“Death threats?” Ottosson exclaimed. “That’s going a bit far.”
“That’s how he understands it all,” said Allan Fredriksson, scratching the back of his head for the third time.
“Do you have lice?” asked Sammy Nilsson.
Ann Lindell grinned and scratched herself in a motion that was supposed to resemble a monkey. This happened behind Fredriksson’s back but he whirled around, as if he sensed that some mischief was going on.
“Nice, very entertaining,” he said sarcastically.
Lindell gave him a nudge in the side.
“Okay,” she said, “a skull in the mailbox.”
“Plus a stone thrown the other day,” said Fredriksson, waving a piece of paper. “And then quite a few articles in the newspaper. Today the Uppsala paper had something and evidently Aktuellt ran a feature yesterday.”
“But death threats?” said Ottosson again.
It was noticeable that he wanted to set the whole thing aside, send the case right back to the uniformed police.
“Wohlin is very definite,” Fredriksson continued. “This is still a Nobel Prize winner, an aristocratic professor we’re dealing with.”
Agne Wohlin had the title of superintendent and was a new star at the Uppsala Police Department. No one liked him, as you instinctively disliked newcomers, superintendents, and people from Dalsland. This last item Sammy Nilsson had added, no one really understood why. He had never spoken badly about Dalslanders before. There were no doubt few at Homicide who knew anyone from Dalsland, or could even point out the province on a map.
“This is a case for the uniformed police,” said Sammy. “They can post a couple of bluecoats there, then it will be calm.”
“Wohlin wants us to investigate the threat pattern.”
“Something for SePo,” Sammy attempted.
“Us,” Fredriksson repeated.
Not me, thought Lindell, but that was exactly what Ottosson decided.
“Ann, you can handle the poor folks in Kåbo, drive out there and talk with the old man.”
“But don’t go down in the cellar,” said Fredriksson.
A number of years earlier Ann Lindell had investigated a series of murders in the countryside outside Uppsala and then had reason to visit a villa in Kåbo, a visit that almost cost her her life. Since then she had not set foot in the area.
“I suppose it’s the same block?”
“Don’t think so,” said Fredriksson, “although it is the same street.”
Both of them seemed strangely unaware of the effect the talk about Kåbo had on her. Perhaps they thought she had left it behind her, but sometimes she still woke up at night, drenched in sweat, in her dreams transported back to a burning inferno.
Sammy put an arm around her shoulders.
“I’ll go along,” he said, pulling her away from a nodding Ottosson and a wildly scratching Fredriksson.
“What the hell can it be?” was the last thing Lindell heard Fredriksson say.
“Something is rotten in Denmark,” Sammy observed in the elevator going down.
Lindell did not bother to ask what he meant. The whole morning had been slightly absurd. If she was to ask about everything she thought was strange she would not get anything else done.
Lindell assumed that the professor did not want uniformed police officers running around in his home, but still! It would be enough if Superintendent Wohlin went there himself, presented all his credentials in his most charming Dalarna dialect, and calmed the old man down, then everything would work out for the best.
“Was it Dalarna?”
“Dalsland,” said Sammy.
As they drove out of the garage and up onto the Råby highway she told about her nightmare, which included everything from scratching rats and rotting corpses to smoke and consuming fire. She had not even talked about this with Brant, even though he was the one who was occasionally subjected to her nocturnal anxiety.
She realized while she was talking that she was being subjected to Ottosson’s solicitude; for therapeutic reasons he simply wanted her to be confronted with the sight of the imposing villas and relive the events from that time, thinking that this would get her started, get her to talk. And it had succeeded beyond all expectations. She unburdened her mind, put words to the torments even before they arrived in Kåbo.
And Sammy was the right person for her to confide in. They were getting along better than ever. Lindell had even socialized a bit during the fall with the Nilsson family.
And there were not too many others to choose from, in a squad that was in the process of falling apart. Ottosson had announced that he would retire at the end of the year, withdraw to his cabin in Jumkil. Berglund had already quit, Haver was on long-term sick leave and would most likely not come back, and a couple of days ago Beatrice Andersson had dropped a bomb: she was going to get a divorce, resign, and move to Skåne. She had met a man, a farmer from the Östra Sönnarslöv area, and was going to “start over.” It sounded like she was presenting a package from some agency, with forms, start-up subsidies, and follow-up.
“How the hell do you meet someone from Skåne?” Sammy Nilsson had asked.
“Through the Farmers Cooperative newsletter,” Ottosson speculated.
“What’s wrong with farmers?” Fredriksson hissed.
“I was talking about Skåne,” said Nilsson, who was known for his almost racist attitude toward people from that province.
And clearly Dalsland had now also fallen into disfavor.
* * *
Ann Lindell hardly knew her way around the block west of Villavägen and she sensed that the terror she had felt five years ago had erased many of the memories. Where the Hindersten villa had once stood there was now a newly constructed, functionalism-inspired house.
“That time it was an associate professor, now it’s a professor,” said Sammy Nilsson with a smile. “Does that mean that—”
“We have both an associate professor and a professor,” Lindell interrupted. “A neighbor is an associate professor and he’s the one who’s the villain in the drama, our Nobel Prize winner thinks.”
“What do you mean? Is he the one who’s threatening the professor’s life?”
Lindell shrugged.
“We’ll just have to see,” she said in a tone that expressed her understanding of their mission.
In front of the house was a van from the local radio station and a couple of other cars.
“Journalists,” Sammy moaned, “and then you’re along. This is going to be really amusing.”
They stopped behind the van. The journalist they already recognized, Göte Bengtsson. He was one of the fixtures on local radio.
When Lindell got out of the car he was standing on the sidewalk, with a wry smile. Dressed in a large parka, he looked like a shaggy bear.
“Reception committee,” Lindell observed.
Göte Bengtsson nodded. He had a disarming talent for looking uninterested, a little disheveled and borderline indifferent, as if he had just been wakened and sent out on an assignment that barely intrigued him. But Lindell did not let herself be fooled.
“I see, Nobel Prize,” he began grandiosely.
In the corner of her eye Lindell saw one of his colleagues approach. In the background a photographer could be seen.
“Personnel shortage,” said Lindell, trying to put on an embarrassed but at the same time bored expression. The journalist, however, did not seem convinced.
“He’s still alive,” said Bengtsson, who knew very well what kind of cases she worked with normally.
“You are too,” said Sammy Nilsson, who had joined them on the sidewalk and now voluntarily took on the task of trying to disarm Bengtsson’s colleagues. He went up to them.
“Is this a new initiative, a kind of preventive activity from the homicide squad?” Bengtsson asked.
Lindell was cold and wished she had a parka too.
“Stylish shack,” she said. “No, we’re allocated here by quota, to get an idea of how the social cases in Kåbo are doing.”
It was not a particularly funny remark, but Bengtsson smiled.
“I had a chat with our prize winner,” he said. “He was extremely outspoken.”
“That’s nice,” said Lindell with a smile. “Then you don’t need me.”
“A little later perhaps?” said Bengtsson.
Lindell nodded and smiled again.
Bengtsson smiled back, turned his head, and saw how Sammy Nilsson was backing away from the journalists with a dismissive gesture.
“Karnehagen from Aftonbladet,” said Bengtsson, “and a new star from Expressen.”
“Do you have any coffee with you?”
Bengtsson nodded toward his van.
Lindell, Bengtsson, and Nilsson then had their coffee in peace and quiet, talking about this and that, and Bengtsson’s impending retirement.
On the sidewalk outside was the tabloid press.
* * *
“There are no excuses for the laxity you have shown. Two uniformed policemen came here and then nothing happens.”
“What should we have done, do you think?” asked Sammy Nilsson. “Cordoned off the block, called in the marines?”
They had talked for ten minutes with Bertram von Ohler and both police officers felt they had no business being there.
The professor stared at Nilsson.
“Perhaps we can speak with your … employee,” said Lindell.
“Why is that?”
“Perhaps she has seen or heard something of interest?”
“And what would that be?”
Lindell smiled. Nobel Prize winner, she thought.
“I don’t want you to worry Agnes, she is extremely sensitive.”
* * *
Agnes Andersson did not look at all worried. She was sitting straight-backed on the other side of the gigantic kitchen table, her hands folded in front of her. She mostly resembled an aged confirmand who was waiting for a question from Bible history. A question that she knew in advance and would manage splendidly.
“What an amazing kitchen,” said Lindell, “so well organized.”
“Thank you,” said Agnes.
Lindell let her eyes sweep again over the walls and cabinets.
“How long have you worked here?”
“Fifty-five years. I came here in 1953.”
There was something familiar about Agnes Andersson, thought Lindell. Had they met previously?
“As a young girl,” Lindell noted, inspecting the woman before her a little more carefully.
How old could she be? Over seventy, at a guess. The protruding eyes looked fixedly at Lindell.
“Before, there was more to do,” said Agnes, “and then there were more of us too. Now it’s just the professor and me.”
“But you can’t very well clean the whole house yourself?”
“Oh yes, but three times a year my sister comes and helps out. At Christmas, in May when the apple trees are blooming, and now in the fall.”
Lindell tried to imagine what it would be like to vacuum, dust, and mop fourteen rooms and kitchen, but couldn’t. Just polishing all the copper forms that were hanging on the walls must take at least a week.
“My sister likes apple blossoms very much,” the woman added.
Lindell tried to imagine what it might be like to have a sister who liked apple blossoms, but couldn’t do that either.
“You must be a strong woman,” said Lindell unexpectedly.
Agnes Andersson moved her head almost imperceptibly.
“I’ll take a look in the garden,” said Sammy, slipping out the kitchen door without waiting for any comment from Lindell.
“I mean, to run a household of this size basically alone.”
“I’m used to it,” said Agnes.
Lindell smiled, and to her surprise the woman answered with a smile.
“The professor must have quite a few guests too.”
“Not anymore. He wants to take it a little easier.”
“What do you think about what happened? I mean the stone-throwing and then the threat in the mailbox this morning.”
“What should one think?” Agnes replied after a few seconds of reflection. “If you ask me I think it’s just some rowdy kids, schoolboy pranks.”
“Have there been threatening phone calls too?”
“Not that I know,” said Agnes, and for the first time during the conversation she looked a trifle uncertain.
“You haven’t noticed anything unusual recently?”
Agnes shook her head. Just then it occurred to her what made Agnes Andersson so familiar. It was the dialect she didn’t really manage to conceal. Fifty-five years in Uppsala had rubbed off most of it but like a shadow from the past the Gräsö dialect was there.
“You weren’t born in Uppsala, were you?”
“Gräsö,” said Agnes.
Lindell wanted to ask if she knew Viola, but refrained. Obviously she knew Viola, probably everyone did on Gräsö, just like everyone knew, or knew of, Munkargrundarn and other features on the island.
Viola, whom she had gotten to know through Edvard Risberg, the man she met during a murder investigation ten years ago. He had gotten a divorce, moved to Gräsö, rented the top floor of Viola’s old archipelago homestead, and he and Ann had started a relationship. Later, when she got pregnant with another man, the relationship fell apart. The biggest mistake of her life, she might think, always with a bad conscience, as her son Erik was her great joy. But Erik would have been Edvard’s too, that was a thought Ann could not let go of and suffered from. One night’s lack of judgment and she was punished by losing the man she loved so deeply.
She knew that she would never experience that passion again. Edvard was there like a thorn in her heart. She had talked with Anders Brant about him, but always in that relaxed way you are expected to do where old relationships are concerned. Perhaps he understood anyway that he could never fully replace Edvard?
Reminded about Viola by Agnes’s dialect, however faint, was to travel along a painful path. It was like looking out through a train window and reliving a beautiful, familiar landscape but not being given the opportunity to stop and get out and experience it close up once again. She would never be able to sleep with Edvard again. Never feel him cuddle up next to her. Never hear Viola rummaging in the kitchen on the ground floor, making morning coffee and sandwiches for her and Edvard.
Agnes was observing her. Ann felt caught and made an effort to come back to the present.
“Can you imagine anyone who wishes the professor harm?”
“That would be Bunde then, the neighbor,” said Agnes, tossing her head. “He’s the one who has an article in Upsala Nya today. The associate professor, he lives one house over, is probably not too pleased with the professor, but he wouldn’t hurt a fly. He’s a man of peace. He’s the one who has the high tower you see. He grows olives and a lot of other things.”
Ann turned her head and through the window she glimpsed a glass cupola. She knew that the associate professor had been a colleague of Bertram von Ohler. The professor had pointed out the associate professor as the instigator of the article in the newspaper, and that although Torben Bunde wrote it, that did not affect the matter. The associate professor was surely behind the skull in the mailbox too, Ohler thought.
Lindell had not read the article that Agnes was talking about, not even noticed it when she quickly leafed through the newspaper that morning. It was Göte Bengtsson who mentioned it and said that it actually did not add anything new, and was more an account of what was being said in Germany and other places. Bunde was well informed according to Bengtsson and unusually temperate, but could not keep from slipping in a few spiteful remarks in the last paragraph about what a duck pond Sweden was, and in an ingenious way Bunde made Professor von Ohler a victim of provincial narrow-mindedness. Being known at a regional hospital in Sweden does not necessarily mean that you should be rewarded with the Nobel Prize, he had concluded.
Bengtsson had pointed out where the author of the article lived and Ann Lindell had on several occasions seen a face visible in the windows.
“A real wasp’s nest,” she let out.
Agnes smiled carefully.
“And then we have the Germans,” she continued, and Lindell saw how the old woman was becoming increasingly exhilarated, her eyes glistened, her hands came up from the table and she underscored each word with cautious gestures.
“The Germans have never liked the professor. And vice versa.”
She told about the article that had been published in some German magazine and how the professor had become hopping mad, first carrying on “like a brigand,” then collapsing on the library couch, stunned and silent, barely responsive.
“I was worried for a while, thought about calling his daughter. He is an old man after all and his heart can give out at any time.”
Lindell nodded as if she completely understood Agnes’s analysis.
“But perhaps Birgitta would make everything worse,” said Agnes in a gruff voice.
There was something of Viola in the woman. Perhaps some kind of female Gräsö gene? The thought amused Lindell and she smiled carefully.
“There are two sons too, I’ve understood.”
Agnes smacked her lips.
“Abraham and Carl,” she said. “I watched them grow up. I shined their shoes.”
Lindell let the words sink in before she continued.
“Perhaps you’ll think I’m impertinent, but what is he like as an employer?”
“I take care of myself,” said Agnes.
“But the professor too, right?”
“That may be,” Agnes replied, and Lindell did not know what she should believe, whether the gruffness was directed at her or at the professor.
She heard voices from the yard and thought she could identify Sammy’s, but was not sure.
“I should thank you,” she said.
“It was nothing,” said Agnes, getting up.
Lindell did the same. They remained standing a moment on each side of the table.
“I’ll use the kitchen exit, like my associate. Maybe I can take a few apples?”
Agnes rounded the table, opened a drawer, and took out a plastic bag which she gave to Lindell.
“You probably know that Viola is not well,” Agnes said suddenly, when Lindell was standing with her hand on the doorknob.
She stared at Agnes.
“How did you know—”
“My sister Greta keeps track of everything,” Agnes explained.
“You knew that I—”
“You’re the police officer from Uppsala who associated with Edvard, yes. I recognized your name. I’ve known Viola my whole life. I’ve met Edvard too. A good person.”
Lindell bowed her head and got an impulse to hide her face with the plastic bag.
“She’s very weak,” said Agnes. “Greta went to see her yesterday. Viola doesn’t want to go to the hospital. Edvard will be with her. He’s like a son.”
Lindell nodded, incapable of saying anything.
“I’ll call Greta and tell her that you send greetings to Viola,” Agnes decided.
“Thanks,” whispered Lindell. “I didn’t know.”
She opened the door and stepped out into the garden. The wind took hold of the plastic bag and it fluttered away before it got stuck on a branch.
Lindell saw Sammy Nilsson standing by the boundary of the lot talking with a man in the neighboring yard. Laughter was heard. It was Sammy’s specialty, easy talk while at the same time taking in a little information.
Ann pulled down the bag, hesitated before the various apples. There were yellow-green oblong ones, another variety was bright red, while a third was blotchy and vaguely conical. She was enticed by the red ones, reached out and picked a few.
She filled the whole bag with a mixture of each variety, before she stopped. She was actually at work and was surely being observed by the neighbors. She set down the bag, leaning it against a trunk, and went over to Sammy.
The man he was conversing with was red-cheeked and actually somewhat red-eyed too. Lindell suspected that it was because the wind on this side of the house was blowing firmly.
“Now I know everything about spruce needles,” said Sammy.
Lindell did not understand what he meant and had no desire to know either, but she nodded toward the man on the other side of the fence. He nodded back and gave her a long look, as if he recognized her but could not place the face.
“Shall we get going?”
“Nice to meet you,” said Sammy, and Lindell was getting mortally tired of all the heartiness.
“Perhaps we have to talk a little with the associate professor too,” she said irritated when they had walked a few meters.
“What’s with you? Was she surly, the domestic servant?”
“Not at all,” Lindell said.
“My old man was almost pure sunshine,” said Sammy.
“That’s nice. Did he have anything to offer? What do you mean, almost?”
“He said that he knew of the professor, but no more than that. But then he said something that made me wonder, that Ohler has always been an oppressor, vermin. Those are really strong words.”
“Agnes knows Viola and Edvard on Gräsö,” said Lindell.
“I’ll be damned! It’s a small world.”
“Gräsö is small,” said Lindell.
“I wonder what he meant by vermin?”
“Viola is really ill.”
“Go out and see her then,” said Sammy thoughtlessly.
Yes, maybe I should do that, she thought. She would probably be happy. I’m sure I would cry the whole time and Viola would be the one who would have to console.
“Shall we go see the associate professor?”
Sammy nodded and cast a glance backward, before they rounded the corner of the house. Yet another car was now parked on the street.
“We’ll have to bring Moberg here,” said Sammy.
Anthony Moberg was a particularly zealous traffic cop, with zero social skills and the one who used the most parking ticket forms in the whole department, perhaps in the whole country.
“Shall we see the associate professor?” Lindell repeated in such an expressionless voice that Sammy stopped and turned toward her.
“Forget about Gräsö now,” he said, without being able to conceal his irritation.
“Okay, I’ll cheer up,” said Lindell, giving him a crooked smile. “It’s just such a shock to be reminded.”
“Shock,” muttered Sammy Nilsson, but he seemed appeased and jogged over toward the journalists who now were thronging by the gate in full force, except for Bengtsson.
“We’ll do the phone trick,” he mumbled.
He opened the gate and smiled at the assembled press.
“Ann Lindell will tell you a little,” he said, slinking off.
She swept her eyes over the flock before she started to perform her spiel.
“Yes, as you know we have received reports that Professor von Ohler has been subjected to a number of villainies”—where did she get that word from?—“and because he has received so much attention, both in Sweden and abroad, in connection with the Nobel Prize, we obviously take seriously—”
“What does Professor von Ohler think about this?” asked Liselott Karnehagen, the woman from Aftonbladet, taking out her pocket recorder.
“What does he think?”
Karnehagen nodded eagerly.
“You’ll have to ask him that,” said Lindell.
At the same moment a shrill whistle was heard. They all turned around. Sammy was standing by the associate professor’s gate gesturing. With exaggerated movements he pointed at his cell phone.
“Excuse me,” said Lindell, pushing her way forward, “evidently there’s a call I have to take.”
She set off at a rapid pace and reached the associate professor’s gate before the throng of journalists realized what had happened. Göte Bengtsson started his van and rolled off, giving a thumb’s-up as he passed Lindell and Nilsson.
* * *
“Associate Professor Gregor Johansson,” Lindell noted on her pad, and it struck her that he was the first associate professor she had spoken with. The one she had encountered previously was in a state of decomposition.
Something also smelled in the living associate professor’s house, not rotten, but she got a faint sense of the untidy, the unaired.
“Why don’t we go up in the tower,” said Johansson.
Sammy and Lindell gave each other a look. Neither of them wanted a lecture on orchids or some other exciting species, but they could not say no, the man was obviously delighted at the thought of letting their conversation take place under glass. Perhaps he wanted to show them how well he had arranged it? He radiated loneliness and Lindell had nothing against keeping him company for a while.
“That would be exciting,” said Sammy.
They climbed up, the associate professor in the lead, eagerly talking about when and how he had his tower constructed, while Lindell thought about Viola. Was she on her deathbed? Agnes’s choice of words might suggest that. She was not a person who exaggerated, dramatized about death, Lindell was sure of that. Agnes seemed to possess a kind of stripped-down, unsentimental attitude to hers and other people’s lives, just like Viola. So when she said, “Edvard will be with her” it could mean that the end was near for the old woman.
Lindell sighed. Sammy gave her a worried look and reached out his hand to support her as she climbed up into the tower.
“Yes, I must say, the view is good,” he said.
The associate professor nodded.
“For the annual fireworks in the Botanical Gardens I usually sit here with a glass of wine.”
“What beautiful plants!” Lindell exclaimed. “And an olive tree! Do you see, Sammy? Olives! And lemons. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it.”
Pride made the associate professor’s skinny cheeks twitch. It was obvious that he didn’t know how to react to this enthusiastic and wholehearted praise.
“That was kind,” he was finally able to say.
Lindell was happy that they had taken the trouble to come up. The tower gave an overview of the block. This is where the drama is playing out, she thought, amused and slightly energized. The former colleague and now bitter enemy, the associate professor who apparently calmly observes everything from above: the neighbor Bunde, whom they had only glimpsed like a moray in its hole, prepared to strike again with its sharp teeth at any moment; the red-eyed gardener in the neighboring yard who with his tirade about “vermin” and “oppressors” was the strange bird in this academic wasp’s nest; the “Germans,” this frightening people who were only jealous that they did not have a Nobel Prize to either award or receive; Agnes, with a half century of experiences, with slow cooking and shiny copper pans, who certainly knew more about Bertram von Ohler than he did himself.
And as the cherry on the cake, someone who with more tangible methods amuses himself by throwing stones and placing a cranium—a real-life skull, as Ottosson had expressed it—mounted on a fence post next to the professor’s mailbox.
“This stone-throwing, what do you think about that?” Sammy Nilsson abruptly interrupted the associate professor’s lecture about succulents.
The associate professor was startled. He looked at Sammy Nilsson in a way that expressed a wounded fatigue, as if the police had abused his confidence.
“I don’t think anything,” he said.
“You haven’t seen or heard anything?”
Gregor Johansson shook his head.
“Have you talked with the gardener, Haller? You seem to have a good deal in common,” said Sammy, pointing down toward the man. “He called Ohler vermin, what could he mean by that?”
“No idea,” said the associate professor.
“Have you discussed the professor and the prize with him?”
“Just in passing,” the associate professor answered.
“Do you share that understanding, about Ohler as vermin?”
“If that were the case, I would be very careful about airing such opinions.”
“Wise,” said Sammy Nilsson. “But now we have to be going. Nice to get a little perspective on existence.”
* * *
“What the hell are succulents?” Sammy exclaimed as they were getting in the car.
“What the hell did you mean by being so contrary? He was a friendly old man.”
The throng of journalists was standing in a semicircle in front of Ohler’s steps. On the steps stood the professor. The whole thing resembled a press conference at the White House.
“Yes, old, and perhaps friendly, definitely to us, but I think there’s some shit there. I thought Haller hinted at a few things. He stood surrounded by dirt and a number of stones that he had dug up, did you see that? He also said something about ‘there is more ammunition for anyone who is interested.’ He stank of booze, did you notice that? And he talked about the associate professor as his ‘brother-in-arms,’ what did he mean by that?”
Lindell leaned her head back and closed her eyes and immediately after that her ears. She did not want to hear more about associate professors and skulls. They would write a report, then turn their attention to essentials.
* * *
The essentials proved to be a sixty-year-old garage owner and member of the Home Guard in the Almunge area who had gotten tired of his wife and then of himself.
The wife was tied up with her back to a chopping block in the woodshed, shot once in the head and once in the chest. The walls of the shed were covered with dried blood, brain matter, and bone chips.
The man was on his back a couple of meters outside the woodshed. Half of his skull was missing. By his side was a hunting rifle.
It was a neighbor who found them. He had heard the shots and “immediately understood” that something was wrong.
“It’s to defend his home,” said Sammy Nilsson, kicking at the foundation of a tank that was on the yard.
After the first attack of nausea, he vomited in the woodshed. He had been seized by fury and yelled at the man who was lying at his feet.
Lindell had been forced to pull him away from the dead man.
“We don’t know what happened,” she said.
“He tied her up,” said Sammy.
That she could not deny and therefore did not say anything. She was also nauseated, partly by the sight of the dead, partly from the smell of diesel.
“Let’s move away a little,” she said, taking Sammy by the arm.
They walked in silence. There was not much they could do now, the technicians would have to perform their duties first. Lindell was struck by the dramatic difference between the villa in Kåbo and the farm in Almunge. Ottosson called just when they had left the associate professor and driven up to the main road. One moment among the bigwigs and the next in front of two dead people in a little village in the country, the man obviously unhappy, evil, or crazy, or all three at once. With the woman bound and terrified in the presence of her husband, Lindell thought this was obviously an uncommonly brutal sight that indicated a kind of planning, and she understood Sammy’s rage. But he was too blocked to start reasoning, so she had to do it for herself.
Perhaps he “only” wanted to scare her by tying her up, but then the sequence of events got out of control? But why in the woodshed? Had it started as a silly quarrel? Probably they would never find out. They had not, after a quick check in the house, found any letter or message that might cast the least bit of light on the background to what happened. The only thing they discovered that suggested a drama was a torn-open box of bullets on the kitchen table. Some bullets had rolled onto the floor.
Could it be a double murder? The question had to be asked, even if Lindell realized it was not very likely.
* * *
It took an hour for the technicians to arrive. During that time Sammy and Lindell questioned the neighbors, most of them elderly, who lived closest. They were obviously shocked, the village was small, everyone knew everyone. No one could give a reasonable explanation for the whole thing. As far as the neighbors knew, the man had never before threatened or abused his wife.
“They seemed to be like most folks,” said one of them, who had recently moved into an older, half-dilapidated shack. “I got help from him to fix the roof. He was a real hard worker, rarely allowed himself a break.”
“She was not particularly talkative but thoughtful,” said a very pregnant woman who lived two houses away. “We used to bake together.”
When they left her she was crying uncontrollably and Lindell felt like a villain.
“I think he didn’t have much work after the summer,” the nearest neighbor, a farmer, mentioned. “Maybe he got depressed? We had talked about him helping me with the fertilizing. Now I’ll have to find someone else and it’s not that easy.”
Lindell had experienced this many times before, how people close to the eye of the storm got hung up on everyday details about the dead.
“Depressed” was a word that turned up again and again in Lindell’s thoughts, while they poked around the farm. Fredriksson and Beatrice, who had joined them half an hour before, went through the house. Fredriksson looked moderately amused, he always wanted to be outdoors, but the itching seemed to have stopped. When he disappeared into the house Lindell saw that the hair on the back of his neck was sticky from some yellow-white cream.
All in all, the farm looked a little depressing, careless in some way. Perhaps the season contributed to the impression?
There were no children to notify. According to an uncertain piece of information, the man had a half-sister “up north.” According to the neighbors, the couple otherwise never talked about any relatives.
“If there are any relatives, then they certainly won’t talk about the dead, especially not about the old bastard,” said Sammy, who seemed unusually bitter and restless.
Or the other way around, thought Lindell. Now perhaps the family can really talk rubbish. But she did not say anything so as not to add further fuel to the fire.
On the way home Lindell fell asleep in the car. That was not unusual. She had a talent for dropping off after a period of tension. Others got wound up, Lindell fell asleep.
Sammy woke her before the Gnista roundabout.
“Are you going home or to day care?”
“No, I have to get the bicycle,” said Lindell.
She looked at the clock and determined that she had plenty of time to pick up Erik.
“A day on the job,” she said, as they turned down into the garage under the police station.
Sammy gave her a quick glance and mumbled something.