Хеннинг Манкелль - The Man from Beijing

‘I’ve already spoken to her, and it would be useful to continue where we left off.’

He went out into the corridor and closed the door behind him. Roslin slid the file labelled BRITA AND AUGUST ANDRÉN towards her. What she saw horrified her. There were photographs, taken inside the house. It was only now that she realised the scale of the bloodbath. She stared at the pictures of the sliced and diced bodies. The woman was almost impossible to identify, as she had been slashed by a blow that almost cut her face in two. One of the man’s arms was hanging from just a couple of thin sinews.

She closed the file and pushed it away. But the images were still there; she wouldn’t be able to forget them. During her years in court she had often been forced to look at photographs of sadistic violence, but she had never seen anything to compare with what Erik Huddén had in his files.

He came back and beckoned her to follow him.

Vivi Sundberg was sitting at a desk laden with documents. Her pistol and mobile phone were lying on top of a file filled almost to the bursting point. She indicated a visitor’s chair.

‘You wanted to speak to me,’ said Sundberg. ‘If I understand it rightly, you’ve travelled all the way from Helsingborg. You must feel what you have to say is important.’

Her mobile phone rang. She switched it off and looked expectantly at her visitor.

Roslin told her story without getting bogged down in details. She had often sat on the bench and thought about how a prosecuting or defending counsel, an accused or a witness, ought to have expressed themselves. She was an expert in that particular skill.

‘Perhaps you already know about the Nevada incident,’ she said when she had finished.

‘It hasn’t come up at our briefings yet.’

‘What do you think?’

‘I don’t think anything.’

‘It could mean that the murderer you are looking for is not a madman.’

‘I shall evaluate your information the same way I do every tip and suggestion. And believe me — there are masses of them here, phone calls, letters, emails. You name it, we got it. Who knows, something may turn up.’

She reached for a notepad and asked Birgitta Roslin to repeat her story. When she had finished making notes she stood up and escorted her visitor to the exit.

Just before they came to the glass doors, she paused.

‘Do you want to see the house where your mother grew up? Is that why you’ve come here?’

‘Is it possible?’

‘The bodies are gone. I can let you in, if you’d like to. I’ll be going there in half an hour. But you must promise me not to take anything away from the house. There are people who’d be only too pleased to rip up the cork tiles on which a murdered person has been lying.’

‘I’m not like that.’

‘If you wait in your car, you can follow me.’

Vivi Sundberg pressed a button, and the glass doors slid open. Birgitta Roslin hurried out into the street before any of the reporters who were still gathered in reception could get hold of her.

As she sat with her hand on the ignition key, it struck her that she had failed. Sundberg hadn’t taken her seriously. It was unlikely they’d look into the Nevada lead, and if they did it would be without much enthusiasm.

Who could blame them — the leap between Hesjövallen and Nevada was too great.

A black car with no police markings drew up beside her. Vivi Sundberg waved.

When they reached the village, Sundberg led her to the house.

‘I’ll leave you here, so that you can be alone for a while.’

Birgitta Roslin took a deep breath and stepped inside. All the lights were on.

It was like stepping from the wings onto a floodlit stage. And she was the only person in the play.

Birgitta Roslin stood in the hall and listened. There is a silence in empty houses that is unique, she thought. People have left and taken all the noise with them. There isn’t even a clock ticking anywhere.

She went into the living room. Old-fashioned smells abounded, from furniture, tapestries and pale porcelain vases crammed onto shelves and in between potted plants. She felt with a finger in one of the pots, then went to the kitchen, found a watering can and watered all the plants she could find. She sat down on a chair and looked around her. How much of all this had been here when her mother lived in this house? Most of it, she suspected. Everything here is old; furniture grows old with the people who use it.

The floor, where the bodies had been lying, was still covered in plastic sheeting. She went up the stairs. The bed in the master bedroom was unmade. There was a slipper lying halfway under the bed. She couldn’t find its mate. There were two other rooms on this upper floor. In the one facing west, the wallpaper was covered in childish images of animals. She had a vague memory of her mother having mentioned that wallpaper once. There was a bed, a wardrobe, a chest of drawers, a chair and a heap of rag rugs piled up against one of the walls. She opened the wardrobe: the shelves were lined with newspaper pages. One was dated 1969. By then her mother had been gone for more than twenty years.

She sat in the chair in front of the window. It was dark now, the wooded ridges on the other side of the lake were no longer visible. A police officer was moving around at the edge of the trees, lit up by a colleague’s torch. He kept stopping and bending down to examine the ground, as if he were looking for something.

Birgitta Roslin had the feeling that her mother was near. Her mother had sat in this very place long before Birgitta had ever been thought of. Here, in the same room at a different time. Somebody had carved squiggles into the white-painted window frame. Perhaps her mother. Perhaps every mark was an expression of a longing to get away, to find a new dawn.

She stood up and went back downstairs. Off the kitchen was a room with abed, some crutches leaning against a wall and an old-fashioned wheelchair. On the floor next to the bedside table was an enamel chamber pot. The room gave the impression of not having been used for a very long time.

She returned to the living room, tiptoeing around as if afraid of disturbing somebody. The drawers in a writing desk were half open. One was full of tablecloths and napkins, another of dark-coloured balls of wool. In the third drawer, the bottom one, were some bundles of letters and notebooks with brown covers. She took out one of the notebooks and opened it. There was no name in it. It was completely filled with tiny handwriting. She took out her glasses and tried to make sense of what looked to be a diary. The spelling was distinctly old-fashioned. The notes were about locomotives, coaches, railway tracks.

Then she noticed a word that gave her a start: Nevada. She stood stock-still and held her breath. Something had suddenly begun to change. This mute, empty house had sent her a message. She tried to decipher what followed, but she heard the front door opening. She replaced the diary and closed the drawer. Vivi Sundberg came into the room.

‘No doubt you’ve seen where the bodies were lying,’ she said. ‘I don’t need to show you.’

Birgitta Roslin nodded.

‘We lock the houses at night. You ought to leave now.’

‘Have you found any next of kin of the couple who lived here?’

‘That’s exactly what I came to tell you. It doesn’t seem like Brita and August had any children of their own, nor any other relatives apart from the ones living in the village who are also dead. The list of victims will be made public tomorrow.’

‘And then what will happen to them?’

‘Maybe that’s something you ought to think about, as you are related to them.’

‘I’m not actually related to them. But I do care about them.’