‘In you?’
Lisen Morell nodded. ‘But he was shy.’
‘Were you interested?’
‘No, I didn’t encourage it at all. And it got better. At first he looked at me as if I… well, you know.’
‘When did it get better?’
‘Last autumn. It seemed like he relaxed. I thought he realised I wasn’t interested.’
‘Maybe he met someone else?’
‘No, but he smelt differently.’
Lindell laughed. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Haven’t you noticed? When they are like males in rut they stink, but when they are satisfied the smell is not as sharp.’
‘Is that because they put more effort into their hygiene when they meet a woman? Wash themselves, put on a little deodorant, and splash on a little of this and that?’
Lisen Morell smiled. Lindell liked her smile, especially since it contrasted so completely with the woman she had met earlier.
‘Okay, when did his smell change?’
‘About a year ago.’
‘And then?’
‘Until early this autumn. Then he went back to his old self, if you can say that. Clumsy in a way I had never noticed before. I almost felt sorry for him, though he stared at my breasts. He also drove into the ditch, I think he was drunk. Not that that is unusual out here. Regular laws don’t apply in Bultudden.’
‘When was that?’
‘Perhaps a month ago.’
‘Was he hurt?’
‘No, I met him shuffling along the road. He was probably on his way to get Lasse Malm or someone else to get help to tow the car. It was stuck in the ditch. But he didn’t want any help from me.’
‘Did you hear the shot?’
‘Probably everyone out here did.’
The fact was that only Lasse Malm and Sunesson had reported that they had heard anything. The others denied hearing the double salvo just before eight o’clock in the evening – that was the time both Malm and Sunesson had given.
‘What did you think?’
‘That someone was shooting a wolf.’
‘Are there wolves here?’
‘There was one a year ago. That was also a lone male.’
‘But hunting a wolf at night,’ Lindell said. ‘Is that sensible?’
‘No, but there’s so much activity around here that is not sensible, day or night.’
Lindell dropped the theme of the wolf and tracked back to the change in Tobias Frisk after the summer.
‘But you never saw a woman arrive or leave?’
‘No.’
‘And the change happened in late summer?’
‘Yes. I remember that he came over the first week of September. I was going to have the car inspected on the tenth and he was going to help me with some small things. And then he smelt like that again, somehow raw. I’m sensitive to smells. You wash with Dove, don’t you?’
Lindell nodded.
‘And there’s jasmine, too.’
‘You’re right,’ Lindell said, and felt a blush spread over her cheeks.
‘So for three months he has smelt of lone male,’ she summed up, as she bent over to fish out a pen and pad from her bag, not wanting Lisen Morell to notice her embarrassment.
‘Like a prowling wolf,’ Lisen Morell said.
‘And it wasn’t the case that a man came into your life last autumn and disappeared in summer? I mean, that Frisk…’
‘I understand what you’re getting at. No, it wasn’t like that. I wasn’t seeing anyone, then or now.’
Morell looked at the floor and drew a breath as if she was bracing herself.
‘I’ve had men,’ she said. ‘Many men. I mean, not like that, that makes it sound worse than it is, but I am not exactly a virgin. But now, the past two, three years – nothing. I can’t bring myself. Even though I love pine cones, which are a result of reproduction, I can’t bring myself to reproduce myself. Even though I love flowers, stamens and pistils, the delicate and beautiful in their construction and whole function, despite this I myself am wilted. Isn’t that ironic? Or sad, perhaps? I don’t know. Perhaps I am a sterile bloom, like the white outer blooms of the Snowball tree. Or a hybrid, a false flower, beautiful and long-flowering but not fertile. A flower for looks but not for seed. Sometimes I long for a child, but I don’t want to bring one into the world. I don’t trust the men who are in power. My stigma will never swell up.’
She finished and stared into the floor again, before she gathered herself and anticipated Lindell.
‘Yes, I know what you want to say, but if you live with a man the question of children always comes up in the end. To deny a man children is to deny him, isn’t it? A man can’t take that. It upsets him. The male wants to reproduce himself, sire offspring. It is the proof of his virility.’
Lindell sensed that she was speaking from her own experiences. There was much to say, but she chose to nod and mumble something about how she understood. Continuing the discussion might cause Lisen Morell to go off-kilter, to revert to the state of mind she had been in the other day, and Lindell wanted to prevent this at all costs.
They said goodbye outside the cottage. Once she reached the car, she opened the door and tossed her bag onto the passenger seat and looked back. Lisen Morell was still standing outside. She was moving her right hand in what looked like a wave.
Lindell hesitated for a second before she quickly walked back over.
‘What do I smell of other than soap and jasmine?’
‘Loneliness,’ Lisen Morell immediately answered.
THIRTY
‘It took you a while,’ commented Bosse Marksson, who was sitting at Frisk’s kitchen table, a stainless steel thermos in front of him.
‘She wanted to talk,’ Lindell said, ‘and I didn’t have the heart to leave.’
She told him what Lisen Morell had said about her neighbour, but mentioned nothing of the rest of the conversation, nothing of Watanabe, pistils, and loneliness.
‘Want some coffee?’
He poured a cup without waiting for an answer.
‘Complicated,’ Marksson said. ‘I can’t get my head around Frisk. I thought I knew him.’
Lindell drank the coffee, which was strong and good.
‘There are cinnamon buns,’ he said, but Lindell thought they might be from the bakery where Frisk had worked and declined the offer.
‘I’ll bet a lot of people have had the wrong idea. Remember what Ahlén said: He’s never had a better person on his staff.’
‘He probably meant as a baker,’ Lindell said.
‘No, the way he said it, it included the whole personality.’
‘People have been wrong before. The fact is that Tobias Frisk had a woman living with him, a woman of foreign extraction that no one says they had any knowledge of, a woman that he most likely murdered and hacked into pieces. And then when you are going to drop in, decides to shoot himself in the head in his best TV couch.’
‘But-’ they both said, and broke into laughter.
‘You start,’ Marksson said with a gesture of invitation.
‘Morell’s story,’ Lindell said. ‘The woman’s foot appears at the end of November while – if we are to believe Morell – Frisk changed back into his old ways and started to smell like a drooling male already at the start of September.’
‘Maybe she stopped putting out, like that woman from ancient history. Finally Frisk got tired of it and cut her to pieces.’
‘It’s possible,’ Lindell said.
‘Three things,’ Marksson said. ‘First: Why does he take his own life? Fear of being discovered, that he can’t stand the shame of being accused of murder. But he must have realised that we didn’t have anything on him with regard to the killing and mutilation?’
‘But the chainsaw?’ Lindell interjected.
‘Yes, that’s the second thing. If he had got rid of it, he would have been scot-free, even if we would have been able to place the woman in his house. All he would have to do would be to claim that she up and left. He didn’t even know you were collecting chainsaws, did he? If we can assume he was so stupid he didn’t think of the saw, that there were remains of the woman on it, then he wouldn’t need to get so nervous that he would have to kill himself, at least not because of your visit. And if he was a smart guy, well, he would have dumped the saw into the Baltic and everything would have been roses. Then he would have been able to offer you cake and take it easy.’