Haver nodded.
‘Everybody was wearing one on a particular day, I don’t know why, but it looked like a chicken farm.’
‘Mondays,’ Lindell said. ‘Yellow is the colour of their king.’
Even Riis looked impressed.
‘Inner and outer investigating,’ said Sammy Nilsson, ‘and for once with the same result.’
Lindell started to tell them about her visit to Sukothai. Ottosson’s smile widened.
‘Good work,’ he said, and Lindell sensed that he enjoyed Haver’s somewhat sulky look. The two of them had not been getting along lately. Lindell did not know why, and did not really care.
‘I think we should put an ad in the Thai newspapers,’ she said. ‘We can get in touch with our colleagues there and they can place the photograph. It should be enough with five locations, places where many Swedes go.’
‘What the hell?’ Riis exclaimed.
Lindell turned to him.
‘Isn’t that a bit much?’ he went on. ‘She is dead.’
‘But who was she?’
‘What does that matter?’ Riis said. ‘Her killer is also dead. Nothing can be made undone. We have the motive and how it happened, we have the forensic evidence.’
‘What is the motive?’
‘Well, that she might have wanted to go home-’
‘Maybe,’ Lindell interrupted. ‘Maybe she wanted to return to Thailand, maybe she… No, Riis, that’s not good enough. And besides, her relatives must want to know what happened to her.’
‘For them she is most likely dead already,’ Riis said. ‘And as for the ad. She is probably from the north of Thailand. That’s where most of the whores-’
‘You’ve been there and checked it out?’
Ottosson coughed, his usual signal when he felt a discussion was going awry. Lindell shot him a quick glance but continued.
‘If it had been a Swedish girl we would have left no stone unturned in order to secure an identity, would we?’
She let her gaze wander over the assembled group in order to get their assent. No one said anything.
‘And think of the tsunami. We sure as hell made sure every scrap of bone could be connected to the right person. We sent people over there from Federal Homicide and many others besides. You remember that, don’t you? That time it was Swedes. I don’t think we told their relatives back in Sweden that we already knew they were dead and so it didn’t really matter. No, we DNA-tested every single scrap of tissue. So shape up, Riis!’
‘That was quite a salvo,’ Sammy Nilsson said.
‘You want us to send a foot to Thailand?’ Riis said sardonically.
‘And you remember the Thais? How they helped the tourists?’
When she finished the whole group was completely quiet. Without thinking about it she poured herself a cup of coffee, but remained standing. Her hand was trembling.
‘Maybe you’re right,’ Ottosson said, and broke the silence, ‘but the question is, will it help to place the ad?’
‘Oh, you too!’ Lindell exclaimed, but regretted it immediately.
‘And we don’t actually know if she’s the woman in the picture. It could be anyone.’
Beatrice’s comment made Lindell slam her cup onto the table.
‘And?’ she said, and her growing animosity toward Beatrice almost made her kick her in the shins, but she controlled herself enough to just stare at her.
‘What do you mean, “and”?’ Beatrice answered calmly.
‘The photograph is the only thing we have, isn’t it? The only thing we have, and that’s what we’re going to work with, as long as it holds up.’
Ottosson took out a napkin, reached over, and wiped up the spilt liquid around Lindell’s cup.
Lindell and Ottosson had only clashed once before. That had been in the context of an investigation of a young Peruvian’s death. That had been eight years ago and Lindell was not proud of her reaction. She sensed that Ottosson agreed with Riis and Beatrice, otherwise he would immediately have jumped to her defence, and that made her almost more chagrined. She felt betrayed but knew that there had to be limits and that they had now reached that point. A continued exchange could only end badly. She was not afraid of the battle, nor of Riis, whom she regarded as a genuine pile of shit, or even to quarrel with Ottosson as she knew she could make amends, but in a strange kind of way she was afraid of Beatrice. To become even more angry and throw out accusations would only play to the advantage of her colleague who had the ability to always keep her cool.
‘Okay,’ she said, taking a sip of coffee and giving Ottosson a look of thanks for wiping up the spill. ‘I’ll suggest that Marksson in Östhammar takes the initiative.’
She felt Ottosson’s immediate relief.
‘Yes, then it will be up to him,’ he said in a tranquil tone.
Lindell turned, coffee cup in hand, and walked off. She felt the gazes of her colleagues burn in her back.
Back in her office she sank down in the visitor’s chair. She had not exactly expected a standing ovation for her discovery that the woman was from Thailand, but this general absence of interest was shocking to her. She could not understand their reaction. Riis – that was one thing. He was uninterested in most things, and Beatrice now had a habit of taking the opposite viewpoint – either quietly or with a tone of mild superiority – of anything Lindell suggested, but Haver and Ottosson? And Sammy Nilsson, the one who was closest to her when it came to a question of values? Incomprehensible. She re-examined the arguments she had used and found that they held up.
The reason for their indifference must stem from the fact that they viewed their prospects of success as minimal. They probably thought that she would get bogged down in the Thai woman’s fate and forget everything else. It had happened before – according to her colleagues – that she had lost her sense of perspective and ended up out of synch with the others in the unit.
She was aware of this undeniable weakness but in this particular case it was a no-brainer. All they had to do was get in touch with a police authority on the other side of the world and let them do the work.
She called Bosse Marksson again and told him she would drive out again the next day. They agreed to meet outside Torsten Andersson’s house at half past nine.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Of course he had recognised the rifle, but he hadn’t wanted to say anything. Marksson had come by and showed him the antique piece, and asked if he had seen it before. It had to be at least sixty, seventy years old. Why should he say anything? What was done was done. Who could believe that Frisk was man enough to pull the trigger? What he didn’t understand was how Frisk had got hold of the weapon.
Now he was out there again, Marksson. Was he whistling? Looked like it. Cops must get cheered up when there is some devilment under way. They come to life. Whistling.
He recognised his dad too. Birger Marksson. That was not a voice you easily forgot. He was still called ‘the health enthusiast,’ dashing around in tights long before it became fashionable among idiot joggers. Now it seemed almost taunting. Birger Marksson had to use twin walking sticks to get around. Birger’s woman, on the other hand, had never gone for a run her whole life. She was from Snesslinge and there one didn’t exert oneself. These days she dashed around to every sporting event like a mountain goat, took bus tours, and was active in every organisation in Östhammar.
What was he waiting for? He had been standing there for at least ten minutes. Torsten Andersson had heard Marksson pulling up next to the mailboxes and how he, after a couple of minutes, had stepped out of the car, and then like a restless spirit started walking up and down the street, whistling, like some puffed-up small-town policeman. Now he was taking out his phone and making a call. How much did all these mobile phone calls cost? Everything worked just fine before all those things.
Another car came driving around the bend. Torsten Andersson recognised it immediately. It was her, the Uppsala cop, the one who liked the crackle of a fire. The anxiety he had felt started to dissolve. It wasn’t him they were after.