Хеннинг Манкелль - The Man from Beijing

In the evening she and Staffan had a late dinner. They only referred in passing to what had happened. The evening papers he had brought home from the train had nothing to add to what she already knew. In one of the photographs from the press conference she noticed Lars Emanuelsson with his hand raised, wanting to ask a question. She shuddered at the thought of their meetings. She mentioned that she would be going to visit Karin Wiman the following day and would probably stay overnight. Staffan knew Karin and had known her late husband.

‘Go,’hesaid. ‘It’lldoyou good. When doyou haveto see the doctor again?’

‘In a few days. He’s bound to say I’m ready to go back to work.’

The next morning the telephone rang shortly after Staffan had left for the railway station, when she was packing her suitcase. It was Lars Emanuelsson.

‘What do you want? How did you get this number? It’s unlisted.’

Emanuelsson snorted. ‘A journalist who doesn’t know how to dig up a telephone number, no matter how secret it is, should take up another profession.’

‘What do you want?’

‘A comment. Big earth-shattering events are taking place in Hudiksvall. A prosecutor who doesn’t seem all that self-confident nevertheless looks us straight in the eye. What do you say to that?’

‘Nothing.’

Lars Emanuelsson’s friendly tone, artificial or not, disappeared. His voice became sharper, more impatient.

‘Let’s cut the crap. Answer my questions. Otherwise I’ll start writing about you.’

‘I have absolutely no information at all about what that prosecutor has announced. I’m just as surprised as the rest of the nation.’

‘Surprised?’

‘Use whatever word you like. Surprised, relieved, indifferent, take your pick.’

‘Now I’m going to ask you some simple questions.’

‘I’m going to hang up.’

‘If you do I’ll write that a judge in Helsingborg who recently left Hudiksvall in a hurry refuses to answer any questions. Have you ever had your house besieged by paparazzi? It’s very easy to make that happen. In the old days in this country a few carefully placed rumours would soon lead to the gathering of lynch mobs. A flock of excited journalists is very reminiscent of a mob like that.’

‘What do you want?’

‘Answers. Why were you in Hudiksvall?’

‘I’m related to some of the victims. I’m not saying which ones.’

She could hear him breathing heavily while he thought that over, or perhaps noted it down.

‘That’s probably true. Why did you leave?’

‘Because I wanted to go home.’

‘What were those old books in that plastic bag you took out of the police station?’

She thought briefly before answering.

‘Some diaries that belonged to one of my relatives.’

‘Is that true?’

‘It’s true. If you come here to Helsingborg I’ll hold one of them out of the door to show you. I look forward to seeing you.’

‘I believe you. You must understand that I’m only doing my job.’

‘Is that it, then?’

‘Yes, that’s it.’

Birgitta Roslin slammed the phone down hard. The call had made her sweat. But the answers she had given had been true and unevasive. Lars Emanuelsson wouldn’t have anything to write about. But she was impressed by his persistence.

Although it would have been easier to take the ferry to Elsinore, she drove down to Malmö and over the long bridge she used to cross only by bus. Karin Wiman lived in Gentofte, north of Copenhagen. Birgitta Roslin lost her way twice before she finally connected to the right road and then the coast route north. It was cold and windy but the sky was clear. It was eleven o’clock by the time she found Karin’s attractive house. It was the house she lived in when she got married, and it was the house in which her husband had died ten years ago. It was white, two storeys, surrounded by a large, mature garden. Birgitta recalled that you could see the sea over the rooftops from the top floor.

Karin Wiman emerged from the front door to greet her. She had lost weight, and she was paler than Birgitta remembered. Was she ill, perhaps? They embraced, went inside, left Birgitta’s suitcase in the room she would be sleeping in and toured the house. Not much had changed since Birgitta was last there. Karin had evidently wanted to leave everything as it was when her husband was still alive. What would Birgitta have done in that situation? She didn’t know. But she and Karin Wiman were very different. Their lasting friendship was based upon that fact. They had developed armour that absorbed or deflected the metaphorical blows they sometimes landed on each other.

Karin had made lunch. They sat in a conservatory full of plants and perfumes. Almost immediately, after the first tentative sentences, they began talking about their student years in Lund. Karin, whose parents had a stud farm in Skåne, had enrolled in 1966, Birgitta the following year. They had met in the students’ union at a poetry reading and soon became friends despite their differences. Karin, given her background, was very self-confident. Birgitta, on the other hand, was insecure and tentative.

They became involved in National Liberation Front activities, sat as quiet as mice and listened to speakers, mainly young men who seemed to know everything, going on about the necessity of rebelling and stirring up trouble. But what inspired them most was the fantastic feeling of being able to create a new world order, a new reality — they were involved in shaping the future. And it wasn’t only the NLF that gave them a grounding in political agitation. There were lots of other organisations expressing their solidarity with the freedom movements mushrooming in the poverty-stricken countries of the developing world and working to evict the old colonial powers. And a similar mood prevailed in local politics. Young Swedes were rebelling against everything old-fashioned and out of date. It was, to coin a phrase, a wonderful time to be alive.

Both of them had joined a radical group in left-wing Swedish politics known as the Rebels. For a few hectic months they had led a cult-like existence where the mainstay was brutal self-criticism and a dogmatic adherence to Mao Zedong’s interpretations of revolutionary theory. They had cut themselves off from all other left-wing alternatives, which they regarded with contempt. They had smashed their classical music records, emptied their bookshelves and lived a life modelled after that of Mao’s Red Guard in China.

Karin asked if Birgitta remembered their notorious visit to the spa resort of Tylösand. She remembered it, all right. The Rebel cell they belonged to had held a meeting. Comrade Moses Holm, who later became a medical practitioner but was barred because he not only used drugs but also provided them to others, had proposed that they should ‘infiltrate the bourgeois group-sex decadents who spend the summer bathing and sunbathing at Tylösand’. After lengthy discussions it was agreed, and a strategy was drawn up. The following Sunday, at the beginning of July, nineteen comrades hired a bus and went to Halmstad and Tylösand. Parading behind a portrait of Mao, surrounded by red flags, they marched down to the beach, past all the astonished sunbathers. They chanted slogans, waved Mao’s Little Red Book, then swam out into the sea with the portrait of Mao raised. Then they assembled on the beach, sang ‘The Red Flag’, condemned fascist Sweden in a short speech, and urged the collected workers to unite, arm themselves and prepare for the revolution that was just around the corner. Then they returned home and spent the next few days evaluating their ‘attack’.

‘What do you remember about it?’ asked Karin.

‘Moses. Who maintained that our invasion of Tylösand would be recorded in the history of the imminent revolution.’