DI Barbarotti was reading the Bible.
Or at any rate he had it on his lap, but it was just lying there waiting for the impulse to strike. It was still Tuesday 7 October and although it was ten in the evening, he was sitting out on the terrace. With a rug over his knees, admittedly, but even so. Marianne was sitting beside him with a rug over her knees, too, and she had just remarked on there being something funny about the weather. The unnatural warmth. Apocalyptic, she called it. It feels apocalyptic, don’t you think? As if the whole world is waiting for some great change to happen.
‘A catastrophe?’ he asked her. ‘To me it just seems nice and warm.’
‘I think so, too,’ she said. ‘I’m just trying to inject a bit of drama. Do you want a drop more wine?’
He did. If catastrophe was coming anyway, it was as well to have some warmth in your veins. Marianne’s not on duty tomorrow, he thought. A little lovemaking might be in order once all the kids are in bed.
Maybe not right here, but we could go down to the jetty.
The jetty her brother had built. Making love outdoors in October, he thought. In a plaster cast, on a jetty – the world is definitely out of kilter.
The weather certainly is. But seriously: thank you, Brother-in-law Roger.
It was only a thought, of course, the jetty idea. There still seemed to be plenty of kids awake. They came and went, intermittently passing their rug-furled parents on the terrace with questions about this and that, including why they were hanging about out there.
Not all the children asked that question, only some of them. But their parents chose not to move, for once.
‘It feels rather magical this evening, don’t you think?’ Marianne asked one of them, but the child just responded, ‘Sure, magical, whatever’, and announced that she had a maths test the next morning.
Her parents smiled, quietly raised their glasses and couldn’t quite keep their hands off each other. Then Gunnar Barbarotti decided the time had come, put his index finger into the Bible at random, opened the page and read:
They shall eat every man the flesh of his own arm:
Manasseh, Ephraim; and Ephraim, Manasseh.
‘Manasseh and Ephraim?’ he exclaimed, nonplussed. ‘How on earth am I supposed to interpret this? The flesh of my own arm?’
‘You know what,’ said Marianne, ‘I’m not sure the good Lord always appreciates your way of reading the Bible.’
‘You think so?’ said Barbarotti in surprise. ‘You mean He finds my approach a bit . . . unsystematic?’
‘Sometimes, yes,’ said Marianne.
‘And maybe there’s a line or two in here that isn’t exactly the peak of perfection either?’ suggested Barbarotti.
‘One or two, yes.’
‘Eva Backman’s getting divorced,’ he told her half an hour later, once Ephraim and Manasseh had been set aside and the kids seemed to have gone to bed. But before they had made any move towards the jetty. He realized it was very unclear whether they would ever get there, but he didn’t want to dismiss the idea out of hand.
‘Divorced?’ said Marianne. ‘High time, too.’
‘Eh?’ said Gunnar Barbarotti. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean she’s doing exactly the right thing, of course,’ answered Marianne. ‘If she’d left it another couple of years it could have been too late.’
‘You’ve only met her once, haven’t you?’
‘Yes,’ said Marianne. ‘But sometimes once is enough.’
‘I didn’t think there was any serious problem with him.’
‘There isn’t any serious problem with a glass of water, either.’
Gunnar Barbarotti pondered this.
‘She’s left it quite a long time, as it is,’ he said.
‘That’s what I’m saying,’ said Marianne. ‘So do you think she needs some help?’
‘I . . . I don’t know. Of course she wants to talk about it . . . I told her she could come here if she wanted, but she thought the couch at work would be the best place to spend the night.’
‘Tonight?’ said Marianne with a glance at her watch.
‘Yes.’
‘And when did she tell him?’
‘This evening. By phone. And then she was planning to bed down at the police station, as I say.’
Marianne sat bolt upright. ‘Gunnar, presumably you told her we had loads of room here?’
‘Of course I did.’
‘And said how much I like her?’
‘Yes, I said all of that, but she insisted . . . I suppose she wants to be on her own. So she can . . .’
‘So she can what?’
‘Test out what it feels like and so on. I called her mid-evening and she said everything was OK.’
‘Hm.’
Marianne was quiet for a long time, twirling her glass in her hand. ‘Yes, maybe that’s sensible,’ she said finally. ‘No point applying a sticking plaster until it really starts bleeding. Do you know what?’
‘What?’ said Gunnar Barbarotti.
‘I think we’re in a state of grace, you and I, being able to sit here like this. We must never start thinking we’ve earned it. A state of supreme grace, do you hear that?’
‘You mean the house and garden and lake?’ asked Barbarotti.
‘No, you idiot,’ said Marianne. ‘I mean you and me and the children. The house and garden and lake are lovely, too, but that’s not the important part.’
‘I get you,’ said Barbarotti.
‘Are you quite sure of that?’
‘Absolutely,’ said Barbarotti. ‘And we can’t ask for nights like these, either. It must be twenty degrees, don’t you think? In mid-October. You don’t . . . you don’t feel like going down to the jetty for a while?’
‘The jetty?’ said Marianne.
‘Yes.’
‘Why not?’ said Marianne.
He gave Eva Backman another call as soon as he woke up.
She assured him everything was under control, she’d slept for at least five hours and after work she was going to see her family to discuss the future. This would require them to miss an important unihockey training session, but after a certain amount of negotiation, all parties had agreed to the arrangement.
‘You’re joking?’ asked Barbarotti.
‘I’m afraid not,’ she replied. ‘And it doesn’t surprise me. In fact, I’m just glad they’re all making time to come.’
‘Bloody hell,’ said Barbarotti.
‘Let’s not talk about it any more,’ said Inspector Backman firmly. ‘I shall be staying with my brother for a few days, starting tonight, and then we’ll have to see.’
‘I explained the situation to Marianne last night,’ he said. ‘She thinks, as I do, that you should come to us.’
‘I appreciate it,’ said Eva Backman. ‘I might take you up on that in due course, but we don’t need to decide anything now, do we?’
‘Of course not,’ said Barbarotti. ‘Talking of your brother, by the way, I had a thought.’
‘Oh yes?’
‘Doesn’t he live pretty close to Lograna?’
‘Er, yes. Why are you asking?’
‘Well, I just wondered if we ought to ask them about . . . they might have heard and seen things. I don’t mean the actual murder, of course, but they might have come across Valdemar or the girl, earlier on?’
‘I’ve already checked that,’ said Eva Backman. ‘I’m afraid none of them saw anything.’
‘OK,’ said Barbarotti. ‘It was just a thought. And no news from Germany?’
‘I know I’m in the building,’ said Eva Backman, ‘but I’m not on duty yet.’
‘I’ll be there in an hour,’ promised Barbarotti. ‘I expect you to be on duty by then, at any rate. We’re going to find that damn Valdemar Roos today, I’ve got this feeling.’
‘We’ll put our faith in your male intuition then,’ said Eva Backman, and ended the call.