by Håkan Nesser
‘But if you can’t give me the name of the murderer, at least throw me a little bone. What do you make of it yourself? Who on earth are we dealing with here, what type of person? I’ve got three more hours in the car.’
The line went quiet for a few seconds.
Then Backman came back with, ‘Sorry. I wouldn’t hold back from sharing even the slightest idea with you, but the fact is that I haven’t got one.’
‘Not a single teensy one?’
‘No, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. I’ve been working for . . . well, what is it now? . . . thirteen hours at a stretch, in round figures . . . and it all adds up to me knowing nothing more than that Erik Bergman was murdered.’
‘Great,’ said Gunnar Barbarotti. ‘Good work, dear.’
And at that, Detective Inspector Eva Backman cut him off.
The rain started just before ten. It fell softly and persistently and the monotonous labour of the windscreen wipers made him sleepy. He stopped for petrol and a coffee once he reached Lake Vättern, and as he got back into the car he could barely resist the impulse to call Gotland. But it seemed entirely unreasonable to send Hagmund or Jolanda Jonsson out into the dark to knock on Marianne’s door. He wouldn’t be ringing for anything specific, but just to hear her voice. If she had had her own phone, he would have had her in the car all evening, he knew, but things were the way they were.
Oh well, at least her children were going to bring an emergency phone with them on Thursday, she had promised that; some rules simply had to be bent occasionally, and he would just have to be patient until then.
He ought to turn his mind to the coming murder investigation instead.
To the letter-writing murderer.
It all felt very odd. To say the least. Murder investigations did crop up in Kymlinge every now and then. A couple of times a year. Most of them were relatively uncomplicated, as he well knew; you could usually home in on the perpetrator/booze-fuelled idiot within a day or two. Murderers requiring protracted detective work were unusual. Drugs or alcohol were a major factor in nine out of ten cases, and the people involved were already known to the police in the same percentage of cases. The outcome of any investigation was almost always the result of steady, routine police work. If you were familiar with the procedures, you didn’t really even need to think about it. At least, that was what Inspector Backman liked to claim. It takes no more intelligence to buy a cinema ticket online than it does to catch a murderer, she had asserted on one occasion.
This time she had said she hadn’t got a clue. That doesn’t bode well, thought Barbarotti. It doesn’t bode well at all.
And yet the murderer had told them who his victim was to be. In good time. They had been given a week to protect Erik Bergman from his assassin. They had failed.
They had not even tried.
Gunnar Barbarotti hoped that this particular aspect would not get out to the press. It wasn’t hard to imagine what sort of headlines they would come up with.
It was Asunander who had taken the decision, possibly in consultation with the prosecutor, Sylvenius, but Barbarotti had already decided he didn’t blame them. He would have reached the same judgement himself. If they had known precisely which Erik Bergman was intended, then maybe they would have acted differently. In that case they would presumably have contacted him and tried to assess the threat in conjunction with him. In retrospect, it was easy to say that they ought to have done that anyway, but it was always easy to make observations in retrospect.
Nor was it police actions to date that were the focus of Barbarotti’s thoughts on this rainy night. Quite the opposite, in fact. It was the actions of the perpetrator.
They really were bizarre. Why? Why the hell write a letter giving the name of your intended victim?
And why send it to him? Detective Inspector Gunnar Barbarotti? At his home address?
Was it just to tease them? Did it have any real significance at all? Did this person actually know Barbarotti?
And – last but not least – did Barbarotti know the murderer?
He had not found plausible answers to any of these questions when he finally parked outside his flat in Baldersgatan. Not even remotely plausible; it was twenty to one, the rain had stopped half an hour before but the streets had a wet sheen in Kymlinge, too.
Since it was past midnight it was now the first of August; it was his ex-wife’s birthday and the whole town seemed to be in blackout mode as if in anticipation of an air raid. Why these two reflections should collide in his head was beyond him, but as he put the key in the lock he remembered the metaphor of a patience-playing power figure. He also realized how exhausted he felt – but still took the time to sort through the accumulation of newspapers, post and leaflets that lay in a drift covering half the floor of his cramped hall.
He separated it all into three neat piles on the kitchen table, and it was as he was hastily flicking through the letters which had arrived in the course of his week away that his fatigue was banished. It evaporated in a split second.
He had enough presence of mind to put a plastic bag over his left hand before he slit open the envelope with a kitchen knife.
The lettering was the same, and the message as unambiguous as last time.
ANNA ERIKSSON’S TURN.
DON’T SUPPOSE YOU’LL STOP ME THIS TIME EITHER?
Gunnar Barbarotti hesitated and held counsel with himself for half a minute. Wondered whether he could possibly be sitting in a deckchair at Hogrän, dreaming, but came to the conclusion that this was not the case.
Then he rang and woke Detective Inspector Backman.
TWO
NOTES FROM MOUSTERLIN
30 June 2002
The girl turned up out of nowhere. All of a sudden, there she was, looking at us with a crooked and slightly cheeky smile on her squarish face.
We were on the beach. All six of us; it was the next morning, and I don’t know whether there had been some agreement made the day before that we would meet up, but Erik and I had scarcely got down to the beach and settled in our deckchairs before the Malmgrens came along on foot from the Bénodet direction and spread out their gaudy beach towels. Anna and Gunnar joined us only ten or fifteen minutes later and thinking about it now, I realize it must have been more or less by arrangement. Soon they had all sorted themselves out and started chatting in that desultory way people do on a beach; one clever comment at a time, with long pauses for thought. Supposed profundities but no responsibility for what they are actually saying; I pulled my cotton sunhat over my eyes and pretended to sleep, and probably needed it too, given that I hadn’t got to bed until after half past two and had only had a few hours’ sleep. Erik seems to be up early regardless of the night before, and woke me before nine this morning with coffee, bacon and scrambled egg; whatever else one can say about him, he’s certainly a thoughtful host.
Perhaps I dozed off for a short while in my deckchair. I was hot, of course, but there was a pleasant breeze blowing off the sea; the distant cries of the seagulls mingled with the intermittent conversation, and after a while I could no longer distinguish one form of expression from the other. But I might actually have been asleep, in which case it was presumably the girl’s voice that woke me up, its tone both childish and slightly abrasive.
Like an old soul in a young body, I remember thinking.
‘Bonjour. Ça va?’
The others went quiet. Katarina Malmgren gave a laugh. ‘Ça va! Bonjour petite.’
I pushed up the brim of my hat and studied her. A dark-haired girl of around twelve or thirteen. A red one-piece swimsuit, a blue straw hat with fabric flowers. A sweater knotted round her waist and a little rucksack on her back.
Sparkling eyes and a slightly mocking expression.
‘Vous n’êtes pas français, hein?’
No, Katarina Malmgren clarified, we weren’t French. We were Swedes. Holidaying in beautiful Brittany. The girl smiled her crooked smile again, and there was something instantly appealing about her, a so
rt of unabashed lack of inhibition, that could have been annoying had she been a year or two older.
But she was still a child, even though budding breasts were discernible beneath the thin material of her swimsuit. Katarina Malmgren asked what her name was.
‘Troaë,’ said the girl. ‘Je m’appelle Troaë.’
It took a while for us to grasp the spelling of this strange name. And how to say it – roughly like the French pronunciation of the word ‘train’, but with a little ‘o’ inserted before the nasal final syllable, we were told. We all tried saying it, while the girl prompted, corrected and encouraged us. Gunnar and Anna in particular seemed to find this practice session great fun.
Troaë explained to us that it was not a common French name. She did not know where it came from, her father had given it to her, and he was an artist, living in Paris.
After all these preliminary gyrations, she put her little rucksack down on the sand and asked if she could paint us. I noticed there were a couple of little brown struts sticking up out of her rucksack and realized it was an easel.
‘Paint us?’ asked Katarina Malmgren with an artificial laugh. ‘Why?’
The girl explained that she intended to become a painter, just like her father. But since she was at school all year in a drab Paris suburb, she had to use her summer holidays for practice. She thought we were an interesting collection of individuals and she had come down to the beach with that very aim in view. Finding a suitable group of people to paint.
She began setting up her easel. ‘So you’re on holiday here with your father and . . . ?’ asked Katarina.
Not at all, it transpired. Troaë told them – if I understood her rightly – that in the summer she lived with her paternal grandmother who had a house outside Fouesnant. Just a few kilometres from the beach; her parents were in Paris, both her mother and her father, but they had divorced long ago and she lived with her father, at least most of the time.
As she talked she prepared her painting things: set up a canvas panel on her easel, backed about ten metres away from us, took out a box of watercolour paints, wetted various brushes with the tip of her tongue, it all looked very professional. Gunnar asked in halting French if we had to keep still all the time, but the girl said that wasn’t necessary, but it would be good if we didn’t move too far from our present positions. I started to feel someone ought to have the sense to call an end to the whole charade, but no one else in the group seemed to object to being painted on the beach. Henrik, conceivably, but he presumably felt restrained by the others’ jollity. I sank further into my deck-chair and tried to resume my doze.
In fact, everyone went quiet for a long time, it must have been getting on for half an hour, as Troaë stood earnestly behind her easel and painted her group of holidaying Swedes on the beach. For some reason, the previous free flow of conversation was inhibited by the girl’s presence, even the women saying little. I think I must have dropped off for a few minutes, and the next time it was Anna who broke the silence.
‘Lunch,’ she said. ‘A dip first, then a bite to eat. What do you say?’
‘Hadn’t we better get our artist’s permission first?’ asked Erik, and I could not tell from his voice whether he was tired of the whole set-up or still faintly amused by it.
Katarina called out to the girl. Asked how she was getting on and said we were about to go in the water and then for lunch.
She replied with something I could not catch; Katarina told us she was asking for two minutes more, that was all, then she was prepared to take a break.
‘Cocky brat,’ muttered Henrik, but was swiftly rebuked by his wife and Gunnar.
‘I think she’s delightful,’ declared the latter. ‘A proper little charmer. Can’t you all see how attractive she’ll be in five years’ time?’
‘You perverse creep,’ said Anna, throwing her head back and laughing. The laughter was loud and affected. I was in two minds about whether to go back to the house after lunch; to find some shade if nothing else, and some peace and quiet for planning my future.
We held our positions until Troaë dropped a deep curtsey and thanked us for our patience.
‘Can we see?’ asked Katarina.
She shook her head. ‘Not until it’s finished. This afternoon or tomorrow, maybe.’
‘Surely she doesn’t mean we’ve got to model for her for days on end?’ said Gunnar.
Katarina translated this for the girl, and we were told that a short session after lunch was all it would take.
She did not join us in the water, but came with us to the restaurant. I do not know whether anyone invited her, but if so, it would have been Katarina or Gunnar; but at any event, Troaë immediately grabbed Erik and walked arm in arm with him all the way to Le Grand Large, a little restaurant a few hundred metres east of the Pointe de Mousterlin. She pressed close to him, too, taking the occasional little hop, demonstrating classical ballet positions and chattering away ten to the dozen. Erik seemed flattered by the attention, pretended to understand everything she said and joked with her; at one point she leapt into his arms and kissed him on the mouth.
‘Watch yourself,’ said Anna with a strained laugh. ‘That kid could be older than you think.’
Then she tried to jump up into Gunnar’s arms as the girl had done with Erik; Gunnar was clearly unprepared for her antics and they both tumbled over in the sand. Troaë shrieked with delight, throwing herself on top of them, and a brief bout of uncontrolled wrestling ensued. Even Henrik took part in the rumpus; I was the only one to remain aloof and keep my distance.
When they were all on their feet again, laughing, getting their breath back and brushing themselves down to get rid of the fine sand, the girl announced that Swedes must be the most hilarious people in the world and that we were very welcome to adopt her.
‘Oh, but we’d have to get your grandmother to sign a form first, in that case,’ Katarina pointed out. ‘No, no more wrestling, it’s time for some lunch and a glass of wine now.’
She said the first part in French and the rest in Swedish, and was then obliged to translate in both directions.
‘I’m sure my grandmother would agree to it,’ said Troaë, looking grave for a moment. ‘She thinks I have no manners and make far too much noise.’
She clung on to Erik’s arm again and we continued on our way to Le Grand Large.
We spent the next two hours eating seafood and drinking white wine. It felt strange to be sitting beneath the pale-blue sun umbrellas in that big, boisterous group – now with the addition of a madcap young girl – as if it we were some kind of natural community. I was struck by the fact that I had only known Erik for about five days, the other Swedes for twenty-four hours and the girl for just a few hours. Yet there we sat over our food and drink, chatting and laughing as if we had known each other forever. I know that at the end of my treatment, as we were saying goodbye to each another, Dr L urged me not to be so sceptical, and I agree that this was part of my specific problem – but right here and now, on this slightly breezy afternoon, I still felt there was some justification for my doubt. Who were these people really?
Who are these people really, I ought to write, of course. How have I found myself in this cluster? What did we actually have to talk about as we poked around amongst snails and lobster and mussels and knocked back the chilled white wine? What were we imagining? As I write this it is late evening, and I am sitting out on the terrace with my thick notebook, just like yesterday. Erik is asleep indoors, or maybe reading in bed, but no, I think he’s had too much wine for that. He isn’t much of a one for books at all. He is not unintelligent, but he doesn’t read. I’m wondering again whether I ought to just leave, but there’s a sort of inertia to the situation itself, holding me back. The landscape appeals to me and that, too, somehow helps to keep me here. The heat and the flatness. The dunes, the low, half-hidden stone houses, the sea, there is so much space here. Maybe an element of tension, too, something unpredictable that I can’t quite put
my finger on; it feels as though there’s something lurking beneath the surface of these people, something waiting to come to light, I can’t help thinking. As if they need each other somehow, as if being in couples is not enough. This is particularly noticeable with Gunnar and Anna, of course; their attention is seldom focused on each other and it is as if they are constantly seeking collusion with, and affirmation from, the rest of us – even from the girl Troaë. Naturally I can’t be sure what these observations are really worth, unused as I am to spending time with other people like this, and presumably there is some kind of boundary line, and the day will come when I can’t stand it any longer. Simply that.
Anyway, Troaë sat with us at the table throughout, drinking Coca Cola but also a glass of wine mixed with water, which she claimed was what she usually had with meals both in Paris and at her grandmother’s in Fouesnant. She really did her utmost to entertain us, and even got us all singing together, which was something I had thought reserved for Swedish settings and a different sort of company. The girl sat between Erik and Gunnar and made sure to divide her favours between them as fairly as she could. If she kissed one of them on the ear, she immediately made sure she did the same to the other, and when we finally had the bill she insisted on paying her share, which of course she was not allowed to do.
We got back to our camp on the beach at around three thirty, and as we all sat or slumped in postprandial torpor in the pleasant offshore breeze, the girl went on painting us. She stood ten metres away from us with her feet planted wide apart and dug into the sand; her straw hat pushed well back and her pretty face veiled in concentration. Katarina Malmgren cursed herself for having left her camera at home, and I could understand why. There’s something irresistibly attractive about the girl, a sort of unruliness and budding charm, difficult to guard oneself against. I don’t know if this observation is correct, but I also got the impression that Anna grew much quieter in the course of the afternoon, as if some kind of rivalry was developing between her and the girl; the adult woman and the child. I may be exaggerating, not being used to concerning myself with the motivation and reasoning of strangers, but when Gunnar at one point attempted to slip his hand under Anna’s bottom, he was discreetly but firmly rebuffed. She even snarled at him; Erik, too, noticed the incident and we exchanged a look of conspiratorial mutual understanding, as they say. This irritated me, for some reason. The look, that is; the hand trying to find its way between Anna Eriksson’s thighs is of no consequence to me.