by Anna Jansson
“The neighbors didn’t see anything?” Maria had talked to several of those who had gathered outside the barricade and taken names and telephone numbers.
Hartman shook his head. “Nothing so far. No one seems to have noticed the tent either, so we’ll have to assume it hasn’t been there for long. The technicians are looking at the grass—it turns yellow fast if it’s covered for any length of time.”
Maria turned quickly around when she heard a rustling coming from the bushes. It was their colleague Ek. Pensively and without the slightest embarrassment he pulled up his fly and adjusted his pant legs.
“Well, you’d think the farmers around here or someone from the historical society would have seen that someone was camping. This isn’t exactly a regular campsite. Maybe he didn’t quite have the hang of the right to access, it can be a little tricky. Although in a way it seems well-planned. He wasn’t far from the restroom.”
After a couple of hours at the station, Maria’s son, Emil, called wondering where she was. “You said you were going to come home early!”
Bad conscience again. The children. She had promised to drive them to the shore to take part in a sand sculpture competition in Tofta. She had completely forgotten and now it was too late. On her way home it occurred to Maria that she had to shop. The fridge was almost empty and she had not thought about what they would have for dinner. Anything at all except Mamma Scan’s meatballs, they’d already had that twice this week. Who are those mothers who can whip out a home-cooked meal after a day at work? It would have to be quick, too, before the kids got too tired and impatient. The day before Maria had been at the recently opened Vigoris shopping center and was instructed in how to shop according to the new system where you scan in the price of the product yourself and put it right in your bag, and then simply present the scanner at the register. Quick and efficient if you know what you want. Salmon fillets, maybe. Maria saw the long line for counter service, where there were fresh fillets at a sale price, and grabbed a package from the freezer instead. Not without bad conscience. Maybe that isn’t a time saver when you have to thaw the fish first before cooking it, but the thought of standing in line was a deterrent.
In the line at the front counter Maria noticed a mannequin-thin woman with short dark hair who was playing with her scanner while she waited. She must have been bored. She scanned in goods and changed her mind, double-clicked, and clicked again. Presumably she had been oriented in the Quick Shop system that same day. According to the advertisements, all goods were followed from producer to customer, the whole transport route, through a little chip placed in each label. No unnecessary warehousing, which in the end is paid for by the customer. The woman continued playing with her scanner and dragged the handgrip along her upper arm and clicked. When she saw Maria’s amused expression she stopped abruptly. Suddenly, as if she had forgotten something important, she left her place in line and rushed toward the exit. The basket was left behind with her groceries and her wallet. Perhaps the parking meter had run out or else she happened to think of something more urgent. A meeting? Maria ran after her and called that she had left her wallet, but the woman did not stop although she must have heard.
“Hello, you forgot your wallet! Wait!” Maria saw her get onto a bicycle and disappear around the corner. Maria opened the wallet before turning it in to the cashier. The woman’s name was Sandra Hagg, according to the driver’s license.
When Maria was in the car on her way toward Klinte, her thoughts returned to the murdered man in the tent. It was nasty. The murder scene was only a few hundred meters from the house where Maria lived with her children.
Chapter 7
Sunday morning the second of July arrived with overcast skies and rain showers. The wind was blowing hard in the harbor in Klinte. Shiny gray waves, like molten lead, reflected the dark sky overhead, and white-foaming masses of water heaved against the pier where several sloops were tied. The trip to Stora Karlso was canceled. Maria Wern was disappointed, but as she was inclined to get seasick, maybe that was just as well. Summer has only just started. There would be other boats, and the moments you remember later and long to return to are perhaps not the days of major outings but moments of rest. Earlier in the week Maria had gone down to Kettlevik’s stone works at Hoburgen—there she sat on a bench and let her eyes rest on the sea. With her back leaning against a sun-warmed plank wall she listened to the sound of a one-cylinder ignition bulb engine, like a thumping heart, while her daughter, Linda, concentrated on making her own rock carvings in the limestone. Meditative and soothing.
It was later that Sunday morning, when Maria was going to drop off a flashlight to her son at the soccer camp in Klinte School, that she found out that the cook had not arrived that morning, and did not leave a message either. Berit Hoas was reliability itself. The coach, Jenny Eklund thought it was strange. All morning she had tried to phone the woman, but no one answered, which was why she asked whether Maria could possibly drive past Berit’s house on Sodra Kustvagen and see what might have happened. Perhaps the cook had misunderstood her schedule and was out in her strawberry patch or whatever it might be. Maria had no objection. She had no definite plans for the day, other than the cancelled trip to Stora Karlso, and now she had nothing in particular to do. The weather forecast on the radio promised no improvement for the next few days, so that would mean staying inside and cleaning house.
Yet another summer on Gotland and this time Maria had come to stay, if possible. During the past winter the house in Kronviken had been rented out. It was a relief to move to a new place of her own after the divorce. The joint decisions and compromises were built into the walls of the old yellow wooden house. The kitchen that was too cramped because Krister wanted room for a bar and his jukebox. The bathroom that never got renovated because Krister spent the remodeling loan on a classic car, which never passed inspection. And the floor of the porch that was never redone because the money they should have used to buy lumber was gone before they even talked to the contractor. Even if both the house and Krister had their charms, they were a closed chapter now. There was a new freedom in this, but sometimes also worry and sorrow at not having succeeded in their life together. Especially now when Krister and his buddy Mayonnaise had taken Linda with them on a camper vacation and Emil was at soccer camp. It was so empty. Lonely, meaningless, and empty.
Maria was not entirely happy to have made Mayonnaise’s acquaintance. There was nothing bad about him exactly—it was mostly that he was so impulsive and disorganized that you couldn’t put up with him for long. It did not feel secure putting responsibility for Linda into the hands of these two gentlemen on Friday evening. But there was no choice. Krister had the right to every other weekend and how he spent it was his own business. The last Maria saw of them when they left on Friday was Mayonnaise reaching for a soda can he was keeping cool in a holder attached to the outside rearview mirror and handing it to Linda, who was standing up between the seats.
“Seat belt!” Maria had run after them and gestured, but Mayonnaise only waved happily back and turned up the volume on the stereo so that the lyrics of the dance band music drowned out her voice. “Seat belt!”
Later that evening Krister phoned because Linda had forgotten her stuffed frog, Helmer Bryd. They hadn’t made it any farther than the Tofta campsite, and then they’d had a little too much beer for them to continue, so if Maria would be nice and bring that damned-piece-of-cloth Helmer so the kid could fall asleep, Krister would be grateful. On the way to Tofta Maria thought about whether there was really any difference between being married to Krister and being divorced from him. This was exactly how tiresome it used to be when he took care of the kids on his own, and that was one of the reasons she had left him.
When Maria stopped at the house where Berit Hoas lived she saw the police car parked beside Ruben Nilsson’s hedge. She was not on duty and did not really want to get involved in anything on her weekend off. To keep going you have to distinguish between work time and
personal life, especially as a single mother. Energy is not an unlimited commodity. How many times this weekend did she push away the thought of the murdered man who was found at Varsande. No one knew how he got there. None of the neighbors had heard or seen anything unusual, and a preliminary run-through of the registry of missing persons in Sweden produced nothing at all. The man was most likely in his fifties. Short, muscular, and dark, with an old scar on the right side just below the rib cage. Without identifying the victim, it’s hard to get an effective investigation under way. Witness accounts were limited. There were other unresolved cases—assault, robbery, and car break-ins—that would be put on hold while the murder investigation was going on.
But when an ambulance arrived at Ruben Nilsson’s house and Detective Inspector Jesper Ek opened the door to the porch to meet the ambulance personnel, curiosity triumphed over good sense, and Maria couldn’t help going over to the house and asking what happened. Ek gestured for her to wait and then answered her after showing the ambulance personnel into the house.
“We don’t know. I really don’t think there’s any indication of a crime. We got a call from a taxi driver this morning, Petter Cederroth, who said he’d found this old man dead already yesterday evening, but that he drove the neighbor lady to the emergency room and clearly a number of misunderstandings arose there. He thought they were going to inform the police, but that didn’t happen.”
“Neighbor lady? Berit Hoas? That's who I’m looking for. Is she in the hospital?” asked Maria. They would sometimes run into each other in the store in Klinte and make small talk about everyday things. Maria hoped it was nothing serious.
“Unfortunately it seems to be pretty bad. We’ve called to try to speak with her. According to the taxi driver she was the last one to see Ruben Nilsson alive. But she was in no shape for a conversation. Unconscious, they said when I asked the nurse a while ago. Her condition appears critical. The taxi driver said something about creamed morels. The dead man in there”—Ek pointed toward the upper floor of the house—“and the neighbor lady shared some creamed morels. Morels apparently have to be parboiled before you eat them. I’ve never tried.”
“Poor Berit, if she accidentally killed someone she’d never get over it. This is just awful.” Maria unconsciously backed up a few steps. “The taxi driver, did he eat the mushrooms, too?”
“No, I don’t think so. I was thinking we should talk with him a little. But he’s sleeping right now, according to his wife. He’s been driving a taxi all night and will probably sleep until two or three, she thought.”
Maria got in her car again, took her cell phone and phoned Jenny Eklund, who was quite dismayed.
“It’s not easy to get hold of a substitute in the middle of the summer. Today I guess we’ll have to serve packaged meatballs and pasta but the rest of the week something has to be worked out. You don’t fix food for fifty kids with the wave of a hand. The milk alone, you know!” Maria agreed and offered to go and shop if that would be of any help, but Jenny had already sent another parent out to organize that. “Maybe we’ll call you later, if we don’t get hold of anyone who can work in the kitchen. But you’re probably working next week?”
“Yes, that is if Krister, Emil’s dad …” Maria broke off the sentence before she got to the point. On second thought, that was not a good idea, not if he intended to bring Mayonnaise along. She wanted to spare her son that experience. She decided to go home, but first she stopped at the newsstand and bought a couple of paperbacks and a big package of candy. On a rainy summer day that was probably the best you could do with your time.
Detective Inspector Tomas Hartman pushed his lawn mower back and forth over the lawn. His much-too-short shorts fluttered in the wind and made his skinny white legs look even narrower. His shirt was buttoned up to his neck, but he had taken off the tie he always wore on duty and stuffed it in his pocket. It peeked out of the cloth gap like a dog’s tongue. When Maria parked outside the garage he did not look up right away, but instead continued straight across the lot in the direction he had started in, not stopping until he turned around and was once again on the drive.
“I’m taking the opportunity to cut the grass now that the weather has cleared up. Looks like there’ll be more rain.” He squinted and looked up toward the sky.
“Yes, probably will be,” said Maria, continuing toward the house. “Is the door locked? I bought a book Marianne wanted since I was in town anyway.”
“She’s going to water aerobics so she’s in the kitchen waiting for her ride.”
Maria had actually wanted to buy a house by the sea, but the prices were even higher than she’d expected. Without a sizeable down payment and on a normal police salary it was impossible to find even a small shed with a sea view. True, she had been offered a place in Eksta by Olov Jakobsson, but somehow she had the feeling that he expected more than rent for such a contract. Olov was all right, that wasn’t it. But Maria didn’t have the energy for even modest expectations after the divorce. It takes time to gather up your skirts and move on. Renting the top floor from Tomas and Marianne Hartman felt more neutral. They were very low-key; they all might have a cup of coffee together if they happened to be outside at the same time in the yard, but otherwise they respected Maria’s privacy when she went up to her apartment. Marianne was on disability after undergoing a lung transplant due to emphysema. She was very happy to have children in the house and immediately offered to watch them if that was needed. She could not exactly kick a soccer ball with them in the yard, but she could be available to watch them. Tomas took care of the yard; that was his major hobby and Maria had nothing against having access to a green oasis without having to take responsibility for it. Another benefit was that she could carpool with Tomas Hartman to work. When you’re single with two children you have to count pennies. Besides, a number of minor matters and police formalities could be taken care of in the car. And Emil was within walking distance of the soccer school in Klinte. All told this had outweighed the advantages of living for almost free in Eksta.
“I bought the book we were talking about yesterday, Marianne. You can read it first, and I can borrow it when you’re done if it’s good. I felt like I wanted a little escape from reality, so I got a mystery for myself. The Myths of the Plagues sounds a little too real. On the back cover there’s something about the Black Death and the Spanish flu. It says that new figures show a hundred thousand people died in Sweden alone. Sounds a little heavy. We’ll have to see what you think of it.”
“Nice of you. Listen, I heard that Berit Hoas is in the hospital. My girlfriend told me. It’s not anything serious, is it?”
Chapter 8
Petter Cederroth was lying in bed in a half-stupor, squinting toward the narrow crack of gray daylight coming in at the lower edge of the blind. Sonja had been in twice to wake him, but he asked to be left alone so he could sleep a little longer. The police were looking for him, she said, and then a nurse at the hospital had called and wanted to talk with him. It was something about Berit Hoas.
People don’t get what a night shift means. If you get home at seven you fall asleep by eight o’clock at best. By twelve you’ve managed to sleep for four hours. Four hours! When someone calls and asks, “Are you still asleep?” you can’t help but get mad. No one would call a day worker at two in the morning and say with surprise, “Are you still asleep?”
It’s a lack of respect, damn it! Driving a taxi on a weekend night is not exactly a lazy man’s job! Besides all the passengers arriving on the night boat with enough baggage to spend the winter on Sandon and arguing about where the taxi line is and who was first at the sign, there were talkative people going home from the bar who haggle about the fare or people going to the hospital to give birth or women who’ve argued with their husbands and intend to spend the night with their sister and left their money at home.
When you sleep during the day, the events of the night get mixed up. It seems like you sleep lighter and dream more.
&nb
sp; Petter woke up because he was cold. When he went to pull up the blanket, it was on the floor and completely damp with sweat. It was cloudy outside and not particularly warm in the room. He wasn’t getting sick, was he? Petter leaned on his elbow and took a gulp of water from the glass sitting on the nightstand. It was lukewarm and stale and his throat hurt when he swallowed. It was not good timing if he were to get sick now. Here he had carefully instructed Sonja in how she should take in the homing pigeons and put the rings in the pigeon clock each time after they came home from the competition. That task demanded a trained educator, but it meant he could take yet another extra shift with the taxi. Money that would go for a vacation in the fall when the flow of tourists subsided. Sonja wanted so much to travel to China.
Petter leaned his head against the pillow again and shut his eyes. The events of the night were still spinning in his head. When you’ve been driving a taxi a long time you recognize the people you drive often. Yet a taxi driver is sometimes a non-person, an observer. Once the passenger gets into the taxi and gives the address, the driver doesn’t exist anymore. That’s how it was last night when he drove one of the doctors of the new healthcare center. Private facility, of course, where the nurses look like airline stewardesses in their well-tailored uniforms and speak clearly and courteously as if they were always being monitored. According to Sonja they had to submit voice tests—whether that was true or not was hard to say. Reine Hammar was his name. Petter had seen the article about him in the newspaper. He was tall—maybe as tall as six-foot-six—perfect suit and perfect hair, but with a cold or allergy. He didn’t blow his nose, it was more like sniffing and constantly clearing his throat. After ten minutes in the car with him, the sound got on Petter’s nerves.
His wife had also been in the picture in the newspaper, a charming woman who looked like she knew what she wanted. She was a doctor too, but she wasn’t the one with him in the taxi last night. This woman was young, with long blonde hair, a short white skirt, and high-heeled boots. Could have been his daughter, if you let your kid go out in such an outfit. The address was Jungmansgatan. Hammar lived in a little house worth over four million kronor in Norderklint, if he hadn’t recently moved. That had also been in the newspaper.