‘Size five,’ she went on. ‘Can it be from a child, or a teenager?’
‘I don’t think so. It looks well used, as it were. We have combed through all the missing-persons reports from a couple of years back and there is no one who matches this foot.’
‘Can it have washed ashore?’
‘It’s possible, but the doctor didn’t think so. No, I believe in the fox. There were also marks of what I think are teeth. They can run quite a ways with a tasty foot in their mouth.’
The conversation came to a halt there. The offshore wind had increased somewhat but they could still cling to the illusion that they were on the beach on a summer’s day as long as they kept their gazes fixed on the sea and disregarded the patches of snow that remained in the shadowy areas below the thickets of alder behind them.
Lindell closed her eyes and let the sun warm her face. She felt Marksson stealing glances at her but did not care. She felt a stillness that was the first she had had in a long while. The surge of the waves and the occasional cry of a gull only underscored the compact silence that reigned.
God only knows how long she would have stood cemented in this way if her colleague had not coughed discreetly.
‘The kind of place that’s hard to forget,’ Marksson said.
She smiled at him and nodded, grateful that he did not mention Edvard in so many words. Edvard, who was possibly as little as twenty or so kilometres away as the crow flies. Nonetheless his words let her understand that he sensed what might be stirring in her mind.
They walked back to his car. The path they followed was trampled by animals, and snaked through the sparse deciduous forest. Marksson went before her and Lindell followed him with her eyes, his back and shoulders. Along the way she grabbed some alder cones, smelt them, and let them rest in her hand before she forcefully tossed them back into the thickets, unexpectedly near to tears. Not on account of the woman who had so violently lost her left foot but because she felt she had walked along this kind of path so many times before.
Back in Östhammar they had coffee at the police station. Marksson was more than willing to admit that they had hit a wall. This had been evident to Lindell the day before when she had read his report. She had the feeling that he did not want to proceed, that he had simply given up all attempts to find the owner of the foot. He never said as much and would never have admitted it. After having stated that all avenues, all reasonable and unreasonable hypotheses, had been aired and examined, it was easy to lose focus and unconsciously grow comfortable with the idea that the investigation had come to an end. This gave way to a period of doubt in one’s own abilities, mixed with anger over the fact that no one else appeared to have come up with something conclusive. Finally it gave way to a creeping feeling that one was wasting all one’s time, while at the same time other, newer cases made claims on one’s attention.
She recognised this from her own investigations. Her role was to breathe life into this ice-cold thing.
They were on to their second cup. Until now there had only been small talk.
‘I have to head back to Uppsala now, but I think it’s good I got to see the place,’ Lindell said. ‘I’m going to think about it. As I said, you seem to have done everything—’
‘Not well enough,’ Marksson interrupted, ‘or the whole thing would be wrapped up by now.’
‘It’s a bit hard with only one foot,’ Lindell said, and he smiled.
‘I heard you have a little one,’ he said.
Lindell nodded and pushed the coffee cup across the table.
‘It’s hard to drive back and forth,’ she said. ‘It may be a colleague of mine who takes over. Then you’ll have to take that walk all over again.’
Marksson shrugged.
‘A little legwork never killed anyone,’ he said.
Lindell raised her eyebrows at his word play. Typical male pig of a policeman, she thought, but couldn’t help smiling when she saw his mischievous look.
SIXTEEN
The label read ERIK AND ANN LINDELL. Next to it was a sticker with the wholesome message No advertisements, public notices ok.
She had asked the building manager to put up both names. Maybe in order to give the impression that a couple lived in the slightly cramped two-bedroom flat, and for this reason the man – even though he was preschool age – had come first.
The bone-white letters had ended up slightly askew. The last L had a phallic look, pointing up at an angle, or else it was a leg about to march off, out of the sign.
A female neighbour had once asked her if she was from Jönköping. Lindell had explained she was from Eastern Götaland.
‘I was thinking of the scales,’ the neighbour said. ‘You know, the scales.’
Ann did not know what she was talking about, but the woman was a bit peculiar, as Sund – another neighbour – liked to point out. She received an explanation much later. It was in an antique shop, into which she had been tempted by an assortment of glasses in the window. On a sideboard there were some scales, manufactured by Lindell’s in Jönköping.
She flicked the glass in front of the names. The L toppled forward and onto its back. A jumped and ended up somewhat inclined to the left.
‘Why are you doing that?’ Erik asked.
He asked many questions, almost all the time.
‘I don’t know,’ she answered.
He was satisfied with the answer, but took the opportunity to flick the sign himself. The second L followed its friend and fell forward, while the A jumped back up.
Ann chuckled. Encouraged by having made her laugh, he knocked it again. Now the E fell down completely.
‘—rik,’ Erik read.
He could read well even though he had not started school. He knew all his letters and could sound out the most difficult words, so ‘rik’ or ‘rich’ presented no problems.
‘Are we rich?’
Ann shook her head, took out her keys, and unlocked.
‘No,’ she said. ‘But we aren’t poor either.’
She decided she would talk to the property manager. Even if the flat looked a bit messy, the sign on the door didn’t have to.
Erik went into his room. The floor in there was right now covered in small plastic men that he arranged in long rows according to an intricate system that she – despite Erik’s long explanations – could not manage to make head nor tail of.
Ann unpacked the bags from the grocery shop, but it was the foot that occupied her thoughts. It had been sawed off, that much was clear. ‘A big-toothed saw, perhaps a power saw, or possibly a bandsaw,’ the pathologist had written in his report. There were traces of vegetable oil on the foot.
She realised that up to this point she had spent much too much time thinking about whom the foot belonged to and not about the perpetrator. Who saws off a foot, and why? A psychotic killer? Someone who has been wronged?
She fetched the map of Östhammar, its archipelago, and found the bay, Bultudden Point, and the places that Marksson had mentioned. She now saw that the Östhammar police had covered a considerable area in their door-to-door investigation.
Assume approximately one thousand people lived in the area – excepting Östhammar city – as well as summer residents. One of these was crazy enough to take out a big-toothed saw and sever the limbs of a woman with a shoe size of five. She was convinced the body had been cut up in order for the perpetrator to have an easier time getting rid of it. Or else it was a result of the fact that the killer, even in death, wanted to humiliate his victim, a ritualistic completion, as if the murder itself was not enough.
Lindell pushed the grocery items aside, sat down at the kitchen table, and let her gaze sweep over the map. The remarkable thing was that no one who could be a match had been reported missing during this time, now almost two weeks since the foot had been found.
She searched with a finger across the map, tracing the roads curling through the landscape, turning in to farms and groups of holiday houses, stopping at road cross
ings, taking turns, turning around and going another way; trying to imagine a crazed driver, perhaps desperate and careless – a foot had been misplaced, after all – maybe cold and calculating, pieces of a woman’s body in the trunk. Maybe a red car.
Had the foot been put on the beach deliberately? No, she reasoned, no one was crazy enough to leave such traces after himself. But if there was something really twisted behind the deed, then perhaps the foot should be seen as a kind of message? Would more feet turn up, haphazardly strewn around the area?
‘Mama, I’m hungry.’
Erik had snuck up behind her back without her noticing.
‘Of course,’ she said, putting the map away. ‘I’m just putting dinner on. We’re having lentil stew.’
‘I want sausages and mashed potatoes,’ Erik grumbled.
She had made the stew the night before so all she had to do was heat it up. She stood up and put away the remaining grocery items left on the table, setting the table while the stew simmered on the stove, and prepared a pitcher of lingonberry cordial, Erik’s favourite.
Erik plunged into ‘twenty questions’ while they ate. He had started to take a serious interest in her work. Having a mother who was a police officer afforded a little bit of status at day care. In part it made up for the unfortunate fact that he did not have a father to brag about.
‘If a thief gets nice again, is he let out of prison?’
‘Sure,’ Lindell said, who did not add the fact that most thieves never ended up in prison.
‘Can you tell if a guy is a thief by the way he looks?’
‘No, they can look like anyone.’
‘Johannes says that all thieves have a screwdriver in their pocket.’
‘Maybe some, but not all of them.’
‘It’s for breaking in,’ Erik explained.
If only it were that easy, she thought. That everyone with a screwdriver was a bandit.
‘Have you ever caught a thief?’
‘Once or twice, but most of the time I work on people who have done other dumb stuff they shouldn’t have.’
Erik looked at her.
‘Eat a little salad,’ she said.
‘Murderers,’ he said abruptly. ‘The guys who shoot people.’
‘Eat,’ Lindell said, even though she knew very well he wouldn’t drop the topic.
‘I know you catch murderers,’ he said. ‘That’s what my teacher says.’
‘What teacher?’
Erik heard from her voice that he was out in unchartered waters, skillfully dropped the question, and started on another line of inquiry.
‘If all the nice people had police cars, then that would scare the bad guys,’ he said.
‘Yes, maybe that would be a good idea,’ Ann said, and scraped the last bit of food from the plate. ‘Did you eat any salad?’
Erik sighed and took a piece of cucumber from the bowl.
After dinner, Erik turned on the television, inserted a video, and sat down. Ann had made a cup of coffee and stood in the doorway to the living room. She observed her son, who was engrossed in Monsters, Inc.
He would start school next autumn. He was looking forward to it, often bringing up the exciting subject of starting school. Maybe he was hoping to find the answers to all of his questions there. His mother unfortunately did not know everything.
Where do you get all of your energy and unflagging curiosity, she wondered. Maybe your father was a little rascal too. ‘The Engineer,’ as Ann secretly referred to Erik’s father. She had no name and barely any memory of how he looked. Erik was the result of a couple too many glasses of wine, a desire for skin and a sweaty night.
Ann Lindell had been a shy and quiet child. She only came to life in her teens, as far as that was possible in a place like Ödeshög.
She returned to the kitchen, worried that she did not know what she should do with Östhammar. If she became engaged in it, the trips back and forth would pose a complication. Not that Erik would suffer, she would drop him off and pick him up at day care the same time as she had been doing all autumn.
But long drives were tiring, as was a murder – as she and everyone else assumed – investigation. It devoured energy, she had noticed that after only one day. She could say no, she knew Ottosson would give in. But how fair was it to dump the foot on someone else? Haver had his hands full, on the job and at home. Sammy Nilsson was overladen with work and the bandy season was in full swing. He trained kids and youths two nights a week. Fredriksson had grown too tired. Lindell could not imagine him driving back and forth to the coast, and he would not get along so well with Marksson. They would not function well together. Berglund was laid up for a while and Beatrice, no, that wouldn’t work.
She got out the pad of paper that she kept on her bedside table, flipped to a clean sheet, and started to write down questions.
SEVENTEEN
After leaving his workplace, Sven-Arne Persson immediately went home. He had a mist before his eyes that only let up once he was lying on his bed. He did not speak, he did not think. All his energy was focused on staying in motion.
Slowly but surely the impact of what Jan Svensk had told him started to seep into his consciousness. He accepted the fact that Elsa had been run over, without much surprise. He tried to imagine her under a thundering lorry but could hardly recollect her face anymore.
The fact that Uncle Ante was writing his memoirs, however, and that in these he would ‘tell everything,’ terrified him, since he knew what Ante was capable of. When his uncle decided on something he was almost impossible to divert from his cause. The fighter from the Teruel front took no orders.
Sven-Arne tossed and turned on the bed, thumping his fist into the wall and cursing all damned Swedes and above all the one with the very name of the Swedes, Svensk. He went through the events of the past few days, and above all he returned to the visit to Koshy’s. Why had he gone there when he had received so many signs along the way that something was up? He should have better interpreted the signals. Instead, he had walked straight into the establishment in a foolhardy manner, to his doom.
What had Ante told Elsa that had made her so upset? What was there to tell, except one thing? Elsa had heard, seen, and understood everything that had to do with him, perhaps even better than Ante. She was the one who had seen through him both in public life as well as in the bedroom. He was for her the impotent rhetorician, the personification of hypocrisy. When he had claimed that it was her coldness and clumsy manner that had made him impotent, she was not hurt – as he had intended – she laughed. She had laughed straight in his face, and in order to humiliate him further, had taken out the dildo she had bought many years ago.
‘This is my county commissioner.’ She had grinned and moved the mechanical member up and down.
She, who had shown no genuine happiness for years, had laughed.
Now she had become bewildered to the point that she had stepped out in front of a lorry. Not intentionally – Sven-Arne was convinced of that. Elsa would never willingly take her own life, that much he knew. Not the Elsa he knew, not with her calculating logic.
And yet now she had been thrown off her stride. Unconscious. He came upon himself wishing she would die. No, he recalled those thoughts. It was too low. The one whose turn it was to die was Ante. He was old. Why should he start to blabber? The last time they talked, half a year ago, he had seemed spry, at least not confused and demented. Quite the opposite: He had analysed the Swedish political situation of the day more clear-sightedly than in a long while. He had taunted the prime minister, who, like a nobleman, was renovating a manor house in his castle-rich home district.
‘He probably also has tenant farmers,’ Ante had declared cheerily, as he always did when he wanted to take aim at some elevated social democrat.
No, it was not very likely that he was confused. He would probably die with a cutting phrase ready on his lips.
Sven-Arne decided that Ante must have upset Elsa by saying that it came as no surp
rise to him to hear that Sven-Arne was in India. It must have hit hard, the discovery that his uncle – a man that Elsa had always disliked – had known these past twelve years what had happened to her husband. It must have been a blow to her pride. She had been doubly betrayed. Thus her bewilderment, and the anger that had come after the initial shock.
He decided that this was what had transpired. Everything else was unthinkable. The mention of memoirs was just idle talk. But on the other hand, if they were published posthumously he would be victorious even in death. For who would seriously be able to criticise the old man, and what would be the point? It was Sven-Arne who would become the target, he would be publicly flogged, hung out to dry. His sentence would be another matter altogether.
He stood up from the bed so quickly that he grew dizzy.
‘What’s the point?’ he screamed.
He already knew the answer. He would have been able to live with the consternation and the general hullabaloo, the critique, the outrage, yes all this he would have been able to take, but he would never again find peace. Not one second of peace. He would be pursued wherever he steered his course. Public interest would never wane, everyone would want to know. To know! All of these damned Swede-bastards who devoured all the shit, hair and all, wallowing in the mass media’s rubbish. They consumed the rotting headlines with a ravenous appetite, as if they were delicacies, and slurped up the offerings of retarded hoaxers as if they came from the king himself.
Ante’s triumphant voice would ring in his ears, whether or not the old man was dead. He had nourished himself with bitter fruit ever since he had returned from Spain, now some seventy years ago. The old man had become broken down, but his ideology had turned to stone and remained unchanged by the tooth of time. He was going to rub his poisonous balms into Sven-Arne’s open wounds.
As a fourteen-year-old on the roof of Rosberg’s barn he had sensed something of Ante’s dream, it was as if he could touch it, and since then he had never been able to cut that feeling out of his chest. When Ante said ‘someone has to do it, it’s just that simple,’ Sven-Arne had interpreted it literally. That time it had been about Rosberg’s roof. Twenty years before it had been about the Spanish Republic.
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