‘Thanks for the fish,’ she said, and followed her colleague.
Torsten dismissed it with a wave.
As usual, Marksson had rushed ahead and was waiting by the car.
‘It’s Malm, isn’t it?’ Lindell said. ‘He got nervous when he knew we were going to talk to Frisk, and set the whole thing up like a suicide. He swapped the chainsaws, putting his Stihl in Frisk’s shed and taking the Jonsered instead.’
‘Looks that way,’ Marksson said. ‘But I wasn’t sure.’
‘But now you are?’
‘Torsten knows something that we don’t. He has seen or heard something. Maybe we’ll never know what it is, or it will eventually emerge, but he has been thinking about it, and now he is sure. I saw it in him.’
They got into the car, backed down Torsten’s driveway, and drove south again. It occurred to Lindell that they were probably dealing with a murderer.
‘Shouldn’t we call in what we’re doing? He may be armed.’
‘I don’t think we need to worry,’ Marksson said. ‘But we can let them know what’s going on.’
He picked up his mobile phone and called the station in Östhammar. He told them what had happened and that they were on their way to collect Lars Malm for questioning.
‘No, we don’t need any assistance. I’ll call you later.’
He turned off the phone and at the same moment waved his hand at a ploughed side street. Lindell had barely registered it before. She turned, and drove some twenty metres down a road with big pine trees on either side before making a sharp swing. Lasse Malm’s pickup was parked by the piled snow on the right.
They got out. Marksson walked over to the car and felt the hood.
‘Still warm,’ he said.
Lindell loosened the tarp over the back. There was a chainsaw underneath. A Jonsered.
Footprints led straight to the sea, which could be glimpsed between the trees. Marksson took out his gun from its holster under his arm.
The shed was some fifty metres away. Lindell took large steps through the snow in Malm’s footsteps. Marksson suddenly stopped. A breeze swept over the water and stirred the yellow-brown reeds at the edge of the shore. Marksson turned and looked searchingly at her.
We stand out too much, Lindell thought. She saw an image of Frisk’s bloody head in front of her eyes.
Marksson went on. Suddenly he turned to the left and Lindell knew he wanted to check the door to the shed. It was open.
‘Lasse,’ Marksson yelled. ‘It’s me. Bosse. Can we talk? I’ve just been to Torsten’s.’
The only answer was the faint rustling of the reeds.
‘Stay here,’ Marksson said.
He walked on slowly. Lindell deliberated if she should follow. Marksson reached the door. He hesitated for a moment, pressed against the wall of the shed, before he peeked in. Lindell took a couple of steps closer. Marksson straightened his back and stood still a couple of seconds. He drew a couple of deep breaths and then waved her over.
Lasse Malm hung in a noose that he had fastened to a hook in the ceiling. A wooden box lay at his feet. The rope had cut deeply into his neck. His mouth was open as if he had screamed at the moment of death. The tongue was blue, the eyes closed.
Marksson straightened the box, stood on it, and was immediately able to determine that Lasse Malm was the third case of death in Bultudden in recent months.
Lindell forced herself to look at the dead man’s hands. His nails were dirty and the hands black with soot. She recalled the first time she had seen them. Then they had seemed so powerful. Now his body appeared diminished. It struck her that he appeared more human in death.
‘He was going to get rid of the chainsaw, but changed his mind and got rid of himself instead,’ she said.
‘I wonder what Torsten said to him,’ Marksson said.
He left the boat shed, went and stood on the granite outside, and stared out at the sea. Lindell looked at his wide back and saw his chest heave in deep inhalations. Then he turned back. Lindell was standing in the doorway.
‘Patima left Frisk and went from the frying pan into the fire,’ he said. ‘Poor girl.’
FIFTY-FOUR
‘There won’t be any charges,’ Sven-Arne Persson said.
Ante lay outstretched on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. Sven-Arne was unsure if Ante had heard what he said, but went on anyway.
‘They only have the girl’s version. The guy denies everything.’
Ante turned his head and looked at his nephew but didn’t say anything.
‘It would be strange if he did, of course,’ he said. ‘He’s kept his mouth shut for twelve years, so why would he start talking now? And who knows what really happened? She seems a bit off, to put it mildly.’
‘You’ve met her?’
‘I went there,’ Sven-Arne said.
‘Why?’
‘I wanted to see the house.’
Ante snorted.
‘“See the house,”’ he echoed. ‘Why on earth? And then you went and turned yourself in?’
Ante braced himself with his hands and managed to drag himself up into a seated position.
‘The police say they have nothing. I talked with the prosecutor this morning. I know him from before. He said the same thing.’
‘Why?’
‘What do you mean, “why”?’
‘Why did you confess?’
‘I didn’t want you to have any trouble,’ Sven-Arne said.
‘No, I didn’t even get that,’ Ante said. ‘That man was a pig and lived off of our money, like a civil servant.’
‘But why did you want to see him dead? Wouldn’t it have been better to reveal his past and let him bear the public humiliation?’
Sven-Arne stared at Ante. He didn’t answer. It had always been that way: Ante made himself inaccessible and left so many questions unanswered when it suited him. Sven-Arne had a desire to attack. Ante had closed his eyes to oppression as long as it was done in the name of the working classes, made light when human rights were violated as long as it was for the right cause. But why take up the old worn arguments? He knew his uncle too well and had been through it all so many times. Ante’s belief in justice was in large part his own. He had chosen the step-by-step reformer’s path and found political work a bottomless marsh. He had participated in the game, been underhanded and careless with the truth, and seen his party lose its health and its original mission. As a county politician he had swallowed and swallowed until his disgust stuck in his throat. He had stepped off the track. Chosen to flee. Now he was sitting in front of an old man who had fought his whole life and who had even been prepared to offer his life to resist Nazism.
‘Let’s drop it,’ Sven-Arne said.
Ante opened his eyes. Sven-Arne saw that he was touched. It occurred to him that he had never seen him cry.
‘There’s one thing,’ Ante said. ‘I’m going to die soon. I’m living on borrowed time, as they say, and I have lived an eventful life, but there is one thing that has pained me for seventy years.’
‘And that is?’ Sven-Arne prompted after a long pause, waiting for the continuation.
‘Do you remember the Brush?’
‘The Bulgarian who blew himself up?’
‘He was a giant.’
Sven-Arne nodded. He had understood as much. The Brush had always popped up in Ante’s stories. The miner was the very image of courage and principled action.
‘He died a miserable death,’ Ante said.
Now he was crying openly. Tears searched their way down the wrinkled cheeks and the wiry whiskers on his chin. Sven-Arne nodded, but could not manage to say anything.
‘I betrayed him,’ Ante sobbed.
‘What are you talking about? You couldn’t help-’
‘I gave them his name! The story about blowing himself up was pure fabrication. I created that story to be able to live. I made it true.’
Sven-Arne leant over and put his hand on Ante’s knee.
‘What happened?’