Хеннинг Манкелль - The Man from Beijing

She went to check that the front door was locked. Then she returned to the computer and started to work her way backwards through the articles in the Reno Gazette-Journal.

The rubbish truck had moved on. It was starting to get dark.

Long afterwards, when the memory of everything that had taken place began to grow dim, she sometimes wondered what would have happened if she had in fact gone on that holiday to Tenerife, then come home and returned to work with her blood pressure lowered and her tiredness banished. But reality turned out differently. Early the next morning she called the travel agency and cancelled her holiday. As she had been sensible enough to take out an insurance policy, the cancellation cost her only a few hundred kronor.

Staffan came home late that evening, as the train he was working on had been stranded, thanks to an engine failure. He had been forced to spend two hours consoling disgruntled passengers, including an elderly lady who had taken ill. By the time he got home he was tired and irritated. She let him eat his evening meal in peace. But when he’d finished she told him about her discovery of what had happened in distant Nevada, and how in all probability it was linked to the mass murders in Hälsingland. She could see he was doubtful, but didn’t know if that was because he was tired or because he didn’t believe her theory. When he went to bed she returned to the computer and kept alternating between Hälsingland and Nevada. At midnight she made a few notes in a pad, just as she did when she was preparing a judgement. No matter how unlikely it might seem, she was convinced that there must be a connection between the two incidents. She was also well aware that, in a way, she was an Andrén too, even if her name was now Roslin.

Was she in danger? She sat for hours, hunched over her notepad. Then she went out into the clear January night and looked up at the stars. Her mother had once told her that her father had been a passionate stargazer. With long intervals in between, she used to receive letters from him describing how he would stand on deck at night in faraway places. Studying the stars and their various constellations. He had a strange belief that the dead were transformed into stars. Birgitta Roslin wondered what he had been thinking when the Runskär sank in Gävlebukten. The heavily laden ship had keeled over in the severe storm and sunk in less than a minute. Only one SOS signal had been sent out before the radio fell silent. Had he had time to realise that he was about to die? Or had the freezing water taken him so much by surprise that he had no time to think? Just sudden terror, then an icy chill, and death.

The sky seemed close; the stars shone brightly that night. I can see the surface, she thought. There is a connection, thin threads intertwining with one another. But what lay behind it all? What was the motive for killing nineteen people in a small village in the north of Sweden, and also putting an end to a family in the Nevada desert? Probably no more than the usual: revenge, greed, jealousy. But what injustice could require such drastic revenge? Who could gain financially by murdering a number of pensioners in a northern hamlet who were already well on their way to death? Who could possibly be jealous of them?

She went back indoors when she began to feel cold. She usually went to bed early because she always felt tired in the evening and hated to go to work the following morning without having had a good night’s sleep, especially when a trial was taking place. She lay down on the sofa and switched on some music, quite softly so as not to disturb Staffan. It was a cavalcade of modern Swedish ballads. Birgitta Roslin had secretly dreamed of writing a pop song that would be chosen to represent Sweden in the Eurovision Song Contest. She was embarrassed about this desire but at the same time felt very positive about it. She even had several preliminary versions of songs locked away in her desk. Perhaps it was inappropriate for a practising judge to write pop songs; but as far as she knew there was no rule against it.

It was three o’clock by the time she went to bed, and she gave Staffan a shake, as he was snoring. When he had turned over and fallen silent, she fell asleep herself.

The following morning she recalled a dream she’d had during the night. She had seen her mother, who spoke to her without Birgitta being able to grasp what she’d said. It was like being behind a pane of glass. It seemed to go on forever, the mother becoming more and more upset because her daughter didn’t understand what she was saying, the daughter wondering what was keeping them apart.

Memory is like glass, she thought. A person who has died is still visible, very close. But we can no longer contact each other. Death is mute; it excludes conversations, only allows silence.

Birgitta Roslin got up. A thought was beginning to form inside her head. She fetched a road map of Sweden. When the children were small, every summer the family used to drive to various cottages they had rented, usually for a month. Very occasionally, such as the two summers they had spent on the island of Gotland, they had flown there. But they had never taken the train, and in those days it had never occurred to Staffan that one day he would exchange his lawyer’s existence for that of a train conductor.

She turned to a general map of Sweden. Hälsingland was further north than she had imagined. She couldn’t find Hesjövallen. It was such an insignificant little hamlet that it wasn’t even marked.

When she put the map down, she had made up her mind. She would take the car and drive up to Hudiksvall. Not primarily because she wanted to visit the crime scene, but in order to see the little village where her mother had grown up.

When she was younger she had dreamed of one day making a grand tour of Sweden. ‘The Journey Home’, she used to call it. She would go to Treriksröset in the far north, where the borders of Sweden, Norway and Finland converged, and then back south to the coast of Skåne, where she would be close to the Continent, with the rest of Sweden behind her back. On the way north she would follow the coast, but on the way back south she would take the inland route. However, that journey had never taken place. Whenever she had mentioned it to Staffan, he had displayed no interest. And it had not been possible when the children were at home.

But now she had the opportunity to make at least part of that journey.

When Staffan had finished his breakfast and was preparing to join the train to Alvesta, the last one before he was due for several days off, she told him her plan. He didn’t object, merely asked how long she would be away and if her doctor would be happy about the strain that such a long drive was bound to impose.

It was only when he was in the hall with his hand on the front-door handle that she became upset. They had said goodbye in the kitchen, but now she followed him and threw the morning paper angrily at him.

‘What on earth are you doing?’

‘Have you no interest at all in why I want to take this trip?’

‘But you’ve told me why.’

‘Doesn’t it occur to you that I might also need some time to think about our relationship?’

‘We can’t start in on that now. I’ll miss my train.’

‘There’s never a good time as far as you’re concerned! It’s no good in the evening, no good in the morning. Don’t you ever want to talk to me about our life?’

‘You know that I’m not as perturbed about it as you are.’

‘Perturbed? You call it being perturbed when I wonder why we haven’t made love for over a year?’

‘We can’t talk about that now. I don’t have time.’

‘You’ll soon have plenty of time.’