For a murderer was what he was, she was convinced of it. No one parted willingly with a foot. She chose to disregard the fact that he would perhaps never have been found guilty in a court of law, that his defence could always have claimed she had left the house as well as Frisk and that someone had thereafter murdered and butchered her.
‘WORK’ was written in her notebook in all caps. The first thing she thought of was restaurants. She was familiar with a handful of Asian establishments in Uppsala alone – Japanese, Thai and Chinese. There were probably others. She fixed on Thai, reached for the telephone book and looked in the Yellow Pages under the heading ‘Restaurants’. Her eye immediately fell on the name ‘Sukothai’. She had eaten there once, with a journalist from TV4. A quick lunch, a couple of months ago.
At that moment it occurred to her that she had two chainsaws in her trunk. Instead of calling the restaurant, she called Marksson.
He picked up right away and Lindell told him about the power tools and that she would try to make time to drive out to Bultudden the following day.
Bosse Marksson was out on the point and he promised to leave a note for Sunesson and Malm to this effect in their respective mailboxes.
‘How is it going?’
‘No one has seen or heard a thing,’ Marksson answered. ‘And I don’t get it. How can a person live in a place like this without anyone finding out?’
‘She may have been locked away,’ Lindell said. ‘It’s happened before.’
‘But where?’
‘Maybe she was scared and stayed inside of her own accord.’
‘But when anyone visited Frisk?’
‘There is the upstairs,’ Lindell said.
Marksson pondered this.
‘Perhaps, but what a life.’
‘What a life,’ Lindell agreed.
She took out the snapshot of the woman one more time. It had been taken outside, in daylight. She was smiling at the photographer. Her dark hair was combed back and the bow peeped out like a white butterfly. She was wearing a short-sleeved yellow T-shirt and something was printed on the left side of it, at the bottom of the picture. They had discussed what this might be, perhaps a logo. The forensic photographer had made an enlargement of the area, but it told them nothing.
She took the photo, slid it into a plastic folder, and decided to drive around to the eateries she knew about.
First she headed to an Indian restaurant in Bäverns Gränd. It was lunchtime and the dining room was full. None of the staff members recognised the woman. Next stop was at Amazing Thai on Bredgränd. Same depressing result. Every staff member shook their heads. She was greeted with smiles at the two Chinese places on Kungsgatan, but no one who worked there could identify the face in the photo.
At Sukothai the lunch rush was over. A woman was gathering up plates and glasses in the dining area. She came over to Lindell with her tray piled high with dishes, smiling as if in recognition, but Lindell interpreted this more as an old habit and not because she truly recognised her.
‘Hungry?’ she asked.
Lindell explained that she was from the police.
‘Anything wrong?’
‘No, not at all,’ Lindell assured her, ‘I just need you to look at this picture.’
She held it up. The woman put down her tray, walked over to a table, and held the photo under the lamp.
‘From Thailand,’ she said at once.
‘So you’ve seen her before?’
‘No, but her blouse. It is yellow. This was taken on a Monday,’ the woman said, nodding firmly. ‘A Monday.’
‘How can you tell?’
‘The colour of the king, yellow. Everyone has a yellow top then. Because they like the king. Always on Monday. All Mondays. The king is good. Yellow is the colour of the king.’
The woman’s face broke into a huge smile and Lindell found herself smiling almost as widely. They studied the photograph together in silence. The woman grew serious.
‘Not a good thing,’ she said.
At first Lindell did not understand what she meant. ‘No, not a good thing,’ she said, and took the picture back. ‘What is this?’ She pointed to the logo on the shirt.
‘The mark of the king,’ the woman said quickly.
‘Do you have any idea where this picture was taken?’
The woman shook her head.
‘She maybe works at a restaurant. You see,’ she said, and pointed to something in the background, a detail partly concealed behind some trees, that Lindell had looked at closely but not understood what it was. It looked like the roof of an old-fashioned well.
‘For fish,’ the woman said. ‘The guests are looking at fish.’
Lindell took another look and understood. Restaurant, she thought. That sounded reasonable. A Swedish man comes in, eats, sees this woman and they start to talk, maybe see each other. He is there for a couple of weeks. Once he has left, she follows. Maybe he sends her money for the trip. He buys himself a girl, maybe with promises about work and riches, maybe love and family. Then the whole thing ends out on a windy point.
‘Thank you, you’ve been a pearl,’ she said, and spontaneously placed her hand on the woman’s arm.
She fired off another smile, showing gleaming white teeth.
‘Coffee?’
There was something in the woman’s face that made it impossible for Lindell to decline, even though she had already had her daily ration.
She sat down at a table with the photo in front of her. This was no gigantic breakthrough in trying to establish the butchered woman’s identity, but at least it was a step in the right direction. Now it seemed even more important to find out who she was.
Edvard had been in Thailand, it occurred to her. Had he bought himself love there? She did not think so, but the very thought of it was enough to make her dejected. All these charter-flying men who took liberties, they were nothing but slave traders. Ola Haver had visited Thailand and said how revolted he was by the fat, middle-aged tourists going around with trim Thai women young enough to be their daughters or granddaughters.
The proprietor came over to her table again, sat down, pulled the picture over and studied it thoroughly, as if imitating Lindell.
She looked up.
‘Advertise in the papers,’ she said. ‘On the coast, that is enough. Everyone can see the picture and they will say if they know her.’
She rattled off a number of place names. Lindell recognised at least two of the names: Phuket and Hua Hin. These she had heard of; she thought Haver had been in Phuket. She asked the woman to write down the names of the main tourist towns. It amounted to a good handful.
She left Sukothai with mixed feelings. The dimly lit interior had served as an escape for a few minutes, where she could reflect on the ongoing investigation in peace. In the stairs out to the alley, where her car was parked, it struck her that her role was not set in stone. She ought to drop Bultudden. With Fredriksson’s lucky guess of the eagle, she had played her part. Marksson and the other colleagues in Östhammar could take it from here. But something in the young woman’s gaze drove her on. Or else was it as simple as the fact that now, when Lindell could place her in a country, the need to know everything appeared even more necessary? No one wants to be anonymous, she thought, and no one wants to die anonymous.
She drove back to the police station. If she had not had coffee at the restaurant she would have gone past Savoy Café, in an attempt to stretch her time of solitary reflection.
At headquarters a whole group was drinking coffee together. It was almost like a morning meeting. Riis was holding forth. Ottosson held up a cup but Lindell shook her head.
‘Thailand,’ Haver said, as Riis finished.
Lindell wondered how in the world he knew, but tried not to show her surprise.
‘And you tell us this now?’
‘I didn’t think of it at first, but then I thought of it with that T-shirt.’
‘Because it’s yellow.’