The thought worried her. Measuring her activities and her best efforts in terms of people she had sent to prison — was that really the sum of her life’s work?
As she ate she avoided looking at the newspapers, which were naturally wallowing in the events at Hesjövallen. Instead she selected a business supplement and leafed through the stock market listings and discussons about the percentage of women represented on the boards of Swedish companies. There were not many people at breakfast. She refilled her coffee cup and wondered if it might be a good idea to take a different route home. A touch further west, perhaps, through the Värmland forests?
She was interrupted in her thoughts by somebody addressing her. A man sitting alone at a table several feet away.
‘Are you talking to me?’
‘I just wondered what Vivi Sundberg wanted.’
She didn’t recognise the man and didn’t really understand what he was asking about. Before she had a chance to reply, he stood up and walked over to her table. Pulled out a chair and sat down.
He was in his sixties, red-faced, overweight, and his breath was foul.
‘I’d like to eat my breakfast in peace.’
‘You’ve finished eating. I just want to ask you a few questions.’
‘I don’t even know who you are.’
‘Lars Emanuelsson. Freelance journalist. Not a reporter. I’m better than that lot. I’m not a hack. I do my homework and what I write is thoroughly researched and stylishly written.’
‘That doesn’t give you the right to prevent me from eating my breakfast in peace.’
Lars Emanuelsson stood up, and sat down on a chair at the next table.
‘Is that better?’
‘A bit. Whom do you write for?’
‘I haven’t made up my mind yet. First I need to get the story, then I’ll decide where to offer it. I don’t sell my work to just anybody.’
She was irritated by his self-importance. She was also repulsed by his smell — it must have been a very long time since he had last taken a shower. He came off as a caricature of an intrusive reporter.
‘I noticed that you had a chat with Vivi Sundberg yesterday. Not an especially cordial exchange of views, I would say. More like two cockerels, marking their territory. Am I right?’
‘You are wrong. I have nothing to say to you.’
‘But you can’t deny that you spoke with her?’
‘Of course I can’t.’
‘I wonder what a judge from another town is doing up here. You must have something to do with this investigation. Horrible things happen in a little hamlet up north, and Birgitta Roslin comes rushing up from Helsingborg.’
She became even more cautious.
‘What do you want? How do you know who I am?’
‘It all boils down to methods. We spend our whole lives searching for the best way of getting results. I take it that applies to judges as well. You have rules and regulations. But you choose your own methods. I don’t know how many criminal investigations I’ve reported on. I spent a full year — or, to be more precise, three hundred and sixty-six days — following the Palme investigation. I realised early on that the murderer would never be caught because the investigation ran aground before it had even been launched. It was obvious that the guilty party would never appear in court because the police and the prosecutors were not trying to solve the murder; they were more interested in appearing on prime-time television. Many people assumed then that the culprit was Christer Pettersson. Apart from some sane and sensible investigators who realised that this accusation was wrong, completely wrong. But nobody paid any attention to them. Me, I prefer to hover around the periphery, see things from the outside. That way I notice things that the others miss. For instance, a judge being visited by an investigating officer who can’t possibly have time for anything else but the case she’s busy with from morning till night. What was it that you handed over to her?’
‘I’m not going to answer that question.’
‘So I interpret that as meaning you are deeply involved in what has happened. I can see the headline now: “Scanian Judge Involved in the Hesjövallen Drama.” ’
She drank the rest of her coffee and stood up. He followed her into reception.
‘If you give me a tip, I can repay you in spades.’
‘I have absolutely nothing to say to you. Not because I have any secrets, but because I know nothing that could possibly be of any interest to a reporter.’
Lars Emanuelsson looked depressed. ‘Not a reporter, a freelance journalist. Let’s face it, I don’t call you a shyster.’
‘Was it you who called me last night?’
‘Eh?’
‘So it was. At least I know.’
‘You mean to say that your mobile phone rang? In the middle of the night? When you were asleep? Is that something I ought to follow up?’
She didn’t answer, but pressed the button to summon the lift.
‘There’s one thing you ought to know,’ said Lars Emanuelsson. ‘The police are suppressing an important detail. If you can call a person a detail.’
The lift doors opened; she stepped in.
‘It wasn’t only old people who died. There was a young boy in one of the houses.’
The doors closed. When she came to her floor, she pressed the down button again. He was waiting for her, hadn’t moved an inch. They sat down. Lars Emanuelsson lit a cigarette.
‘You’re not allowed to smoke in here.’
‘Tell me something else that I couldn’t care less about.’
There was a potted plant on the table that he used as an ashtray.
‘You always need to look for what the police don’t tell you. What they conceal can reveal the way they are thinking, where they think they might be able to pin down their perpetrator. In among all those dead people was a twelve-year-old boy. They know who his next of kin are, and why he was there in the village. But they aren’t telling the general public.’
‘How do you know this?’
‘That’s my secret. In an investigation like this there’s always a potential leak. It’s a question of identifying it, and then listening carefully.’
‘Who is this boy?’
‘At the moment he’s an unknown factor. I know his name, but I’m not going to say. He was visiting relatives. He really ought to have been at school, but he was convalescing after an eye operation. The poor kid had a lazy eye. But now his eye was in the right place, back in its slot, you might say. And then he was killed. Like the old folks he was staying with. But not quite the same.’
‘What was different?’
Emanuelsson leaned back in his chair. His stomach overflowed his waistband. Roslin found him totally repulsive. He was aware of that, but didn’t care.
‘Now it’s your turn. Vivi Sundberg, the books and letters.’
‘I’m a distant relative of some of the people who’ve been murdered. I gave Sundberg some material she’d asked for.’
He screwed up his eyes and peered at her. ‘Do you expect me to believe that?’
‘You can believe whatever you like.’
‘What books? What letters?’
‘They were about family circumstances.’
‘What family?’
‘Brita and August Andrén.’
He nodded thoughtfully, then stubbed out his cigarette with unexpected energy.
‘House number two or seven. The police have given every house a code. House number two is called two slash three — which obviously means that they found three dead bodies there.’
He continued watching her closely as he took a half-smoked cigarette from a crumpled pack.
‘That doesn’t explain why your exchanges were so cold in tone.’