‘You read a lot,’ she said, and her gaze wandered along the bookshelves.
‘What do you want?’
She decided to get right to the point. Ante Persson was not the kind to be warmed up with a gentle introduction.
‘Elsa Persson is in the hospital,’ she said, and made an effort to catch his eye.
‘What’s happened?’ he asked, with no discernible reaction.
‘She was run over.’
He nodded. No question as to how it had happened or how serious it was. How is this man put together, she wondered to herself.
‘She walked out in front of a lorry after paying you a visit last week.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ he said.
If Lindell were to describe his voice, she would use only one word: harsh.
‘Are you? From what I understand the two of you were not particularly close.’
‘That’s not surprising if you never meet. The last time was two years ago and that visit lasted all of five minutes.’
He looked at her with watery eyes. The irises were of an undefinable colour and the whites were bloodshot. There was, however, an intensity in his old man’s eyes that she sensed had either attracted or frightened women, and perhaps also men, when Ante Persson had been in his prime.
She found herself mostly curious. His apparently unbroken intellect, the books and other items on the table, and his still forceful voice did not speak of any debility. It was only his body that did not seem to have kept up.
‘What was it that time?’
‘She explained that her husband, my nephew, had been declared dead officially. She wanted me to know before it was published in the paper.’
‘And this time she came to tell you that he had risen from the dead?’ Ante Persson nodded and smiled a faint, possibly ironic, smile.
‘You can read both English and Spanish?’
He nodded again. He had resumed the completely expressionless – not to say icy – face. She could tell he was on his guard. His right hand rested over his left.
‘And German and a little Russian,’ he said after a couple of seconds. ‘So I knew that you would come,’ he added after an additional pause.
‘But you knew he was alive?’
The thought came to her as a sudden inspiration. If you were going to divulge a secret to anyone it would be Ante Persson, that she was convinced of.
‘Did you speak to Elsa?’
‘No, she is apparently unconscious.’
‘I see,’ he said. ‘You figured it out on your own.’
‘Right here and now,’ she replied.
Ante Persson gave an unexpected roar, a belly laugh, hearty and contagious.
‘You are the nicest fucking cop I’ve ever met.’
‘You’ve dealt with the police before?’
‘More than sixty years ago, but back then it was pretty frequent. Well, and then they came by when Sven-Arne disappeared, but that doesn’t really count.’
Lindell wanted to know more but knew the man on the other side of the table was not one to let himself be rushed. He talked about what he wanted to talk about. The rest you had to guess or wait for.
‘Tell me about Sven-Arne,’ she urged.
‘He was a plumber,’ he grinned, ‘who rose up like a hot-air balloon.’
‘And then the air went out?’
‘Exactly.’
He leant across the table and the look in his eyes changed for a fraction of a second, as if he was preparing to add something. But he sank back instead.
‘The two of you were close?’
Ante Persson did not answer. Lindell glanced at the books on the shelf. She noticed that they were arranged thematically. As far as she could tell they were all about politics; there was no fiction.
‘I’m working on my memoirs,’ he said abruptly. ‘You can read it all in there.’
‘Can I get a look?’ Lindell asked.
‘If Sven-Arne is alive or not doesn’t matter. He is a piece of fly shit in the universe, just like you and I, for that matter. He became a politician and that might have been all right but he didn’t believe in it, and that’s bad. I mean, here, on the inside,’ he said, and thumped above his heart. ‘In here. There has to be a red thread one follows in life.’
‘Like you have done?’
Ante Persson sighed deeply.
‘I’ve tried,’ he said.
He massaged the stumps that were all that remained of the little and ring finger on his left hand.
‘Even though it’s been hard, damned hard, many times.’
Sad men, Lindell thought. Sad old men. How many haven’t I met? She thought of her father, Berglund, Torsten Andersson on Bultudden, and of Edvard, who in thirty years would probably sit much like Ante Persson, sighing and grumbling.
She quickly felt very tired. Why am I sitting here listening to this whining? I’m a criminal investigator, not a case worker or psychologist. But she knew that a police officer was every bit as much a social worker. In this mess of human frailties there were lies, squashed hopes, betrayal – and sometimes violence. The question was if she would get any wiser – a better cop – by talking to Ante at the Ramund nursing home. Or did it just serve to make her depressed? She had no answers to Ante’s pained questions, she was convinced of that. He, who from a human perspective was now living on borrowed time, had most likely ransacked himself for decades and was clearly still as searching and lost. Am I doing the right thing? Am I? She found herself circling these same questions herself, both professionally and in private, excruciatingly aware that she would never arrive at a definitive answer.
Lindell lifted the head that she had unconsciously lowered, as if in prayer. The old man was watching her. Before his gaze – serious and without a trace of the mockery she had observed earlier – she felt completely cold inside.
‘Why did he run off to India?’ she asked, mostly in order to get away.
Ante Persson did not answer. She knew the audience was over.
Ann Lindell ended up standing outside the nursing home for a while. It was only a couple of minutes’ walk to the Café Savoy but she decided to put it off for another time. She walked along Sysslomansgatan, following it south and crossing Ringgatan, when she suddenly recalled that an arsonist had lived in these parts. Three people, a mother, father, and small child, illegal refugees from Bangladesh, had died in Svartbäcken. Hate and intolerance had characterised that time.
It was quite by chance that she had read in the newspaper recently that the arsonist, together with three others, had escaped from the Tidaholms prison. They were still at large. It made her think of Torsten Andersson’s words about getting rid of the murderers.
Children were playing outside the Sverker school. She stopped at the fence and watched the quick bolts across the concrete, listened to the shouts and laughter. A group of boys were bouncing a ball back and forth. Next autumn it would be Erik’s turn.
A bus pulled over, the door opened, and the driver gave her an inquiring look. She realised she was standing at a bus stop and got on, mainly so she wouldn’t infuriate the driver.
‘I was lost in thought,’ she said.
The driver smiled but said nothing. She sat down. Take me far away from here, she thought, and closed her eyes. The ache in her back came in waves.
When she opened her eyes and looked out of the window she saw a Christmas display at the Salvation Army. Through the dirty pane she could see a gigantic Santa Claus, smiling a confused smile, as if he were terrified. A heap of red packages lay at his feet.
The bus continued on its way to the centre of town. There were stars and glittering decorations all over. Should she head back to Ödeshög for Christmas? Her mother had called and more or less pleaded for it. ‘It may be the last time,’ she had added when she perceived Ann’s hesitation.
The last time? What did she mean? Was she thinking of Ann’s increasingly befuddled father or was it simply a tearful attempt to coax her daughter back to Ödeshög?