In one instance, JA describes how an Irishman named O’Connor had been sentenced to death for murdering a Scottish labourer. They had been drunk and ended up fighting over a woman. O’Connor was now dueto be hanged, and the judge who travelled to the camp in order to preside over the trial had agreed that the hanging didn’t need to take place in the nearest town, but could be carried out on a hill close to the point the railway track had reached. Jan August Andrén writes that‘I like the idea of everybody being able to see what drunkenness and violence can lead to’.
He describes the Irishman as young, with ‘barely more than down on his chin’.
The execution will take place early, just before the morning shift begins. Not even a hanging can result in a single sleeper car or even a single coach bolt being fitted behind schedule. The foreman has been instructed to make sure that everybody attends the execution. A strong wind is blowing. Jan August Andrén ties a bandanna over his nose and mouth as he goes around checking that his team has left its tents for the hill where the hanging will take place. The gallows is on a platform made of newly tarred sleepers. The moment O’Connor is dead the gallows will be dismantled and the sleepers carried back down to where the track is being laid. The condemned man arrives, surrounded by armed guards. There is also a priest present. Andrén describes the scene: ‘A growling dissent could be heard from the assembled men. For a moment one might suppose the grumbling was directed at the hangman, but then one realised that all present were relieved not to be the one about to have his neck broken. I could well imagine that many of them who hated the daily toil were now feeling blissful delight at the prospect of being able to carry iron rails, shovel gravel and lay sleepers today.’
Andrén writes like an early crime reporter, Birgitta Roslin thought. But was he writing for himself, or possibly for some unknown reader in the future? Otherwise why use terms like ‘blissful delight’?
O’Connor trudges along in his chains as if in a trance, but suddenly comes to life at the foot of the gallows and starts shouting and fighting for his life. The unease among the assembled men increases in volume, and Andrén writes that it is ‘terrible to watch this young man fighting for the life he knows he will soon lose. He is led kicking and screaming to the rope, and continues bellowing until the trapdoor opens and his neck is broken.’ At that moment the growling ceases, and according to Andrén it becomes ‘totally silent, as if all those present have been struck dumb, and felt their own necks breaking’.
He expresses himself well, Roslin thought. A man with emotions, who can write.
The gallows is dismantled, the body and the sleepers carried off in different directions. There is a fight between several Chinese who want the rope used to hang O’Connor.
The telephone rang. It was Sundberg.
‘Did I wake you up?’
‘No.’
‘Can you come down? I’m in reception.’
‘What’s it about?’
‘Come down and I’ll tell you.’
Vivi Sundberg was waiting by the open fire.
‘Let’s sit down,’ she said, pointing to some chairs and a sofa around a table in the corner.
‘How did you know I was staying here?’
‘I made enquiries.’
Roslin began to suspect the worst. Sundberg was reserved, cool. She came straight to the point.
‘We are not entirely without eyes and ears, you know,’ she began. ‘Even if we are only provincial police officers. No doubt you know what I’m talking about.’
‘No.’
‘We are missing the contents of a chest of drawers in the house I was kind enough to let you into. I asked you not to touch anything. But you did. You must have gone back there at some time during the night. In the drawer you emptied were diaries and letters. I’ll wait here while you get them. Were there five or six diaries? How many bundles of letters? Bring them all down. When you do, I shall be kind enough to forget all about this. You can also be grateful that I went to the trouble of coming here.’
Birgitta Roslin could feel that she was blushing. She had been caught in flagrante, with her fingers in the jam jar. There was nothing she could do. The judge had been found out.
She stood up and went to her room. For a brief moment she was tempted to keep the diary she was reading just then, but she had no idea exactly how much Sundberg knew. Her seeming uncertainty about how many diaries there were was not necessarily significant — she could have been testing Roslin’s honesty. She carried everything she had taken down to reception. Vivi Sundberg had a paper bag into which she put all the diaries and letters.
‘Why did you do it?’ she asked.
‘I was curious. I can only apologise.’
‘Is there anything you haven’t told me?’
‘I have no hidden motives.’
Sundberg eyed her critically. Roslin could feel she was blushing again. Sundberg stood up. Despite being powerfully built and overweight, she moved daintily.
‘Let the police take care of this business,’ she said. ‘I won’t make a song and dance about you entering the house during the night. We’ll forget it. Go home now, and I’ll carry on working.’
‘I apologise.’
‘You have already.’
Sundberg left the hotel and got into the police car waiting outside. Birgitta Roslin watched it drive away in a cloud of snow. She went up to her room, fetched a jacket, and took a walk along the shore of the ice-covered lake. The wind came and went in chilly gusts. She bowed her head. She felt slightly ashamed.
She walked all the way round the lake and was warm and sweaty when she returned to the hotel. After a shower and a change of clothes, she thought about what had happened.
She had now seen her mother’s room and knew that it was her mother’s foster-parents who had been killed. It was time to go home.
She went down to reception and asked to keep the room for one more night. Then she drove into Hudiksvall, found a bookshop and bought a book about wines. She wondered whether to eat again at the Chinese restaurant she’d visited the previous day, but chose an Italian place instead. She lingered over her meal and read the newspapers without bothering to see what had been written about Hesjövallen.
She drove back to the hotel, read some pages of the book she had bought, went to bed early.
She was woken up by her phone ringing. It was pitch dark. When she answered nobody was there. There was no number on the display.
She suddenly felt uncomfortable. Who had called?
Before going back to sleep she checked to make sure the door was locked. Then she looked out of the window. There was no sign of anybody on the road to the hotel. She went back to bed, thinking that the next day she would do the only sensible thing.
She would go home.
9
She was in the breakfast room by seven o’clock. The windows looked out over the lake, and she could see that it had become windy. A man approached, pulling a sledge with two well-bundled children as passengers. She recalled the days when she had spent so much time and effort dragging her own children up slopes that they could sledge down. That had been one of the most remarkable periods of her life — playing with her children in the snow, and at the same time worrying about what judgement to pass in a complicated lawsuit. The children’s shouts and laughter contrasting with the frightening crime scenes.
She had once worked out that during the course of her career, she had sent three murderers and seven people guilty of manslaughter to prison. Not to mention several more sentenced for grievous bodily harm, who could count themselves lucky that their crimes had not resulted in murder.