Tempo non mi parea da far riparo
contra colpi d’Amor: però m’andai
secur, senza sospetto; onde i miei guai
nel commune dolor s’incominciaro.
“Isn’t it beautiful? So vivid, so expressive,” he would always exclaim after he had let the words sink in. Laura was not expected to say anything, simply listen. Her father needed an audience. Someone who did not talk back, did not engage in sparring about the text. Someone who simply listened, enraptured. Listened to the words that intoxicated, that carried one away, transformed and gave life meaning.
“The sonnet is superior!” he could suddenly shout and then burst into laughter when he saw her expression of surprise and—sometimes—fear.
If only he had laughed more. That was what Alice, her mother, had said, that her father took life too seriously. He was an expert in the language of love but incapable of romance or tenderness, imprisoned in an environment where the beautiful words did not carry any weight.
Laura had noticed the tension between laughter and silence early on. Sometimes her mother would sing but she always stopped when her father approached. It was as if it was inappropriate to display joy over something as trivial as fair weather, the scent of the roses from the garden, or that a movement could be an expression of a joy in living and not simply a means to get from the desk to the dining table.
Laura’s mother was from the country. He would use Skyttorp, the name of her village, like an insult. It became a synonym for stupidity and laxity. He loved to correct her country expressions and when she used a dialect word he pounced on her like a hawk. Her language shrunk. She swallowed the words and the songs of her childhood on a small farm between Örbyhus and Skyttorp.
Laura remembered one time when her mother had cracked, how she in a forceful attack accused him of being a hypocrite: he loved Petrarch’s simple Tuscan language dialect but despised her own. Astonished, he listened to her barrage, her increasingly vulgar language, how she assaulted him in pure Uppland dialect, and finally burst out into a ringing laughter that seemed never to want to end.
“Hysterical,” Ulrik called her and Alice slapped him across the mouth.
She grew silent and kept up her silence when her husband was around. She died eighteen months later. She had recently turned forty-four.
As her father’s health declined and his isolation increased, as the world’s scorn, the neighbors’ pointed words and open disdain grew, Laura was erecting a strong line of defense around the house. She placed the ridiculously ugly white plastic furniture in the center of the garden only to taunt the nearest neighbor, the aesthete who edged his lawn every other week. The furniture shone, jumped out at the professor and his wife. Later she completed this arrangement with a sun umbrella that loudly proclaimed the superiority of Budweiser.
She fed pigeons so that they would dirty the surroundings, played senseless music at high volume outside while she lay inside reading, refused to do anything about the shared hawthorn hedge that was encroaching on the neighbor’s carefully tended vegetable patch.
When the professor complained she was unapologetically rude. That worked, she knew. Insolence, an unwillingness to discuss things reasonably, vulgarity—that was what the academics in the neighborhood found the most distressing.
She flaunted her poor taste, dressed even worse than her father, entertained loud acquaintances who sat in the white garden furniture and carried on noisily long into the night.
Her father was oblivious to it all. He only went out into the garden a few times a year when he walked around and talked in a concerned way about the increasing state of disarray but without doing anything about it. Sometimes he would say that they should hire someone to help prune the old fruit trees but nothing was done. In the garden there were wild apple-oaks that blew down during fall storms, groaned under the weight of moldy fruit that was never harvested.
The state of disrepair both inside the house and in the garden became more extensive. Why did she keep living there? Sometimes her colleagues asked her this but she couldn’t answer. She tried to explain it in terms of financial considerations, but that was a lie, everyone knew that. She offered reasons such as the need to take care of her confused father. That was more satisfying but was still not completely satisfying.
Sometimes she claimed she felt so comfortable in the old house that she could never get used to a modern apartment or townhouse. But people around her shook their heads, concerned that she was taking after her father.
She sat at the kitchen table with the same feeling of liberation she had felt a month ago. The radio had been on that time. The Swedish people had just voted no to joining the European Monetary Union and the kitchen was filled with commentary that did not interest her in the least. She had not even voted.
She looked out of the window, turned off the radio, and was overcome with the silence. The room shrunk. The dark green kitchen cabinets seemed to bulge out, to be coming closer. The kitchen counter—covered in dishes—seemed to expand with deep breaths.
A moment of regret, or rather, reflection, came over her like a tremor, but disappeared just as quickly. The way she had chosen left no room for doubt. Or rather, the path her life had taken was not the result of a conscious decision, was how it seemed to her. She had given herself up to a wave, a force that was now mercilessly carrying her forward, simply forward. No history, no reflection, simply a kind of quiet rush, hard as flint, that far exceeded her father’s emotions at reading those beautiful words. His euphoria was relative and fragile. He was weak. She was strong.
Words, words, words, into infinity. She did not want them, the artfully arranged, duplicitous assurances that people surrounded themselves with. She silenced the words and eradicated their falseness.
Laura felt that she now commanded two worlds. Now she could step out into reality without anxiety or anticipation. She carried a shield, an armor against which the words bounced off.
“You seem happier,” a colleague said in the lunchroom a few weeks after her father’s disappearance.
“It’s the only way,” Laura answered cryptically.
The colleague was pleased, thought she could see a new Laura, convinced it was because her suffocating life with her father was over, that a new Laura was being born in the midst of longing and grief. Horrible, but true.
“Maybe we could go out sometime,” the colleague had suggested.
Laura shook her head.
Kerstin was one of the better ones, but did Laura want a confidant? No, Kerstin would not understand the feeling of liberation. Laura was and would remain alone.
“My father may have been murdered and you think I should go out and enjoy myself?” she said and left the room.
Four
The task of going door-to-door in the area around Petrus Blom-gren’s house did not take long. Sammy Nilsson and Bea Andersson, who were in charge of this, could afterward report that there were altogether some twenty properties. Fourteen of these were permanent residences and the rest were summer cottages.
No one had seen or heard anything. There was not even any gossip, no hints or speculation, simply disbelief that something so horrible could happen in Vilsne and that it was Petrus Blomgren who was the victim. No one had a bad word to say about the victim. Sammy and Bea listened to the testimony without being able to discern any criticism between the lines. Blomgren was well-liked, highly thought of even, in the area. Neighbors had only praise for his still life, his industriousness, and concern for his nearest neighbor, Dorotea. An older man talked about Blomgren’s love of nature, another about how admirable it was that even though Blomgren was a bachelor he managed to keep everything as clean and tidy as he did, and a third, the Kindblom couple, told them that their children when they were young would go up to “Uncle Petus” and there be treated with candy and sometimes, on Thursdays, with freshly made pancakes and homemade jam.
“Jumkil’s Mother Theresa,” Sammy Nilsson summarized and glanced at Bea to see
if she had anything to add, but she only nodded.
“I see,” Ottosson said and turned to Lindell.
She and Fredriksson had spent the day trying to bring order to the state of Petrus Blomgren’s paperwork.
“At the Föreningsspar Bank they were unusually helpful,” she said after a moment’s hesitation.
She and Fredriksson had decided that he was the one who would present their findings but he had not turned up.
“Actually Allan is the one who was supposed to . . .” Lindell began.
“Take us through what you know,” Ottosson said, unusually brusque.
“All right, as you like. Blomgren had seventy-six thousand kronor in his savings account. There are very few transactions. He received his pension, took out a couple of thousand every month. The last withdrawal was six days ago. Two thousand. In the house we have recovered around nine hundred kronor in cash.”
“No cards?”
“No, he only had one account and no bank cards.”
“Could there be accounts at other banks?” Sammy Nilsson asked.
“No, the guy at the bank didn’t think so. Blomgren had been with the Föreningsspar Bank his whole life, though it was called something else before.”
“The Förenings Bank,” Fredriksson said, who had just come through the door. “It became the Föreningsspar Bank a good many years ago,” he continued and sat down at the table.
“In addition, for many years Blomgren had a donation by direct deposit set up with Doctors Without Borders. They received four hundred kronor every month. He recently raised the amount. Earlier it was three hundred.”
“That’s strange,” Ola Haver inserted. “I would have expected Save the Children or converting the heathens, but Doctors Without Borders is unexpected.”
“The guy at the bank also asked about this, but Blomgren gave no particular reason,” Fredriksson said. “Maybe he saw a TV program about them?”
“No large withdrawals recently?”
“No,” Lindell said. “As we said, everything was in order. No unexpected transactions.”
“He kept a will at the bank,” Fredriksson said. “I talked to the lawyer who drew it up three years ago. It was at Blomgren’s behest. He came alone to the lawyer’s office and had a prepared document that he wanted the lawyer to look through. It didn’t take long. All assets go to Doctors Without Borders, with the exception of twenty thousand to his neighbor, Dorotea Svahn, and ten thousand to Jumkil Church.”
“Damn,” Sammy said.
“It’s hardly credible that Doctors Without Borders or the church board have death squads posted in the countryside,” Haver said, “and Dorotea probably can’t kill a fly.”
“That was sweet of Petrus,” Bea said. “I don’t think Dorotea is so well off.”
“The church is,” Sammy said.
“Not in Jumkil,” Ottosson objected.
The last maple leaves are falling right now, Fredriksson thought. No one will be raking Blomgren’s yard today. As he often did, he fell into a few moments of thought. His colleagues were used to these short pauses and waited patiently for the continuation.
“I think we can rule out a planned financial motive,” Fredriksson continued, “but of course it’s always possible that a passerby had the idea to attack this old man in the hopes that there was money to be gained.”
“But nothing in the house was touched,” Haver said.
“The killer was scared off,” Fredriksson determined laconically.
It seemed he felt there was no more to say on the topic.
For another hour the group discussed possible motives and how they should proceed with the investigation. They did this in an unusually calm manner, as if Petrus Blomgren’s quiet and retiring lifestyle had influenced the assembled homicide detectives.
Everything went according to procedure. The drama that Ann Lindell had once thought she would experience when she started as a police officer fell away as the years went by. The difference was noticeable. The first investigations in the Violent Crimes Division in Uppsala had thrown her into a state of intensity, had claimed her thoughts day and night. Many times it had rendered her unable to live a normal civilian life. It was, she now realized, one of the reasons that she and Edvard had never really become close. In spite of their mutual love and their longing for that intimacy. Now he was lost to her and she steeled herself not to let the bitterness and regret poison the rest of her life.
They had not been in touch since last spring. She had called him right before Pentecost, enraptured and almost completely convinced that a reconciliation was possible. But Edvard was no longer interested. She could hear it in his voice. All summer she had cursed herself, consumed with self-pity and distaste for her life. Only her son, Erik, could make her really happy.
The fall had started with a rape and a case of assault. No excitement, only routine, and a nauseating feeling of indifference.
Now it was October. Her blues month. A new murder. No suspense, only sorrow. She pictured Dorotea on the gravel road, struggling up the hill to Blomgren’s house, on her way to say good-bye.
“Hello, Earth to Ann.” Ottosson interrupted her chain of thought.
“Sorry,” Lindell said quickly, suddenly intensely embarrassed at her distraction.
“I wonder if you could draft a media statement?”
“Of course,” she said, “I’ll talk to Lise-Lotte.”
The meeting broke up.
“We’ll fix this,” Allan Fredriksson said to Lindell as they left the room.
“Think so?”
“Sure thing, Allan. After all, crime doesn’t pay.”
Sammy Nilsson was snickering behind them. Lindell turned around.
“What do you think?”
“Allan’s the gambler, but I say two weeks. Are you in? I’ll wager a hundred.”
“Okay,” Fredriksson said, who during the last year had won large sums on horses.
Ann Lindell left the group with a feeling of isolation. All too often she felt they simply talked past each other, that the indispensable feeling of teamwork was lost. She didn’t know if this simply had to do with her or if the others felt the same way.
For Lindell this feeling had a physical manifestation. She would get warm, sometimes glowing red, her sight altered so that she saw the room as a sealed space where the objects and words were bent inward toward an imaginary center that was Ann Lindell, single mother and investigative detective. The walls in the room were at the same time protection and limitation.
At first she thought she was sick. Now she had accepted that her psyche played these tricks on her. She sometimes lived as if inside a container. When she spoke she heard an echo and was surprised when the people in her surroundings reacted to her words. And despite all this she went on.
She stopped, slightly nauseated, feeling sad and sweaty. At that moment Sundelin, a colleague from the policing division, came hurrying down the corridor. He halted and asked her how the investigation was going. Lindell replied that it was probably going to be difficult.
“You’ll crack it,” the colleague said confidently “You usually do.”
He smiled and Lindell smiled back.
Sundelin hurried off. She watched him and wished they could have talked for a while. Sundelin had been one of Munke’s acolytes. Munke, whom Lindell had always thought of as somewhat of a buffoon, competent, of course, but not someone she particularly enjoyed working with.
They had worked during the spring on a murder investigation and that was when their mutual respect for each other’s professional expertise had developed into the beginnings of a friendship. Munke had died of a heart attack at the tail end of the investigation and Lindell felt as if someone from her inner circle had passed on.
She had taken everyone by surprise when she gave a speech at his funeral in Vaksala Church, touching on the small connections that contained the large. Only very few members of the audience had probably understood what she was trying to get at. B
erglund, the old dog, perhaps, and Ottosson definitely, who had afterward taken her aside and told her he was going to step down as head of the Violent Crimes Division.
“There are other things,” he had said, and Ann sensed that behind his talk of his summer cottage and the grandchildren there was a fear for the direction society was taking and also, at a very personal level, of death.
“Ann, you are a sensitive soul,” he had said, “but don’t break down,” and Lindell just wanted to fall into his arms. “In that case it would be better for you to quit the force,” he had added.
“The force.” How many people called it “the force” these days? It sounded like a brotherhood held together with a unified spirit. For better or for worse it had bound policemen together, for that was what they were: men. Men like Munke. Boorish, sometimes real pigs, many times recruited from the military, most of them politically conservative. From these some real police officers appeared. Like Munke. Lindell and he were rarely in agreement when talking about current events, but there was a genuine honesty in her deceased colleague that she had appreciated a great deal.
The unifying spirit was no longer there, she knew. Not so much because of the individual colleagues but more because of the pressure from above. Lindell thought it was mostly for the good—the homogenous group of men functioned fairly well in the old days but no longer. She was needed, Beatrice also. Ditto Ola Haver and Sammy Nilsson. They had seen themselves as young officers with a new way of looking at things and new insights. Now they had all entered middle age and soon they would make up the ranks of the veterans.
She continued on down the corridor, still very warm and aware of her own body.
The Cruel Stars of the Night Page 4