Jan August’s address was: Reno Post Office, Nevada, United States of America.
She continued reading, but found nothing else in the piles that related to her mother’s connection with the Andrén family.
She put the documents back in the file, returned to the Internet and, without much hope of success, tried to find the postal address in Minneapolis that Gustaf Andrén had given. As expected, she came to a dead end. She tried the address in Nevada and was referred to a link to a newspaper called the Reno Gazette-Journal. Just then the phone rang: it was the travel agency. A friendly young man with a Danish accent ran through all the details of the package holiday with her and described the hotel. She didn’t hesitate. She made a preliminary booking and promised to confirm it the following morning at the latest.
She returned to the computer and called up the Reno Gazette-Journal again. She was just about to move on to another page when she recalled that her search was for Andrén, not merely the postal address. So there must be some reference to that name in a recent issue of the Reno Gazette-Journal. She started reading through the list of articles and subjects, clicking her way from one page to the next.
She gave a start when the relevant page eventually appeared. At first she read it without really grasping its implications. Then she read it again, more slowly, and began to wonder if she could believe her eyes. She stood up and backed away from the computer. But the text and the pictures didn’t disappear.
She printed them out and took them with her to the kitchen. She read everything once more, very slowly.
On January 4th a brutal murder took place in the little town of Ankersville, northeast of Reno. The proprietor of an engineering workshop and his whole family were found dead that morning by a neighbour, who had become suspicious when the workshop didn’t open as usual. The police have no leads as yet. But it is clear that the whole Andrén family — Jack, his wife, Connie, and their two children, Steven and Laura — had been murdered with some kind of knife or sword. There was nothing to indicate robbery or burglary. No obvious motive, the Andrén family was well liked and had no enemies. The police are now looking for a mentally unbalanced perpetrator, or perhaps a desperate drug addict, in connection with these horrific murders.
She sat there motionless. The sound of a rubbish truck drifted up from the street below.
For the first time, she felt fear creeping up on her. As if she were being observed unawares.
She went to check that the front door was locked. Then she returned to the computer and started to work her way backwards through the articles in the Reno Gazette-Journal.
The rubbish truck had moved on. It was starting to get dark.
7
Long afterwards, when the memory of everything that had taken place began to grow dim, she sometimes wondered what would have happened if she had in fact gone on that holiday to Tenerife, then come home and returned to work with her blood pressure lowered and her tiredness banished. But reality turned out differently. Early the next morning she called the travel agency and cancelled her holiday. As she had been sensible enough to take out an insurance policy, the cancellation cost her only a few hundred kronor.
Staffan came home late that evening, as the train he was working on had been stranded, thanks to an engine failure. He had been forced to spend two hours consoling disgruntled passengers, including an elderly lady who had taken ill. By the time he got home he was tired and irritated. She let him eat his evening meal in peace. But when he’d finished she told him about her discovery of what had happened in distant Nevada, and how in all probability it was linked to the mass murders in Hälsingland. She could see he was doubtful, but didn’t know if that was because he was tired or because he didn’t believe her theory. When he went to bed she returned to the computer and kept alternating between Hälsingland and Nevada. At midnight she made a few notes in a pad, just as she did when she was preparing a judgement. No matter how unlikely it might seem, she was convinced that there must be a connection between the two incidents. She was also well aware that, in a way, she was an Andrén too, even if her name was now Roslin.
Was she in danger? She sat for hours, hunched over her notepad. Then she went out into the clear January night and looked up at the stars. Her mother had once told her that her father had been a passionate stargazer. With long intervals in between, she used to receive letters from him describing how he would stand on deck at night in faraway places. Studying the stars and their various constellations. He had a strange belief that the dead were transformed into stars. Birgitta Roslin wondered what he had been thinking when the Runskär sank in Gävlebukten. The heavily laden ship had keeled over in the severe storm and sunk in less than a minute. Only one SOS signal had been sent out before the radio fell silent. Had he had time to realise that he was about to die? Or had the freezing water taken him so much by surprise that he had no time to think? Just sudden terror, then an icy chill, and death.
The sky seemed close; the stars shone brightly that night. I can see the surface, she thought. There is a connection, thin threads intertwining with one another. But what lay behind it all? What was the motive for killing nineteen people in a small village in the north of Sweden, and also putting an end to a family in the Nevada desert? Probably no more than the usuaclass="underline" revenge, greed, jealousy. But what injustice could require such drastic revenge? Who could gain financially by murdering a number of pensioners in a northern hamlet who were already well on their way to death? Who could possibly be jealous of them?
She went back indoors when she began to feel cold. She usually went to bed early because she always felt tired in the evening and hated to go to work the following morning without having had a good night’s sleep, especially when a trial was taking place. She lay down on the sofa and switched on some music, quite softly so as not to disturb Staffan. It was a cavalcade of modern Swedish ballads. Birgitta Roslin had secretly dreamed of writing a pop song that would be chosen to represent Sweden in the Eurovision Song Contest. She was embarrassed about this desire but at the same time felt very positive about it. She even had several preliminary versions of songs locked away in her desk. Perhaps it was inappropriate for a practising judge to write pop songs; but as far as she knew there was no rule against it.
It was three o’clock by the time she went to bed, and she gave Staffan a shake, as he was snoring. When he had turned over and fallen silent, she fell asleep herself.
The following morning she recalled a dream she’d had during the night. She had seen her mother, who spoke to her without Birgitta being able to grasp what she’d said. It was like being behind a pane of glass. It seemed to go on forever, the mother becoming more and more upset because her daughter didn’t understand what she was saying, the daughter wondering what was keeping them apart.
Memory is like glass, she thought. A person who has died is still visible, very close. But we can no longer contact each other. Death is mute; it excludes conversations, only allows silence.
Birgitta Roslin got up. A thought was beginning to form inside her head. She fetched a road map of Sweden. When the children were small, every summer the family used to drive to various cottages they had rented, usually for a month. Very occasionally, such as the two summers they had spent on the island of Gotland, they had flown there. But they had never taken the train, and in those days it had never occurred to Staffan that one day he would exchange his lawyer’s existence for that of a train conductor.