“Then he took off in another taxi half an hour later,” Sammy continued.
“Have you checked the fare?”
“Will do. He took Uppsala Taxi. The monkey noticed that.”
Lindell took a deep breath, trying to think of something intelligent to say.
“I see,” she managed to say.
“Why do you ask? Do you have anything new concerning our writer friend?”
“No, no, I was just curious, I knew you would be checking up on him. Ottosson mentioned something about it.”
Sammy Nilsson did not say anything. Perhaps he was waiting for more? But why did he say “monkey”? Sammy’s last name was Nilsson too.
“We’ll be in touch,” said Lindell at last, when the silence became too tangible.
“We’ll do that! Bye!”
After the call Lindell sat for a long time, brooding about whether she should go to see Ottosson and tell him what she had been unable to say to Sammy. But she decided to lie low. On the screen his name was shining and she shut down the computer.
“Jerk,” she said.
* * *
Listlessly she opened a folder that contained the latest about Klara Lovisa. At the top was the photograph and as usual Lindell studied it carefully before she browsed further and produced the hastily jotted down notes from yesterday.
A man in Skärfälten, just ten kilometers west of the city, had seen a young girl in the company of a man. The description tallied, and the witness had even specified the right color of her jacket and pants. They were walking together at a slow pace on the road toward Uppsala-Näs.
A day after the disappearance, when the media had reported on the case, the man, Yngve Sandman, called the police tip line, but since then no one had shown any interest in questioning him further.
Yesterday he had called, somewhat bitter but mostly surprised at the lack of action, and was forwarded to Lindell.
“I have a daughter myself,” he said.
Lindell could not explain why no one from the police had been in touch. Carelessness, she thought to herself, but obviously could not say that. Always with disappearances, especially when young women were concerned, there was an abundance of tips and observations. Mostly they led nowhere. The man’s call had no doubt drowned in the flood of calls.
Ann Lindell got his information again and promised to be in touch within a day or two. Now it had been exactly twenty-four hours and she made the call. They agreed that she would drive out to see him right away.
* * *
“It was here,” said Yngve Sandman, pointing. “I was on my moped and they were walking there, on the other side of the road.”
Lindell looked at him.
“So they were walking on the wrong side,” Lindell observed, as if that were significant. “You were on a moped?”
“Yes, I collect mopeds and was out test-driving an old Puch. It’s older than me. It doesn’t go fast and I was able to get a good look at them.”
“Tell me how they were walking, what they looked like and that.”
“She was walking closest to the road. They weren’t walking particularly fast, didn’t look stressed. But they didn’t seem to be talking with each other, not right when I encountered them anyway.”
“How did the girl seem?”
Yngve Sandman shrugged his shoulders.
“Well, what should I say? I thought she was pretty, if you know what I mean.”
Lindell nodded.
“Did you get the impression that they knew each other? She didn’t look scared or anything?”
“Well, two friends out walking, that’s what it looked like. But actually you can be afraid of a friend too.”
“How were they dressed?”
“I’ve told you that, first in April and then yesterday to you.”
“Tell me again.”
“She had dark-green pants, almost looked military with a couple of pockets in front on the hip, and a light-blue jacket. Pretty short, I thought, it was cold that day. I didn’t think about her shoes, if I had to guess they were black, some kind of boots.”
Mr. Sandman guesses right, thought Lindell. Klara Lovisa had on a pair of short, black boots the day she disappeared.
“And him?”
“Blue jeans and a jacket with a hood, which he had pulled up. It was dark, maybe blue. Workout clothes, I think.”
“What did he look like?”
Suddenly the sky darkened and they looked up. A dark cloud passed quickly and the sun was hidden for a few moments.
“Around twenty-five, maybe younger,” said Sandman, as the sun returned. “Light hair, but the hood concealed most of his head.”
“Glasses?”
The man shook his head. He looked away along the road.
“I got the sense that he was walking a little funny, but that may be because he was walking halfway in the ditch, if you know what I mean?”
“Was he limping?”
“No, not exactly, but in some way…”
They stood quietly a moment.
“I have a daughter myself,” he said. “If she disappeared, I mean.”
“Yes,” said Lindell. “It’s too awful.”
“Does she have any siblings?”
“No.”
He shook his head and stood quietly a moment.
“Looks like rain,” he said, as another threatening black cloud drew past.
“Did you drive back the same way?”
“Yes, I turned up at Route 72. Although I stopped there awhile and adjusted the moped. It was running a little shaky and I had to tighten a brake wire.”
“How long did it take before you came past here again?”
“Ten minutes, maybe fifteen.”
“And then the two of them were gone?”
“Yes, not a soul on the road.”
“What time of day did you see them?”
“Around eleven thirty.”
Klara Lovisa had left home on Saturday the twenty-eighth of April one hour earlier. Lindell looked around. Fields, a few houses, a narrow country road that made its way down toward the valley. She had driven this way perhaps a dozen times. What was Klara Lovisa doing here? What was the likelihood that she was the one Yngve Sandman had seen? And who was the young man?
Klara Lovisa did not have a boyfriend, not officially anyway. Her girlfriends had spoken about an Andreas, whom she had dated since seventh grade, but he had been removed from the investigation long ago. The day of her disappearance he had been in Gävle with his mother.
Could the young man by her side be an unknown admirer, someone she was acquainted with, or in any event recognized? It seemed as if she had been walking on the road voluntarily. If this was even Klara Lovisa.
Sandman was her last straw. He seemed lucid and not someone who was only trying to get attention. She cursed the unknown associate who had neglected the early information. Then the observation was close to fresh, now almost two months had passed.
Ann Lindell decided to use the folder she had already put in order during the first week of the investigation.
“I want you to look at some photographs of young girls.”
“I see,” he said, not seeming particularly engaged.
Lindell browsed a little back and forth, held out the first photo. He shook his head. There was a similar reaction to photos number two, three, and four. At the fifth photo he lingered a little before shaking his head. He firmly rejected girls six, seven, and eight, and all the others that followed.
“Then we have the nineteenth and final picture,” said Lindell.
“It looks like a parade of Lucia candidates,” he said. “But I didn’t see any of them here.”
“Certain?”
Sandman nodded immediately. Lindell took out the twentieth picture, which she had left sitting in the folder.
“That’s her,” he said immediately.
He did not need to say anything because as he was looking at Klara Lovisa he took a deep breath and made
a gesture with his hand as if to illustrate that it was here on the road he had seen her.
“It’s her,” he repeated. “Poor girl.”
Lindell was not convinced. Sandman may very well have recognized the picture from the newspaper, but it reinforced her impression that he was not a crackpot. All too often the “customer” was so eager to please that he, for some reason less often she, would do everything at a confrontation to “recognize” someone, perhaps not point out anyone definitively but still show some hesitation, as if it were impolite to consistently be a naysayer. He had denied any recognition, including the one he believed was the last picture.
“Thanks,” she said. “You’ve been a very big help.”
Yngve Sandman looked almost helpless.
They walked back toward the parked cars. There they remained standing awhile in silence. The sun once again broke through the clouds. It was like a staged alternation between shadow and sun, which in turns let the landscape, the stony meadowland up toward the forest, and the fields with the spiky corn on the other side of the road, bathe in light, and then be swept into a slightly mysterious darkness.
“The human factor,” he said at last.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s not allowed to happen in my work. I mean, when I called you the first time someone dropped the ball, it’s obvious, isn’t it?”
Lindell could not help but nod.
“Then perhaps she was still alive?”
“Yes, that’s how it is,” Lindell admitted. “Then we would have been in a better situation.”
“And her parents too, even if…”
Yngve Sandman looked down at the roadside. By his feet a dandelion was growing. He kicked at it so that the yellow flower was separated from the stalk.
“I live up there on the rise,” he said without prompting, and pointed. “You don’t see the house but it’s behind there. It’s a nice house, paid for. I live almost for free. The children have moved out. I get by. I tinker with my mopeds. The woods are full of berries and mushrooms.”
Lindell looked in the direction he was pointing. An area as good as any, she thought. She had a vague memory that once she had picked mushrooms in the vicinity, but maybe it was on the other side of Route 72.
“Stina left a few years ago.”
He said it without bitterness, just a statement. And he smiled.
“How many kids do you have?”
“Two. And you?”
“A boy,” said Lindell. “He’ll start school in the fall.”
“I was early,” he said. “I have a windmill on the lot,” he said with unexpected eagerness. “It’s really ugly but it was my dad who built it. I mean, if you were to come by, you’ll see the windmill.”
“What kind of work do you do?”
“Air traffic controller.”
“You’re used to details,” said Lindell, and smiled back. “You can’t miss anything.”
“That’s how it is. For me the human factor doesn’t exist.”
“It was nice to meet you,” said Lindell, extending her hand. “Although the circumstances could have been better.”
“It doesn’t feel good, I mean this,” he said, taking her hand in a slightly awkward motion and throwing out his other arm.
After a period of silence Ynvge Sandman tried to smile again, but it was more like a grimace.
Lindell sensed that he was a man without great pretensions, a man who did not let himself be surprised, whose equanimity would not be disturbed too easily. She sensed the equanimity was acquired, perhaps even forced. For behind his tinkering and berry picking she sensed a very lonely person.
And now that balance had been disturbed. A girl’s disappearance worried him, that was clear, but what exactly was going on in the man’s mind she obviously did not know.
They separated, walking to their cars. Lindell raised her hand as she drove away. He remained standing outside his car, peering along the road, and did not appear to see her greeting.
* * *
Stone dead for centuries, thought Lindell, and then comes a whole swarm of men. He had hit on her, it was quite clear: single, children moved out, a hint of solid finances, and an honorable job. And then a comment about the windmill that showed a romantic side. Yngve Sandman was no tough guy; he maintained a hideous windmill for sentimental reasons.
But he was right, if their procedures functioned then perhaps the disappearance would have been solved. If it really was Klara Lovisa he had seen. And Ann Lindell was becoming more and more convinced of that as she drove at a slow pace back toward the city.
In line with Berthåga she got an impulse to turn and drive to the home of Klara Lovisa’s parents. Her mother was probably home. She had been on sick leave from her job at the Swedish Medicines Agency since the disappearance.
But she continued toward the city. Before she visited them again she should refresh her memory, go through some of the many interviews that were filed in binders piled in her office.
Over 150 interviews had been conducted during April and May to try to chart the girl’s life, contact points, and movements during the time before she disappeared.
Perhaps in the binders there would be a single sheet of paper that might tell about a blond, young man wearing jeans and a dark-blue jacket with a hood. A man who made Klara Lovisa abandon the thought of buying a spring jacket and instead lured her out of town.
Six
Beatrice Andersson had never seen a T-shirt that stained. It had once been white but was now covered with spots. She could not keep from staring. A dark whirl of hair stuck out at the chest. When he took hold of the T-shirt and pulled it away from his substantial stomach to study the variety of colors for himself, she observed that the man also had hair on the back of his hand and fingers.
Göran Bergman laughed.
“Yeah, I know,” he said. “If you’re selling laundry detergent you’ve come to the right place. Solvent would be even better.”
There was a pungent odor coming from the apartment, mixed with the smell of coffee.
She introduced herself and asked if he had time for a brief conversation.
“Sure,” he said. “It’s time for a coffee break anyway.”
He stepped to the side and let her into the apartment. On the floor below the coat rack, which held only two garments, was a wastebasket, a bucket of kitchen scraps, three pairs of shoes, all heavy work shoes, and a pair of sandals.
He pushed the wastebasket to the side.
“I’m in the middle of painting,” he said with his back to her, disappearing into the kitchen just to the right. “You don’t need to take off your shoes!”
Beatrice Andersson followed. The kitchen was small and dominated by an easel. The half-finished painting depicted a forest glade.
“Okay, and what does the police department want with someone like me?” he said, taking out two mugs and pouring coffee without ceremony.
“Fresh brewed,” he said. “Sit yourself down! Is this about the car? Has someone burned up my car?”
“You haven’t read the newspaper?”
Göran Bergman shook his head.
“It got too expensive, and there’s just a lot of crap in it anyway.”
She took a sip of coffee and waited until he sat down across from her.
“I don’t have good news. Your friend Bo Gränsberg was found dead yesterday. I’m sorry.”
Bergman slowly lowered the mug and stared at her.
“I see, he couldn’t take it anymore,” said Bergman.
“He didn’t die by his own hand,” said Beatrice.
“Someone killed him?”
“Yes, it’s that bad.”
Beatrice told how and where Bo Gränsberg was found.
“How did you find me?”
“His ex-wife said that you and Bo got together.”
Göran Bergman nodded. He fixed his eyes on the painting.
“He liked that, although it’s ugly as sin. I thought about givi
ng it to him.”
“Where would he hang it up?” Beatrice asked.
Bergman gave her a look of surprise.
“You worked together?”
“Yes, for many years. He was the best. We were the best, that’s how it was! Damn it, we were the fastest and the safest scaffolders in town.”
“But then he injured himself?”
“Yes, so fucking stupid. And here I sit with damaged legs. Did you ever hear the like, I’m forty-eight and my knees are shot.”
“What were the two of you up to?”
“I see, Gunilla gossiped,” said Bergman with a crooked smile, and started to tell her.
The idea was that the two old workmates would start a company, scaffolding construction, of course, but other things too. What the “other things” might include was not clear from Bergman’s exposition. He thought they had the know-how and the contacts, plus a solid reputation, even though Bosse’s was somewhat tarnished, but no one could take from him the almost twenty years he had worked in construction and on building facades.
They could no longer perform the purely physical aspect, erecting the scaffolding, but Bergman thought—and Beatrice had no reason to doubt him—they could organize the work like nobody else. They knew all the tricks, they had a good sense of people and a realistic picture of what the job involved.
How much of a problem do I have with construction workers, wondered Beatrice. When she dropped off Haver at the police building and said she was thinking about visiting Bergman alone, he asked how much she knew about construction workers. As if he was an expert, simply because his father had been in the industry. She was well aware of his father’s reputation and above all his early, unpleasant death, and for that reason she did not say anything. Everyone on the squad knew that this was a sensitive chapter in their associate’s life, something he was still wrestling with after all these years. There was no reason to add to his burden, but she felt a certain sense of triumph in having gotten Bergman to talk so freely.
Because Bergman was talking away. It seemed as if he had repressed the thought of his friend’s death, and everything sounded to Beatrice very intelligent and thought out. They had done what many others who were going to start a new business did not have the sense to do, that is, market research. Bergman had called around and personally visited thirty or so “actors on the market,” as he put it, the majority of them, if not acquaintances, known from before anyway.
Black Lies, Red Blood: A Mystery Page 4