Хеннинг Манкелль - The Man from Beijing

She became even more cautious.

‘What do you want? How do you know who I am?’

‘It all boils down to methods. We spend our whole lives searching for the best way of getting results. I take it that applies to judges as well. You have rules and regulations. But you choose your own methods. I don’t know how many criminal investigations I’ve reported on. I spent a full year — or, to be more precise, three hundred and sixty-six days — following the Palme investigation. I realised early on that the murderer would never be caught because the investigation ran aground before it had even been launched. It was obvious that the guilty party would never appear in court because the police and the prosecutors were not trying to solve the murder; they were more interested in appearing on prime-time television. Many people assumed then that the culprit was Christer Pettersson. Apart from some sane and sensible investigators who realised that this accusation was wrong, completely wrong. But nobody paid any attention to them. Me, I prefer to hover around the periphery, see things from the outside. That way I notice things that the others miss. For instance, a judge being visited by an investigating officer who can’t possibly have time for anything else but the case she’s busy with from morning till night. What was it that you handed over to her?’

‘I’m not going to answer that question.’

‘So I interpret that as meaning you are deeply involved in what has happened. I can see the headline now: “Scanian Judge Involved in the Hesjövallen Drama.” ’

She drank the rest of her coffee and stood up. He followed her into reception.

‘If you give me a tip, I can repay you in spades.’

‘I have absolutely nothing to say to you. Not because I have any secrets, but because I know nothing that could possibly be of any interest to a reporter.’

Lars Emanuelsson looked depressed. ‘Not a reporter, a freelance journalist. Let’s face it, I don’t call you a shyster.’

‘Was it you who called me last night?’

‘Eh?’

‘So it was. At least I know.’

‘You mean to say that your mobile phone rang? In the middle of the night? When you were asleep? Is that something I ought to follow up?’

She didn’t answer, but pressed the button to summon the lift.

‘There’s one thing you ought to know,’ said Lars Emanuelsson. ‘The police are suppressing an important detail. If you can call a person a detail.’

The lift doors opened; she stepped in.

‘It wasn’t only old people who died. There was a young boy in one of the houses.’

The doors closed. When she came to her floor, she pressed the down button again. He was waiting for her, hadn’t moved an inch. They sat down. Lars Emanuelsson lit a cigarette.

‘You’re not allowed to smoke in here.’

‘Tell me something else that I couldn’t care less about.’

There was a potted plant on the table that he used as an ashtray.

‘You always need to look for what the police don’t tell you. What they conceal can reveal the way they are thinking, where they think they might be able to pin down their perpetrator. In among all those dead people was a twelve-year-old boy. They know who his next of kin are, and why he was there in the village. But they aren’t telling the general public.’

‘How do you know this?’

‘That’s my secret. In an investigation like this there’s always a potential leak. It’s a question of identifying it, and then listening carefully.’

‘Who is this boy?’

‘At the moment he’s an unknown factor. I know his name, but I’m not going to say. He was visiting relatives. He really ought to have been at school, but he was convalescing after an eye operation. The poor kid had a lazy eye. But now his eye was in the right place, back in its slot, you might say. And then he was killed. Like the old folks he was staying with. But not quite the same.’

‘What was different?’

Emanuelsson leaned back in his chair. His stomach overflowed his waistband. Roslin found him totally repulsive. He was aware of that, but didn’t care.

‘Now it’s your turn. Vivi Sundberg, the books and letters.’

‘I’m a distant relative of some of the people who’ve been murdered. I gave Sundberg some material she’d asked for.’

He screwed up his eyes and peered at her. ‘Do you expect me to believe that?’

‘You can believe whatever you like.’

‘What books? What letters?’

‘They were about family circumstances.’

‘What family?’

‘Brita and August Andrén.’

He nodded thoughtfully, then stubbed out his cigarette with unexpected energy.

‘House number two or seven. The police have given every house a code. House number two is called two slash three — which obviously means that they found three dead bodies there.’

He continued watching her closely as he took a half-smoked cigarette from a crumpled pack.

‘That doesn’t explain why your exchanges were so cold in tone.’

‘She was in a hurry. What was different about the death of the boy?’

‘I haven’t managed to find out every detail. I have to admit that the Hudiksvall police and the ones they’ve called in from the CID in Stockholm are keeping their cards unusually close to their chest. But I think I’m right in saying that the boy wasn’t exposed to unwarranted violence.’

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘What can it mean but that he was killed without first having to experience unnecessary suffering, torture and fear? You can draw various conclusions from that, each one more likely but probably more false than the next. But I’ll let you do that yourself. If you’re interested.’

He stood up, having first once again stubbed out his cigarette in the plant pot.

‘I’d better get back to circulating,’ he said. ‘Maybe we’ll bump into each other again. Who knows?’

She watched him go out through the door. A receptionist came past and paused when she smelled the smoke.

‘It wasn’t me,’ said Birgitta Roslin. ‘I smoked my last cigarette when I was thirty-two years old, which must be around about the time you were born.’

She went up to her room to pack her bag. But she paused by the window, watching the persistent father with his sledge and his children. What exactly had that unpleasant man said? And was he really as unpleasant as she thought? No doubt he was only doing his job. She hadn’t been particularly cooperative. If she’d treated him differently, he might have had more to tell her.

She sat down at the little desk and began making notes. As usual, she could think more clearly when she had a pen in her hand. She hadn’t read anywhere that a young boy had been murdered. He was the only young person to be killed, unless there were other victims the general public didn’t know about. What Lars Emanuelsson had said about excessive violence could only mean that the others in the house had been badly beaten, perhaps even tortured, before they were killed. Why had the boy been spared that? Could it simply be that he was young and the murderer had somehow taken that into account? Or was there some other reason?

There were no obvious answers. And anyway, it wasn’t her problem. She still felt ashamed of what had happened the previous day. Her conduct had been indefensible. She didn’t dare think about what would have happened if some journalist had found her out. Her return back home to Skåne would have been humiliating, to say the least.

She packed her bag and prepared to leave her room. But first she switched on the television to catch the weather forecast, which would help her make up her mind about which route to take. She stumbled on the broadcast of a press conference at police HQ in Hudiksvall. There were three people sitting on a little dais, and the only woman was Vivi Sundberg. Her heart skipped a beat — what if Sundberg was about to announce that a judge from Helsingborg had been exposed as a petty thief? She sat down on the edge of the bed and turned up the sound. The man in the middle, Tobias Ludwig, was speaking.