The almost physical sensation that time simply passed, running away at an ever-faster tempo, came to her again, this constantly recurring feeling. As if everything was in vain, all conviction, all the goals she had set up and struggled to achieve. “Then you have to water.” “Claptrap” was a word she had inherited. Everything is just claptrap, her father’s humorless and self-abasing phrase. “Then you have to mound.” Yes, but what then? Then and then! I want to mound now! She turned around, picked up the phone and pressed “Send” on the message, opened the pantry, took out a glass and bottle but felt such terror that she was incapable of pouring the wine. It was as if the bottle had taken on a life of its own, it shook in her hand, and the glass fell out of her other hand and shattered. She took a deep breath, breathed slowly, closed her eyes, did as she was told by the woman at the clinic that she’d gone to two years ago. There were so many methods, five steps, twelve steps or however many there were, to get over, go past, move forward. She breathed until the oxygen around her was used up. That was her method.
* * *
The hammock received her, gave her the movement she craved, sent her thoughts like arrows in all directions. They struck apple trees, the fence, gables, Erik’s cabin, woodpiles, and sheds. Everything was here. Don’t skimp. Hold on. Pick up the pieces. Shower away the anxiety, let the pheromones work, waken him from miles away, lure him to you like a moth to the twilight lamp.
Get dressed! Now in size 38! Get dressed. Undress! She pushed with her feet and the hammock got renewed speed. Surround yourself with scents. Let summer come, open everything wide, air out the room, let the wind fill the rooms with the smell of yellow bedstraw and honeysuckle. Get drunk, have a third glass! Breathe in. Breathe out. Mound the potatoes. Let his hands cup themselves around you, dampen you. Breathe out. Live a little longer. Caress him. Give him all the love that’s built up, let the floodgates burst.
She put a hand on her left breast. The nipple was stiff under the bleached fabric of her shirt.
* * *
“Sammy!” She heard for herself how that sounded, challenging like at an agility class for puppies.
“Yes, my dear.”
“Are you drunk?”
“Are you?”
“Knock it off. Finally you answer. I’ve been thinking about something. What makes a man get out of bed in the middle of the night and get in the car to drive forty kilometers?”
“I understand. I’ve researched the subject, if I may say so. Therese couldn’t give a reasonable explanation, there was nothing that Andreas had said that would explain it. He had basically been distracted and absent that evening, but no more than that.”
“Love and jealousy,” said Lindell. “That can explain it. Think about it, a lot of other things you can think away, sleep away, drink away, but if you’re possessed by jealousy it sits deep, you don’t get rid of the thorn that easily.”
“You mean that he was still in love with Lovisa?”
“It’s not for certain, you can be jealous anyway. We know that he talked with his brother that evening. Therese said that, didn’t she? Andreas knew that Daniel wouldn’t be going with his parents to Stavby, and maybe Daniel told him that Lovisa would be coming to visit at the smithy. Maybe he said that just to annoy Andreas, some kind of competition between them.”
“And when he was tossing and turning in bed with Therese, he couldn’t stand it any longer, but instead felt he had to go and check, is that what you mean?”
“Something like that,” said Lindell, who had no problem whatsoever picturing it all. “Unreasonableness wins over logic.”
“Why did he take Therese’s car?”
Sammy’s question remained unanswered, even though there was only one reasonable explanation. Lindell felt how she was running on idle. As long as you couldn’t show that Andreas had actually been at the scene, there was nothing to move ahead with, which Sammy no doubt also realized.
In that way the call ended itself. Ann had unconsciously walked around the property several times. Now she was standing by the potato patch, staring at her phone. Why snoop? it struck her. You’ve left that behind.
* * *
Right before the regular news broadcast was about to begin, Bertil Efraimsson came slowly walking across the road. It was actually the first time, besides during Astrid’s party, that Ann had seen him outside his own property. It struck her how homebound he must be. She had seen Gösta out on all kinds of errands, often with his little cart where he stored his tools. Bertil didn’t go anywhere, people came to him and his workshop.
Bertil took his sweet time, and he walked slower and slower the closer he came to her driveway. There he stopped. Ann could observe him from the outdoor shower. She had just cleaned up after a brief but intensive duel in the garden. She had carted away excess stones from a failed attempt to build a rockery; it most resembled a distended fruitcake with stones sticking out like raisins. She had never seen a more unnatural structure. Now she had picked away the stones. The work had done her good. She had released her thoughts about bombs and arson. Now she would be reminded without having to turn on the TV.
The gravel crunched under his feet. Halfway to the house he shouted out a “hello.” Ann stepped out. If you were fifteen, twenty years younger, Bertil was a thought that flickered past.
“Am I disturbing?”
“Not at all.”
She went up to meet him, pointed at the hammock but changed her mind when she noticed that it was in the shade. A pale evening sun was still shining over the back side of the house, and she piloted him there. He said something complimentary about the flowers. They sat down. He turned down coffee.
“Reason,” she said, getting right to the point. “You said that we could reason together.”
“I have to confess something,” said Bertil. “Perhaps I’ve made myself guilty of an earthly crime, and that may have happened. What’s worse perhaps is that…” He fell silent. Ann waited. She could sense his indecisiveness and tension.
“Omid, the missing boy, stayed with me for a couple of months. I hid him.”
“The cousin of the one who froze to death?”
Bertil turned his face up, breathing in air through his aquiline nose, as if to gather strength. Then the whole story came out. Ann chose not to interrupt with questions, but instead waited until he was finished.
“He disappeared a day before the fire in the smithy, you say? Did he set it?”
“No,” said Bertil, but without the customary force in his voice.
“Where is he now?”
“No idea.”
“Have you talked with Sammy about this?”
“Only with Gösta, that was the other day, and Astrid knew that the boy was with me. And now you know. Soon the weekly paper will be writing about it.”
He gave her a crooked smile. She wanted him to leave. She had all the information, now she needed to think in peace and quiet. Bertil stood up hesitantly, as if there were still things to add.
Ann followed him with her gaze until he rounded the corner of the cottage. She perceived his smile as false, even if she was convinced that he had an honest intent. But it was nonetheless a church smile, a mildly indulgent, slightly dismissive, smile.
* * *
She had missed the news broadcast and checked the latest developments on the internet instead. No progress in the investigation was reported, but that didn’t have to mean a thing. She tried to imagine the activity going on in both Stockholm and Uppsala, but without any success, she knew too little about the approaches and ideas that applied in her former colleagues’ hunt.
Sammy’s phone was busy. She left a voice message that briefly relayed what her neighbor had just said.
Thirty-Nine
Tuesday started with a gentle spring rain. It was over in twenty minutes, but the freshness it brought with it seemed to have affected everyone at the creamery. Even Anton looked energized.
Matilda and Ann helped turn cheeses in the ripening room. It
was physical labor, work that Ann liked, the smell, the coolness, the rows of magnificent cheeses. She was still fascinated by the massiveness of their rounded forms and the silent sequence that slowly but surely changed the consistency, color, and taste. There were no guarantees in which direction the process would go. Mostly it went as calculated, but sometimes something unexpected happened. Not even two such experienced dairy people as Matilda and Anders could be absolutely certain.
Ann wanted to talk about what had happened, both in Tilltorp and in Hökarängen, but Matilda had made it clear that she wasn’t interested. That was the advantage of going to a job completely separate from what had occupied her thoughts the past few days. The police officer in her had to give way to the mysteries and labors of cheese making. And that did her good.
She worked a half day and could go home at lunch. That had been decided a few weeks ago, her new slimmed-down schedule. Matilda had apologized and said it was temporary, but Ann was worried that it was the start of even more reductions. The creamery’s products were doing well, but the investments had been major, the payments heavy, and now they needed to expand further. “I don’t want to, but Anders says it’s necessary. It seems as if this kind of small-scale operation isn’t sustainable. And now, if we’re going to start selling in Finland, maybe it’s needed.” Ann knew that Anders was in Holland to buy more equipment, among other things a new cheese vat was on the wish list.
On her way home she thought about Matilda’s words. It worried her; she didn’t want to lose that job for anything in the world. What would she do then? And it was so close, just over five hundred steps. She could no longer imagine having to get in the car and drive for miles every day to work.
Sebastian Ottosson was perched on a scaffold, scraping paint. Ann stopped by his mailbox. She raised the lid carefully; nothing in the box. He pretended not to see her but instead continued working. The flakes were dancing.
“It will be nice!” she shouted. Sebastian lowered the scraper and turned toward her. She understood that he was trying to evaluate her words, what they stood for.
“We need milk at the creamery. When will you start with the goats?”
He climbed down and went up to her; only the gate separated them.
“Has Anders talked about that, about milk?”
“Of course,” said Ann. “Milk and cheese are all we talk about. Get going with goats!”
He shifted his feet.
“Are you alone? No one to help you?”
He cast a glance toward the house. “Not today.” She suspected that he was lying, because an older car was parked by the back of the house. She didn’t recognize the make, but out of habit memorized the license plate number.
“I’m going to put up a fence next week,” he said. “I’ve already bought a tribe, in any case the start of one.”
“Have you worked with goats before?”
“In Sörmland, when … there was a job I got, or I lived there, you know…”
There was something tormented about Sebastian Ottosson, something unexpressed. He gave her a quick glance. “Granddad believed in it, the goats that is.”
Ann wondered where his parents were. Had he been placed on a goat farm in Sörmland? Could she ask? No. Would she check on that some other way? No.
“I talked with Anders and Matilda, but they didn’t know. Have they talked with you about buying milk from me?”
“They have a lot going on now, but sure, they need more milk. Now we only work with cow’s milk, and goat’s milk would be a good addition.”
He looked toward the creamery, then gave her a quick glance, as if to figure out if she was serious.
“You live here in the village, your family is from here. I came here recently, but we have to get along, don’t we?”
He nodded mechanically without any great empathy. For a moment Ann had the idea that he agreed simply because in the future he wanted to sell milk, as if she could decide that. To check his reaction she told him about the harassment and the threats she’d received, the doves in the mailbox and the piece of wood through the window. The badger too, but not that it was in her bed, that felt too embarrassing.
“Who’s behind it?”
“I don’t know.”
They observed one another. She believed his quiet denial.
“I think it was Stefan, your buddy. And he was probably involved in setting fire to the school too. He’s not a good person. You’ll live here with your goats. Good. I’ll walk past here on my way to the creamery and see to it that the milk becomes good cheese, and for many years at that. Good. You have to choose who your friends will be.”
“It’s cool,” he said while his increasingly stressed appearance contradicted that message. Ann waited, but when he remained silent she said goodbye and left.
* * *
The first thing she did was to check on the car on Sebastian’s property. It was an Alfa Romeo, a model unfamiliar to Ann, registered to a certain Rasmus Rönn. She ought to have been more surprised, but it was as if the information only confirmed what she had already taken for granted, that everything fit together.
“Take your fucking goats,” she mumbled and felt her mental blood pressure rising, a feeling of equal parts disappointment and fury. Was Rasmus in Thailand, as Sammy had said, or in Tilltorp, which the car suggested? Rasmus, an ugly name besides, like a treacherous cocker spaniel.
She sent a message to Sammy about the Alfa, then placed herself in the therapeutic outdoor shower, after which she sat down with her new diversion maneuver, a pitcher of lemon water with a lot of ice, which she pretended was a discolored sangria. She sipped and thought, but shoved aside everything that had to do with creamery or murder. “Dubrovnik,” she said quietly. She knew inside that Edvard could imagine coming along, while she could also hear him say something about work, that it was crucial to be available during the summer, the summer guests on Gräsö always needed help, and they paid well. Was he a bore? She, and her girlfriends, had asked that question for all these years. The answer was an unambiguous “yes.” Even so she’d loved him, and thereby blocked everything and everyone, gave up several possibilities to seriously get to know other men, men who would not hesitate for a second to go to the Adriatic coast or Trinidad, or anywhere at all. Romantic men, talkative men, lighthearted men. There were such men, weren’t there?
No, it had been Edvard who counted. A masochistic attitude. But loving a bore must say quite a bit about herself, right? She didn’t want to complete that thought. Could he change? She really wanted to believe that he could, not least after his latest visit, when he had demonstrated a kind of newfound levity.
She sent a text message, told him about Croatia. It felt as if she was making an ultimatum, even though in no way could that be read in the short message.
Forty
“Congestion tax,” Stolpe said with a grin. “Do you know how many entries there are into Stockholm in May?”
“Over forty million,” Sammy answered immediately.
“I think I got there before our Stockholm colleagues, but it wasn’t easy to get the Transport Agency to move their asses.”
“Who passed?”
“You exaggerated a bit, but there are over eight million entries. They take in more than a hundred and forty million in tax in May alone, did you know that?”
“Naturally,” said Sammy.
“Seven hundred thousand decisions are going to be made on tax, one of which applies to our friend Rönn. He doesn’t even know about it yet.”
“When, last Saturday?”
“Congestion tax isn’t charged on Saturdays.”
“When?”
Sammy felt his irritation growing, against his will however, because he had no problem identifying Stolpe’s satisfied expression. Sometimes things cruised ahead, and then even a simple detective inspector must get to savor it.
“Monday, May twenty-eighth, at five thirty-eight P.M., at the Kristineberg interchange.”
“How did y
ou manage, or did you threaten someone at the Transport Agency?”
“I took a chance that he drove in the NCC car. They have some kind of company agreement, don’t ask me how it works, but it facilitated the search. Now we’ll go ahead and check backward.”
“When did he drive back?”
“That we don’t know. The fees don’t apply in the evening, but I know that he worked the following day.”
Stolpe got up from the chair, hoisting his pants up over his bulging abdomen. Sammy thought he reminded him of some movie character from the forties. He grinned.
“Of course, sometimes things fall into place,” said Stolpe.
“And now you’re going to pick him up from the prison hole?”
“It’s already done. He’s been sitting in room five for at least half an hour. Now he wants a lawyer, and one’s on their way in. Will you be there?”
Sammy considered for a moment but declined. He didn’t want to see Rönn ground down, so that was enough.
“I’m going out to Tilltorp,” he said. “Little brother Rönn’s car is there.”
“You see” was Stolpe’s insipid comment, before he took in what Sammy had said. He looked up. “We’ll probably get to have a damned beer sometime.”
“That we will,” said Sammy.
“Are you going alone? Bodin, then?”
“He’s checking Rönn’s contact network in his phone and computer.”
“How are things on the home front?” Stolpe removed his jacket from the chair and pulled it on in a surprisingly smooth motion.
There was clearly talk in the building. Sammy forced himself to smile. He wasn’t particularly surprised but a little disappointed at Stolpe’s insensitivity, and he left his colleague with mixed emotions.
* * *
As he headed northeast from Uppsala in his new, leisurely driving style, thoughts of Berglund, his old colleague, returned. Perhaps there was a connection, his driving style and what Violent Crimes looked like ten or fifteen years ago. Old man thinking leads to old man driving, he thought, glancing in the rearview mirror and seeing half a dozen cars behind him. When the road opened up to two lanes all of them breezed past him, and a couple of the drivers gave him a look.
The Night of the Fire Page 26