‘I thought you were going to be working on the graffiti problem,’ said Marianne. ‘Not that Valdemar Roos.’
‘And so I am,’ said Gunnar Barbarotti. ‘That is, I’m working flat out on the graffiti question, but there’s something about Valdemar Roos I just can’t let go.’
‘So I’ve come to realize,’ said Marianne. ‘And to be honest, it worries me slightly that you find him so interesting.’
‘Why’s that?’ asked Barbarotti in surprise, putting two more slices of bread in the toaster. ‘What’s wrong with being interested in your work?’
Marianne sighed, regarding him across the kitchen table and the debris of four children’s breakfasts. For the time being they really were only a quartet, Sara and Jorge having made their flat on Kavaljersgatan habitable enough for them to start spending the nights there. It could be permanent, but it was hard to tell.
And Brother-in-law Roger was a mere memory. It was half past eight, and Marianne wasn’t on duty that morning. Gunnar worked flexitime.
And here she was, worrying about him.
‘Some people will always be hard to understand,’ he said, trying to give her something specific. ‘That makes them interesting. I think Valdemar Roos is one of those people.’
Marianne gave a snort of derision. ‘Interesting? He’s just your average dirty old man in his sixties, as far as I can make out. Thinks a lot of himself, slightly nuts. He leaves his wife without a word of explanation and you reckon that makes him special?’
‘Hm,’ said Gunnar Barbarotti.
‘This is a girl of twenty, if I’ve understood correctly. They killed a young man and now they’re on the run. You must see that it worries me when you call something like that interesting?’
Barbarotti thought about it.
‘A junkie girl and an old lecher,’ summarized Marianne when he failed to come up with a good answer. ‘To put it rather coarsely.’
Barbarotti cleared his throat in an attempt to overcome his vacillation. ‘What . . . what are you imagining exactly?’ he said. ‘That I have some secret wet dream of driving off into the blue with a teenage girl? Is that what you think? In that case let me assure you that . . .’
He faltered and felt a twinge of pain from his foot.
‘That what?’ said Marianne.
‘That I love my wife more than anything on earth and that my interest in Ante Valdemar Roos is exclusively to do with its . . . psychological and universally human aspects.’
‘Bravo,’ said Marianne, bringing her palms together and making him feel for a moment as if the whole conversation was the seventh take of a hopeless scene from some even more hopeless low-budget reality show for morning TV. Did such things exist? And if they did, surely there was no time for retakes?
‘But tell me one thing,’ his wife went on. ‘If this noble and universally human policeman really loves his wife as much as he claims, how can she really be sure things are as he says? Mightn’t he just be trying to provide some window dressing?’
‘What the heck is up with you?’ said Barbarotti, and gave his plaster an anxious scratch. ‘I just don’t get how you can . . .’
But then he saw she was smiling, and that her dressing gown had fallen open in the sort of way that changes things entirely and leads to places radically unlike, say, a low-budget daytime reality TV show.
‘Come with me,’ he said, holding out his hand.
‘What do you mean?’ said Marianne.
‘So you’ve made it at last?’ said Eva Backman, looking up from her computer.
Running a bit late, thought Barbarotti. My wife and I shagged for two hours this morning. Sorry, it takes longer when you’re in plaster.
He might have said it out loud, too, if it hadn’t been for Inspector Sorrysen, who was all too sensitive when it came to that sort of frankness and who also had a heavily pregnant wife.
Was the latter fact even remotely relevant?
‘There was a graffiti lead I had to follow up,’ he said, sitting down. ‘How’s it going?’
Eva Backman looked at him with a suspicious frown. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘it’s going well. I think we can say with a fair degree of certainty that we’ve found the girl.’
‘It was her?’
‘That’s right,’ said Backman. ‘Our little Polish friend. Sonja Svensson the Elvafors manager and Mr Lundgren from Halmstad were in complete agreement.’
Inspector Sorrysen nodded and read from a sheet of paper. ‘Anna Gambowska. Born in Arboga on first August 1987. Mother Polish, came to Sweden in 1981. Grew up in Örebro . . . the girl, that is. Completed her years of compulsory schooling and started an upper secondary course but left in 2003. Taken into the care of local authority social services in Örebro at the end of July this year at the request of the girl’s mother. Obvious addiction problems, admitted to the Elvafors residential centre on first August.’
‘On her birthday?’ said Barbarotti.
‘Correct,’ said Sorrysen.
‘We’re awaiting further particulars from Örebro,’ explained Backman. ‘But we have a good photo of her, and Sonja Svensson was able to give us quite a lot of information.’
‘Such as?’ asked Barbarotti.
‘Ahem,’ went Backman. ‘Such as she’s evidently a tough nut. Impaired empathy, seemingly, and not inclined to cooperate. Refuses to stick to rules, self-willed, keeps herself to herself rather than joining in communal activities. Difficult to deal with, in Sonja Svensson’s view. After she ran away, the atmosphere at the centre improved right away.’
‘I see,’ said Barbarotti. ‘And when was it she ran away?’
‘The start of September,’ said Backman.
‘And they waited nearly a month to report that she’d gone?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s odd, isn’t it?’
‘I didn’t press her on that point,’ said Backman. ‘But I agree with you, it is a bit odd.’
‘And how the hell did she get wind of Valdemar Roos?’ Barbarotti went on.
‘We don’t know,’ said Backman.
‘There’s no previous link between them?’
Eva Backman shook her head. ‘It seems not. Why should there be? But we don’t know that definitely yet, of course.’
‘I don’t suppose Roos has a record where narcotics are concerned?’
‘Clean as a whistle,’ said Sorrysen. ‘They’re an odd couple and no mistake.’
‘And the victim?’ asked Barbarotti. ‘Have we got anything to give us a lead on who he might be? He had substances in his blood, didn’t he?’
‘Could they all have lived at the cottage together?’ suggested Sorrysen.
‘The girl certainly did,’ said Backman. ‘There are loads of fingerprints that are presumably hers. But none of the victim’s, as far as we know.’
‘And the relationship between the two?’ asked Barbarotti. ‘The victim and the girl, that is.’
‘We haven’t got that far yet,’ Backman reiterated. ‘But when we get the material from Örebro, we can start pulling it all together. We’ve established a police contact up there. DCI Schwerin, if you remember him?’
Gunnar Barbarotti smiled. ‘Schwerin? Excellent, then we needn’t worry.’
‘Just so,’ said Backman. ‘It might take a while, but we needn’t worry.’
Inspector Borgsen looked quizzically from one colleague to another.
‘Last autumn,’ Backman filled him in. ‘Dead Man’s Field outside Kumla.’
‘Oh yes,’ said Sorrysen. ‘Right, I’m with you.’
‘Precisely,’ said Barbarotti.
He stayed on for a while in Backman’s office after Sorrysen had departed.
‘So what do you really make of all this?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know,’ said Backman. ‘What is one to make of it?’
‘Was the girl a prostitute?’
Backman sighed. ‘That’s unclear. Nothing on record to indicate it, at any rate, but why should there be?’
‘Yes, why should there be?’ said Barbarotti.
‘There aren’t that many ways a girl can get money for drugs,’ Backman observed gloomily. ‘Though she’s only twenty-one and her addiction seems mainly to have been to hash, some smack, too, but she seems to have gone into rehab before she was reduced to that. Maybe she hadn’t been reduced to that; she’d had a few jobs since she opted out of college. So it could be she was managing financially, somehow.’
‘Could be,’ said Barbarotti.
‘She could have been dealing, too, but Sonja Svensson didn’t actually know very much about her background. Their focus at that place is looking to the future, she claims. Not digging into the past. It’s all part of their philosophy.’
‘Philosophy?’ queried Barbarotti.
‘That was the term she used,’ said Backman.
‘And we’re dealing with some tough little nut, that was what she told you?’
‘Yes, that was what she told me. But that’s par for the course, wouldn’t you say? Toughness is a precondition in that world. If they haven’t got a hard shell they fall apart, you know that, surely? Christ, sometimes I feel grateful I’ve only got boys.’
‘Yes,’ said Barbarotti. ‘It’s easier being a man. But only half as interesting.’
‘A quarter,’ countered Eva Backman, unable to suppress a smile. ‘Why do you always have to exaggerate every damn thing, you males?’
‘Sorry,’ said Barbarotti. ‘I got a bit carried away. But now she’s going to get her picture in the paper too, our tough cookie Anna. Don’t you reckon?’
‘Of course,’ said Backman. ‘And they are an interesting couple, as we said. I can imagine the tabloids making a splash with this tomorrow. They’re not exactly Bonnie and Clyde, but a sixty-year-old man and a twenty-year-old girl on the run together . . . well, that ought to shift a few copies.’
‘Especially as they’ve left a corpse in their wake,’ Barbarotti added. ‘Yes, I fear you’re absolutely right. Though . . .’
‘Yes?’
‘Though we’re scarcely going to find them with the help of our press, magnificent though they are. I imagine people down in Europe don’t give a toss what’s in our papers. But what’s your view? Because I’ve only got a quarter of a brain, as we agreed.’
Eva Backman laughed. ‘There’s nothing as attractive as a modest guy. What size brain do you think Valdemar Roos has got, incidentally?’
‘Good question,’ said Barbarotti.
‘Certainly is. Half a million in cash and a twenty-year-old female addict as a sidekick. A fatal stabbing at a secret cottage and then a getaway down through Europe . . . he’s losing his reputation for dullness, that’s for sure.’
Barbarotti was thinking. ‘He must have bought the cottage first,’ he said. ‘I mean, quitting his job and starting on a secret life and all that . . . you don’t think it had anything to do with Anna Gambowska from the start, do you? Could he have got to know her when she was being treated at Elvafors . . . or even earlier?’
‘No, I don’t think so,’ said Eva Backman. ‘Sonja Svensson had no idea who he was, at any rate. It all seems so improbable. Maybe . . . well maybe they met by sheer chance.’
‘Yes, that’s how we rationalize it, I suppose,’ said Barbarotti.
‘How do you mean?’
‘When we can’t grasp how things fit together, that’s when we put the blame on sheer chance.’
‘You’re so smart sometimes,’ said Eva Backman. ‘I’m almost inclined to believe God equipped you with two quarters of a brain.’
‘Thank you,’ said Barbarotti. ‘Right, I must get to my office and put the final touches to the graffiti mystery. Let me know if there are any developments.’
‘Final touches?’’ said Eva Backman. ‘You don’t mean to say . . .?’
‘I’ve got a theory,’ said Gunnar Barbarotti. ‘Now where the heck did I leave my crutches?’
Her father looked older than ever.
And so he was, of course, but when she saw his ashen face and sunken cheeks and met his anxious eyes, she really felt it could not be long now.
She tried to work out when she had seen him last. June, she decided, the weekend before midsummer. Almost four months had gone by.
Shameful, it was the only word she could find. Of course she had talked to him on the phone five or six times since then, but Erik and family had him with them every day. Every hour of every day.
Feeling that sense of shame did not render it any easier to make contact with him. Ellen had the day off, evidently, and they exchanged a few words when her sister-in-law arrived, but not many. Then she left them alone in the kitchen and shut the door.
Alone with a pot of coffee and a plate of freshly baked cinnamon buns.
When did I last bake cinnamon buns for my family? thought Eva Backman. What sort of person am I, when it comes down to it?
She pushed aside the self-criticism and poured some coffee for her father. Cinnamon buns had nothing to do with human qualities, did they?
‘No sugar,’ he said. ‘I’ve given up sugar.’
‘I know that, Dad,’ she said. ‘You gave up sugar forty years ago.’
‘Too much sugar isn’t good for you,’ he declared. ‘Dr Söderqvist told me to give it up, so I did.’
‘How are you keeping these days, Dad?’ she asked.
‘Fine,’ he said, looking anxiously about him as if it were some kind of trick question. ‘I’m doing fine. I live here with Erik and . . . Ellen.’
‘Yes, it’s very nice for you here, Dad,’ she said. ‘Do you still go for walks in the forest?’
‘Every day,’ he said, sitting up straight. ‘You have to do something to keep your brain going . . . or your body, anyway.’
As if he realized his brain wasn’t up to much any longer. She swallowed and decided to get straight to the point. He was always clearer in the head at the start of a conversation; as soon as he tired, his concentration went, his ability to focus on what they were actually talking about.
‘You rang me a couple of weeks ago to tell me you’d seen something awful, Dad. Do you remember that? You said you’d seen a murder.’
He raised his coffee cup and put it down again. Suddenly there was a new expression in his eyes, and she could have sworn the colour of his face changed. A healthy sort of flush spread across his cheeks and forehead. Good, she thought. He remembers. Keep it in your head now, dear Dad.
‘Oh yes,’ he said, ‘of course I remember. I rang you to tell you about it because you’re in the police. Have you started investigating it?’
‘Yes Dad, we have. But I could do with . . .’
‘Are you on the track of anybody?’
‘What? Well yes, you could say that. But I’d like to hear again exactly what it was you saw.’
He raised his cup and this time he drank. He put the cup back on the saucer and smacked his lips.
‘I used to like it better with sugar,’ he said. ‘I think I’ll start putting some in again when I get old.’
‘And what was it you’d seen, that day you rang me?’ she prompted him. ‘It was over by that old crofter’s cottage, wasn’t it? The one they call Lograna.’
‘I don’t know what it’s called,’ said Sture Backman, ‘but I know what I saw.’
He fell silent. Go on, Dad, please go on, she thought. Don’t let it sink back into darkness.
He coughed and thumped his chest a couple of times with his fist. ‘Damn nuisance, this cough,’ he said. ‘You want me to tell you about the murder?’
‘Yes please, Dad.’
He cleared his throat and prepared himself.
‘I came out onto the road,’ he said. ‘Do you know which road I mean?’
‘Yes Dad.’
‘Right. Well then, I was walking along, whistling to myself, I do that sometimes when I’m out for a stroll . . . or I sing if the weather’s fine, I’m not embarrassed to tell you that. Old tunes, usually, the ones that were popular when I was young. Mum and I used to dance—’
‘What did you see at the cottage?’ she broke in.
‘I’m just telling you,’ he replied a little indignantly. ‘Don’t you interrupt me, my girl. They came running out of the house, her first, but he died.’
‘He died?’
‘He died. They flew at each other, and he had some kind of cudgel that he hit her with, but she stuck the knife in his stomach.’
‘Did you see it happen?’
‘Of course I did. He was bleeding like a pig. He staggered round in the currant bushes and then he collapsed. I’m sure he must have died, because . . . because the blood was pouring out of him, it was bright red and I was scared stiff. Can you understand that I was scared stiff, Eva?’
‘What happened to the girl?’ she asked.
‘Eh?’
‘The girl. The one who stabbed him with the knife, what happened to her?’
Sture Backman gave a shrug.
‘I don’t damn well know. I could only see him, staggering about and bleeding like a stuck pig. Then I took to my heels, I thought I ought to get away. Anyone would have done the same.’
‘Did you see an elderly man?’
‘What’s that?’
‘An elderly man. Was there anyone there apart from the two you told me about, at the cottage . . . or nearby?’
Sture Backman thrust out his lower lip; she could not tell if he was thinking or if it was an indication the memories were fading away. She sat quietly, waiting.
‘There was only one elderly man,’ he said finally. ‘But that was me, and I was standing out on the road.’
‘Thank you, Dad,’ she said, realizing she had tears in her eyes.
Sture Backman put out a hand to take a cinnamon bun. ‘What year did that happen?’ he asked.
‘What?’
‘What we’re sitting here talking about, of course. What year was it?’
‘It was a little while ago,’ she said. ‘Quite recently, in fact.’
‘Yes, well, I don’t go past that house any more. It’s a shame because I used to like doing that circuit. Do you think . . .?’
‘Yes?’
‘Do you think things have calmed down, so I could go round that way again?’
‘I think so, Dad,’ she said. ‘Yes, I’m absolutely sure you can go round that way if you want.’
His face brightened. ‘Oh good,’ he said. ‘Thank you for coming to explain the situation, Eva.’
‘I’m the one who should say thank you, Dad,’ said Eva Backman. ‘And I promise to come back very soon and go out for a walk with you. How are things looking next week?’
Sture Backman drank some coffee and considered the matter.
‘I could make sure to keep a day free next week,’ he said, and stretched out a hand to her across the table. ‘But why on earth are you crying, my girl? That’s nothing to blub about, is it?’