Хеннинг Манкелль - The Man from Beijing

Birgitta put the letter in her bag, drank a cup of coffee and prepared to leave. Just as she was about to close the front door, she noticed some flight tickets on a table in the hall. She noted that Karin was booked to fly with Finnair from Helsinki to Beijing.

She took the ferry from Elsinore. It was windy. After landing she stopped at a corner shop displaying placards announcing that Lars-Erik Valfridsson had confessed. She bought a bundle of newspapers and drove home. Her reserved, taciturn Polish cleaning lady was waiting for her in the hall. Birgitta had forgotten that this was the day she was scheduled to come. They exchanged a few words in English as Birgitta paid her. When she was finally alone in the house, she sat down to read the newspapers. As usual, she was amazed to see how many pages the evening papers could devote to facts that were extremely sparse. What Staffan had said in their brief telephone conversation the previous evening contained at least as much information as the newspapers made a fuss about.

The only new item was a photograph of the man assumed to have committed the murders. The picture was probably an enlargement of a passport or driver’s licence photograph and showed a man with a featureless face, narrow mouth, high forehead and thin hair. She found it hard to imagine this man committing the barbaric murders in Hesjövallen. He looks like a Low Church pastor, she thought. Hardly a man with hell in his head and his hands. But she knew that she was going against her better judgement. She had seen so many criminals come and go in her court whose appearance suggested they couldn’t possibly have committed the crimes they were charged with.

It was only when she had discarded the newspapers and switched on teletext that her interest was really aroused. The main item there was the discovery by the police of what was presumably the murder weapon. The precise location had not been revealed, but it had been dug up where Lars-Erik Valfridsson had said they would find it. It was a rather poor home-made copy of a Japanese samurai sword. But the edge was very sharp. The weapon was currently being examined in the hope of finding fingerprints and, above all, traces of blood.

Something wasn’t right. She had an advertising pamphlet for the Chinese restaurant in her bag. She called the number and recognised the voice of the waitress she had spoken to. She explained who she was. It took a few seconds before the waitress caught on.

‘Have you seen the newspapers? The picture of the man who murdered all those people?’

‘Yes. Terrible man.’

‘Can you remember if he’s ever had a meal at your restaurant?’

‘No, never.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Never while I’m on duty. But other days my sister or my cousin work. They live in Söderhamn. They have restaurant there. We take turns. Family firm.’

‘Will you do something for me?’ said Birgitta Roslin. ‘Ask them to look at the picture in the newspapers. If they recognise him, please call me.’

The waitress made a note of Roslin’s telephone number.

‘What’s your name?’ asked Roslin.

‘Li.’

‘Mine’s Birgitta. Thank you for helping me.’

‘You’re not here in Hudiksvall?’

‘I’m at home in Helsingborg.’

‘Helsingborg? We have a restaurant there. Also family. It’s called Shanghai. Food as good as here.’

‘I’ll go there for a meal. Provided you help me.’

She remained seated by the telephone, waiting. When it rang, it was her son. She asked him to call back later, as she was expecting a call. Half an hour later, the call came.

‘Maybe,’ said Li.

‘Maybe?’

‘My cousin thinks the man might have been in restaurant once.’

‘When?’

‘Last year.’

‘But he’s not certain?’

‘No.’

‘Can you tell me his name?’

Birgitta made a note of the name and the telephone number of the restaurant in Söderhamn, then hung up. After a brief pause to think things over, she called police headquarters in Hudiksvall and asked to speak to Vivi Sundberg. She expected to have to leave a message, so was surprised when Vivi Sundberg came to the phone.

‘How’s it going with the diaries?’ Vivi asked. ‘Still finding them interesting?’

‘They’re not easy to read. But I have time. Anyway, congratulations on your breakthrough. If I understand things correctly you have both a confession and a possible murder weapon.’

‘This can hardly be the reason that you’re calling.’

‘Of course not. I wanted to bring your attention back to my Chinese restaurant one more time.’

She told Vivi about the Chinese cousin in Söderhamn, and that Lars-Erik Valfridsson might have eaten at the restaurant in Hudiksvall.

‘That could explain the red ribbon,’ said Birgitta in conclusion. ‘A loose thread.’

Vivi Sundberg seemed only vaguely interested.

‘We’re not worried about that ribbon at the moment. I think you can understand that.’

‘But I wanted to tell you even so. I can give you the name of the waiter who might have served the man, and his telephone number.’

‘Thank you for letting us know.’

When the call was over Roslin phoned her boss, Hans Mattsson. She had to wait for some time before he could take the call. She told him she expected to be cleared for work when she went to see her doctor in a couple of days.

‘We’re drowning,’ said Mattsson. ‘Or perhaps it might be more accurate to say we’re being choked. All the cutbacks have strangled Swedish courts. I never thought I’d live to see it.’

‘To see what?’

‘A price put on having a state governed by law. I didn’t think it was possible to give democracy a monetary value. If you don’t have a state functioning on the basis of law, you don’t have democracy. We’re on our knees. There’s a creaking and scraping and groaning coming from under the floorboards of this society of ours. I’m really worried.’

‘It’s hardly possible for me to take care of all the things you’re talking about, but I promise to look after my own trials again.’

‘You’re more than welcome.’

She dined alone that evening as Staffan had to spend the night in Hallsberg between two shifts. She continued to leaf through the diaries. The only entries she paused to read properly were those at the end of the last volume. It was June 1892. JA was now an old man. He lived in a little house in San Diego, suffering pains in his legs and his back. After a lot of haggling he would buy ointments and herbs from an old Indian medicine man; he found they were the only medications that helped him. He wrote about his extreme loneliness, about the death of his wife, and the children who had moved so far away — one of his sons now lived in the Canadian wilderness. He never mentioned the railway.

The diary ended in the middle of a sentence. It’s 19 June 1892. He notes that it has been raining during the night. His back is aching more than usual. He had a dream.

And his notes stopped there. Neither Birgitta Roslin nor anybody else in this world would ever know what he had dreamed about.

She leafed backwards through the diary. There was nothing to indicate that he knew the end was nigh, nothing in his notes paving the way for what was soon to happen. A life, she thought. My death could look the same; my diary, if I had kept one, would be unfinished. Come to that, whoever manages to conclude his or her story, to write a final period before lying down and dying?

She put the diaries back into the plastic bag and decided to post them the next day. She would follow what was happening in Hudiksvall the same way as everybody else.

She looked up a list of chief judges in the different regions of Sweden. The chief judge at the Hudiksvall district court was Tage Porsén. This will be the trial of his life, she thought. I hope he’s a judge who enjoys publicity. Birgitta knew that some of her colleagues both hated and were afraid of being confronted by journalists and television cameras.