The Cruel Stars of the Night

by Kjell Eriksson

  When Erik had fallen asleep Ann Lindell turned off all the electric lights in the apartment and lit a couple of candles that she put out on the table in the living room. A glass of Portuguese wine was already out there, half empty.

  A cozy evening at home, she thought, chuckled, and pulled her legs up under her. The silence was deafening. Sund, one of the few neighbors that Ann Lindell had a fairly regular contact with, had popped in with a construction set for Erik. He had bought it on sale, or so he claimed. Ann had the feeling it had not been inexpensive. It was an airplane. As usual, the neighbor had overestimated Erik’s abilities. He was simply too young for Sund’s gifts but Ann was touched by his thoughtfulness.

  They sat at the kitchen table for a while and talked. Sund’s car, a more than forty-year-old Ford Anglia, was completely worn out. Sund was of two minds about what to do. Ann Lindell advised him to have the car repaired. The neighborhood would not be the same if the “Black Pearl” disappeared from the parking lot.

  After about an hour, when it was Erik’s bedtime, Sund had reluctantly said good-bye and gone home. The faint smell of pomade lingered in the apartment. She had come to realize there was some talk in the building regarding Sund’s old-fashioned attentions toward Ann, an older man’s concern for the single woman some thirty years his junior, and some had taken to calling him Sick—a play on Sund, which means healthy—but for her it was a source of joy. She had never noticed anything unhealthy in her neighbor. Quite the opposite. He was just thoughtful and a little lonely.

  She thought about Sund and from there it was not far to Petrus Blomgren and Jan-Elis Andersson. Men, lonely men around seventy. Those times she had visited her neighbor she had been struck by how the loneliness shone in the orderly home. Everything was clean and nice, everything in its place, perhaps a touch pedantic. The coffee cup always in the same place on the counter, placed on a small crocheted pad, ready to be used, carefully washed and returned to the cloth after the coffee break was over.

  Well-ordered but very lonely. This was also true of the two retired farmers. What had Sund worked with? Ann recalled that he had talked about office work, maybe at the mustard factory, since Sund had talked a lot about the “pickle plant,” as it was called. Had he been married? There was so little she knew of his life. Sund talked mainly about the here and now and his plans for the short term.

  Had Blomgren and Andersson had any relationships? This did not immediately communicate itself from their homes and none of those who had been questioned so far had said anything. But back in the day there must have been some love in both of the farmers’ lives. Somewhere perhaps there was a woman who remembered her love for Petrus Blomgren. Maybe there would be someone who would shed a tear when she opened the newspaper tomorrow morning and read that Jan-Elis Andersson had been murdered in his home in Norr-Ededy village, Alsike.

  Women were good at keeping track of the dead as well as the living and there was always the chance that someone would turn up when the two murder victims were buried. Ann decided to attend the funeral services. She did not expect they would be very large.

  If there was a connection between the two murders she was not yet able to see it. But she was convinced the connection lay in their lives, perhaps far back in time. Two farmers are not murdered by accident within two days of each other, not in Ann Lindell’s book.

  She did not feel optimistic but still more confident than before. Perhaps it was the chat with Sund or the fact that she had now poured herself her second glass of wine that meant the outlook appeared brighter.

  She studied the bottle’s label that showed a hilly landscape dotted with grapevines snaking up the slopes. In the background there was a castle with turrets and spires.

  “From shed to castle,” she muttered.

  When Ann Lindell crawled into bed she was slightly dizzy. Two glasses of wine were enough. The pillow felt like a dear friend and the warm blanket like a desired lover.

  Thirteen

  It was reading hour at the Homicide Division, something both funny and frightening.

  Upsala Nya Tidning had headlined their first page with the news of the second murder in as many days. They had managed to interview the nearest neighbor who described Jan-Elis Andersson as an “honorable man.”

  “It’s an ‘honor’ killing,” Ola Haver said.

  Expressen did its bit by dubbing this the work of the “Country Butcher.” They had even managed to get a statement from the Federation of Swedish Farmers’ chairman, who was not, however, particularly concerned. Apart from that the papers were full of bloodthirstiness and “revelations.”

  “She lives more than a thousand kilometers from here,” Berglund said and pointed at a photograph of the head of the farmers’ association. “Of course she’s not particularly worried.”

  “A chairman of the Federation lives at least a thousand kilometers from all farmers,” Sammy Nilsson said. “Especially from guys like Blomgren and Andersson.”

  Aftonbladet had also jumped on the theory about a serial killer. A well-known criminologist had expounded in its pages with customary verbosity and gave an account of experiences from the United States. What this had to do with Uppsala was not clear. Dagens Nyheter had managed to mix up the pictures of Blomgren and Andersson’s houses.

  “That one,” Ottosson said bitterly. He had bumped into the expert and had formed his opinion. Ann Lindell walked in with the chief of the crime information service, stepping right into the charged feeling that the assembled daily papers managed to create in the morning. They chatted almost cheerily. The rest looked up. Sammy Nilsson grinned.

  “Have you been to the movies again?” he asked Lindell, who ignored him. She knew that was often the best tack.

  Ola Haver pushed the stack of papers away.

  “Should we get going?”

  Ottosson started as usual with a brief overview of the situation in the city and also dutifully came with a report of the Tierp area. This consisted of a violent perpetrator who had smashed a couple of cars and then taken off in his own vehicle in a southerly direction, most likely under the influence of some kind of pills. According to their colleagues in Tierp the man was considered dangerous.

  Berglund sighed. Ottosson glanced up from his papers.

  “Okay,” he said, “now we leave all dangerous Tierpians. Question number one: do we believe in a connection?”

  “Yes,” Lindell said firmly and argued according to the thoughts she had had the night before. “We have to bore back through time,” she said in conclusion and looked at Sammy Nilsson.

  “The country division,” Berglund said, when Sammy didn’t react.

  “Nada,” Sammy said. “Both of them are former farmers. Blomgren on a smaller scale, back in the day he was a dairy farmer with a small stock of animals, de-registered as a supplier of animals at the end of the seventies, continued to cultivate grain for livestock feed but then stopped completely. Worked a lot on the side. Fredriksson knows more about this. Jan-Elis Andersson’s farm was a little bigger, about sixty hectares, most of it grazing for his and others’ animals. Dairy cows but also in later years beef cattle and even horses. He rented out stalls and supplied the feed.”

  “Does he still have any animals?” the head of KUT, the Criminal Information Service, asked.

  “Only a cat. The neighbor is taking care of it. Both of them sold their land. Andersson was in fairly good financial shape with close to half a million in the bank plus a few shares and bonds.”

  “Who stands to inherit?”

  “A niece, Lovisa Sundberg, in Umeå. Married to an architect.”

  “Have we made contact with her?”

  The KUT director’s questions rolled out like a string of pearls and created a song of harmonious alternating parts between him and Sammy Nilsson.

  “Sure, the Umeå colleagues have talked to her. She’s in shock, but collected, they say. She was still up north as of yesterday.”

  “And the architect?”

  �
��On a business trip to Stockholm. I’m sorry but he was sitting in a meeting from eight thirty in an office on Kungsholmen.”

  “When do farmers eat breakfast?” Berglund asked quietly.

  Sammy Nilsson chuckled.

  “That depends,” he said. “Now, Andersson had no animals to take care of so it could have been any time, but in his case probably on the early side.”

  “Can the architect have killed him and then driven to his meeting?”

  “He had breakfast at Hotell Tegnér at seven. I’ve talked to the staff.”

  “Good,” Lindell said with emphasis and Sammy gave her a quick look before going on.

  “It also turns out he’s confined to a wheelchair.”

  Allan Fredriksson continued the proceedings by giving an account of Petrus Blomgren’s various jobs and earnings. The farm had initially been the center of his finances but its importance had gradually diminished. It appeared that he had not at first realized that a farm of thirty hectares isn’t a particularly good affair. His last years as an active farmer were the most meager. Since he started working at Nylander’s Construction and took extra jobs in the forest the picture changed dramatically, or so Blomgren must have felt, Fredriksson conjectured.

  “He doubled his taxable income in a couple of years. The deposits to his savings account increased. He had money to spare. I have tried to map out his professional life to see if there was anything out of the ordinary but I can’t find anything. Blomgren kept on going, living a retiring and calm existence, no trouble with the authorities.”

  Fredriksson flipped through his notes. Ottosson glanced at Lindell and smiled. Subdued meetings and proceedings were the chief’s specialty. In this territory he moved with a lightness that came as a surprise to the occasional outsider. Ottosson had a rare ability to create comfort and an unforced feeling of unpretentiousness.

  “His time as a carpenter does not leave any visible tracks,” Fredriksson continued when he had found the right paper, “except for an injury in the fall of ’ninety-one. He falls from a scaffold and splits his spleen.”

  Berglund sighed.

  “I’ve talked with two men who used to work with him. They describe Blomgren as being extremely timid. Except for being very punctual and hardworking he didn’t make much of an impression. He claimed to only have been drunk once in his life. He had spent a week in Spain—Mallorca, the men thought it was.”

  “The most exciting thing about his life was that he died,” Sammy said.

  “Are you done?” Ottosson asked.

  Fredriksson nodded.

  “With regard to Andersson we haven’t managed to find very much,” Berglund said, “but tomorrow we will probably be able to present the exciting details.”

  “Sammy,” Ottosson said.

  Sammy Nilsson’s account of the two farmers’ involvement in the Federation of Farmers was also not particularly dramatic. Both of them had been members but in different divisions. There was nothing to suggest that they had bumped into one another on such occasions.

  “What about the threatening letter at Andersson’s house?” Lindell asked.

  “Everything points to him being the author. The handwriting matches that on his own papers, but it will be checked into more thoroughly.”

  The conference room fell silent. Ottosson gave Lindell a look and started to sum up the main points but noticed that his colleagues’ concentration was failing. Everything had been said and they were experienced enough to know what had to be done.

  They broke up convinced that their working day would be long. Lindell gathered up her notes and exchanged a few words with the director of KUT before she went back to her office.

  Fourteen

  The knee-length grass swayed as if a giant hand was stroking it. Laura Hindersten thought there was something comforting about the movement. It was as if the wind in a gentle gesture took leave of what was left of the summer.

  A rotted apple landed with a thud on what had once been a gravel path but was now woven through with weeds. The path led to an oval sitting area, paved in slate and surrounded by some gangly roses that Laura’s mother had planted. Laura could still remember the name of the rose: Orange Sensation. She remembered where and when they had bought them. It was at the nursery on Norbyvägen and Laura had just turned ten. Laura thought the talkative gardener was a distant relative because he used the same words as her mother and because the ends of his sentences disappeared and were replaced by a gesture or an expressive face, exactly like her grandfather’s.

  He took them to an earth cellar on the edge of the nursery where they were greeted by the smell of raw earth. The roses were arranged on shelves, packed into bundles and with tiny pale shoots coming up from the stems. He carefully chose a bundle, cut the string, and inspected each rose one at a time. He saw poorly but compensated for this with touch and stroked the stems with his fingers. He put roses with shrivelled branches to one side.

  “Those are B-quality,” he explained, “and that isn’t what you want.”

  Laura got the impression that he was treating her mother very well. Few people were as polite to her as this old gardener.

  “Is the young miss also interested in roses?”

  Laura nodded. The man smiled at her. It seemed as if he enjoyed lingering in the earth cellar. He read the different names of the roses bundled on the groaning shelves. There was Poulsen rose, Alain, Nina Weibull, Peace, and many others.

  “The Poulsen I only keep because . . .”

  He smiled again and nodded.

  “Well, you know, memories . . .”

  She had watched the garden passively for an hour. She was so cold she was shivering but could not bring herself to go inside the house.

  If someone had entered the garden and discovered her pressed up against the French windows, with the grocery bags at her feet, then Laura would have given the impression of a person without hope. Her inability to cross the threshold had imparted a strange stiffness to her pale face. Her gaze moved restlessly as if it was searching for a place to rest. The movement in the grass and the sound of the falling apple had of course not spurred her to open the terrace door and step into the warmth but it did wake her from her paralysis. She pulled her right hand across her face while the left one felt for the door handle behind her back.

  Right here, a very long time ago on a warm summer’s day, was where her father and mother had stood. For once very close to each other, perhaps even hand in hand for a moment, in the no-man’s-land between her father’s domain—the house—and her mother’s, which was the garden.

  The terrace door had been completely open. There was a great deal of traffic between the bushes and the trees, where small birds flew around with food in their beaks. The day before she had found a dead baby bird by the mock-orange bush and buried it behind the compost.

  Laura had been sitting at the foot of the apple tree playing with a new gift. Happy voices had come from the house. The toy was uninteresting. It was the voices that meant something. She had fled out into the garden but not so far that she couldn’t hear the exhilarated guests’ avid conversation and the volleys of laughter that echoed like frightening bursts of thunder.

  Her parents looked at her and smiled. Ulrik Hindersten was dressed in a dark suit and her mother wore a green dress with white lace around the neck. Laura thought they looked like a bride and groom.

  “Dinner will be ready soon,” her mother said.

  They went back in and Laura tried to understand why they had walked out onto the terrace together, so close to each other and apparently enjoying each other’s company.

  Laura stared out over the garden and could see herself sitting under the apple tree. That was the day everything started. The previous conflicts between her and her father were nothing but outpost skirmishes compared to the drawn-out war that came after, a war that went on for over twenty years.

  She finally opened the door and stepped over the bags in the dining room. The heavy chairs and ta
ble, the candelabra on the massive tabletop had been there that time. She sat down, letting her gaze go from chair to chair and called to mind, as her father must also have done many times, the different guests and their placement at the table. She even recalled the scent of perfume and food and the young student’s sweat.

  All books and folders were gone, the curtains pulled back, and the light created a whole new room. On the table there was a white linen tablecloth and it was laid with the china that was usually stored in the oak sideboard.

  Laura was called in but remained standing in the doorway. Mrs. Simonsson, who Laura saw for the last time at her mother’s funeral, was bringing out dishes and tureens. She wore a little apron and a white cap. Laura couldn’t help but laugh.

  The adults were already seated. An older man whom Laura recognized from her father’s workplace was the one who talked most frequently and loudly. The women on both sides of him listened attentively.

  Ulrik Hindersten asked for their attention and said he hoped the food would please them. He concluded his brief remarks by saying a few words in Latin—Laura thought they came from Livius, an author from whose work Ulrik Hindersten would often read aloud in the evenings. Many people around the table laughed.

  It was the twentieth of July, Petrarch’s birthday, a day that was always celebrated in this house. But this time it was a twofold celebration. Over the summer a rumor had started and stubbornly grown stronger: that this fall the long-awaited recognition of Ulrik Hindersten’s scholarly contribution would finally be forthcoming. He was going to be appointed to the professorial chair.

  Many of his colleagues were assembled at the table but also several acquaintances from the neighborhood, not the most immediate neighbors but two couples who lived farther down the street. There was also a literature expert from Stockholm among the guests and some older men who spoke Italian.