She turned to a general map of Sweden. Hälsingland was further north than she had imagined. She couldn’t find Hesjövallen. It was such an insignificant little hamlet that it wasn’t even marked.
When she put the map down, she had made up her mind. She would take the car and drive up to Hudiksvall. Not primarily because she wanted to visit the crime scene, but in order to see the little village where her mother had grown up.
When she was younger she had dreamed of one day making a grand tour of Sweden. ‘The Journey Home’, she used to call it. She would go to Treriksröset in the far north, where the borders of Sweden, Norway and Finland converged, and then back south to the coast of Skåne, where she would be close to the Continent, with the rest of Sweden behind her back. On the way north she would follow the coast, but on the way back south she would take the inland route. However, that journey had never taken place. Whenever she had mentioned it to Staffan, he had displayed no interest. And it had not been possible when the children were at home.
But now she had the opportunity to make at least part of that journey.
When Staffan had finished his breakfast and was preparing to join the train to Alvesta, the last one before he was due for several days off, she told him her plan. He didn’t object, merely asked how long she would be away and if her doctor would be happy about the strain that such a long drive was bound to impose.
It was only when he was in the hall with his hand on the front-door handle that she became upset. They had said goodbye in the kitchen, but now she followed him and threw the morning paper angrily at him.
‘What on earth are you doing?’
‘Have you no interest at all in why I want to take this trip?’
‘But you’ve told me why.’
‘Doesn’t it occur to you that I might also need some time to think about our relationship?’
‘We can’t start in on that now. I’ll miss my train.’
‘There’s never a good time as far as you’re concerned! It’s no good in the evening, no good in the morning. Don’t you ever want to talk to me about our life?’
‘You know that I’m not as perturbed about it as you are.’
‘Perturbed? You call it being perturbed when I wonder why we haven’t made love for over a year?’
‘We can’t talk about that now. I don’t have time.’
‘You’ll soon have plenty of time.’
‘Meaning what?’
‘Perhaps I’ve run out of patience.’
‘Is that a threat?’
‘All I know is that we can’t keep going on like this. Go away, go to your damned train.’
She turned on her heel, headed for the kitchen and heard the front door slam. She felt relieved at having said at last what she’d been wanting to say for ages, but she was also anxious about how he would react.
He phoned that evening. Neither of them mentioned what had happened in the hall that morning. But she could tell by his voice that he was shaken. Perhaps it would be possible now, and not a moment too soon, for them to talk about what could no longer be suppressed?
The following day, early in the morning, she got into the car, ready to drive north from Helsingborg. Staffan, who had arrived home in the middle of the night, carried her bag out to the car and put it on the back seat.
‘Where are you going to stay?’
‘There’s a little hotel in Lindesberg. I’ll spend the night there. I promise to call you. Then I suppose I’ll find somewhere in Hudiksvall.’
He stroked her cheek gently and waved as she drove off.
A day later she found herself six or seven miles from Hudiksvall. If she turned off inland a bit further north, she would pass through Hesjövallen. She hesitated a moment, felt a bit like a hyena, but banished the thought. She had a good reason for going there, after all.
When she reached Iggesund she took a left, and went left again when she came to a fork in the road at Ölsund. She passed a police car travelling in the opposite direction, and then another. The trees suddenly gave way to a lake. A row of houses lined the road, all of them cut off by red-and-white police tape. Police officers were walking along the road.
She could see a tent erected at the edge of the trees, and a second one in the nearest garden. She scanned the village slowly through a pair of binoculars she’d brought with her. People in uniform or overalls were moving between the houses, smoking by the gates in groups. She sometimes visited crime scenes as part of her work and was familiar with the set-up — though not on such a scale. She knew that prosecuting counsels and other officers of the law were not especially welcome, as the police were often wary of criticism.
A uniformed police officer tapped on her windscreen and interrupted her thoughts.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘I didn’t realise that I’d strayed inside the cordoned-off area.’
‘You haven’t. But we keep an eye on everybody who comes here. Especially if they have binoculars. We hold our press conferences in Hudiksvall, in case you didn’t know.’
‘I’m not a reporter.’
The young police officer eyed her suspiciously.
‘What are you, then? A crime-scene junkie?’
‘Actually I’m a relative.’
The officer took out his notebook.
‘Of whom?’
‘Brita and August Andrén. I’m on my way to Hudiksvall, but I can’t remember the name of the person I’m supposed to see.’
‘Erik Huddén. He’s the one responsible for contacting relatives. Please accept my condolences.’
‘Thank you.’
The officer saluted; she felt like an idiot, turned round and drove off. When she got to Hudiksvall she realised that it wasn’t only the battalions of reporters that made finding a vacant hotel room impossible. A friendly receptionist at the First Hotel Statt told her that there was also a conference taking place that involved delegates from all over Sweden, ‘discussing forests’. She parked her car and wandered around the little town. She tried two hotels and a guest house, but everything was full.
She looked for somewhere to have lunch and found a little Chinese restaurant. It was quite full, but she got a small table next to a window. The room seemed to be exactly like every other Chinese restaurant she’d been to. The same vases, porcelain lions and lamps with coloured ribbons serving as shades.
A Chinese woman came with the menu. Birgitta Roslin ordered with difficulty; the young woman could speak practically no Swedish at all.
After her hasty lunch, she rang for a room and eventually got one at the Andbacken Hotel in Delsbo. There was a conference going on there as well, this one for an advertising company. Everyone in Sweden appeared to be tied up travelling between hotels and conference venues.
Andbacken turned out to be a large white building on the shore of a snow-covered lake. As she waited in the queue at reception, she read that the advertising folk would be busy that afternoon with group work. In the evening there would be a gala dinner at which prizes would be distributed. Please God, don’t let this be a noisy night with drunks running up and down the corridors and slamming doors, she thought.
Her room looked out over the frozen lake and the wooded hills. She lay down on the bed and closed her eyes for a short while, then got up, put on her jacket and drove to Hudiksvall. Reporters and TV crews thronged the police station. Eventually she found herself face to face with a young, exhausted receptionist and explained what she wanted.
‘Vivi Sundberg doesn’t have time.’
The dismissive response surprised her.