The Man From Beijing

by Unknown

  ‘In a few days. He’s bound to say I’m ready to go back to work.’

  The next morning the telephone rang shortly after Staffan had left for the railway station, when she was packing her suitcase. It was Lars Emanuelsson.

  ‘What do you want? How did you get this number? It’s unlisted.’

  Emanuelsson snorted. ‘A journalist who doesn’t know how to dig up a telephone number, no matter how secret it is, should take up another profession.’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘A comment. Big earth-shattering events are taking place in Hudiksvall. A prosecutor who doesn’t seem all that self-confident nevertheless looks us straight in the eye. What do you say to that?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  Lars Emanuelsson’s friendly tone, artificial or not, disappeared. His voice became sharper, more impatient.

  ‘Let’s cut the crap. Answer my questions. Otherwise I’ll start writing about you.’

  ‘I have absolutely no information at all about what that prosecutor has announced. I’m just as surprised as the rest of the nation.’

  ‘Surprised?’

  ‘Use whatever word you like. Surprised, relieved, indifferent, take your pick.’

  ‘Now I’m going to ask you some simple questions.’

  ‘I’m going to hang up.’

  ‘If you do I’ll write that a judge in Helsingborg who recently left Hudiksvall in a hurry refuses to answer any questions. Have you ever had your house besieged by paparazzi? It’s very easy to make that happen. In the old days in this country a few carefully placed rumours would soon lead to the gathering of lynch mobs. A flock of excited journalists is very reminiscent of a mob like that.’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Answers. Why were you in Hudiksvall?’

  ‘I’m related to some of the victims. I’m not saying which ones.’

  She could hear him breathing heavily while he thought that over, or perhaps noted it down.

  ‘That’s probably true. Why did you leave?’

  ‘Because I wanted to go home.’

  ‘What were those old books in that plastic bag you took out of the police station?’

  She thought briefly before answering.

  ‘Some diaries that belonged to one of my relatives.’

  ‘Is that true?’

  ‘It’s true. If you come here to Helsingborg I’ll hold one of them out of the door to show you. I look forward to seeing you.’

  ‘I believe you. You must understand that I’m only doing my job.’

  ‘Is that it, then?’

  ‘Yes, that’s it.’

  Birgitta Roslin slammed the phone down hard. The call had made her sweat. But the answers she had given had been true and unevasive. Lars Emanuelsson wouldn’t have anything to write about. But she was impressed by his persistence.

  Although it would have been easier to take the ferry to Elsinore, she drove down to Malmö and over the long bridge she used to cross only by bus. Karin Wiman lived in Gentofte, north of Copenhagen. Birgitta Roslin lost her way twice before she finally connected to the right road and then the coast route north. It was cold and windy but the sky was clear. It was eleven o’clock by the time she found Karin’s attractive house. It was the house she lived in when she got married, and it was the house in which her husband had died ten years ago. It was white, two storeys, surrounded by a large, mature garden. Birgitta recalled that you could see the sea over the rooftops from the top floor.

  Karin Wiman emerged from the front door to greet her. She had lost weight, and she was paler than Birgitta remembered. Was she ill, perhaps? They embraced, went inside, left Birgitta’s suitcase in the room she would be sleeping in and toured the house. Not much had changed since Birgitta was last there. Karin had evidently wanted to leave everything as it was when her husband was still alive. What would Birgitta have done in that situation? She didn’t know. But she and Karin Wiman were very different. Their lasting friendship was based upon that fact. They had developed armour that absorbed or deflected the metaphorical blows they sometimes landed on each other.

  Karin had made lunch. They sat in a conservatory full of plants and perfumes. Almost immediately, after the first tentative sentences, they began talking about their student years in Lund. Karin, whose parents had a stud farm in Skåne, had enrolled in 1966, Birgitta the following year. They had met in the students’ union at a poetry reading and soon became friends despite their differences. Karin, given her background, was very self-confident. Birgitta, on the other hand, was insecure and tentative.

  They became involved in National Liberation Front activities, sat as quiet as mice and listened to speakers, mainly young men who seemed to know everything, going on about the necessity of rebelling and stirring up trouble. But what inspired them most was the fantastic feeling of being able to create a new world order, a new reality – they were involved in shaping the future. And it wasn’t only the NLF that gave them a grounding in political agitation. There were lots of other organisations expressing their solidarity with the freedom movements mushrooming in the poverty-stricken countries of the developing world and working to evict the old colonial powers. And a similar mood prevailed in local politics. Young Swedes were rebelling against everything old-fashioned and out of date. It was, to coin a phrase, a wonderful time to be alive.

  Both of them had joined a radical group in left-wing Swedish politics known as the Rebels. For a few hectic months they had led a cult-like existence where the mainstay was brutal self-criticism and a dogmatic adherence to Mao Zedong’s interpretations of revolutionary theory. They had cut themselves off from all other left-wing alternatives, which they regarded with contempt. They had smashed their classical music records, emptied their bookshelves and lived a life modelled after that of Mao’s Red Guard in China.

  Karin asked if Birgitta remembered their notorious visit to the spa resort of Tylösand. She remembered it, all right. The Rebel cell they belonged to had held a meeting. Comrade Moses Holm, who later became a medical practitioner but was barred because he not only used drugs but also provided them to others, had proposed that they should ‘infiltrate the bourgeois group-sex decadents who spend the summer bathing and sunbathing at Tylösand’. After lengthy discussions it was agreed, and a strategy was drawn up. The following Sunday, at the beginning of July, nineteen comrades hired a bus and went to Halmstad and Tylösand. Parading behind a portrait of Mao, surrounded by red flags, they marched down to the beach, past all the astonished sunbathers. They chanted slogans, waved Mao’s Little Red Book, then swam out into the sea with the portrait of Mao raised. Then they assembled on the beach, sang ‘The Red Flag’, condemned fascist Sweden in a short speech, and urged the collected workers to unite, arm themselves and prepare for the revolution that was just around the corner. Then they returned home and spent the next few days evaluating their ‘attack’.

  ‘What do you remember about it?’ asked Karin.

  ‘Moses. Who maintained that our invasion of Tylösand would be recorded in the history of the imminent revolution.’

  ‘What I remember is that the water was really cold.’

  ‘But I have no memory of what we thought at the time.’

  ‘We didn’t think anything. That was the point. We obeyed the thoughts of other people. We didn’t realise that we were supposed to act like robots in order to liberate mankind.’ Karin shook her head and burst out laughing. ‘We were like little kids. We took ourselves so seriously. We claimed that Marxism was science, just as true as anything said by Newton or Copernicus or Einstein. But we were also believers. Mao’s Little Red Book was our Bible. We didn’t realise that what we were waving was not the word of God, but a collection of quotations from a great revolutionary.’

  ‘I remember having doubts,’ said Birgitta. ‘Deep down. Just as I did when I visited East Germany. I remember thinking: This is absurd, it can’t go on for much longer. But I didn’t say anything. I was always afraid that my uncertainty would be notic
ed. And so I always yelled out the slogans louder than anybody else.’

  ‘We lived in a state of unparalleled self-delusion, even though we meant well. How could we possibly believe that Swedish workers enjoying a bit of sun would be prepared to arm themselves and overthrow the present system in order to start something new?’

  Karin Wiman lit a cigarette. Birgitta recalled that she had always been a smoker, always felt instinctively for a pack of cigarettes and a book of matches.

  They carried on talking until evening about friends they had known and what had become of them. Then they went for a walk through the little town. Birgitta realised that both she and Karin had the same need to think their way back into the past in order to understand more of their current life.

  ‘Still, it wasn’t all naivety and lunacy,’ said Birgitta. ‘The idea of a world based on solidarity is still very much alive in me today. I like to think that, despite everything, we stood up to be counted, we questioned conventions and traditions that could have tipped the world even further to the right.’

  ‘I’ve stopped voting,’ said Karin. ‘I don’t like it, but I can’t find any political truth that I can subscribe to. But I do try to support movements that I believe in. And they do still exist, in spite of it all, just as strong and intractable. How many people today do you think care about the feudal system in a little country like Nepal? I do. I sign petitions and send money.’

  ‘I barely know where Nepal is,’ said Birgitta. ‘I have to admit that I’ve become lazy. But sometimes I still long for that feeling of goodwill that was everywhere. We weren’t just crazy students who thought we were at the centre of the world, where nothing was impossible. There really was such a thing as solidarity.’

  Karin burst out laughing.

  They made dinner together. Karin mentioned that the following week she would be going to China to take part in a major conference on the early Qin dynasty, whose first emperor laid the foundations for China as a united realm.

  ‘What was it like when you first visited the land of your dreams?’ Birgitta asked.

  ‘I was twenty-nine when I went there for the first time. Mao had already gone, and everything was changing. It was a big disappointment, difficult to cope with. Beijing was a cold, damp city. Thousands and thousands of bicycles that sounded like an enormous swarm of grasshoppers, but then I realised that, even so, an enormous change had come about. People had clothes to wear. Shoes on their feet. I never saw anybody in Beijing starving, no beggars. I remember feeling ashamed. I had flown into this country from all the riches we take for granted; I had no right to regard developments in China with contempt or arrogance. I began to fall in love with the thought that the Chinese had won the trial of strength in which they had been embroiled. That was when I finally made up my mind what I was going to do with my life: become a Sinologist. Before that moment I’d had other ideas.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘You’ll never believe me.’

  ‘Try me!’

  ‘I’d thought of becoming a professional soldier.’

  ‘Whatever for?’

  ‘You became a judge. How does anyone make these decisions?’

  After dinner they returned to the conservatory. The lights made the white snow outside glow. Karin had lent her a sweater, as it was becoming rather cold. They had drunk wine with the meal, and Birgitta was feeling a bit tipsy.

  ‘Come with me to China,’ said Karin. ‘The flight doesn’t cost an arm and a leg now. I’m bound to be given a big hotel room. We can share it. We’ve done that before. I remember the summer camps when you and I and three others shared a little tent. We were lying more or less on top of one another.’

  ‘I can’t,’ said Birgitta. ‘I’ll probably be cleared to go back to work.’

  ‘Come with me to China. Work can wait.’

  ‘I’d like to. But you’ll be going there again sometime, right?’

  ‘Of course. But when you get to our age, you shouldn’t put things off unless you have to.’

  ‘We’ll live for a long time yet. We’ll live to an old age.’

  Karin said nothing. Birgitta realised that she’d put her foot in it. Karin’s husband had died at the age of forty-one. She had been a widow since then.

  Karin understood what her friend was thinking. She stretched out her hand and stroked Birgitta’s knee.

  ‘It’s OK.’

  They continued talking. It was almost midnight when they retired to their rooms. Birgitta lay down on her bed with her mobile phone in her hand. Staffan was due home at midnight and had promised to call.

  She had almost dozed off when the telephone in her hand began to vibrate.

  ‘Did I wake you up?’

  ‘Nearly.’

  ‘Did everything go well?’

  ‘We’ve been talking non-stop for more than twelve hours.’

  ‘Will you be coming home tomorrow?’

  ‘I’ll sleep as long as I can. Then I’ll head home.’

  ‘I assume you’ve heard what’s happened? He’s said how he went about it.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The man in Hudiksvall.’

  She sat up immediately.

  ‘I know nothing at all. Tell me!’

  ‘Lars-Erik Valfridsson. The man they charged. The police are looking for the weapon at this very moment. He evidently told them where he’d buried it. A home-made samurai sword, according to the news.’

  ‘Is that really true?’

  ‘Why would I tell you something that isn’t true?’

  ‘Of course you wouldn’t. But anyway. Has he said why?’

  ‘Nobody has said anything apart from it being revenge.’

  When the call was over, she remained sitting up. During the whole day with Karin she hadn’t devoted a single thought to Hesjövallen. Now everything that had happened came flooding back into her mind.

  Perhaps the red ribbon would have an explanation that nobody had foreseen?

  Why couldn’t Lars-Erik Valfridsson also have eaten at that Chinese restaurant?

  She lay down and switched off the light. She would go home tomorrow. She would send the diaries back to Vivi Sundberg and start work again.

  There was no way she would go to China with Karin, even if that was what she would really like to do above all else.

  20

  When Birgitta Roslin got up the next morning, Karin Wiman had already left for Copenhagen, as she had an early lecture. She had left a note on the kitchen table.

  Birgitta. I sometimes think that I have a path inside my head. For every day that passes it gets a bit longer and penetrates deeper into an unknown landscape where it will eventually peter out one of these days. But that path also meanders backwards. Sometimes I turn round, like I did yesterday during all the hours we were talking, and I see things that I’d forgotten about, or prevented myself from remembering. I want us to continue with these conversations. The bottom line is that friends are all we have left. Or rather, perhaps, the last line of defence we can fight to maintain. Karin.

  Birgitta put the letter in her bag, drank a cup of coffee and prepared to leave. Just as she was about to close the front door, she noticed some flight tickets on a table in the hall. She noted that Karin was booked to fly with Finnair from Helsinki to Beijing.

  She took the ferry from Elsinore. It was windy. After landing she stopped at a corner shop displaying placards announcing that Lars-Erik Valfridsson had confessed. She bought a bundle of newspapers and drove home. Her reserved, taciturn Polish cleaning lady was waiting for her in the hall. Birgitta had forgotten that this was the day she was scheduled to come. They exchanged a few words in English as Birgitta paid her. When she was finally alone in the house, she sat down to read the newspapers. As usual, she was amazed to see how many pages the evening papers could devote to facts that were extremely sparse. What Staffan had said in their brief telephone conversation the previous evening contained at least as much information as the newspapers made a fuss about.


  The only new item was a photograph of the man assumed to have committed the murders. The picture was probably an enlargement of a passport or driver’s licence photograph and showed a man with a featureless face, narrow mouth, high forehead and thin hair. She found it hard to imagine this man committing the barbaric murders in Hesjövallen. He looks like a Low Church pastor, she thought. Hardly a man with hell in his head and his hands. But she knew that she was going against her better judgement. She had seen so many criminals come and go in her court whose appearance suggested they couldn’t possibly have committed the crimes they were charged with.

  It was only when she had discarded the newspapers and switched on teletext that her interest was really aroused. The main item there was the discovery by the police of what was presumably the murder weapon. The precise location had not been revealed, but it had been dug up where Lars-Erik Valfridsson had said they would find it. It was a rather poor home-made copy of a Japanese samurai sword. But the edge was very sharp. The weapon was currently being examined in the hope of finding fingerprints and, above all, traces of blood.

  Something wasn’t right. She had an advertising pamphlet for the Chinese restaurant in her bag. She called the number and recognised the voice of the waitress she had spoken to. She explained who she was. It took a few seconds before the waitress caught on.

  ‘Have you seen the newspapers? The picture of the man who murdered all those people?’

  ‘Yes. Terrible man.’

  ‘Can you remember if he’s ever had a meal at your restaurant?’

  ‘No, never.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Never while I’monduty. But other daysmysisterormycousin work. They live in Söderhamn. They have restaurant there. We take turns. Family firm.’

  ‘Will you do something for me?’ said Birgitta Roslin. ‘Ask them to look at the picture in the newspapers. If they recognise him, please call me.’

  The waitress made a note of Roslin’s telephone number.

  ‘What’s your name?’ asked Roslin.

  ‘Li.’

  ‘Mine’s Birgitta. Thank you for helping me.’