She got up, stretched out her hand, and laid it on her colleague’s shoulder. There was a new kind of closeness between them. She liked it, even if she was uncertain what effect it would have on their future working relationship.
He put his hand on hers.
‘I’m glad you came up to talk for a while. I’ll be going home on Monday.’
She spent the rest of the day writing up her notes from Bultudden. Marksson must surely be expecting some kind of report. She didn’t have much to show for herself, and took her time.
Sammy Nilsson looked in but Lindell pretended to be extremely busy and only gave clipped answers to his questions, and after a couple of minutes he slunk off.
She was done at half past three. She turned off the computer, got herself a cup of coffee, and returned to her office. The activity at the unit appeared to have dropped off. Everything was calm. Friday. Fredriksson and Beatrice were taking the night shift. Ottosson had already gone home. She heard Riis clomp by. Then there was simply silence outside her door.
She thought about Ante Persson and his memoirs. What would they be about? The red thread of his life?
She recalled his gaze, how it changed in the flash of an instant. A dangerous man, it struck her, without being able to offer a satisfactory account as to what this dangerous quality might consist of. Was it his age that had made him in a way unreachable? She had always had respect for older people.
Or was it simply the case that his evident integrity – perhaps an expression of a heightened self-sufficiency – made her feel uncomfortable? She had felt this same feeling of unease many times when she listened to older people. As if she were inferior in experience and knowledge.
But most of the time the relationship was reversed: Most of them felt inferior and pressed in their contact with the police, and this was something every interrogator could take advantage of. She wasn’t the most skillful in this respect. Both Beatrice and Sammy Nilsson were considerably better. Lindell preferred the give and take of open conversation. She didn’t like unspoken threats or traps.
Someone like Ante Persson was a challenge. He was not one to be tempted out onto thin ice. He only shared information that he had picked out and at the pace that he had set.
Riis went stomping in the opposite direction down the corridor and Lindell was startled out of her thoughts. She looked at her watch and decided that the working day was done.
TWENTY-FOUR
Lindell did not wave to Torsten Andersson as she passed his house. It was a ridiculous protest but she knew he would register it.
As she drove by Margit and Kalle Paulsson she swore quietly under her breath. She had forgotten to talk to Marksson about Lisen Morell. That woman needed immediate intervention. Otherwise she would go under. For a moment she considered stopping by her house before she took on the three loners (as she had dubbed the bachelors on the point) but instead decided to end her tour with a visit to the fishing cottage.
Her first ‘loner’ lived a couple of hundred metres up. She drove into the yard. A line ran from a shed to the main house. She guessed it was a dog run. She couldn’t see a dog but still parked her car at a safe distance.
Thomas B. Sunesson walked out onto his front step the moment she opened her car door.
‘There’s no dog,’ was the first thing he said. ‘I saw you wondering where to put the car.’
‘You never know,’ Lindell said, holding out her hand. His grin was in no way unfriendly.
‘Before we go on, there’s something I have to know: What does the B stand for?’
The grin grew wider.
‘Bertram. Like Dad and his dad and his dad before him, all the way back.’
She returned his smile. Thomas B. Sunesson spoke with the broadest Roslagen dialect one could imagine. Yet another Edvard, she thought; and the fact was that Sunesson reminded her of him. The same open face, the at some moments almost childlike features, an impression reduced somewhat by its angular masculinity. This fateful combination that Lindell had found so attractive.
‘His name was Bronco. The dog, I mean,’ Sunesson added when he saw Lindell’s bewilderment. ‘A greyhound. An angry bugger.’
So you were forced to get rid of it, Lindell thought.
‘He became fourteen years old.’
The man looked over to the shed. Lindell followed his gaze and discovered the dog house.
‘But he was my friend, the bastard.’
The melancholy tendency also underscored the resemblance to Edvard.
‘Shall we go inside?’
He nodded and walked to the door without further ado, kicking off his clogs in the vestibule and disappearing inside.
They sat down in the kitchen. She got the impression that he had cleaned for her visit. A pile of newspapers were neatly stacked on the table, the countertop was wiped down, no dirty dishes were out, and a clean dishtowel was hanging from a hook.
He offered Lindell coffee but she said no, having already drunk two cups that morning.
‘You’re involved in a manhunt,’ he said.
News about the foot had spread, even if the macabre find on the other side of the bay had surprisingly not been made much of in the media.
She launched into her usual spiel about questioning any people in the area who may have observed something. As she talked he watched her intently, as if he did not want to miss a single word. She assessed his age as around forty. There was a small but marked scar above one eyebrow. He was noticeably tanned, or rather, weather-beaten.
‘No, I haven’t seen anything out of the ordinary,’ he said when she stopped. ‘There’s not much that happens around here, and if against all odds someone did turn up we would notice. Especially if it was a woman,’ he added, and smiled imperceptibly.
‘No unknown cars have driven by?’
He shook his head.
‘Well, maybe last summer; there are always confused Stockholmers who come by. They’re either looking for summer houses, or else they are just lost. Sometimes they stop and ask if you know anything that’s for sale.’
‘Anyone in particular that you remember?’
‘No, they all look the same. There was one,’ Sunesson said, and chuckled, ‘who wanted to buy this old dump. He offered me a million on the spot. When I said no, he raised it by half a million. Bronco was barking like crazy. He doesn’t like city slickers.’
‘How much do you want for it?’
His smile widened. ‘Interested?’
‘Not really.’
‘I’m not selling,’ he said, suddenly serious.
‘Any red cars drive by here lately?’
‘Frisk has a red car. He lives at the end of the street, as we say. And of course then we have the magpie in the fishing cabin.’
‘You mean Lisen Morell?’
‘Not the sharpest tack, if you ask me.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘She calls herself an artist, but she can’t paint, that’s for sure.’
‘You call her the Magpie.’
‘She’s always dressed in black and white.’
Lindell dropped Morell. ‘So Tobias Frisk has a red car?’
He nodded. ‘Are you looking for a red car?’
‘We have a witness who saw a red, unfamiliar car on the other side of the bay. That’s all.’
‘But Frisk isn’t unfamiliar.’
‘Maybe on the other side.’
Sunesson snorted. ‘In other words, you don’t have much.’
Lindell acknowledged as much.
‘Do you have a saw?’
He looked taken aback. ‘Of course I do.’
‘A chainsaw?’
He nodded.
‘Can I see it?’
‘I’m not following any of this.’
‘Maybe you even have a bandsaw?’
‘That too. And a wood cutter, and a skidsteer, and a trailer and a-’
‘Thanks, that’s enough,’ Lindell interrupted.
The chainsaw was a Stihl.
‘No, don’t touch it!’
Sunesson quickly pulled his hand back.