The Man From Beijing

by Henning Mankell

  She thought about the picture on Sture Hermansson’s videotape. Was it really feasible for one lone man to carry out all those murders? Were there others involved whom she didn’t know about yet? Or had the red ribbon ended up in the snow at Hesjövallen for an entirely different reason?

  She found no answer. Instead she took out the brochure that had been left in the wastebasket. That also made her doubt whether there was any connection between Wang Min Hao and what had happened at Hesjövallen. Would a murderer really leave such obvious clues behind?

  The light inside the church was dim. She put on her glasses and leafed through the brochure. One of the spreads was a picture of a skyscraper in Beijing and Chinese characters. On other pages were columns of figures and photographs of smiling Chinese men.

  What interested her most was the Chinese writing on the back of the brochure. It brought Wang Min Hao very close to her. He was probably the one who had written it. As a reminder of something? Or for some other reason?

  Who could read this stuff? The moment she asked the question, she knew the answer. Her distant and Red revolutionary youth suddenly came to mind. She left the church and stood in the churchyard with her mobile phone in her hand. Karin Wiman, a friend from her student days in Lund, was a Sinologist and worked at the university in Copenhagen. No one answered, but she left a message asking Karin to call her back. Then she returned to her car and found a large hotel in the centre of Hudiksvall with vacant rooms. Hers was spacious and on the top floor. She switched on the television and saw on teletext that snow was forecast for that night.

  She lay on her bed and waited. She heard a man laughing in one of the neighbouring rooms.

  The ringing phone woke her. It was Karin Wiman, who sounded somewhat baffled. When Birgitta Roslin explained what she wanted, her friend urged her to find a fax machine and send her the page with the Chinese characters.

  She was able to use the fax at the front desk, then went back to her room to wait. It was dark outside now. She would soon call home and explain that, because the weather had taken a turn for the worse, she would be staying another night.

  Karin Wiman called at half past seven.

  ‘The characters are carelessly drawn, but I think I can work out what they mean.’

  Birgitta Roslin held her breath.

  ‘It’s the name of a hospital. I’ve tracked it down. It’s in Beijing. Called Longfu. It’s in the centre of town, on a street called Mei Shuguan Hutong. It’s not far from China’s biggest art gallery. I can send you a map if you like.’

  ‘Please do.’

  ‘OK, now you can tell me why you want to know all this. I’m very curious. Has your old interest in China been resurrected?’

  ‘Perhaps. I’ll tell you more later. Can you send the map to the fax machine I used?’

  ‘You’ll have it in a few minutes. But you’re being too secretive.’

  ‘Just be patient for a while. I’ll tell you everything.’

  ‘We should get together.’

  ‘I know. We see far too little of each other.’

  Birgitta Roslin went down to the front desk and waited. The map of central Beijing arrived momentarily. Karin had marked it with an arrow.

  Roslin noticed that she was hungry. Her hotel didn’t have a restaurant, so she grabbed her jacket and went out. She would study the map when she came back.

  It was dark in town, few cars, hardly any pedestrians. The man at the front desk had recommended an Italian restaurant in the vicinity. She went there and ate in the sparsely occupied dining room.

  By the time she left, it had started snowing. She headed back to her hotel.

  She suddenly stopped. For some reason she had the feeling she was being watched. But when she looked round, she couldn’t see anybody.

  She hurried back and locked her room door, securing it with the chain. Then she stood behind the curtains and looked down onto the street.

  The same as before. Nobody to be seen. Just the snow falling, more and more densely.

  18

  Birgitta Roslin slept badly that night. She woke up several times and went to the window. It was still snowing. The wind was creating high drifts along house walls. The streets were deserted. At about seven she was woken up once and for all by snowploughs clattering past.

  Before going to bed she had called home with the details of the hotel she had checked into. Staffan had listened but not said much.

  That he didn’t express any surprise on hearing she wasn’t on her way back made her both angry and disappointed. There was a time when we learned not to dig too deeply into each other’s emotional lives, she thought. Everyone needs some private space. But that shouldn’t develop into indifference. Is that where we’re headed? Are we there already?

  There was an electric kettle in her room. She made a cup of tea and sat down with the map Karin Wiman had sent her. The room was in semi-darkness, the only light coming from a reading lamp and from the muted television. The map was difficult to read, but she found the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square. It brought back memories.

  Roslin put the map down and thought about her daughters and their generation. The conversation with Karin had reminded her of the person she had once been herself. So near and yet so far, she thought.

  Those days were crucial. In the midst of all my naive chaos, I was convinced that the way to a better world was via solidarity and liberation. I’ve never forgotten that feeling of being at the very centre of the world, at a time when it was possible to change everything.

  But I’ve never lived up to the insights I had at that time. In my worst moments I’ve felt like a traitor. Not least to my mother, who encouraged me to rebel. But I suppose, if I’m honest with myself, my political will was really no more than a sort of varnish I spread over my existence. The only thing that really penetrated was my determination to be an honest judge. That’s something nobody can take away from me, she concluded.

  She drank her tea and made plans for the day. She would visit the police again and tell them what she’d discovered. This time they would have to listen. They hadn’t exactly achieved a breakthrough in the investigation so far. When she checked into her hotel she had heard some Germans in the lobby discussing what had happened in Hesjövallen. This was news abroad as well as at home. A blot on the copybook of innocent Sweden, she thought. Mass murder has no place in this country. Such things only happen in the United States, or occasionally in Russia, but not here, in a little remote and peaceful village in the depths of the Swedish forests.

  It was still snowing when Birgitta Roslin went to the police station again. The temperature had fallen. The thermometer outside the hotel said minus seven degrees Celsius. The pavements had not yet been cleared. She walked carefully to avoid slipping.

  It was quiet in the station’s reception area. A lone officer was reading messages on a noticeboard. The woman at the telephone switchboard was motionless, staring into space.

  Roslin had the impression that the Hesjövallen massacre hadn’t occurred, that the whole thing was a fantasy someone had made up.

  ‘I’m looking for Vivi Sundberg.’

  ‘She’s in a meeting.’

  ‘Erik Huddén?’

  ‘He’s there as well.’

  ‘Is everybody in the meeting?’

  ‘Everybody. Apart from me.’

  ‘How long is it going to last?’

  ‘Impossible to say. Maybe all day.’

  The woman in reception opened the door to let in the officer who had been reading the noticeboard.

  ‘I think there’s been a breakthrough,’ she said in a low voice, and left.

  Birgitta Roslin sat down and leafed through a newspaper. Police officers occasionally came and went through the glass door. Journalists and a television team arrived. She half expected to see Lars Emanuelsson.

  A quarter past nine. She closed her eyes and leaned back against the wall. Then she gave a start on hearing a voice she recognised. Vivi Sundberg was standi
ng in front of her. She looked very tired, with black shadows around her eyes.

  ‘You wanted to speak to me.’

  ‘If I’m not disturbing you.’

  ‘Of course you’re disturbing me. But I assume it’s important. You know the drill by now.’

  Birgitta Roslin followed her through the glass door and into an empty office.

  ‘This isn’t my office,’ said Sundberg. ‘But we can talk here.’

  Birgitta Roslin sat down on an uncomfortable visitor’s chair. Vivi Sundberg remained standing, leaning against a bookcase filled with red-backed files.

  Roslin braced herself, thinking that the situation was preposterous. Sundberg had already decided that no matter what she had to say, it would be irrelevant to the investigation.

  ‘I think I’ve found something,’ she said. ‘A clue, I suppose you could call it.’

  Sundberg’s face was expressionless. Roslin felt challenged.

  ‘What I have to say is so important you should ask someone else to be present.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’m convinced of it.’

  Vivi Sundberg left the room and returned swiftly with a man who introduced himself as District Prosecutor Robertsson.

  ‘I’m in charge of the preliminary investigation. Vivi tells me you have something to tell us. You are a judge in Helsingborg, is that right?’

  ‘That’s correct.’

  ‘Is Prosecutor Halmberg still there?’

  ‘He’s retired.’

  ‘But he still lives in Helsingborg, doesn’t he?’

  ‘I think he’s moved to France. Antibes.’

  ‘Lucky man. He enjoyed a decent cigar, that one. Jurors often used to faint when he lit up in the back rooms during breaks in a trial. He started to lose cases when they introduced a smoking ban. He thought it was due to melancholy and cigar deprivation.’

  ‘I’ve heard stories about that.’

  The prosecutor sat down at the desk. Sundberg had returned to her place by the bookcase. Birgitta Roslin described in detail what she had discovered. How she had recognised the red ribbon, traced it to the restaurant, then found out that a Chinese man had been visiting Hudiksvall. She put the video cassette on the desk together with the brochure in Chinese and explained what the roughly written characters on the back cover meant.

  Robertsson was staring hard at her. Vivi Sundberg was examining her hands. Then Robertsson grabbed hold of the cassette and stood up.

  ‘Let’s take a look at this. Now, right away.’

  They went to a conference room where an Asian lady was clearing away the coffee mugs and paper bags. Birgitta Roslin bristled at the brusque way in which Vivi Sundberg ordered the cleaning woman to leave the room. After a great deal of difficulty and a succession of curses Robertsson eventually managed to make the video recorder work.

  Somebody knocked on the door. Robertsson raised his voice and said they couldn’t be disturbed. The Russian women appeared on the screen but soon left. The picture flickered. Wang Min Hao took centre stage, looked at the camera, then left. Robertsson rewound and paused the tape at the moment when Wang looked at the camera. Sundberg had also become interested now. She closed the blinds on the nearest window, and the picture became clearer.

  ‘Wang Min Hao,’ said Birgitta Roslin. ‘Assuming that’s his real name. He turns up here in Hudiksvall out of nowhere on the twelfth of January. He spends the night in a little hotel, having first plucked a red ribbon out of a lampshade hanging over a table in a restaurant. That ribbon is later found at the crime scene in Hesjövallen.’

  Robertsson had been standing in front of the television screen, leaning over it. He sat down again. Vivi Sundberg opened a bottle of mineral water.

  ‘Strange,’ said Robertsson. ‘I take it you’ve checked that the red ribbon really did come from that restaurant?’

  ‘I’m sure it did.’

  ‘What’s going on?’ said Vivi Sundberg vehemently. ‘Are you conducting some kind of private investigation?’

  ‘I don’t want to get in your way,’ said Birgitta Roslin. ‘I know you’re very busy.’

  Suddenly Sundberg left the room.

  ‘I’ve asked them to bring the lamp from that restaurant,’she said when she came back.

  ‘They don’t open until eleven o’clock,’ said Roslin.

  ‘This is a small town,’ said Sundberg. ‘We’ll get hold of the owner and order him to open up.’

  ‘Make sure the media mob doesn’t hear about this,’ warned Robertsson. ‘Just imagine the headlines if they do.“Chinaman behind the Hesjövallen Massacre”?’

  ‘That’s hardly likely after our press conference this afternoon,’ said Sundberg.

  So the girl on the switchboard had been right, Roslin thought. Something has happened and will be made public today. That’s why they’re only half interested.

  Robertsson started coughing. It was a violent attack, and he turned red in the face.

  ‘Cigarettes,’ he said. ‘I’ve smoked so many cigarettes that if they were laid out end to end they would stretch from the centre of Stockholm to somewhere south of Södertälje. From about Botkyrka onwards they had filters. Not that they improved things at all.’

  ‘Let’s talk this over,’ said Vivi Sundberg, sitting down. ‘You’ve caused a lot of trouble and irritation in this building.’

  Now she’s going to bring up the diaries, Roslin thought. Today will end with Robertsson digging up something to charge me with. Hardly obstructing justice, but there are other possibilities.

  But Sundberg made no mention of the diaries, and Birgitta Roslin had the feeling there was a mutual understanding between them, despite Sundberg’s attitude. What had happened was nothing her coughing colleague needed to know about.

  ‘We will definitely look into this,’ said Robertsson. ‘We have no preconceived ideas, but there are no other clues indicating a Chinese man.’

  ‘What about the weapon?’ Roslin asked. ‘Have you found it?’

  Neither Sundberg nor Robertsson answered. They’ve found it, Roslin thought. That’s what’s going to be announced this afternoon. Of course it is.

  ‘We can’t comment on that at the moment,’ said Robertsson. ‘Let’s wait for the lamp to arrive and compare the ribbons. If they are in fact the same, then this information will become a serious part of the evidence. We’ll keep the cassette, of course.’

  He reached for a notepad and started writing.

  ‘Who has seen this Chinese man?’

  ‘The waitress in the restaurant.’

  ‘I often eat there. The young one or the old one? Or the miserable old crank in the kitchen? The one with the wart on his forehead?’

  ‘The young one.’

  ‘She varies from being modestly shy to very cheekily flirty. I think she’s bored to tears. Anybody else?’

  ‘Anybody else who did what?’

  Robertsson sighed.

  ‘My dear colleague, you’ve surprised us all with this Chinaman that you’ve pulled out of your hat. Who else has seen him? The question couldn’t be more straightforward.’

  ‘A nephew of the hotel owner. I don’t know his name, but Sture Her-mansson said he was in the Arctic.’

  ‘In other words, this investigation is beginning to take on unheard-of geographical proportions. First you produce a mysterious Chinese man. And now you tell us there’s a witness in the Arctic. They’ve been writing about this business in Time and Newsweek, the Guardian phoned me from London, and the Los Angeles Times has also expressed interest. Has anybody else seen this Chinese person? I hope whoever you mention isn’t currently in the Australian outback at the moment.’

  ‘There’s a maid at the hotel. She’s Russian.’

  Robertsson sounded almost triumphant when he responded.

  ‘What did I tell you? Now we’ve got Russia involved as well. What’s her name?’

  ‘She’s known as Natasha. But according to Sture Hermansson her real name is something different.’ />
  ‘Maybe she’s here illegally,’ said Vivi Sundberg. ‘We sometimes find Russians and Poles who shouldn’t be here.’

  ‘But that’s hardly relevant at the moment,’ said Robertsson. ‘Is there anyone else who’s seen this Chinese man?’

  ‘I don’t know of anyone,’ said Birgitta Roslin. ‘But he must have come and gone somehow. By bus? Or taxi? Surely someone must have noticed him?’

  ‘We’ll look into it,’ said Robertsson, putting down his pen. ‘Assuming this turns out to be important.’

  Which you don’t believe it is, Roslin thought. Whatever other line of investigation you have, you think it’s more important.

  Sundberg and Robertsson left the room. Roslin felt tired. The probability of what she’d discovered having anything to do with the case was low and getting lower. Her own experience was that strange facts often turned out to be red herrings.

  While she waited, growing more and more impatient, she paced up and down the conference room. She had come across so many prosecutors like Robertsson in her life. Sundberg was also typical of the women police officers who gave evidence in her courts, but they rarely had hair as red as hers.

  Sundberg came back, followed shortly by Robertsson and Tobias Ludwig. He was holding the plastic bag containing the red ribbon, and Vivi Sundberg was carrying the lamp from the restaurant.

  The ribbons were laid out and compared. There was no doubt that they were identical.

  They sat around the table again. Robertsson summarised briefly what Birgitta Roslin had told them. He’s good at making an effective presentation, she noted.

  When he finished, nobody had any questions. The only one to speak was Tobias Ludwig.

  ‘Does this change anything with regard to the press conference we’ll be holding later today?’

  ‘No,’ said Robertsson. ‘We’ll look into this. But in due course.’

  Robertsson declared the meeting closed. He shook hands and left. When Birgitta Roslin stood up, she received a look from Vivi Sundberg she interpreted as meaning she should stay behind.