Before the Frost

by Henning Mankell

  It was a long time ago. They had been maybe twelve or thirteen. She couldn’t remember whose idea it was, but between them they had decided to go to Copenhagen together. It was spring and both of them were bored and restless at school. They covered for each other when one of them cut class, which happened more and more frequently. Mona had given her permission, but her dad wouldn’t hear of it. She heard him describe Copenhagen as a den of sin and iniquity, a beast waiting to consume two very young girls who knew nothing about life. In the end Anna and Linda had gone anyway. Linda knew there would be trouble waiting for her when she returned, so, as a kind of advance revenge, she lifted a hundred kronor from her dad’s wallet before she left. They took the train to Malmö and the ferry to Copenhagen. To Linda it seemed like their first serious excursion into the adult world.

  It had been breezy but sunny, a happy, giggly day. Anna won the rubber ducky at an amusement stand at the Tivoli, and at first all of their experiences were transparent, joyous ones. They had their freedom, their adventure. Invisible walls crumbled around them wherever they went. Then the image darkened. Something happened that day that was the first real blow to their friendship. We were sitting on a green bench, Linda remembered. Anna had been borrowing money from me all day because she was broke. She had to go to the bathroom and asked me to hold her purse. Somewhere in the background a Tivoli orchestra was playing. The trumpet was out of tune.

  Linda was thinking of all this while she lay on the bathroom floor. The warmth from the heating system installed under the tile felt good against her back.

  It was a green bench and a black bag. After all these years she couldn’t say what had made her open the purse. There had been two crisp hundred-kronor notes inside, not even crumpled or hidden inside a secret compartment. She had stared at the money and felt a stab of betrayal. She closed the purse and decided she wouldn’t say anything, but when Anna came back and asked if Linda would buy her a soda, something exploded inside her. They stood there shouting at each other. Linda had forgotten what Anna had said in her defense, but they had gone their separate ways and had sat apart on the return trip to Malmö. It took them a long time to start speaking to each other again. They never talked about what had happened in Copenhagen, but eventually they had managed to resume their friendship.

  Linda sat up. There are lies at the heart of this, she thought. I’m sure Henrietta concealed something from me when I was there, and I know Anna is capable of lying. I discovered that in Copenhagen and I’ve found her out on later occasions as well. But with her at least I know her so well that I can tell when she’s telling the truth. The story she told me about seeing her father—or a doppelgänger—in Malmö is true. But what’s behind all this? What didn’t she tell me? Sometimes the part that’s left out is the biggest part of the lie.

  Her cell phone rang. She knew it was her father. She got to her feet to steel herself in case he was still angry, but the tone of his voice only told her that he was tense and tired. Her father had more voices than other people, it seemed to her.

  “Where are you?” he asked.

  “In Anna’s apartment.”

  He was silent. She could hear that he was still out in the forest. There were voices of people walking past, the scrape of walkietalkies, and a dog barking sharply.

  “What are you doing there?” he asked after a while.

  “I’m more afraid now than I was before.”

  To her surprise he said:

  “I know. That’s why I’m calling. I’m on my way over. I need to hear about this in more detail. There’s no reason for you to worry, of course, but I’m taking this matter seriously now.”

  “How could I not worry? It’s not natural for her to be gone like this, that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you all along. If you don’t understand that, then you can’t possibly know why I’m afraid. Also, her phone line was busy, but then when I got here she wasn’t in. Someone was here, I’m sure of it.”

  “I’ll get the full report when I get there. What’s the address?”

  Linda gave it to him.

  “How is it going?” she asked.

  “I’ve never seen anything like this.”

  “Have you found the body?”

  “Not yet. We haven’t found anything, least of all clues to what actually happened here. I’ll honk when I arrive.”

  Linda bent over the bathroom sink and rinsed her mouth out. In order to freshen her breath she brushed her teeth with one of Anna’s toothbrushes. She was about to leave the bathroom when she impulsively opened the bathroom cabinet. She saw something that surprised her. This is just like leaving the journal behind, she thought.

  From time to time Anna developed eczema on her throat. She had talked about it only a few weeks earlier when they were all over at Zeba’s place, talking about their dream vacations. Anna had said that the first thing she would pack was the prescription-strength cream that kept her eczema under control. Linda remembered her saying she only bought this cream one tube at a time in order to keep it as fresh as possible. And yet here it was, sitting among the other bottles and toothbrushes on the shelf. Anna had a thing about toothbrushes. Linda counted nineteen brushes in the cabinet, eleven of which had never been used. She looked at the cream again. Anna would never have left this behind, Linda thought. Not willingly. Neither this cream nor her diary. She closed the bathroom cabinet and left the bathroom. What could have happened? There were no signs that Anna had been removed by force, at least not from the apartment itself. Perhaps something had happened on the street. She could have been knocked over or forced into a car.

  Linda stood by the window and waited for her father. She felt tired and cheated. Her time at the academy had in no way prepared her for what she had been through this day. She could never have imagined that she could one day find herself looking at a severed gray-haired female head and a pair of clasped hands cut off at the wrists.

  Not simply clasped, she thought. Hands knit together in prayer before they were cut. She shook her head. What happened in those last moments, in the dramatic pause while the axe was lifted above those hands? What had Birgitta Medberg seen? Had she looked into another person’s eyes and understood what was about to happen? Or had she been spared that dreadful knowledge? Linda stared out at a streetlamp swaying in the wind. She sensed what must have happened: hands clasped together pleading for mercy. The executioner denies the plea. She must have known, Linda thought. She knew what was coming and she pleaded for her life.

  Headlights suddenly lit up the side of the building. Her father honked his horn once, parked the car, then got out and looked around for the right entryway until he saw Linda in the window gesturing to him. She threw the keys down to the street and heard him come up the stairs. He’s going to wake up all the neighbors, she thought. I have a father who thunders his way through life like an infantry battalion. He was sweaty and tired, his clothes soaked through.

  “Is there anything to eat?”

  “I think so.”

  “And a towel?”

  “The bathroom is over there. There are towels on the bottom shelf.”

  When he came back to the kitchen he had removed all his clothes except his undershirt and briefs. The wet clothes were hanging on the hot pipes in the bathroom. Linda had set the table with all the food she could find in the refrigerator. She knew he wanted to eat in peace. When she was growing up it had been forbidden to talk or make noise around the table at breakfast. His silence had driven Mona up the wall—she always waited to have her breakfast until after he had left for work. But Linda had often sat there sharing the silence with him. Sometimes he lowered the paper, usually the Ystad Allehanda, and winked at her. Silence at breakfast was sacred.

  “I should never have brought you along,” he said suddenly, a sandwich halfway to his mouth. “There’s no excuse for it. You should never have had to see what was in that hut.”

  “How is it going?”

  “We have no clues, no explanations for what ha
ppened.”

  “But what about the rest of the body?”

  “There’s no sign of it. The dogs can’t pick up a scent. We know Birgitta Medberg was mapping trails in that part of the forest, so it seems reasonable to assume she stumbled onto the hut by accident. But who was hiding out there? Why this brutal murder, why mutilate the body and dispose of it in this way?”

  Wallander finished the sandwich, made a new one and left it half-eaten.

  “So tell me. Anna Westin, this friend of yours, what does she do? She’s a student—but of what exactly?”

  “Medicine. You know that.”

  “I never rely on my memory. You had arranged to meet her, you said. Was that here?”

  “Yes.”

  “And she wasn’t home when you came over?”

  “No.”

  “Is there any possibility of a misunderstanding?”

  “No.”

  “Tell me the part about her father again. He’s been gone for twenty-four years and has never once communicated with her in any way. And then she’s in a hotel and sees him through a window?”

  Linda told him everything in as much detail as she could muster. He was quiet when she finished.

  “We have one person who turns up after being missing for years,” he said finally. “And the following day the person who saw that person goes missing herself. One appears, the other disappears.”

  He shook his head. Linda told him about the journal and the neck cream, and about her visit to Henrietta. He listened attentively to everything.

  “What makes you think she was lying?”

  “If Anna thought she saw her father on a regular basis she would have told me long before now.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “I know her.”

  “People change. You can never know everything about them, even friends.”

  “Is that true for me too?”

  “For me, for you, your mother, Anna, everyone. Then, of course, there are people who are totally incomprehensible. My father was an outstanding example of the latter.”

  “I knew him.”

  “You think you did.”

  “Just because the two of you didn’t get along doesn’t mean I felt the same way. And we were talking about Anna.”

  “I heard you never reported it.”

  “I followed your advice.”

  “For once.”

  “Oh shit, give me a break.”

  “Show me the journal.”

  Linda went to get it, and opened it to the page where Anna had written about the letter from Birgitta Medberg.

  “Did she ever mention her name to you?” Wallander asked.

  “Not that I can remember.”

  “Did you ask her mother if she had any connection to Medberg?”

  “I saw Henrietta before I knew about this.”

  Wallander went to the bathroom to get his notepad from his jacket.

  “I’ll have someone talk to her again tomorrow.”

  “I can do it.”

  Wallander sat down.

  “No,” he said sternly. “You can’t do it. You’re not a police officer yet. I’ll get Svartman or someone else to do it. You aren’t going to be doing any more investigating on your own.”

  “Do you always have to sound so pissed-off?”

  “I’m not pissed-off, I’m tired. And worried. I don’t know why what happened in that hut happened, only that it was horrifying. And I don’t know if it marks an end or a beginning.”

  He looked at his watch and got up again.

  “I have to go back there,” he said.

  Then he stopped in the middle of the kitchen, indecisively.

  “I have trouble believing it was just a coincidence,” he said. “That Medberg simply had the misfortune to run into the wicked witch who lives in the gingerbread house. I can’t see that you’d get murdered for knocking on the wrong door. There are no monsters in Swedish forests. Not even trolls. She should have stuck with butterflies.”

  Wallander walked back to the bathroom and put his clothes back on. Linda tagged along. What was it he had said? The door to the bathroom was slightly ajar.

  “What was it you said?”

  “No monsters live in Swedish forests.”

  “After that.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “You did. After the monsters and trolls and all that. The last thing?”

  “She should have stuck to butterflies and not started mapping ancient trails.”

  “What butterflies?”

  “Höglund talked to the daughter—someone had to inform the relatives. The daughter said Medberg had had a large butterfly collection. She sold it a few years ago to help Vanya and her kids buy an apartment. Vanya always felt guilty about it because she thought her mother missed the butterflies. People often have these kinds of reactions when someone dies. I was the same way when Dad died. I could start blubbering at the thought of how he used to wear mismatched socks.”

  Linda held her breath. He noticed something was up.

  “What is it?”

  “Come with me.”

  They walked out into the living room. Linda turned on a lamp and pointed to the wall.

  “I’ve tried to keep an eye out for things that are different, I’ve already told you that. But I forgot to say that something was missing.”

  “What?”

  “A butterfly case. You know, a butterfly in a frame. It disappeared the day after Anna went missing.”

  Wallander frowned.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes,” she said. “And the butterfly was blue.”

  18

  It seemed to Linda that it took a blue butterfly to convince her father to take her seriously. She wasn’t just a kid anymore, not just an officer-in-training with potential, but a full-fledged adult with judgment and keen powers of observation.

  She was sure of herself. The butterfly had been removed at the same time or shortly after Anna’s disappearance. That settled it. Wallander called his team in the field and asked Höglund to come to the apartment. He asked how things were going at the crime scene. Linda heard Nyberg’s irritated voice in the background, then Martinsson, who was sneezing violently, and finally Lisa Holgersson, the chief of police. Wallander put the phone down.

  “I want Ann-Britt to be here,” he said. “I’m so tired I’m not sure I can trust my own judgment any more. Are you sure you’ve told me all the relevant facts?”

  “I think so.”

  Wallander shook his head.

  “It seems too much of a coincidence.”

  “A few days ago you said one always has to be prepared for the unexpected.”

  “I say a lot of crap,” he said thoughtfully. “Is there any coffee in the house?”

  The water had just boiled when Höglund honked her horn down on the street.

  “She drives too fast,” Wallander said. “She has two young children—what is she thinking? Throw her the keys, will you?”

  Höglund caught the keys in one hand and walked briskly up the stairs. Linda noted she had a hole in her sock but her face was made up—heavily made up. When did she have time to do that? Did she sleep with her makeup on?

  “Would you like some coffee?”

  “Please.”

  Linda thought her father would be the one to talk, but when she came in with the coffee cup and put it on the table in front of Höglund, Wallander nodded at her to begin.

  “It’s better for her to hear it from the horse’s mouth,” he said. “Don’t leave out any details, you can count on Inspector Höglund to be a good listener.”

  Linda picked up her story with both hands and unfolded it as carefully as she was able, all in the right order. Then she showed Höglund the journal with the page that mentioned Birgitta Medberg. Wallander only broke in when she started talking about the butterfly. Then he took over, changing her story to something that would perhaps form the basis of an investigative narrative. He got up off the sofa
and tapped the wall where the butterfly had been hanging.

  “This is where the lines intersect,” he said. “Two points, or perhaps three. Birgitta Medberg’s name is in Anna’s journal and they exchange at least one letter, although we haven’t found it. Butterflies figure in both of their lives, although we don’t know yet what the significance of this is. And then there is the most important similarity: they’re both missing.”

  Someone outside started shouting in Polish or Russian, most likely a drunk.

  “It’s certainly a strange coincidence,” Höglund said. “Who knows Anna best?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Does she have a boyfriend?”

  “Not right now.”

  “But she’s had one?”

  “Doesn’t everyone? I think probably her mother knows her best.”

  Höglund yawned and ruffled her hair.

  “What about all this business with her father? Why did he disappear? Had he done something?”

  “Anna’s mother seems to think he was running away.”

  “From what?”

  “Responsibility.”

  “And now he’s back and Anna disappears. And Medberg is murdered.”

  “No,” Wallander broke in. “‘Murdered’ isn’t an adequate description of it. She was slaughtered, butchered. Hands clasped as in prayer, head severed, torso and limbs missing. Martinsson has tracked down the Tademans, by the way. Mr. Tademan was extremely intoxicated, according to Martinsson, which is interesting. Anita Tademan—whom Linda and I met—seems to have been much easier to talk to. They haven’t seen any unusual persons in the area, no one knew about the hideout in the forest. She called someone she knows who often hunts around there, but he hadn’t seen any hut or even the ravine, strangely enough. Whoever used the place knew how to keep a low profile while remaining in relatively close proximity to people. I sense this is an important point, that he was invisible but close by.”