Хеннинг Манкелль - The Man from Beijing

There were high windows behind her back.

Just before she sat down, she had noticed that the sun was beginning to break through the thick clouds that had moved in over Sweden during the night.

By the time the trial was over two days later, Birgitta Roslin knew what her verdict would be. They were guilty, and the elder of the two men, Abdul ibn Yamed, who was the ringleader, would be sentenced to three years and two months in prison. His assistant, the younger man, Yassir al-Habi, would get one year. Both men would be deported on release.

The sentences given were similar to what had gone before. Many of the individuals smuggled into Sweden had been threatened and assaulted when it transpired that they were unable to pay what they owed for the forged immigration papers and the long journey. She had taken a particular dislike to the elder of the two men. He had appealed to her and the prosecutor with sentimental arguments, claiming that he never retained any of the money paid by the refugees but donated it all to charities in his homeland. During a break in proceedings the prosecuting counsel had stopped by for a cup of coffee and mentioned in passing that Abdul ibn Yamed drove around in a Mercedes worth almost a million kronor.

The trial had been strenuous. The days had been long, and she had no time to do more than eat and sleep and study her notes prior to returning to the bench. Her twin daughters phoned and invited her to Lund, but she didn’t have time. As soon as the case was over, she was faced with a complicated one involving Romanian credit card swindlers.

She had no time to keep abreast of what was happening in the little village in Hälsingland, missing the morning newspapers and the evening TV news bulletins.

The morning Roslin was due to start preparing for the trial of the swindlers from Romania, she discovered that she had a note in her diary about an appointment with her doctor for a routine annual check-up. She considered postponing it for a few weeks. Apart from feeling tired, being out of shape and occasionally suffering anxiety attacks, she couldn’t imagine there being anything wrong with her. She was a healthy person who led an unadventurous life and hardly ever even had a cold. But she didn’t cancel the appointment.

The doctor’s office was not far from the municipal theatre. She left her car on the side street where it was parked and walked to the surgery from the court. It was cold, fine weather with no wind at all. The snow that had fallen a few days earlier had melted away. She stopped by a shop window and contemplated a dress. But the price tag gave her a shock, and she moved on.

In the waiting room was a newspaper whose front page was laden with news about the mass murders in Hälsingland. She had barely got as far as picking it up when she was summoned by the doctor. He was an elderly man who reminded her of Judge Anker. Roslin had been his patient for ten years. He had been recommended by one of her legal colleagues. He asked her how she felt, if she’d had any pains, and having noted her responses he passed her on to a nurse who took a blood sample from one of Roslin’s fingertips. She then sat in the waiting room. Another patient had claimed the newspaper. Roslin closed her eyes and waited. She thought about her family, what each of them was doing, or at least where they were, at that very moment. Staffan was on a train heading for Hallsberg, he wouldn’t be home until late. David was working in AstraZeneca’s laboratory just outside Gothenburg. It was less certain where Anna was: the last time she had been in touch was a month ago, from Nepal. The twins were in Lund and wanted their mother to visit them. She dozed off and was woken up by the nurse shaking her by the shoulder.

‘You can go in to the doctor now.’

Surely I’m not so exhausted that I need to drop off in a doctor’s waiting room, Roslin thought as she returned to the doctor’s office and sat down.

Ten minutes later Birgitta Roslin was standing in the street outside, trying to come to terms with the fact that she wouldn’t be working for the next two weeks. The doctor had introduced sudden and unexpected disorder into her life. Her blood pressure was far too high, and coupled with her anxiety attacks caused the doctor to insist on two weeks’ leave from work.

She walked back to the court and spoke to Hans Mattsson, a chief judge and her immediate superior. They managed to work out between them a way of dealing with the two cases she was currently embroiled in. She spoke to her secretary, posted a few letters she had written, called at the chemist’s to pick up her new medication, then drove home. The lack of anything to do was paralysing.

She made lunch, then flopped down on the sofa with the newspaper. Not all the bodies in Hesjövallen had been named publicly. A detective by the name of Sundberg made a statement and urged the general public to contact the police with any information. There were still no leads, but the police were sure, no matter how hard it might be to believe, that they were looking for only the one killer.

On another page a public prosecutor called Robertsson claimed that the investigation was progressing on a very large scale totally without prejudice. The police in Hudiksvall had received the assistance that they had requested from the central authorities.

Robertsson seemed to be confident of success: ‘We shall catch whoever did this deed. We shall not give up.’

An article on the next page was about the unrest that had spread throughout the Hälsingland forests. Many villages in the area had few inhabitants. There was talk of people acquiring guns, of dogs, alarms and barricaded doors.

Birgitta Roslin slid the newspaper to one side. The house was empty, silent. Her sudden and unwanted free time had come out of the blue. She went down to the basement and fetched one of the wine lists. She decided to order the case of Barolo Arione online. It was really too expensive, but she felt the urge to treat herself. She thought about doing some cleaning, an activity that was almost always neglected in her household. But she changed her mind just as she was about to bring out the vacuum cleaner. She sat down at the kitchen table and tried to assess her situation. She was on sick leave, although she wasn’t really ill. Is having high blood pressure really being ill? Maybe she really was close to burning herself out, and perhaps it could affect her judgement in court?

She looked at the newspaper in front of her on the table and thought again about her mother and her childhood in Hälsingland. An idea struck her. She picked up the telephone, rang the local police station and asked to speak to Detective Chief Inspector Hugo Malmberg. They had known each other for many years. At one time he had tried to teach her and Staffan to play bridge, without arousing much enthusiasm.

She heard Malmberg’s gentle voice at the other end of the line. Most people imagine police officers sound gruff; Hugo would convince them otherwise. He sounded more like a cuddly pensioner sitting on a park bench feeding the birds.

She asked how he was and wondered if he had time to see her. He agreed. She’d walk.

An hour later, Birgitta Roslin entered Hugo Malmberg’s office with its neat and tidy desk. Malmberg was on the phone, but he gestured, inviting her to sit down. The call concerned an assault that had happened the previous day.

Malmberg hung up and smiled at her. ‘Would you like a cup of coffee?’

‘I’d rather not, thank you.’

‘Meaning what?’

‘The police station’s coffee is just as bad as the brew they serve up in the district court.’

He stood.

‘Let’s go to the conference room,’ he said. ‘This telephone rings nonstop. It’s a feeling I share with every other decent Swedish police officer — that I’m the only one who’s really working hard.’