After taking leave of Bertil Efraimsson, Ann Lindell walked slowly homeward, overcome by a peculiar mixture of satisfaction and despondency. The former came from the fact that the arsons appeared to be solved, and hopefully that would put an end to some of the talk in the village. She was satisfied besides at her own effort, and the department’s. Sammy, Bodin, and the others had conducted themselves well. Finally, you might add. That gladdened an old police heart.
The despondency came from the fact that Tilltorp had been transformed, the tone had changed, trust had taken a knock, but also from the reactions of outsiders—many who had not even visited the village had strange ideas. At the gym in Österby talk had spread the whole spring, every time she’d gotten questions whether anything new had come out. “But you must know something!” a Zumba participant blurted out when Ann refused to speculate. Maybe they thought that as a former police officer she had access to special information.
As an undercurrent, mostly unexpressed, was the understanding that it was the fault of “the others.” “What business did they have here, I mean from the start?” was a line she heard from a customer at the creamery. A plumber, a normally sympathetic and humorous man who lived in the neighborhood, and who helped out with some small jobs at work, had mentioned that they couldn’t even speak Swedish. “They want subsidies, but don’t want to learn the language” was his analysis. Would she ever be able to joke with him like she’d always done? Even her closest neighbor had undergone a metamorphosis during the spring, from cozy uncle in carpenter’s pants to a real grouch.
Small displacements. Words that crept in. She looked around. A car approached, too fast and too close. She was forced to step down in the ditch. She hadn’t seen it before, a dark BMW that skidded outside her lane. There were many passersby who didn’t understand that curve. Before her time, Gösta had said, a car had crashed right into the lilac hedge on the other side. She memorized the license plate number, a sheer reflex, and took out her phone to call and check who the owner was. That benefit, calling the station and quickly getting information, she still had. She still had friends left at the department.
“Missed Call,” the display said. The number was known, but not listed in her contacts. She browsed back in her call list, had to browse a long time before it showed up. She wondered who it could be. She counted days, tried to put the number in a context, see which other ones were right before and after, but got no wiser. She opened Eniro and checked the number: “Justus Jonsson.”
When she closed the browser she discovered two new voice messages. She listened. Clicked off, stood completely breathless, stock-still, before she routinely checked the time when they were entered, and then listened to them a second time. The words were etched in.