She had had trouble falling asleep, tossed and turned, and woken up with period pain.
‘Hey there, Eagle,’ Sammy Nilsson said by way of greeting when Fredriksson sauntered in. ‘Lindell has just been telling us her ornithological adventures in the outer coastal area.’
‘It should have been a flamingo,’ she said.
Ottosson looked up, surprised. Sometimes it struck Lindell what an absence of imagination he had.
‘But then I would have had to go to west Africa,’ she added. Ottosson still looked nonplussed.
Lindell sighed and sat down at the table.
‘Today I have some old shit to tackle,’ she said, mainly to get a word in before anyone else. Beatrice Andersson and Riis – who was back from his last sick leave – were the last to get there.
‘A shooting in Vattholma,’ Ottosson said. ‘Someone firing away in the forest, unclear why. Most excitement is from yesterday evening and night, otherwise fairly calm. A couple of domestic disputes and a new case of car torching in Stenhagen.’
‘Not the right weather for chasing hooligans,’ Haver said.
‘If only they would torch my car,’ Sammy Nilsson said.
‘Well, then, how did things go in Östhammar?’
‘One more day. I’m going back tomorrow morning for three more interviews.’
‘What about Erik?’ Ottosson asked.
‘I’ve worked it out,’ Lindell said. ‘Then I’ll wrap it up.’
‘Can’t the real country policemen take care of it?’
‘No, they have enough going on, and I want to finish my work on Bultudden.’
‘Something up?’
‘It’s just a feeling,’ Lindell answered unassumingly, and smiled at Fredriksson.
She knew what it would mean for him if a breakthrough came as a result of his eagle theory.
Admittedly she did have a great deal of ‘old shit’ occupying her desk, but she had been planning to take it easy. In part because the ache in her back was hellish at times, and in part because she wanted time to visit Berglund again.
Listlessly, she checked her email and luckily there was nothing there that couldn’t wait.
She gulped down the rest of her coffee and stopped by Ottosson’s office.
‘Anything new from Berglund?’
‘Haver was up there yesterday. Everything seemed fine. Berglund has started taking walks on the hospital grounds. And he’s reading through the old case materials.’
‘I was thinking of looking in on him today.’
‘That will make him happy,’ Ottosson said kindly, rifling through his piles of paper, pulling one page out but tossing it aside and giving her a bewildered smile.
‘I don’t understand,’ he mumbled.
Lindell smiled. She knew that Ottosson was stressed, and nonetheless he managed to carry it off. Once again she was able to maintain that she had a good boss. He did not often complain about his work situation, despite often having just cause. He was rarely surly or arrogant, but did become distracted when there was too much on the go, and this morning was coloured by just such an air of distraction.
‘Was there anything else?’
‘No,’ Lindell said, although she would have liked to linger a while, maybe chat, but she decided to leave him in peace.
When she returned, there was a note on her desk with a hastily scrawled name. It was her own handwriting but at first she could not remember where, how, and why she had written down the name, before she realised that it was the name of the missing county commissioner’s relative, which she had been given by Elsa Persson’s neighbour.
Ante Persson – the one who had most likely made Elsa Persson so upset and distraught that she had walked out right in front of a lorry. Where was it the neighbour said that he lived? Wasn’t it Ramund? Elsa Persson had been run over at the corner of Sysslomansgatan and Luthagsleden. That could fit. If she had been coming from Ramund and was on her way downtown she would naturally cross Luthagsleden at that point.
But hadn’t she already been there and visited the old man at the time when she bumped into her neighbour? Perhaps she had been on her way back there, or was trying to leave?
Whichever it was, Lindell’s curiosity was piqued. If she went to see this Ante Persson – the name appealed to her somehow – then perhaps she would get her answer. And in addition it would give her something to tell Berglund.
The first thing she noticed was a bookcase, or rather, books in great quantities, many of them shoved on top of ones that were standing on the shelf. Thereafter she noticed a hand resting on a bed rail. The hand was missing two fingers.
‘What the hell is this?’
The clerk behind her back let out a giggle.
‘What did I tell you?’ she whispered to Lindell, who turned her head and stared at the woman. The latter was about to say something else but stopped, her mouth half open.
‘Thank you,’ Lindell said, turning her back. She heard the door glide shut.
The hand fascinated her. It was powerful. The part of the arm that could be seen was covered in hair. Grey, curly hairs. The muscles in the hand and arm tensed and Ante Persson got out of bed. She caught sight of one shoulder and his back.
She knocked against the doorjamb again, trying to raise her voice above the radio that was on. The voice on the radio was speaking about Iraq.
‘I could have sworn,’ she heard him mutter.
She took a couple of steps into the flat through the narrow hallway and stopped in the doorway. It was as if he sensed more than heard her, because he turned his upper body abruptly. His face contorted, perhaps from pain. He did not look shocked or frightened, just angry.
‘What is this?’
‘Hello, Ante Persson,’ she said loudly.
‘I’m not deaf!’
Lindell nodded.
‘Could we turn the radio down a notch?’
‘It’s the news.’
She took another step, not sure if she should hold her hand out. His left hand hung alongside his body and now it looked surprisingly powerless, while the right hand rested on the handle of a sort of walking aid. If he lets go he will lose his balance, she thought.
‘You’re not a staff member,’ he observed.
Lindell shook her head.
‘I’m from the police,’ she answered, and couldn’t help but smile as a crack momentarily appeared in his dismissive expression, a flicker of insecurity in his eyes.
‘What are you grinning about?’ he growled.
What an old codger, she thought, and her smile widened.
‘My, you’re a grumpy bastard,’ she said, and unexpectedly his snort turned into a smile. He shuffled over to the radio and turned off the reporter’s voice in the middle of a sentence that Lindell thought had started promisingly: ‘It will be a mild winter according-’
‘All they do is lie anyway,’ he said. ‘It’s going to be a hellishly cold winter. Sit down.’
She sat down at the kitchen table that was pushed up against the bookshelf. A somewhat peculiar arrangement, but she realised immediately that the table was not used for its intended purpose. It was actually a desk with a contemporary desk lamp, a pile of books, a notepad, a portable tape recorder, a magnifying glass, and a jar of pens. A stack of photocopies and a highlighter were laid out on the desk.
She sat down on the side she thought he did not usually sit at. She examined the room during the time it took for him to take his seat. The furnishings were spartan, if not downright bare. The bed was made. There was an embroidered pillow at one end. On the wall, between the two windows, there was something that she took to be a diploma, behind glass and in a silver-coloured frame. It was embellished with stamps and a flourish in gold and red that resembled a weapon. Ante Persson’s name was written in an ornate script.
The stack of books on the table was dominated by English-language works with titles such as Another Hill and Beyond Exile and Death. There was a large book toward the bottom that she thought was in Spanish.