Хеннинг Манкелль - The Man from Beijing

‘Birgitta Roslin? My apologies for calling at this late hour. Do you recognise my voice?’

She did recognise it, but couldn’t put a face to it. It was a man, an elderly man.

‘No, not really.’

‘Sture Hermansson.’

‘Do I know you?’

‘Know is perhaps too strong a word. But you visited my little Hotel Eden in Hudiksvall a few months ago.’

‘Now I remember.’

‘I want to apologise for calling so late.’

‘You already have. I take it you have a special reason for calling?’

‘He’s come back.’

Hermansson lowered his voice when he spoke these last words. The penny dropped, and she realised what he was talking about.

‘The Chinaman?’

‘Precisely.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘He arrived not long ago. He hadn’t booked in advance. I’ve just given him his key. He’s in the same room as last time. Number twelve.’

‘Are you sure it’s the same man?’

‘You have the film. But he seems to be the same person. He uses the same name, at least.’

Birgitta tried to think what to do. Her heart was pounding.

Her train of thought was broken by Hermansson.

‘One more thing.’

‘What?’

‘He asked about you.’

Birgitta held her breath. The fear inside her hit home with full force.

‘That’s not possible.’

‘My English is not good. To be honest, it took me some time before I realised who he was asking after. But I’m sure it was you.’

‘What did you tell him?’

‘That you lived in Helsingborg. He seemed surprised. I think he assumed you were from Hudiksvall.’

‘What else did you say?’

‘I gave him your address, because you’d left it with me and asked me to get in touch if anything happened.’

You half-witted imbecile, Birgitta thought. She was suddenly panic-stricken.

‘Do me a favour,’ she said. ‘Call me when he goes out. Even if it’s the middle of the night. Call.’

‘I take it you want me to tell him I’ve been in touch with you?’

‘It would be good if you didn’t mention that.’

‘OK, I won’t. I won’t say a thing.’

The call was over. Birgitta didn’t understand what was going on.

Hong Qiu was dead. But the man with the red ribbon had come back.

After a sleepless night Birgitta Roslin called the Hotel Eden just before 7 a.m. The phone rang for a considerable amount of time without anybody answering.

She had tried to deal with her fear. If Ho hadn’t come from London and told her that Hong Qiu was dead, she wouldn’t have reacted so strongly to Sture Hermansson’s call. But she assumed that because Hermansson hadn’t been in touch again during the night, nothing further had happened. Perhaps the man was still asleep.

She waited another half-hour. She had several days ahead of her without any trials and hoped to work her way through all the piled-up paperwork and spend some time pondering her final decision regarding the sentence for the four Vietnamese criminals.

The telephone rang. It was Staffan from Funchal.

‘We’re taking a side trip,’ he said.

‘Over the mountains? Down in the valleys? Along those beautiful paths through all the flowers?’

‘We’ve booked tickets on a big sailing boat that’s going to take us out to sea. We maybe out of mobile phone range for the next couple of days.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘Nowhere. It’s the children’s idea. We’ll be unqualified crew members together with the captain, a cook and two real sailors.’

‘When are you leaving?’

‘We’re already at sea. It’s lovely weather. But unfortunately there’s no wind yet.’

‘Are there lifeboats? Do you have life jackets?’

‘You’re underestimating us. Tell me you hope we have a good time. If you like I can bring you a little bottle of seawater as a souvenir.’

It was a bad connection. They yelled out a few words of farewell. When Birgitta replaced the receiver, she suddenly wished she had gone to Funchal with them, even though Hans Mattsson would have been disappointed and her colleagues irritated.

She called the Hotel Eden again. Now the line was busy. She waited, tried again after five minutes — still busy. She could see through the window that the beautiful spring weather was continuing. She was too warmly dressed and changed her clothes. Still busy. She decided to try from downstairs in her office. After checking the fridge and making a grocery list, she dialled the Hudiksvall number one more time.

A woman replied in broken Swedish. ‘Eden.’

‘Can I speak to Sture Hermansson, please?’

‘You can’t,’ yelled the woman.

Then she shouted something hysterically in a foreign language that Birgitta assumed was Russian.

It sounded as if the telephone had fallen onto the floor. Somebody picked it up. Now it was a man who answered. He spoke with a Hälsingland accent.

‘Hello?’

‘Can I speak to Sture Hermansson, please?’

‘Who’s asking?’

‘Who am I speaking to? Is this Hotel Eden?’

‘Yes. But you can’t speak to Sture.’

‘My name’s Birgitta Roslin and I’m calling from Helsingborg. I was contacted around midnight by Sture Hermansson. We arranged to speak again this morning.’

‘He’s dead.’

She took a deep breath. A brief moment of dizziness. ‘What happened?’

‘We don’t know. It looks as if he’s managed to cut himself with a knife and bled to death.’

‘Who am I speaking to?’

‘My name’s Tage Elander. Not the former prime minister, my surname doesn’t have an r before the l. I run a wallpaper factory in the building next door. The hotel maid, the Russian woman, came running in a few minutes ago. Now we’re waiting for the police and an ambulance.’

‘Has he been murdered?’

‘Sture? Who the hell would want to murder Sture? He seems to have cut himself on a kitchen knife. As he was alone in the hotel last night, nobody heard his cries for help. It’s tragic. He was such a friendly man.’

Birgitta wasn’t sure she had understood correctly. ‘He can’t have been alone in the hotel.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because he had guests.’

‘According to the maid, the hotel was empty.’

‘He had at least one paying guest. He told me that last night. A Chinese man in room number twelve.’

‘It’s possible I misunderstood. I’ll ask her.’

Birgitta could hear the conversation in the background. The Russian maid was still hysterical.

Elander came back to the telephone. ‘She insists there were no guests here last night.’

‘All you need to do is check the ledger. Room number twelve. A man with a Chinese name.’

Elander put down the phone again. Birgitta could hear that the maid whose name might be Natasha had started to cry. She also heard a door shutting and different voices speaking in the background. Elander picked up the receiver again. ‘I’ll have to stop there. The police and the ambulance have arrived. But there is no hotel ledger.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘It’s vanished. The maid says it’s always on the counter. But it’s gone.’

‘I’m certain there was a guest staying in the hotel last night.’

‘Well, he’s not here now. Maybe he’s the one who stole the ledger?’

‘It could be worse than that,’ said Birgitta. ‘He might have been the one holding the kitchen knife that killed Sture Hermansson.’

‘I don’t understand what you’re saying. Maybe it’s best if you speak to one of the police officers.’

‘I’ll do that. But not right now.’

She replaced the receiver. She had remained standing while taking the call, but now she had to sit down. Her heart was hammering in her chest.