Хеннинг Манкелль - The Man from Beijing

‘Can an act of madness be meticulously planned? Your answer is as good as mine.’

‘So we’ll have to wait and see.’

They drank tea and went to bed early. He stretched out his hand and stroked her cheek.

‘What’s on your mind?’ he said.

‘I was thinking about what a lot of forest there is in Sweden.’

‘I thought perhaps you might be thinking it was good to get away from everything.’

‘From what? You?’

‘Me. And all the trials. A little midlife crisis.’

She snuggled up closer.

‘Sometimes I think: What’s going on? It’s unfair, I know. You, the children, my job, what else can I ask for? But there are other things. What used to make us tick when we were younger. Not only understanding, but making a difference. If you take a look around, the world has only got worse.’

‘Not in every way. We smoke less, we have computers, mobile phones.’

‘It’s as if the whole world is falling apart. And our courts are pretty useless when it comes to preserving any kind of moral decency in this country.’

‘Is this what you were thinking about when you were up there in the north?’

‘I suppose so. I’m a little depressed. But perhaps you need to be a little depressed sometimes.’

They lay there without speaking. She expected him to reach for her, but nothing happened.

We’re not there yet, she thought, disappointed. But at the same time she couldn’t understand why she didn’t feel able to make the move herself.

‘We should go away for a while,’ he said eventually. ‘Some conversations are better during daylight hours rather than right before going to sleep.’

‘Maybe we should go on a pilgrimage,’ she said. ‘Do what tradition tells us to do, take the route to Santiago de Compostela. Put rocks in our backpacks, every one representing a problem we’re wrestling with. Then, when we’ve found solutions, we take the rocks out and lay them by the roadside, one by one.’

‘Are you serious?’

‘Of course. But I don’t know if my knees are up to it.’

‘If you carry things that are too heavy, you might get heel spurs.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Something nasty in your heels. A good friend of mine’s had it. Ture, the vet. He’s been through hell.’

‘We should become pilgrims,’ she mumbled. ‘But not just yet. I need to get some sleep. So do you.’

The next day Birgitta Roslin contacted her doctor to confirm her follow-up appointment in five days. Then she gave the house a thorough clean, no more than glancing at the plastic bag with the diaries. She spoke to her children about arranging a surprise party for Staffan’s birthday. Everybody agreed it was an excellent idea, and she called to invite their friends. She listened to the occasional news bulletins from Hudiksvall. Information seeping out from the embattled police HQ was scanty, to say the least.

It was not until late afternoon that she sat down at her desk and took out the diaries. Now that a man had been charged with the murders, her own theories seemed less important. She thumbed through until she came to the last page she had read.

The telephone rang. It was Karin Wiman. They set up a time for Birgitta to visit the following day.

In his diary notes JA continued complaining about nearly everybody he had to work with and was responsible for. The Irish are idle drunkards, the few black men the railway company employs are strong but unwilling to make an effort. JA longs for slaves from the Caribbean islands that he’s heard about. Only lashes of the whip can induce these strong men to really make use of their strength. He wishes he were able to whip them like one could whip oxen or donkeys. Birgitta Roslin was unable to establish which race he disliked most. Perhaps the ‘Red Indians’, the Native Americans for whom he had so much contempt. Their reluctance to work, their two-faced cunning, were worse than anything he’d come across among the scum he was forced to kick and beat into submission to ensure the eastern advancement of the railway. He also wrote regularly about the Chinese: he would be only too pleased to drive them into the Pacific Ocean and make them choose between drowning and swimming back to China. But he can’t deny that the Chinese are good workers. They don’t drink hard liquor, they keep themselves clean and they obey the rules. Their only weakness is their predilection for gambling and strange religious ceremonies. JA continually tries to justify his reasons for disliking these people who in fact are making his job easier. Some lines were almost impossible to make out, but Birgitta Roslin thought he must be suggesting that the industrious Chinese were cut out for this work, and nothing else. They had reached a level that would never be raised, no matter what was done to help them.

The people JA holds in highest esteem are the ones from Scandinavia. The army of workers building the railway contains a little colony of Nordic labourers: a few Norwegians and Danes, but more Swedes and Finns. I trust these people. They don’t try to fool me, as long as I keep an eye on them. And they’re not afraid of hard work. But if I turn my back on them, they’re transformed into the same gang of thugs as all the rest of them.

Birgitta Roslin pushed the diary aside and stood up. Whoever this railway foreman had been, she found him more and more repulsive. A man from a simple background who had emigrated to America. And then he suddenly found himself with enormous power over other people. A brutal person who had become a little tyrant. She got dressed to go out and went for a long walk through the city in order to shake off the disgust she felt.

It was six o’clock when she switched on the radio in the kitchen. The news bulletin began with Robertsson’s statement. She stood as if transfixed, listening. In the background was the noise of flashbulbs and scraping chairs.

As on earlier occasions, he was clear and precise. The man who had been charged the day before had now confessed that he, and he alone, had committed all the murders at Hesjövallen. At eleven o’clock in the morning he had requested, through his lawyer, to speak again to the female police officer who had first interrogated him. He had also asked for the prosecutor to be present. His motive, he said, was revenge. There would have to be several more interrogations before it could be established just what he had been taking revenge for.

Robertsson concluded with the details that everybody had been waiting for.

‘The man charged is Lars-Erik Valfridsson. He is a bachelor, employed by a firm that carries out excavation and rock-blasting operations. He has been sentenced several times in the past for assault and battery.’

The flashbulbs continued to pop. Robertsson began answering questions from the barrage fired at him by the mass of journalists. The female broadcaster faded out Robertsson’s voice and embarked on a summary of what had happened so far. Roslin left the radio on but turned her attention to teletext. There was nothing new, only a summary of what Roberts-son had said. She switched off both the television and the radio and sat down on the sofa. Robertsson’s voice had convinced her that he was sure they had found the murderer. She had listened to enough prosecutors to be able to draw conclusions about the sincerity of what he had said. He was convinced he was right. And honest prosecutors never based their indictments on revelations or guesses, but on facts.

It was too soon to draw conclusions. But she did so nevertheless. The man who had been arrested and charged was certainly not Chinese. She went back to her study and replaced the diaries in the plastic bag. There was no longer any need for her to study these unpleasantly racist and misanthropic jottings from more than a hundred years ago.