‘Has he done something?’ asked Espen Lund. ‘I mean, do you suspect him of some crime?’
Eva Backman shook her head and fastened her seatbelt with a resolute click.
‘He’s been missing for two weeks,’ Inspector Barbarotti informed him from the back seat. ‘You don’t happen to have any idea where he might have got to?’
He tucked a small cushion under his leg and thought that once he finally got rid of the plaster and could walk like a normal human being, he would never spare that sodding foot another thought. It had already monopolized far more of his attention than it deserved.
‘Me?’ said Espen Lund. ‘Why on earth would I know where Valdemar Roos has gone?’
‘You sold him that house,’ Eva Backman reminded him. ‘Nobody else seems to have known about it.’
‘Discretion guaranteed,’ said Barbarotti.
‘For heaven’s sake,’ groaned Espen Lund. ‘I sell thirty houses and flats a month. I didn’t know I was also responsible for how my buyers choose to spend their time.’
‘Steady on,’ said Barbarotti. ‘We’re just trying to get to the bottom of this. You were old friends, you and Valdemar Roos. He must have told you what he wanted the old place for. And why he didn’t want his wife knowing about it?’
Espen Lund hesitated for a moment.
‘He was a bit secretive about it.’
‘Secretive?’ said Backman.
‘Yes. He wanted it all handled discreetly . . . just like you . . . what’s your name again?’
‘Barbarotti,’ said Barbarotti.
‘Oh, so that’s you? What have you done to your foot?’
‘Fight with a gangster,’ said Barbarotti.
Espen Lund gave a strained laugh. ‘And the other guy’s in hospital, I suppose?’
‘The cemetery,’ said Eva Backman. ‘Why was he so secretive about it, then? You must have been a bit curious, surely?’
Espen Lund sighed. ‘Valdemar’s as dull as ditchwater,’ he said. ‘I don’t really know him all that well, but there was a period in our lives when we saw a fair amount of each other. After his divorce and so on. We were playmates as children, I can’t help that. These past fifteen years I haven’t seen him more than four or five times.’
‘So you were surprised when he rang and said he wanted to buy a house from you?’
‘Well not surprised, exactly,’ said Espen Lund, inserting a portion of snus under his top lip. ‘Nothing much surprises you after a few years in this business. Valdemar Roos wanted to buy a cottage for some peace and quiet. What’s so remarkable about that?’
Eva Backman shrugged and pulled out onto the Rocksta roundabout. Barbarotti thought that, for his part, he would never buy anything from this jaded estate agent. But on the other hand, if you were already the owner of 350 square metres of property in need of renovation, you probably didn’t require any more houses.
‘Did you have any contact with him afterwards?’ he asked. ‘Once the sale had gone through, I mean?’
Espen Lund shook his head. ‘Nope. We signed the contracts, the previous owner was there, too, and since then I’ve seen neither hide nor hair of him.’
‘And when was that exactly?’ asked Backman.
‘We signed on the twenty-seventh of August,’ said Espen Lund. ‘He picked up the keys on the first of September. I saw him then, of course, but only for ten seconds. I checked the date after you rang yesterday.’
‘All right then,’ said Barbarotti. ‘You don’t know his wife, do you?’
‘Never met her,’ said Espen Lund.
‘His first wife?’
‘Nor her,’ said Espen Lund.
‘Hmm. OK,’ said Eva Backman. ‘It’s starting to rain now, as well.’
Gunnar Barbarotti looked out of the window and saw that she was right. Then he checked his watch.
It was twenty past nine. It was Monday 29 September and they still knew nothing about the further adventures of Ante Valdemar Roos.
But in half an hour they would be at his cottage in the woods. At least that was something, thought Barbarotti.
At least that was something.
They hadn’t brought a search warrant with them, but it turned out not to matter. It only took them a minute or two to come across the body, and at that moment the smallholding in the forest became a crime scene and all their assumptions were radically altered.
Despite the plaster cast on his leg, Barbarotti succeeded in forcing the door open at the first attempt; perhaps the more correct procedure would have been to sit in the car in the rain and wait for backup, but what the hell, he thought, and he was sure Eva Backman agreed with him, he could tell from the look of her; she certainly offered no protest. Some rules were made to be broken.
‘Nice to get under cover, at any rate,’ he declared, looking round the simply furnished kitchen.
Eva Backman located a switch and put on the overhead light. It was only mid-morning but the rain had brought with it a crepuscular gloom. She took out her phone and requested reinforcements. She gave a terse outline of the situation and ended the call.
Barbarotti looked at her and realized neither of them much fancied going out to stand guard over the body.
‘Why does it always have to be raining when we find a dead body?’ he grumbled. ‘It’s always the same.’
‘It’s Heaven, shedding tears,’ said Eva Backman. ‘Let’s stay in here for now, eh?’
He nodded.
‘No point standing out there getting soaked to the skin.’
‘No.’
Espen Lund gave a sob. The good estate agent had gone extremely pale at the sight of the dead body and was now slumped over the kitchen table, resting his head on his arms. Backman and Barbarotti did a quick scout round inside the cottage. A kitchen and one other room, that was all. Simply furnished, certainly, but it looked lived in, thought Barbarotti. There was bedding on the bed and food in the fridge. Newspapers a couple of weeks old, various items of clothing and a clock radio in working order.
But nothing to offer any pointers to why there was a dead body outside.
What the hell happened here? thought Gunnar Barbarotti. This is getting weirder and weirder.
Backup arrived about half an hour later, with the police doctor and CSI team two minutes behind them.
The rain had turned into a downpour in the meantime and Espen Lund had smoked three cigarettes outside, getting drenched in the process.
‘Snus and cigarettes?’ Barbarotti asked, but got no answer.
Espen Lund had not uttered a single word since they found the body; Barbarotti assumed this was a symptom of shock, but supposed it would be safest not to try to do anything about it.
The victim was lying behind the earth cellar, right on the forest margins but fairly clearly visible to anyone venturing onto the plot of land round the cottage. A young man somewhere between twenty and thirty, as far as they could tell, but the forest creatures had come and eaten parts of his face, so it was hard to judge precisely. He was lying on his back, at any rate, with his arms at his sides, and although it was debatable how he had died, the dried blood encrusting his jacket from his navel up to roughly nipple level provided a pretty good indication. It looked as though the wildlife had been feasting on that part of him, too, and when Barbarotti came back and tried to examine the body a little more closely, he could easily understand why Espen Lund had gone so pale and quiet.
‘The stab wound to the stomach, what do you reckon?’ said Eva Backman as the photographer snapped away from every conceivable angle and the CSI technicians shifted their feet impatiently, waiting to get their plastic canopy up so they could at least avoid a total soaking as they went about their delicate task.
‘Not exactly a wild guess,’ said Barbarotti. ‘He’s been lying here for quite a while, too.’
‘No doubt about that,’ said Eva Backman. ‘It’s two weeks since Valdemar Roos went missing. And if there’s any logic in this business, this fellow’s been dead for about the same length of time.’
‘Logic?’ said Barbarotti. ‘You don’t mean to say you can see any logic in all this?’
‘It’s not him, anyway,’ said Backman, accepting the umbrella that one of the technicians passed to her.
‘What?’
‘That’s not Valdemar Roos.’
Barbarotti looked again at the ill-treated corpse. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘His wife didn’t say anything about him having a pierced eyebrow.’
Three hours later they were in the car again, on their way back to Kymlinge. Lund the estate agent had been taken home earlier, so at least they were spared that bother. The rain had stopped, too, but in all likelihood only temporarily. The sky above the strip of forest to the south-west looked an ill-tempered blueish-black; further heavy showers were surely on their way.
‘All right then,’ said Eva Backman. ‘Shall we try to recap?’
‘By all means,’ said Barbarotti. ‘You go first.’
‘Man of around twenty-five,’ said Backman. ‘Murdered. Stab wound to the stomach.’
‘The aorta,’ said Barbarotti. ‘Right on target, huge loss of blood. Probably dead within a minute.’
‘Unconscious in thirty seconds,’ said Backman. ‘But he could have staggered a few metres before he collapsed.’
‘No sign of his being dragged or carried to the scene.’
‘But somebody pulled out the knife. The murder weapon hasn’t been found.’
‘Looks to have been a big kitchen knife or, like, a carving knife.’
‘Must you use that expression?’ said Backman.
‘Like?’ said Barbarotti. ‘I know you don’t like it. Anyway, never mind the lectures on modern Swedish language usage, let’s get on. Identity unknown. No wallet. Probably murdered at the scene, probably twelve to eighteen days ago.’
‘We’ll call it a fortnight,’ said Backman, ‘for logical reasons.’
‘As discussed,’ said Barbarotti.
‘That Sunday evening, then,’ continued Backman. ‘It seems pretty plausible to imagine that’s when something happened. But what? And who is he?’
‘Good questions,’ said Barbarotti. ‘What else do we have?’
‘We have a red scooter, a Puch,’ said Backman. ‘Registration number SSC 161. Found by the road, a hundred metres from the house. We still don’t know who the thing belongs to but if we’re lucky that’s how we’ll find out the victim’s name.’
‘You think so?’ said Barbarotti.
‘Sorrysen should be ringing about that before long,’ said Backman. ‘He’s had half an hour.’
Their colleague DI Borgsen back at HQ went by the nickname of Sorrysen because of his generally mournful demeanour.
‘Expect he’ll call shortly,’ said Barbarotti. ‘What can we say about the house?’
‘Roos was living there,’ said Eva Backman. ‘He’s been using the place as some kind of retreat, instead of going to work. No doubt about it.’
‘But why?’ said Barbarotti.
‘Search me,’ said Backman.
‘Anything else?’ said Barbarotti.
‘There seems to have been a woman living there too. Or should we say a girl? Those panties and cami tops in the bag of washing point to someone pretty young.’
‘About twenty?’ said Barbarotti.
‘Like, yes,’ said Backman, putting her finger to her temple.
‘And therefore?’
‘And therefore we can assume that the account of Wissman, the witness at Ljungman’s that Friday, was accurate. Can’t we?’
‘Exactly,’ said Barbarotti. ‘But who the heck is she?’
‘And where have they gone?’ said Backman.
Barbarotti thought for a moment. ‘What’s to say they aren’t lying somewhere in the forest with fatal stab wounds to the stomach as well?’ he suggested. ‘Nothing, as far as I can see.’
‘Lay off,’ said Backman. ‘One corpse is quite enough.’
‘OK,’ said Barbarotti. ‘Where are they then?’
‘You can get a fair way in a fortnight,’ said Backman.
‘The far side of the moon, if you want to,’ said Barbarotti.
Backman was silent for a while, chewing on her bottom lip. ‘A lot of question marks,’ was her eventual conclusion.
‘A lot,’ Barbarotti agreed with a sigh. ‘I think I’ve got water in my plaster cast as well. It feels like a meringue after all that bloody rain out there.’
Eva Backman glanced over her shoulder and saw him slouched uncomfortably in the back seat. ‘Shall I take you straight to the hospital?’ she asked.
‘Yes please,’ said Gunnar Barbarotti. ‘I promised to be there at two and it’s half past now.’
Eva Backman nodded.
‘We’ll have to sit down and give some proper structure to this later. Sylvenius is going to lead the preliminary investigation, and the case is going to be mine. Do you think you could come to HQ when you’re done?’
‘Of course,’ said Barbarotti. ‘Just got to guzzle some new plaster, it won’t take a jiffy. But . . .’
‘Yes?’
‘I’ve got a date with Asunander to discuss the graffiti as well, hope I can put it off.’
‘Stabbing trumps graffiti, surely?’
‘I hope so,’ said Barbarotti. ‘But I can’t be sure.’
In the event, he was stuck at the hospital for most of the afternoon – with several long periods of waiting – and had plenty of time to reflect on that morning’s find at Lograna.
That was the name of the property, Espen Lund had told them before the power of speech deserted him – Lograna – but it remained unclear whether the name was attached to the land or only to the house itself. The previous owner’s name was Anita Lindblom, anyway, just like the celebrated singer, the one who had a hit with ‘Such is Life’, and the purchase price had been 375,000 kronor.
Just before they got to the cottage that morning, Barbarotti had again asked if Valdemar Roos had mentioned another woman, and Lund had again denied this was the case.
‘And you didn’t suspect anything along those lines, either?’ Backman had tried.
Not at all. The estate agent had been categorical. Admittedly he didn’t know Valdemar Roos all that well nowadays, but for him to have started chasing women at his age seemed as unthinkable as . . . well, words failed him.
We’ve heard that before, thought Barbarotti as he made sure his meringue foot was propped up nice and high in the waiting room. Every single person to express a view on this Ante Valdemar Roos had said the same. Stressing how unlikely it would be for him to have a lover.
And yet it was so. He’d had a girl at his secret cottage. All the signs pointed to it. It wasn’t just the bag of dirty washing that indicated her existence, there were other things too. A couple of long black hairs in the bed, for example, and some sanitary towels in a sack of rubbish in the outhouse.
Was there any room for uncertainty?
Could it be that she didn’t exist, in spite of everything?
Conceivably, thought Barbarotti – a shadow of a doubt, as the saying went – but he found it hard to believe. The witness at Ljungman’s, the evidence at Lograna, everything about Valdemar Roos’s recent behaviour, as reported by his wife and others . . . no, decided Inspector Barbarotti, everything argued for there being a young woman involved in this strange story.
But who was she?
Where was she from and where had he found her?
And the victim, who was he? The young man knifed in the stomach, who bled to death and then lay undiscovered behind an earth cellar for two weeks?
He hadn’t been carrying any ID. No particular distinguishing features, or at any rate none they had discovered so far. Jeans, trainers, a polo-neck sweater and a pale jacket.
That was all. The secondary injuries inflicted on him by the birds and animals were disgusting. His eyes had been eaten; Barbarotti remembered his ex-wife carrying one of those organ donor cards in her purse, an undertaking to donate her organs to whoever happened to need them if she suffered a fatal accident, but her eyes were not to be touched.
Had he come to Lograna on the scooter? They now had details of the registered owner, Backman had told him over the phone. But it appeared to be a dead end: the vehicle belonged to one Johannes Augustsson in Lindesberg, but it had been reported stolen at the start of June. Johannes Augustsson was eighteen, Inspector Sorrysen had spoken to him on the phone, and there was no reason to doubt the information he had given. The scooter was taken from the car park of the big Gustavsvik water park on the outskirts of Örebro, and he never saw it again.
The cottage and garden had been painstakingly searched, of course. Or the search was in progress, at any rate. Looking for fingerprints and so on, and a number of bags containing a range of items had been sent to the National Forensic Centre in Linköping for analysis. So that aspect was covered. Where some things were concerned it was best to stick to the accepted procedures.
Inspector Barbarotti was not feeling particularly optimistic, however, and he wondered why. Perhaps it was really only because his foot hurt, and because Marianne had looked sad when he left home.
Only?
He rang her number from his mobile but there was no answer.
Oh well, he thought. This evening I shall tell her I love her and would rather be dead than be without her – and as for the mystery of Valdemar Roos, at least we’ve made a few steps in the right direction. Haven’t we?
They had found a cottage and they had found a dead body. It could have been worse.
Barbarotti glanced at his watch. Quarter past three. Dr Parvus was running half an hour late now. The waiting room was a greyish green and he had been sitting alone in it for forty-five minutes. He picked up a well-thumbed copy of Women’s Weekly. It dated from June 2003 and had a blithely smiling Swedish princess in folk costume on the front cover.
Fascinating, thought DI Barbarotti, and started leafing through it.
It was half past five by the time he got back to the police station. He went straight in to Inspector Backman for an update. In the doorway he coincided with Sorrysen, who was on his way out.
‘Peculiar business,’ said Sorrysen. ‘A lot of people we know nothing about.’
‘Two,’ said Barbarotti, ‘if I’ve counted right. We know about Valdemar Roos, at any rate?’
‘But he’s missing,’ said Sorrysen. ‘Right, I must get off home. We’ll carry on with this in the morning.’
He nodded to Backman and Barbarotti and left.
‘What’s up with him?’ said Barbarotti. ‘He’s not usually in a hurry to get home, is he?’
‘His wife’s heavily pregnant,’ said Backman. ‘Smart plaster cast you’ve got there.’
But she sounded glum. ‘What are you thinking about?’ asked Barbarotti.
Eva Backman sighed and sank down behind her desk. ‘All sorts of things,’ she said. ‘That boy, for example. I can’t get that picture out of my mind, somehow. Nobody should have to die like that – just think if we never find out who he was.’
‘Of course we will,’ said Barbarotti, propping his crutches against the radiator and parking himself on the yellow plastic chair. ‘You’ll have to update me, I’m several hours behind.’
Inspector Backman’s eyes rested on him for a while with that same mournful expression. ‘You know what,’ she said, ‘apart from the fact that we’ve sent out enquiries in all directions and issued a few press releases, absolutely nothing of interest has been going on. The only thing that’s happened is Alice Ekman-Roos going to look at the body.’
‘And she didn’t recognize him?’ asked Barbarotti.
‘No,’ said Backman, ‘but she threw up over him.’
She’s right, thought Barbarotti. This is a day that seems completely devoid of silver linings.
Eva Backman woke with a start. She looked at the clock. The red numerals showed 05.14.
Oh God, she thought. What am I doing waking up at quarter past five in the morning?
Ville had his back to her and was breathing heavily. It was pitch black in the bedroom and the rain was rustling the foliage outside the window. She turned her pillow over and decided to try getting back to sleep. It was an hour and a half until she actually needed to be up, so what was the point in lying here and . . .?
But before the numerals had time to flash onto 05.15, it came back to her.
She had remembered something in a dream, and that memory had flung her up out of the well of sleep. It was something important. It was to do with . . . with Valdemar and . . . her father.
What he’d said.
What he’d said on the phone that time, when was it? About two weeks ago.
Yes, that was right. They hadn’t talked since, and she hadn’t been in touch with her brother or sister-in-law either. She’d been thinking about them, of course, out at Lograna yesterday. In the car on the way there she’d realized Valdemar’s cottage must be close to Rödmossen, but she hadn’t mentioned it to Barbarotti. The fact that her father, and her brother and his family, lived no more than a kilometre from where they found a man who had been stabbed to death just hadn’t seemed . . . relevant.
Except in her own private system of coordinates.
Until now, that was. She pushed back the duvet and went to the bathroom. She put on the light, slipped out of her nightie and had a shower.
What on earth was it her father had said? How had the conversation started?
He had claimed he’d seen a murder, that was the gist, wasn’t it?
He had been out for a walk and had witnessed someone killing someone else. Surely that was what he’d said? And blood, he’d talked about the colour of the blood, she remembered that.
Then the account had veered off in other directions, the way it usually did when Sture Backman embarked on a story. She had only been listening with half an ear, but he had started with something about a murder, hadn’t he?
He said he’d seen something dreadful and that was why he’d rung Eva.
Because she was a police officer.
Yes, that was definitely it.
And two weeks after that day they found a body about a kilometre from where he lived.
Why didn’t this come back to me yesterday? wondered Eva Backman as she turned the water to cold for a moment – she needed to kick-start her brain, apparently. Why has this suddenly surfaced hours later, in a dream? she asked herself irritably. I must be losing my touch.
Or maybe that was simply what dreams were for?
She went to the kitchen and put some coffee on.
Poor old Dad, she mumbled to herself. You must have been so scared, so scared.
Because that was how things stood. Sture Backman would often be anxious and upset when he couldn’t understand the reality around him. When the dark cloud forced its way inside him, casting a blanket of shadow over his mental capacities. When he realized he was losing control of everything he had – effortlessly – been able to control all his life.
Like an eclipse of the sun, he would say. It’s like an eclipse of the sun.
What should she do?
Interview him? Question him about what he had actually seen that day?
Was that a good idea? There was every risk of his having forgotten the whole thing. She would probably just worry him. He wouldn’t understand what she was talking about, and the tears would come. It felt . . . well, indecent, in some obscure way she couldn’t really explain to herself.
But on the other hand: what if he really had seen something vital? What if it might after all be possible to fish up something from that confused memory of his?
Take him to the scene of the crime?
Eva Backman started on her first coffee of the day and felt a sudden wave of nausea.