Månsson watched the men surreptitiously for a few seconds. Detective Inspectors Bure and Borg, so similar in facial features, hairstyles and dress, that he had trouble telling them apart. Unless that was just because he hadn’t really made any effort to do so. A sort of petty revenge for the fact that he had been sidelined. And the fact that these two men in suits had taken over his conference room, investigation and police station.
Månsson clenched his jaw. His stomach rumbled again. The evening papers had established their own local headquarters in the two pizzerias, which meant that he couldn’t go there, unlike Bure and Borg. He could always go home for lunch, of course, but Malin was at work and his own culinary skills left a lot to be desired. Or he could send one of the receptionists out to get food for him. But he had already done that several times in the past few days, and he was pretty sure that his staff were on the point of seeing through him.
That left either the hotdog kiosk at the edge of the village, or the pub over the road. Scylla or Charybdis.
Chapter 17
O
n Monday morning Veronica gets there well before she needs to. She even beats Ruud.
‘Early bird,’ he declares, before going into the kitchen to switch on the coffee machine.
She ought to be feeling guilty about using his office without permission, but that’s drowned out by the tumult in her head. She can hardly remember how she got home on Saturday. Or how she’s managed to pass the hours between then and now. All she knows is that there are three empty wine bottles in her kitchen, and that her hangover is tinged with excitement and confusion. Strangely, none of this seems to be outwardly visible. Ruud chats away as usual, and even though she turns away feeling nauseous when he unlocks the door to his office and bustles about in there, he doesn’t seem to notice anything.
The usual Monday participants appear, and this time she stands by the door and shakes them all by the hand. Every now and then she wipes her hand discreetly on her trousers so it doesn’t feel too clammy. Even though she’s well aware that the blond man has only attended the Friday sessions so far, she still feels disappointed when it gets to nine o’clock and he hasn’t shown up. The blond man. That’s how she thinks of him after her conversation with Mattias. The blond man, not Isak.
She sits down in her place, takes a deep breath and leafs through to a blank page in her pad. Her movements are impatient and frustrated. She nods to Elsa with the grey hair and pearls of grief to start talking about her daughter. The woman looks back at her in surprise, and she doesn’t realise until Elsa has started speaking that she forgot to introduce herself and tell them her own story the way she usually does. She glances towards the wall, hoping that Ruud hasn’t noticed. Better than that, he isn’t even there.
Elsa is halfway through her daughter’s story when the door opens and the blond man walks in. He’s wearing the same clothes as before, and when her initial surprise has subsided she realises that she’s staring at his face.
He nods apologetically and slips onto one of the empty chairs, and she forces herself to look away. She quickly turns to the faxed picture of the computer-generated face that she’s tucked in the back of her notepad.
The similarities are still striking, even if her raddled brain may have exaggerated them since Saturday. If you looked closely enough, you could see that his nose and forehead were slightly different, and the eyes were a little closer together on the photofit picture. But if you saw the picture from a few metres away, most people would probably say it was the same person. She can’t test that right now, though. All she can do is glance at the blond man while she pretends to listen to what Elsa is saying. She tries to conjure up Billy’s expressions and mannerisms and compare them with the blond man’s. But he’s sitting still, doesn’t make any gestures that might help her. Besides, she’s also trying to compare a child with a grown man.
It takes her several seconds to realise that Elsa has stopped talking. She apologises and manages to pose a couple of awkward questions before moving on to the next participant. She sits painfully through another seven stories, trying all the while not to stare at the blond man. Even though she hurries them along – and on a couple of occasions brings things to a somewhat abrupt end – once again there are only a few minutes left when it finally gets to his turn.
By now her shirt is sticking to the small of her back, and her hands are as clammy as her mouth is dry.
The blond man repeats his usual story. Hello, my name’s Isak. My best friend went missing when I was little. Nothing was the same after that . . . and she can tell that he’s about to conclude at roughly the same point as last time. She even sees him glance up at the clock. So she does what she absolutely isn’t supposed to do. She interrupts him with a question about the background to his story.
‘Where did you grow up, Isak?’
He stops, and for a moment looks rather surprised. Then he smiles at her. His smile is lovely, and she hardly notices herself mirroring it almost immediately.
‘Out in the country. A long way from here.’
‘And your parents, did they ever talk to you about your missing friend?’
‘No, not at all. I grew up in a foster family. All that business with . . .’
He makes a gesture and she takes a deep breath, thinking he’s about to say her younger brother’s name, but he doesn’t.
‘. . . my friend happened before I was adopted. It’s mostly just fragments of memory, a mystery that was never really explained. Maybe that’s why I’m having trouble letting go of it.’
The last sentence hits her in the chest like a shard of ice. The man fixes his bright blue eyes on her, and it’s as if the whole room dissolves. The folding chairs and other group members are gone, and the two of them are all that’s left. Her eyes fill with tears and she feels her mouth open.
‘That’s all we’ve got time for today.’ Ruud’s voice is brusque, and she looks up at him, surprised and frightened; she sees a similarly stern expression on his face.
Ruud collars her before she has a chance to go over to the blond man. He takes her arm gently but firmly, and makes her stand up. He smiles at the group members as they leave the room, and she forces herself to do the same – and not stare at the young man’s back as he walks out. Not try to see if the cigarette packet he pulls out just before the door closes is a pack of Red Prince.
‘We need to talk, Veronica,’ Ruud says.
Chapter 18
Summer 1983
M
ånsson realised his mistake the moment he opened the door to the pub. He ought to have checked the cars in the car park, worked out who was inside and taken that as the basis for his decision about where to have lunch. But he had been in a hurry, and wanted to avoid the reporters, so he had pulled a civilian coat over his uniform and almost jogged across the square.
And now he was standing here in the doorway with pretty much every face in the pub turned towards him. Naturally he recognised most of them. Möller the grocer, Kurt the painter, Kristin from the bank and her colleague with the long red nails. A couple of people from the council office a bit further away. But it was the group at the table right next to the door that worried him most.
Harald Aronsson, Billy’s uncle, was sitting there with his foreman, Brink, and the Strid brothers. The four of them seemed to be in the middle of an animated discussion when he walked in.
Månsson took a deep breath and set off towards the far end of the room where he had spotted a free table. He nodded to Aronsson and his gang, adding a ‘Good morning’ which he hoped sounded simultaneously authoritative and relaxed, but which of course did neither.
‘Månsson!’
He stopped and turned round reluctantly. Aronsson was pointing towards a free chair at their table. ‘Grab a seat!’ It sounded more like an order than an invitation.
Månsson hesitated for a moment, trying to think of a good excuse not to join the men, but Aronsson pre-empted him.
‘Alf,�
�� he called to the landlord. ‘Can you get the chief of police the dish of the day, please. On my tab.’
Aronsson gestured towards the chair again and raised his dark eyebrows slightly. His deep-set eyes and prominent nose always reminded Månsson of a buzzard.
He sat down opposite Aronsson and unbuttoned his coat. The landlord put a plate of hash in cream sauce down in front of him, a dish he would usually have devoured with relish, but suddenly he didn’t feel anywhere near hungry. He felt the other men’s eyes on him and forced himself to eat some.
Brink was a thickset man of about fifty, almost completely bald. The Strid brothers were some ten years younger, red-haired, in good shape and the closest thing to local celebrities the village could come up with. They had both been successful wrestlers, one of them had even been Swedish champion. In latter years they had taken over the running of their father’s engineering workshop and had expanded it significantly. They were currently building three big wind turbines for Aronsson. A ridiculous idea, according to most people in the village.
‘How are things going? Looked like you got into a bit of hot water the other day,’ Aronsson said.
From the corner of his eye Månsson could see the other men smirking.
‘We’re continuing with the investigation.’ He finished chewing, then washed the mouthful down with a swig of low-alcohol beer. ‘The regional police chief has sent over a couple of detectives from the city—’
Aronsson interrupted him with a wave of his hand and a look of irritation.
‘That’s all in the papers. I want to know what you’re actually doing to find whoever took my nephew. What lines of inquiry you’re working on, who you’re talking to.’ Aronsson leaned closer. ‘And when you’re going to arrest the man who did it.’
‘Well,’ Månsson said, avoiding Aronsson’s eyes, ‘details of the investigation are confidential.’
Aronsson slammed his fist down on the table.
‘I don’t give a shit about fucking confidentiality!’ His exclamation silenced the room instantly.
Aronsson’s eyes were black, and a blue vein was throbbing in one of his temples. Månsson swallowed again, drily. He cursed the fact that he hadn’t been able to stifle his reflex reaction.
‘We’re still conducting interviews, following up various leads . . .’ he began, without really knowing where the sentence was going.
‘Have you questioned Tommy?’ one of the Strid brothers asked.
‘Tommy Rooth,’ Brink added. He leaned over the table towards Månsson. ‘Have you questioned him? Everyone knows there’s bad blood between him and Harald. All that business last year about poaching, and Harald’s windscreen getting shot out.’
Månsson looked at Brink, then back at Harald Aronsson.
‘We’ve questioned Rooth. He denies any involvement. Says he doesn’t know anything about Billy.’
‘What about his farm? Didn’t you find anything there?’ the other brother said.
Månsson closed his eyes and took another mouthful of hash to gain a bit of time. He should have kept quiet, he should never have sat here in the first place. Shouldn’t have been so damn desperate to please people. He put his fork down.
‘Old grudges aren’t enough to get a search warrant. Anyway, he was acquitted of the shooting incident. We tested all his rifles without getting a match. Rooth’s smart . . .’
Månsson stopped himself. He held his hands out and stood up.
‘I have to stick to the law, especially now Regional Crime are involved. Without something that definitely connects Tommy Rooth to Billy, I can’t do more. Thanks for lunch, Aronsson, but I have to get back to the station.’
*
He had been sitting at his desk for around ten minutes, trying to settle his stomach with some dry biscuits from the staffroom, when the phone rang. His direct line. ‘Hello, this is Laila down at the petrol station. I’ve got something I want to tell you.’
Månsson tried to summon up a picture of the woman in his head. Short hair, glasses, a little bit plump, not unlike Malin. Always friendly, with a lively glint in her eye. He usually referred tip-offs from the public to the receptionists. But something in Laila’s voice told him he should take this call himself.
He brushed the crumbs from his desk, and reached for a pen and paper from one of his drawers.
‘What was it you wanted to say?’
The line went silent for a few moments, long enough for him to register her hesitation.
‘It’s about Tommy Rooth.’
Chapter 19
S
ometimes when she repeats certain words over and over again to herself, they start to sound strange. As if the syllables were scratching against each other, shifting the meaning and somehow making the word into its own opposite.
This time it isn’t her words that change but Ruud’s.
Everything’s going to be all right. Everything’s going to be all right.
. . . be all right.
. . . be all right.
He says lots of other things too. That she called the forbidden number from the phone in his office on Saturday, and that she had therefore breached the ban on contact, even though she has no recollection of that at all. A completely stupid thing to do, of course. Unlike her home phone, the telephone in the Civic Centre hasn’t got a ‘withhold number’ function, so calling from there is a sure-fire way of getting caught. He doesn’t ask what she was doing in his office on a Saturday, though, which she’s grateful for. But on the other hand, she can’t help wondering why. Maybe he simply doesn’t want to know the answer?
Ruud says he’ll try to persuade the HR department to give her one last chance. But she’ll have to see the therapist again, convince him that the phone call was a one-off, not a relapse. She agrees without realising that Ruud means right away. She doesn’t appreciate that until he pulls up outside the clinic and tells her one last time that everything is going to be all right.
*
Her therapist, who isn’t really hers seeing as her employers are paying him, is called Bengt, and he’s tall in a slightly hunched way. As if he’s ashamed of his own height and tries to look shorter by leaning forward, which brings his face far too close to hers.
‘Tell me what’s happened, Veronica.’ He’s sitting on the leather armchair opposite her. Smiling kindly, the tip of his tongue visible at the corner of his mouth. She hears his fountain pen scratch on his notepad as she tells him about her call to Leon, the call she really shouldn’t have made. She’s fighting the urge to dig her fingernails into the skin of her lower arm, clawing deep gouges in her flesh. Punish herself for her utter stupidity.
Ruud drives her home afterwards. He doesn’t ask any questions, lets her just sit there in silence staring out through the side window. He even turns the radio on, just loud enough for the silence to feel less oppressive.
‘You’re off work for a week,’ he says when, after what feels like an eternity, they turn into her street. ‘Bengt has promised to send a report early next week. As soon as HR get it and we’ve had a chance to talk it through, I’ll be in touch. I promise I’ll do everything I can to help you. OK?’
‘Great,’ she mumbles. Then, a few seconds later, she adds, ‘Thanks.’
He slips into a loading zone, then turns towards her.
‘You need to pull yourself together, Veronica.’
This unnecessary exhortation sounds simultaneously pitying and concerned, and she doesn’t know which she likes least.
‘No alcohol, not even a glass of wine at the weekend. And absolutely no more phone calls to Leon Santos, because then I won’t be able to do anything to help you. And stay away from the Civic Centre, OK?’
She knows Ruud means the blond man. Maybe he’s got it into his head that she fancies him. Maybe he’s even a bit jealous. Or angry. Because she’s had the nerve to do something like that right in front of him.
She can’t be bothered to reply, so just gets out of the car. She glanc
es instinctively along the street to where the smoker had been standing. And, just as before, there’s no one there.
Chapter 20
Summer 1983
T
he small, windowless room was hot, and well on its way to becoming airless. There were four of them in there, which was at least one too many. Månsson put his fist in front of his mouth and stifled a belch. His gastric catarrh had turned into a full-blown attack now, and he hadn’t slept much last night. But nothing was going to stop him from taking part in this interview.
‘Right, then, let’s get going,’ the slightly shorter of the two detectives, Borg or Bure, said, leaning back against the wall.
His colleague pressed the button on the recorder and moved the microphone so it was closer to the man sitting opposite him.
‘Interview with Tommy Rooth, date of birth 21 October 1947. Present are myself, Detective Inspector Bure and Detective Inspector Borg from Regional Crime, and Police Inspector Månsson.’
‘Chief of Police.’ Månsson put his hand over his stomach.
Bure looked up and exchanged a quick glance with his colleague.
‘Chief of Police Månsson,’ Månsson repeated, louder and firmer this time. They didn’t actually want him there, he was well aware of that. They had even implied that it might make the interview more difficult. But he had still insisted on being present.
‘Chief of Police Månsson,’ Bure said, correcting himself with ill-disguised sarcasm.
He opened a folder he had put down next to the microphone. Then looked up the man opposite him.
‘OK, Rooth. You’ve been through this before, so I daresay you know how it works?’
Tommy Rooth shrugged his shoulders.
‘Two convictions for assault, one for threatening behaviour. Resisting arrest, violence against a public official, vehicle theft. For a while you seem to have been quite a regular here at the station.’
End of Summer Page 9