“We should question the boss himself,” Sammy said and informed him briefly about the situation, but refrained from telling him about his previous experiences and impressions of Waldemar. Bodin could form his own understanding.
“Have you found anything exciting?”
“No, I can’t say so. I see this as an initial search, then others will have to search the area, won’t they? It’s pretty difficult terrain.”
“That sounds sensible,” said Sammy, who found his colleague more and more reasonable.
“Who is she?”
“No one knows. Probably only Daniel Mattsson can answer that question, and God only knows where he is.”
“Hope the smoke fumes took her first. It’s usually that way, isn’t it?” said Bodin, kicking at a stone so that it flew off noisily.
* * *
Waldemar Mattsson looked anything but fresh. Tired and hollow-eyed, maybe still a little hungover, with grayish beard stubble over his puffy cheeks, he was standing apparently idle in the front yard of his house. Perhaps he was observing the somewhat unsuccessful circular planting in the middle of the yard, which surrounded a flagpole that was much too short. No flag was flying. He threw out one hand, as if he were involved in a discussion. His mouth was moving.
Sammy Nilsson placed a hand on Bodin’s arm to get him to stop. They observed Waldemar Mattsson, fifty-six years old, sole owner of more than a thousand acres, a small part of which was cultivated, the rest forest or nonarable, and a lake full of fish, married to Wendela, née Sigman, a few years younger than her husband, with two sons, Andreas and Daniel, thirty-two and twenty-six years old respectively. Together with his sons Waldemar owned three trucks, a trailer, and an unknown amount of construction machinery in a medium-sized haulage firm.
All this was in the public record. Sammy and his colleagues had routinely mapped Mattsson in connection with the school fire. He did not recall the details, but found the farmer a typical representative of a kind of arrogant citizenry in the Swedish countryside; tough, expansive, and successful, with influence in their own parish, but perhaps not too far beyond.
When the rumors that his sons had been involved in the arson started circulating, the father had laughingly dismissed all the talk. “They want to get at me” was his only comment. “The gossipmongers want to get at me.”
He was almost a caricature of a conceited estate owner, a bit reminiscent of a former prime minister. Sammy did not like him then, and there was nothing that suggested he would do so now.
“Mattsson!” he shouted. The farmer turned around.
The two policemen went up to him. “Have you gotten any sleep?”
“What the hell do you think!”
“I don’t think so,” said Sammy. “You’ve thought of course about who the woman is.”
“I have no idea.”
“And Daniel, he hasn’t been in touch?”
The farmer stared toward the driveway into the farm.
“His brother, Andreas, shouldn’t he be here?”
“Someone has to take care of the work. We’re driving for the Peab construction company, and we’re damned far behind. Then you can’t cancel just because it’s a Sunday.”
“Not even with arson?”
Mattsson did not reply.
“Why have you taken out a Winchester?”
Bodin’s question surprised Sammy, but Mattsson just sneered. A rifle was leaning against the closed lower door to the house. Sammy hadn’t seen it earlier. There you go, he thought, talk diverts attentiveness.
“Are you satisfied with it?” Bodin continued.
“We’ll have to see,” said Mattsson. “Are you a hunter?”
“I have the old model,” said Bodin.
“M70?”
Bodin nodded.
“Yes, let me tell you this,” Mattsson said, turning demonstratively toward Bodin. “In these times it’s best to be armed. You never know what’s waiting around the corner.”
“Has someone threatened you?”
“Not just me. Look around you. What does it look like?” The farmer had lowered his voice, as if he wanted to whisper a confidence. “What? Turn on the TV and it’s nothing but disasters, and now we’re importing them, as if we didn’t have enough problems of our own. Would you want that Gaddafi as a neighbor? That’s what threatens me—and you. These days those who like to move in God’s free nature can’t be secure.”
“He’s dead,” said Sammy.
“Yes, you see!”
“But…” Bodin tried to interject.
“No buts! When Wendela and I were picking mushrooms last fall,” he swept his arm out in a vague direction, “we met a whole pack of blacks. At the head of the line were two perky do-gooders. The blacks should be introduced, as they said, or whatever the hell word it was they used.”
He waited for a reaction, but when none came, he continued. “In our forest. They should be introduced! What will the next step be?”
“You have no idea at all where you son is?”
Mattsson turned around and stared at Sammy Nilsson.
“He’s an adult.”
“Your wife doesn’t either?”
“Don’t drag her into this.”
“Her son is missing, his house burned down, his girlfriend or buddy burned up inside, so she’s already dragged in.”
“When I know where he is I’ll let you know.”
Perhaps it will be the other way around, Sammy Nilsson thought, but nodded. “Do you mind if we look around the farm a bit?”
Waldemar Mattsson muttered something, turned on his heels and walked toward the house, took the steps in two quick strides, seized the Winchester with his back to the police, and lifted it with one hand in the air before he disappeared through the open door.
“The free man’s gesture,” Bodin said without an ounce of irony.
“Shane,” Sammy Nilsson answered with a grin.
“Richard Widmark,” said Bodin.
“It was Alan Ladd.”
“It’s all the same, isn’t it?”
Afterward Sammy Nilsson could understand very well how the two of them made associations to American film culture. Mattsson was “American,” it was not just the presence of the rifle and what it symbolized. There was also the narrow-minded self-importance mixed with a large measure of pride, bordering on self-satisfaction. He guarded his land, his acres and his farm, his family, his porcini mushrooms.
“What could get someone like that to change?” Bodin wondered. They were still standing on the farmyard, thoughtful about where Waldemar Severin Mattsson could be redirected. “I mean, get involved with the Red Cross, become a refugee guide, or mushroom guide, light candles for those drowned in the Mediterranean, anything at all that might refer to a life outside the village.”
“Nothing, I think. Possibly a religious conversion or a rap on the skull.”
Bodin broke their passivity by heading for what Sammy thought was a machine shed. Large doors of corrugated sheet metal rattled faintly with the slightest gust of wind. He observed his colleague. Wonder what he hunts?
They strolled almost carefree past buildings, some weathered by age, with logs on the shady side discolored by shimmering blue mold and striated pale red on the south side, and with roof tiles that had crumbled from decades of sun and rain. The doors were fastened with iron bolts inserted in crude latches, some of which surely forged in the now-destroyed smithy. Other buildings were newly constructed, and there sheet metal, aluminum, and functionality dominated. The locks were sturdy, all of the same manufacture, probably with similar locking mechanisms. It looked reasonably clean and orderly; the whole farm exuded entrepreneurial spirit and a certain measure of affluence.
Bodin moved around familiarly. It was noticeable that this was his environment. He looked around and no doubt registered details that Sammy Nilsson himself missed or simply did not understand.
“No animals,” observed Sammy, who wanted to contribute something anyway.
The survey produced absolutely nothing, in any event not anything that visibly led the investigation forward. Despite the poor outcome they wandered quietly back toward the scene of the fire. It was a lovely morning at the end of May, and they had something to think about. The closer they came, the stronger the smell of fire became, and their thoughts acquired a different, more mournful direction.
“I called for a dog,” said Bodin.
“You think there’s anything to search for?”
“There always is.”
“I think I’ll go for a drive. Maybe Lindell has something to contribute. She lives here, after all.”
“It’s okay, I’ll take care of Fido, or whatever his name might be, and his master.”
* * *
Sammy Nilsson jumped into the car and bumped back on the gravel road. He thought such a poorly laid and maintained road was strange when the farm had access to all kinds of machinery. As he turned onto the highway he peered back up toward the farm. Everything looked idyllic, the birch trunks with the rich flora at their feet, the moss-clad stones sticking up and the birdsong with calls of every type, but he knew from before that idylls often concealed atrocities. It was when humankind took possession of the landscape that everything was soiled. That was also something Bodin talked about, although in different words, and Sammy sensed more than knew that his colleague was brooding about something. In due time he would probably blurt out what this was about.
* * *
Ann Lindell was on her knees, planting flowers in a ring on the back side of the house. It was such an odd sight that Sammy observed her awhile before he coughed.
“You’ll never be a spy,” said Lindell, and he understood that she had heard him coming.
“Nice” was all he said.
“I thought Bodin and Olsen were on duty.”
“How do you know that?”
“I talked with our mutual friend Regina.”
Ann stood up and inspected the result of her work.
“She told me that Daniel Mattsson was living in the cabin and that his truck had a driving ban.”
“I didn’t know that,” Sammy said without hesitation.
“I’ve seen that pickup driving on the road all spring.”
“We found a body, a young woman.”
“What!” Lindell exclaimed. “I’ll be damned.”
Sammy could not keep from smiling.
“No trace of Daniel?” she continued.
“No, but no one seems worried. Or rather, his father, Waldemar, doesn’t seem to think that anything has happened to his son. And it bothers me that he can be so dead certain. He doesn’t know who the woman is.”
“And everything is burned up? I mean…”
“There is nothing that says anything about anything. In any case not yet. Maybe they can find something.”
“Whose bicycle is it?”
“You saw it? Don’t know. It struck me that maybe the girl came to the smithy by bike.”
“Then Waldemar ought to know who it is, if it’s a local girl who cycled to Hamra farm.”
Sammy was getting more and more pensive, but Lindell forged ahead in her good old style.
“Daniel’s minor assault in 2016, what was that about?”
He didn’t want to show Lindell that he was surprised about how well-informed she was, but instead tried to adopt an indifferent expression and tone. “A Somali that Daniel head-butted outside a sausage stand in Gimo. The boy fell badly, cutting himself on an aluminum strip. A lot of blood, but no permanent injuries.”
“More than in his skull perhaps. Wonder where he is?”
“I’ll check,” said Sammy, but he did not think this would lead anywhere. “How’s Erik doing? I heard that he was the one who called about the fire.”
“Good, I think. He slept a long time, wolfed down an early lunch, and now he’s probably sitting in front of the computer.”
“Is he going to keep playing hockey?”
“I think so. He hasn’t said anything different.”
Sammy noticed that she was pleased. He was too.
“Like before,” he said, and Lindell picked up on what he meant immediately.
“This is what I miss. When we had time.”
“You were good,” said Sammy. “But I think this is even better.”
Ann smiled and leaned down to brush off the soil from her knees.
“And there’ll be less wine now, right?” he said. She looked up, met his gaze, something that was inconceivable a couple of years ago when he brought up her drinking.
He observed her. She closed her eyes, but there was something alert, even clearly beautiful, about her face. She looked healthier than ever. The spring sun had also contributed.
“Good. The country and the cheese. The flowers.”
“The country and the cheese, and the solitude,” said Ann. “There were too many people.”
“Wrong people.”
“So it is. I missed Ottosson and Berglund, but that wasn’t decisive. It felt as if everything was running between our fingers.”
“Results weren’t good enough, in other words.”
“Yes, now a lot is being written about that, I’ve seen. Your new boss Stefansson is really going all out. The shootings are blamed, but I think it’s been in the works a long time, a kind of impoverishment.”
She pulled off her gardening gloves.
“New types of crime, new types of police,” said Sammy.
“There must be some good examples? Where the force is functional.”
“Do you know how many cars we confiscated last year?”
“How would I know that?”
“To be exact, three hundred and nineteen with connection to criminal gangs. Sentences of more than seventy years imprisonment. We’ve put a blowtorch on them. But forget about that now, what do you think, was the smithy fire set?”
“The smithy fire, is that what they’re calling it? Yes, it was. But now I want a glass of Chablis. Sit down in the hammock and rock a little, but don’t fall asleep, I want to tell you something.”
He obeyed, curious about what she had to tell. After ten minutes she showed up again. She had changed her shirt, from a big checked one, perhaps Edvard had left it behind sometime, to a white, ironed, secretarial one with starched collar, a choice that surprised him. The stained work pants had been replaced by a pair of skinny jeans. She had clearly lost weight, he noticed.
She sat down beside him, a glass in hand. A scent of soap and perfume, she’d had time to shower too.
She raised the glass, took a mouthful, and then resumed her line of reasoning about the fire. “It’s not by chance that there are fires in the same village in the course of a few months. And what is the common denominator?”
“Daniel Mattsson,” he said, like a compliant schoolboy.
“Exactly, that’s the circumstance that makes me distrust chance. Find that young man, you’ve solved the whole thing. Maybe. It depends on Daniel’s specific gravity. Another thing: Can you check whether there was anyone from outside the village at the New Year’s party, buddies of Daniel and the other local talents?”
“What are you thinking?”
“Just an idea,” said Lindell.
“Partygoers who perhaps are not that loyal to the village, you mean?”
“Something like that.”
Sammy did not get a chance to expand on that as his phone rang just then. He answered. It was Bodin.
“We’ve found him. Dead.”
“Daniel?”
Lindell looked puzzled while Bodin told him that it didn’t take Freja more than ten minutes to nose him up. That it was Daniel Mattsson was probably the most likely.
“Who the hell is Freja?”
He got out of the hammock, while Lindell took another sip.
“‘Fido’ was a bitch,” sai
d Bodin. “The body was lying squeezed between a couple of boulders, hard to get to. I did say that it’s a difficult terrain.”
“Someone else’s handiwork?”
Lindell looked at him. He thought he saw something expectant, even ravenous, in her face.
“Yes, you can easily say that. It seems like a sharp object was poked into one eye.”
“Listen,” said Sammy Nilsson. “Now we have to get the big machinery going. I’m coming over. Will you call Stefansson?”
He clicked off.
“Albin Daniel Severin Mattsson’s specific gravity is falling, I understand.”
Sammy nodded in response, already on his way. Suddenly he cursed himself, why had he so willingly volunteered on a free Sunday? He recounted what Bodin had told him.
“Holy shit,” he exclaimed. “I’m the one who has to have the talk with the awful farmer and his wife.” But he regretted it at once. “Excuse me, they have actually lost a son.”
Lindell extended a hand in a calming gesture. Erik had come out of his cabin. Maybe he’d heard Sammy’s outburst.
“Now there’s both arson and murder,” Lindell said.
“What?”
“I’ll tell you,” she said, putting her arm around Erik.
Sammy stopped. “Yes, exactly, you were going to tell me something?”
“We’ll deal with that later,” said Lindell. “I’ll know more tomorrow.”
Thirteen
“You understand, he was my son.”
The big hands, marked by labor, rested on the garden table. His hair stood on end, his eyes beyond all rescue, his face heavy, not to say destroyed, from fatigue. Waldemar Mattsson had explained that he could not be inside for more than a short time, he felt like he was suffocating indoors.
“My son.”
Sammy Nilsson observed the farmer. Gone was the arrogance, gone the forceful impression.
“I’m sorry,” said Sammy.
“What is it worth?” said Waldemar, raising one hand in a feeble gesture. Sammy sensed that this was about the farm, perhaps about life as such.
“I was proud.”
He got up, but remained standing in front of the table, as if he was giving a speech. “You, the hunter,” he said, turning to Bodin. “You know. That feeling on an early autumn morning, there is silence, no birds are in motion, most of them have flown away or are busy fattening up, the morning chill is nothing because you’re dressed to meet the mist over the clearing, and you have coffee in your thermos. Maybe you’ve had a shot, but only one. Everything is familiar, I mean, you recognize everything so well. It’s home. Nothing more is needed. You don’t need anything else.”
The Night of the Fire Page 8