houses.’

  The doors closed. When she came to her floor, she pressed the down button again. He was waiting for her, hadn’t moved an inch. They sat down. Lars Emanuelsson lit a cigarette.

  ‘You’re not allowed to smoke in here.’

  ‘Tell me something else that I couldn’t ca
re less about.’

  There was a potted plant on the table that he used as an ashtray.

  ‘You always need to look for what the police don’t tell you. What they conceal can reveal the way they are thinking, where they think they might be able to pin down their perpetrator. In among all those dead people was a twelve-year-old boy. They know who his next of kin are, and why he was there in the village. But they aren’t telling the general public.’

  ‘How do you know this?’

  ‘That’s my secret. In an investigation like this there’s always a potential leak. It’s a question of identifying it, and then listening carefully.’

  ‘Who is this boy?’

  ‘At the moment he’s an unknown factor. I know his name, but I’m not going to say. He was visiting relatives. He really ought to have been at school, but he was convalescing after an eye operation. The poor kid had a lazy eye. But now his eye was in the right place, back in its slot, you might say. And then he was killed. Like the old folks he was staying with. But not quite the same.’

  ‘What was different?’

  Emanuelsson leaned back in his chair. His stomach overflowed his waistband. Roslin found him totally repulsive. He was aware of that, but didn’t care.

  ‘Now it’s your turn. Vivi Sundberg, the books and letters.’

  ‘I’m a distant relative of some of the people who’ve been murdered. I gave Sundberg some material she’d asked for.’

  He screwed up his eyes and peered at her. ‘Do you expect me to believe that?’

  ‘You can believe whatever you like.’

  ‘What books? What letters?’

  ‘They were about family circumstances.’

  ‘What family?’

  ‘Brita and August Andrén.’

  He nodded thoughtfully, then stubbed out his cigarette with unexpected energy.

  ‘House number two or seven. The police have given every house a code. House number two is called two slash three – which obviously means that they found three dead bodies there.’

  He continued watching her closely as he took a half-smoked cigarette from a crumpled pack.

  ‘That doesn’t explain why your exchanges were so cold in tone.’

  ‘She was in a hurry. What was different about the death of the boy?’

  ‘I haven’t managed to find out every detail. I have to admit that the Hudiksvall police and the ones they’ve called in from the CID in Stockholm are keeping their cards unusually close to their chest. But I think I’m right in saying that the boy wasn’t exposed to unwarranted violence.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘What can it mean but that he was killed without first having to experience unnecessary suffering, torture and fear? You can draw various conclusions from that, each one more likely but probably more false than the next. But I’ll let you do that yourself. If you’re interested.’

  He stood up, having first once again stubbed out his cigarette in the plant pot.

  ‘I’d better get back to circulating,’ he said. ‘Maybe we’ll bump into each other again. Who knows?’

  She watched him go out through the door. A receptionist came past and paused when she smelled the smoke.

  ‘It wasn’t me,’ said Birgitta Roslin. ‘I smoked my last cigarette when I was thirty-two years old, which must be around about the time you were born.’

  She went up to her room to pack her bag. But she paused by the window, watching the persistent father with his sledge and his children. What exactly had that unpleasant man said? And was he really as unpleasant as she thought? No doubt he was only doing his job. She hadn’t been particularly cooperative. If she’d treated him differently, he might have had more to tell her.

  She sat down at the little desk and began making notes. As usual, she could think more clearly when she had a pen in her hand. She hadn’t read anywhere that a young boy had been murdered. He was the only young person to be killed, unless there were other victims the general public didn’t know about. What Lars Emanuelsson had said about excessive violence could only mean that the others in the house had been badly beaten, perhaps even tortured, before they were killed. Why had the boy been spared that? Could it simply be that he was young and the murderer had somehow taken that into account? Or was there some other reason?

  There were no obvious answers. And anyway, it wasn’t her problem. She still felt ashamed of what had happened the previous day. Her conduct had been indefensible. She didn’t dare think about what would have happened if some journalist had found her out. Her return back home to Skåne would have been humiliating, to say the least.

  She packed her bag and prepared to leave her room. But first she switched on the television to catch the weather forecast, which would help her make up her mind about which route to take. She stumbled on the broadcast of a press conference at police HQ in Hudiksvall. There were three people sitting on a little dais, and the only woman was Vivi Sundberg. Her heart skipped a beat – what if Sundberg was about to announce that a judge from Helsingborg had been exposed as a petty thief? She sat down on the edge of the bed and turned up the sound. The man in the middle, Tobias Ludwig, was speaking.

  She gathered it was a live broadcast. When Tobias Ludwig had finished what he had to say, the third person – public prosecutor Robertsson – pulled the microphone towards him and said that the police badly needed any relevant information they could get from the general public. Nonlocal cars, strangers who had been noticed in the vicinity, anything that seemed unusual.

  When the prosecutor had finished, it was Vivi Sundberg’s turn. She held up a plastic bag. The camera zoomed in on it. There was a red ribbon inside. Sundberg said the police would like to hear from anybody who recognised the ribbon.

  Birgitta Roslin leaned towards the screen. Hadn’t she seen a silk ribbon like the one in the plastic bag? She knelt down in order to get a better view. The ribbon certainly reminded her of something. She racked her brains, but couldn’t place it.

  The press conference proceeded to the stage where journalists started asking questions. The picture vanished from the screen. The room in police HQ was replaced by a weather map. Snow showers would drift into the east coast from the Gulf of Finland.

  Birgitta Roslin decided to take the inland route. She paid at the front desk and told the girl on duty that she had enjoyed her stay. There was a bitterly cold wind as she made her way to the car. She placed her bag on the back seat, studied the map and decided to drive through the forest to Järvsö and continue south from there.

  When she came out onto the main road, she pulled into the first parking bay. She couldn’t stop thinking about that red ribbon she had seen on television. She remembered having seen an identical ribbon, but couldn’t put her finger on when or where. She could almost identify it, but couldn’t take that final step. If I’ve come this far, surely I’ll be able to find out, she thought, and phoned police HQ. Timber trucks kept rumbling past, whipping up heavy clouds of snow that restricted her view. It was quite some time before the phone was answered. The operator who responded sounded harried. Roslin asked to speak to Erik Huddén.

  ‘It’s related to the investigation,’ she explained. ‘Hesjövallen.’

  ‘I think he’s busy. I’ll give him a buzz.’

  By the time he came to the telephone, she was starting to have second thoughts. He also sounded impatient and under pressure.

  ‘Huddén.’

  ‘I don’t know if you remember me,’ she said. ‘I’m that judge who insisted on speaking to Vivi Sundberg.’

  ‘I remember.’

  She wondered if Sundberg had said anything about what had happened that night. But she had the distinct impression that Huddén knew nothing about it. Perhaps Sundberg had in fact kept it to herself, as she’d promised? Perhaps I’m helped by the fact that she broke the rules by letting me into the house in the first place?

  ‘It’s about that red ribbon you showed on TV,’ she said.

  ‘Hmm, I’m afraid i
t seems to have been a big mistake to do that,’ said Huddén.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Our switchboard has practically gone up in smoke thanks to all the people who claim to have seen it. Usually wrapped round Christmas presents.’

  ‘My memory tells me something quite different. I think I’ve seen it.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘I don’t know. But it has nothing to do with Christmas presents.’

  He was breathing heavily at the other end of the line, and seemed to have trouble making up his mind.

  ‘I can show you the ribbon,’he said eventually. ‘If you come right away.’

  ‘Within half an hour?’

  ‘You can have two minutes, no longer.’

  He met her in reception, coughing and sneezing. The plastic bag with the red ribbon was on the desk in his office. He took it out of the bag and laid it on a piece of white paper.

  ‘It’s exactly seven and a half inches long,’ he said. ‘Just under half an inch wide. There’s a hole at one end suggesting that it’s been fastened to something. It’s made of cotton and polyester, but gives the impression of being made of silk. We found it in the snow. One of the dogs sniffed it out.’

  She was certain she recognised it, but still couldn’t remember where from.

  ‘I’ve seen it,’ she said. ‘I can swear to that. Maybe not this particular one, but something identical.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘I can’t remember.’

  ‘If you’ve seen a similar one in Skåne, that’s hardly going to help us.’

  ‘No,’ she said seriously. ‘It was somewhere up here.’

  She stared at the ribbon while Erik Huddén leaned against the wall, waiting.

  ‘Still can’t place it?’

  ‘No, I’m afraid not.’

  He put the ribbon back into the plastic bag and accompanied her down to reception.

  ‘If your memory returns, you can call us,’ he said. ‘But if it turns out to be a ribbon round a Christmas present, don’t bother.’

  Lars Emanuelsson was standing outside, waiting for her. He was wearing a threadbare fur hat pulled down over his forehead. He was annoyed when he realised she had unmasked him.