“Cheap labor,” Ola Haver said.
“She was allowed to live there for free in exchange for helping out in the stables,” Sammy Nilsson said. “From what I can understand that was a lot of work.”
However they twisted and turned the case of the niece and her husband they couldn’t find anything that made it likely that the Umeå couple had any connection to the crime. Both of them had excellent alibis and it was at the very least improbable that they would have hired a killer.
Ann Lindell was finding it hard to concentrate. She was completely convinced of a connection between the two murders and the niece appeared less interesting. She let her thoughts run away and internally summed up the advances of the past few days, or rather, the lack of advances.
Checking the passenger lists to Mallorca had turned out to be impossible to do. The records simply didn’t exist any longer. Lindell considered whether or not it was worth the effort to try to gather information on the hotels in Mallorca. Perhaps they could find Blomgren’s name in some register, but it was likely that even these had been destroyed or were unavailable after twenty years.
Contact with a dozen or so members of the Federation of Farmers who could possibly give information about both of the men’s activities within the farmers’ co-op turned out to be a waste of time. There was nothing that spoke for the fact that Andersson and Blomgren had ever met in the context of the organization.
No witnesses had stepped forward to say anything about a suspicious car or any unknown persons who had moved in the murder victims’ circles, either in Alsike or Jumkil.
The cases were slowly going cold. Lindell didn’t like it. Or rather, she hated it. Two unexplained murders were simply too much. She could also see it in Ottosson. He was becoming increasingly tense as the days went by. His former cheeriness had been replaced by an irritable impatience.
Even the newspapers had stopped writing about the murders. The first few days’ fat headlines bore witness to the journalists’ excitement. The “Country Butcher” became an accepted concept. Now everything was quiet. Lise-Lotte Rask, who was responsible for press information, said that a few isolated reporters diligently called to see if there had been any breakthroughs. She thought she could almost discern a sneer to their pointed questions.
Lindell caught herself thinking about Charles Morgansson. Since his brief visit they had bumped into each other, said hello, and exchanged a few words but nothing had been said about another movie date.
She decided to give him a call. Maybe they should go out Friday?
“What are you smiling about?” Sammy Nilsson interrupted her thoughts.
Lindell glanced at Ola Haver, the one in the assembled group whom she thought best knew her thoughts, before she answered.
“Pantyhose.” She smiled sweetly at Sammy. For once he was rendered speechless.
Back in her office she discovered that trainee Asplund had been in again. There were two reports on her desk. One was a report on who had lived in Vilsne village the last two decades. Lindell had asked the trainee to assemble this information. It involved about fifty people altogether. Ann looked through the list without really knowing what she was after.
The second report was a compilation of all the people who had gone missing in the district over the past year. She was surprised at the number, ten people, but knew that most of them would turn up again of their own accord. Most of the ones who disappeared without a trace did it of their own free will and were really no case for the police if they didn’t involve underage individuals.
Two names on the list interested Ann more than the others and only because they were older men: Helmer Olsson, eighty-two years old, a former rubber worker from Rasbokil who disappeared in August. His wife thought he must have gotten lost but search parties that had been undertaken in the deep mushroom-filled forests north of his village had not yielded any results. Helmer Olsson’s mushroom basket had been recovered at the edge of a swampy area. Perhaps he had gone down in the bottomless quagmire that was locally referred to by the name of “Oxdeath.”
The other name was Ulrik Hindersten, a seventy-year-old professor, reported missing at the end of September. The person who reported him was the daughter, Laura Hindersten, with the same address as her father.
The results of the investigations added up to zero.
Ann checked who had taken down the information, looked at the time, and lifted the telephone receiver in the hopes that her colleague was still at work. Åsa Lantz-Andersson answered immediately and told her what she knew about Laura Hindersten, a woman she remembered very well.
After the conversation it was time to pick up Erik. Lindell went into Ottosson’s office and told him that she had to bring Erik in for a medical checkup the next day, and that after that she was going to go see a woman whose father had disappeared.
“You think there’s a connection?”
“I don’t know, but we have to dig into everything.”
Ann Lindell left the police station feeling unusually happy. Maybe it was because the sun was shining for the first time in several days. Admittedly the sun was only able to break through a small gap in the cloud cover but she took it as a good sign.
When she got home she was going to call Morgansson.
Twenty
The flames reached almost as high as the snowball bush. Laura had to retreat because of the heat. For a few moments she was worried but told herself the damp grass was not flammable.
To burn books, she thought and remembered how her father, during a trip to Florence, had lectured her about Savonarola who had incited people to burn books during Carneval.
Ulrik Hindersten was divided in his opinion of this Dominican, who was a “devil” in that Petrarch’s and Livius’s books were on the bonfire. He took this as a personal insult and expressed genuine sorrow at how many antique texts had thereby been lost.
But her father also admired Savonarola as a speaker and for his ability to engage his audience. There was something attractive about his popularity. Her father appreciated strong personalities who were able to motivate the masses.
Savonarola ended up much like the books he had banned. Her father had taken her to Piazza della Signoria in Florence, the square where the monk was humiliated and burned as a heretic. With his Italian friends he discussed whether or not it was right to declare Savonarola a saint.
These debates were very much to Ulrik Hindersten’s taste. Laura remembered how she had admired his ability to find arguments in the hour-long disputes.
Now Livius and Petrarch were destroyed in her own bonfire, and they burned well, the new dissertations as well as the old volumes, bound in calfskin and representing centuries of learning.
She followed the black flakes with her gaze and noted with satisfaction that many of them were blowing in the professor’s direction. She bent over and picked up a slim volume of Capablanca and tossed it onto the fire. The pages flipped nervously in the wind before they were caught by the flames and were transformed into sooty confirmations of Laura’s decree.
With tense anticipation she stared into the fire as if against the black paper there would appear the glimmer of a message about what her new life was going to look like. Laura crouched down, leaned forward, the heat brought tears to her eyes, and she was gripped by a feeling of solemnity as if at a graduation or funeral. She was so moved that she did not hear the car that parked on the street, nor the light steps across the mossy lawn.
“Excuse me, are you Laura Hindersten?”
Laura had to steady herself with a hand against the ground in order not to fall into the dwindling fire, and she turned toward the woman who was standing a few meters away.
“I’m sorry if I startled you. My name is Ann Lindell and I’m with the police.”
Laura looked at her sooty hand and then gazed at Ann. Clearly, Laura could see her but it was as if her unsteady gaze could not bear to bring her into focus. Several seconds went by before she answered.
“Ye
s, my name is Laura Hindersten. What is this about?”
The voice was pleasing, completely devoid of concern or surprise. Ann saw how the woman in front of her changed from emotionality to coldness, as she stood up calmly and smiled.
“It’s about your father, as perhaps you’ve guessed.”
Åsa had forewarned her. Laura Hindersten was snobby and treated the police as if they were idiots and therefore Lindell unconsciously wore a stern expression.
“Because of some other cases we are checking on the individuals who have gone missing recently, and your father disappeared in September.”
Laura Hindersten looked watchful. Lindell discovered that there was something mocking about her smile and had the thought that her father had returned. What if this woman was pulling something over on her? Was Ulrik Hindersten having a cup of coffee in the kitchen?
“Have you heard from him at all?”
Laura shook her head.
“What are you burning?”
“Old junk.”
Ann Lindell bent down, picked up a book, and read the title on the spine.
“That’s Livius’s first book,” Laura said.
Lindell hesitated in the middle of dropping the book back onto the ground. Laura took it out of her hand.
“Who was Livius?”
“A Roman.”
Lindell was satisfied with the answer. Laura threw the book onto the fire, which was giving off a pleasant heat. Fires invite reflection and neither of the two women felt it was strange that they stood silently for a while side by side and watched Livius’s words go up in flames.
“That was that,” Laura said.
“Is it a series?”
“Series,” Laura giggled, “Ulrik should have heard that. Yes, there’s maybe some hundred and fifty books.”
“And you’re burning them all?”
“No, most of them have disappeared and there are only a few that have been translated into Swedish.”
Lindell looked at the woman next to her. She hadn’t noticed any of the heralded snootiness; instead Laura seemed to have more of a thoughtful, almost meditative aspect. Laura met her gaze and smiled introspectively
Lindell wished she was a smoker. Then she would have taken out a cigarette, lit it, and then smoked it in peace and quiet while the fire so eagerly licked up the rests of Livius and all the others.
“Sometimes I think Ulrik is here,” Laura said quietly.
“Do you think he’s alive?”
Laura shrugged.
“Do you know anyone by the name of Petrus Blomgren or Jan-Elis Andersson?”
“No.”
“Do you read the paper?”
When Laura made no attempt to answer, Lindell continued.
“Maybe you’ve heard about the two farmers who were murdered last week? They were the same age as your father.”
Laura smiled at her and Lindell’s feeling that the woman in front of her was unwell was strengthened.
“I’m thinking of going away. There are beaches that . . . my father . . .”
She stopped in the middle of a sentence, her mouth half open as if the words didn’t want to leave her mouth. Lindell had an impulse to shake her so they would fall out.
“Can we go in and talk? The fire looks like it will take care of itself.”
They sat down at the dining room table. Lindell noted the mess but decided not to ask more about Laura Hindersten’s cleaning project. Instead she tried to get her to talk more about her father.
After a moment of hesitation Laura became more animated. Lindell could listen, study her features and shifting expressions as the narrative progressed at a comfortable pace. She had the feeling that she was listening to a public radio lecture, the type of program that she all too often turned off, but that at those times when the tempo around her were conducive to listening, were an invitation to closeness to another person and a restful reflection.
Ann recalled how she had listened to a conversation between two women who had both been abused by their husbands and how that dialogue had taught her more than all of the seminars, arranged by various lecturing professionals, that she had participated in.
She fairly soon developed a kind of understanding for why Laura was burning her father’s possessions and although she found it wasteful and unethical to burn books as if they were junk, she could identify with Laura’s feelings and motivations. She used the word “free” on several occasions and then her voice took on a special quality, like a chord that a newcomer to the guitar has just learned and strums again and again with pride and wonder at the harmonious sound.
“You see,” Laura said and brushed her hand across the table, “love and knowledge, Augustine’s words. Ulrik had ideas, but most of them were borrowed.”
Lindell looked at the hand on the dark tabletop. Laura sighed and the hand stopped.
“You didn’t want to walk in his footsteps?”
“For a while, maybe. You saw the books; I’ve read most of them. When I was twenty I knew three languages, besides Swedish and Latin, and a little colloquial French.”
She laughed a little.
“But I don’t have any words for the simplest things.”
“I can speak Eastern dialect pretty well,” Lindell said.
“Stick with that,” Laura said.
Lindell again looked at Laura’s hand on the table, thin, almost transparent, with well-groomed nails, a round smudge of soot on the back of her hand that spread into a fine-veined pattern when she balled up her fist.
“Would you like a glass of wine?”
Ann shook her head.
“No, of course not,” Laura said with a smile.
She got up, walked over to a small table in one corner of the dining room, and took out a bottle of red wine.
“One of best things about Ulrik was that he taught me to appreciate wine. Only the best was good enough. This is a La Grola from 1990.”
She put out the half-empty wine bottle.
“Bought in a small place north of Verona,” Laura went on, and pulled out the cork. “Smell it! Produced by Allegrini. They became our friends, like many others in Valpolicella. We traveled around the vineyards and wineries. Ulrik could really charm people.”
Ann leaned forward and positioned her nose over the bottle. It smelled different than the cheap red wines she usually drank.
“We were often guests of the Alighieri family. One of Dante’s sons bought the property and it is still owned by the family. The thirteen hundreds,” she added when she saw Ann’s quizzical expression.
“You have to spend more than one thousand kronor for this, maybe more, I don’t know. The cellar is full of bottles.”
Laura stopped and looked at the bottle.
“I think my mother knew more about life and love than Ulrik,” she continued more thoughtfully.
“Do you miss her very much?”
Laura didn’t answer immediately.
“My mother came from the countryside and had a language for it. It worked. There weren’t many who could talk and laugh like her, but she couldn’t do it here, not in this house. It feels as if all of that has been lost. I sometimes imagine that there are people somewhere who speak like my mother, some dying population that is hanging on in a forgotten landscape.”
“Don’t you ever see relatives on her side?”
“No. I have three cousins, but I never see them. Their mother was Alice’s sister. I don’t even know if their houses are still there. I’m not sure I remember their language.”
Ann thought about Vilsne village.
“My life has always been driven by others,” Laura continued, “but now I’ve decided to change all that.”
“Do you have any idea why your father disappeared? Do you think it may have been voluntary?”
Laura shook her head.
“He was too much of a coward to take his own life.”
“He might be alive.”
“No!”
“You seem very
certain.”
“He wouldn’t leave this life voluntarily,” Laura said in a voice that was barely audible.
Ann Lindell suddenly had a feeling of claustrophobia but squelched her impulse to get up and leave the house.
Laura retracted her hand from the table. She whispered something that Lindell couldn’t hear. If Laura had seemed like an open and reasonable person only a minute or so ago, with even a touch of humor in her comments, her sunken posture and tightly clenched hands resting in her lap testified to a woman in the grips of enormous confusion and anxiety.
She glanced at Lindell who could sense both helplessness and fury in Laura’s gaze. It reminded her of a prisoner, someone who all at once becomes aware of the massive walls and the closed door.
“What was your mother’s maiden name?”
“Andersson,” Laura said quickly as if she had been expecting that very question.
“Where was she from?”
“Skyttorp.”
Lindell tried to place the name. It was an area north of the city, she knew that much but no more. She stood up and Laura flew up from her chair.
“Thanks for the chat,” Lindell said and stretched out her hand. “I have one last question and you don’t need to answer if you don’t want to. Did your father abuse you?”
Laura let out a short laugh, a dry, sharp laugh.
“Is that what you think? Yes, he abused me, every day.”
Lindell wanted to take hold of Laura, who noticed her impulse and took a step back.
“He abused me with words. And now I’m burning all the words,” she spat and gestured with her head to the garden.
When Ann Lindell had left Laura remained standing for a moment in the middle of the room.
After reassuring herself that the policewoman’s car really had left the street and that the fire had died down without setting fire to the grass, Laura went back in, opened the basement door, and walked down. She took the thirteen steps very carefully, turned the lightbulb so it would go on, and looked around. Everything looked normal. And who would have been down here?
It consisted of a storage area that, like the garage, had served as a storage place for a variety of unusued items, a laundry room that had not been used since her mother’s death, and a boiler room where the old wood-fired boiler rested like a surly animal from the past. Next to the boiler room there was a poorly lit section where the wood was stored.
The Cruel Stars of the Night Page 16