‘So the question is why you return all these years later. You do not seem particularly remorseful.’
‘I got tired of India. I imagined spending my last remaining years in an institution.’
‘Bullshit,’ Sammy Nilsson said.
Fredriksson coughed and leant forward, as if he wanted to push his colleague aside.
‘If we come back to a thread from yesterday,’ he said, and smiled at Persson, ‘your uncle Ante. First you told us that you were alone in Kungsgärdet but you later changed your story to say he was waiting in the car. Do you hold firm to this?’
‘Yes, he stayed in the car. I took one of his crutches, so he couldn’t leave the car.’
‘Why did he even come along?’
‘We were out for a ride. That was something we did sometimes, went on small excursions.’
‘Small excursions,’ Fredriksson repeated. ‘Did he know where this one was headed? Who you were going to see?’
‘No. I said I was running an errand.’
‘Why did you choose an excursion?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘If you had been planning to murder Nils Dufva, wouldn’t it have been better to go there alone?’
‘Maybe I didn’t want to kill him.’
‘The crutches.’
‘I brought them for self-defence. I was led to believe that Dufva was a violent man.’
‘Bound to a wheelchair?’
‘What can one know?’
‘Can you precisely describe your exchange of words when you were face-to-face with him?’
‘We didn’t say much.’
‘Did he recognise you?’
‘I think so.’
‘And what did he say?’
‘I guess he wondered what I was doing walking into his house. I can’t remember exactly. It was a number of years ago. And there was such a racket in his place I couldn’t hear properly.’
‘What kind of racket?’
‘The old man had both his television and radio turned on, and on the highest setting. As I said, it was an infernal racket.’
‘You didn’t turn off the appliances?’
‘No, why would I have done so?’
‘You weren’t there to talk?’
Sven-Arne did not reply. Fredriksson made a notation in his notebook.
‘And what did you say when he wondered why you had walked into his house?’ he said after a brief, somewhat ominous pause.
‘I asked him if he was Nils Dufva.’
‘You did not recognise him from before?’
‘I wanted to be sure.’
‘You wanted to be sure that you were going to kill the right man?’
Persson did not answer, and to all extents and purposes that was where the session ended. Sven-Arne Persson was unwilling to say anything else. He skirted their attempts to clarify what had happened that fateful autumn day of 1993 and above all why he became a killer. He became bantering in his tone and thereafter more brief in his answers, only to finally lapse into silence. He was escorted back to his cell.
Sven-Arne Persson was in no way pleased with his performance, but he did not know how he could have approached it in any other way. He regretted his outburst over his political colleagues. It was meaningless to waste energy on such things.
He knew that the policemen were dissatisfied, and he had registered Nilsson’s obvious irritation, not to say exasperation. The other one, Fredriksson, appeared to take the whole thing more calmly. Perhaps they were playing two different roles in order to get him to talk. Not that he really cared; it did not change anything.
Despite the stomach pains that had come and gone all night, he felt in fine form. The most freeing thing was that he did not need to make any weighty decisions. He existed in a pleasant vacuum. His cell was small and spartan but he was accustomed to modest surroundings from his time in India. So all in all he found it congenial. The only thing he missed was books, but he had been promised a couple of novels. Newspapers he did not want. He was indifferent to television. He vegetated, but somewhere in his consciousness there was a question about how long this situation would last, and above all how he would stand it. Perhaps he would wake up one morning and feel prison for what it was: a cage.
But right now he felt no great concern. He lay down on the camp bed, closed his eyes, and fell asleep after several minutes.
FORTY-TWO
‘This is a good book,’ Bosse Marksson said, holding up a slender volume.
‘Oh?’ Lindell said, perplexed over this start to the conversation. ‘What is it about?’
She was late. She had pulled up in front of the little police station in Östhammar at exactly a quarter to nine. Angelina was at the reception desk. Lindell had talked to her before, about travel. There was a globe on the counter and when Lindell complained about stress Angelina had spun it and urged Lindell to stop it with her finger. She had landed in South America. In Paraguay.
‘Go there,’ Angelina said. ‘I’m sure it will be relaxing.’
And this morning as she had hurried into the police station, Angelina had simply pointed to the globe and grinned.
‘It’s about a man who takes the train north in order to attend the funeral of an elderly relative.’
‘Sounds fascinating,’ Lindell said.
‘Listen to this,’ Marksson said, and opened the book. ‘“Someone who doesn’t love us is in the process of changing our land”,’ he read in an authoritative voice.
He lowered the text and looked at Lindell, whose gaze was fixed on a framed photograph on the window sill. It showed a woman, whom Lindell assumed was Marksson’s wife.
‘That sounds about right,’ Lindell said, suddenly unsure as to what was expected of her.
Marksson had talked about books before. She had understood that he was a bookworm and perhaps also something of an amateur philosopher. For her part, she did not read much. Perhaps a dozen books a year.
Marksson read the sentence again, now without looking at it.
‘And the bit before it isn’t bad either: “If I am going to participate in bringing change to my country I want to do so because someone I love will later be able to live here.”’
He shut the book.
‘But you aren’t here for a reading. I’m returning this to the library today, that’s why I brought it in. It’s a Stig Claesson, one of my favourites.’
‘I thought it sounded good,’ Lindell said.
‘Someone is changing this land – we see that, don’t we?’
Lindell nodded. She wanted to say something insightful, building on this, but the stressful drive and her thoughts, miserable and ranting, had made her slow.
‘Someone who doesn’t love us.’
‘The National Police Committee,’ Lindell said, and Marksson looked at her with an expression that was difficult to interpret.
‘You seem tired.’
‘I’m wiped out,’ she said. ‘I mean, it’s not that bad, but you know how-’
‘Something is wrong,’ Marksson interrupted.
Lindell drew a deep breath and sat up in her chair.
‘I don’t know what it is,’ she picked up, ‘but something in this story doesn’t sit well with me. Maybe it’s the picture of Tobias Frisk. You knew him and probably know better, but for me he doesn’t seem like a murderer. I know it is a silly objection, killers can be a million different ways, but this thought didn’t just come out of nowhere. This uncertainty doesn’t come from my impression of Frisk, whom I know so little about, but it has come from the outside. Do you know what I’m getting at? I mean…’
Lindell leant over the desk and caught the hint of a smile that swiftly came and went in Marksson’s face.
‘There is something out there that I have seen or heard, something that has led me to the conviction that Frisk is not a killer. He is no longer self-evident.’
Marksson nodded.
‘Go on,’ he said.
‘A visual impression,’ Lindell said, and told him about her experience on Ringgatan after she had left Café Savoy. How she had a sudden thought and stopped in her tracks.