‘In other words, this investigation is beginning to take on unheard-of geographical proportions. First you produce a mysterious Chinese man. And now you tell us there’s a witness in the Arctic. They’ve been writing about this business in Time and Newsweek, the Guardian phoned me from London, and the Los Angeles Times has also expressed interest. Has anybody else seen this Chinese person? I hope whoever you mention isn’t currently in the Australian outback at the moment.’
‘There’s a maid at the hotel. She’s Russian.’
Robertsson sounded almost triumphant when he responded.
‘What did I tell you? Now we’ve got Russia involved as well. What’s her name?’
‘She’s known as Natasha. But according to Sture Hermansson her real name is something different.’
‘Maybe she’s here illegally,’ said Vivi Sundberg. ‘We sometimes find Russians and Poles who shouldn’t be here.’
‘But that’s hardly relevant at the moment,’ said Robertsson. ‘Is there anyone else who’s seen this Chinese man?’
‘I don’t know of anyone,’ said Birgitta Roslin. ‘But he must have come and gone somehow. By bus? Or taxi? Surely someone must have noticed him?’
‘We’ll look into it,’ said Robertsson, putting down his pen. ‘Assuming this turns out to be important.’
Which you don’t believe it is, Roslin thought. Whatever other line of investigation you have, you think it’s more important.
Sundberg and Robertsson left the room. Roslin felt tired. The probability of what she’d discovered having anything to do with the case was low and getting lower. Her own experience was that strange facts often turned out to be red herrings.
While she waited, growing more and more impatient, she paced up and down the conference room. She had come across so many prosecutors like Robertsson in her life. Sundberg was also typical of the women police officers who gave evidence in her courts, but they rarely had hair as red as hers.
Sundberg came back, followed shortly by Robertsson and Tobias Ludwig. He was holding the plastic bag containing the red ribbon, and Vivi Sundberg was carrying the lamp from the restaurant.
The ribbons were laid out and compared. There was no doubt that they were identical.
They sat around the table again. Robertsson summarised briefly what Birgitta Roslin had told them. He’s good at making an effective presentation, she noted.
When he finished, nobody had any questions. The only one to speak was Tobias Ludwig.
‘Does this change anything with regard to the press conference we’ll be holding later today?’
‘No,’ said Robertsson. ‘We’ll look into this. But in due course.’
Robertsson declared the meeting closed. He shook hands and left. When Birgitta Roslin stood up, she received a look from Vivi Sundberg she interpreted as meaning she should stay behind.
When they were alone, Vivi Sundberg closed the door and came straight to the point.
‘I’m surprised you’re still involving yourself in this investigation. Obviously, what you’ve discovered is remarkable. We will investigate further. But I think you’ve already gathered that we have other priorities at the moment.’
‘Can you tell me anything?’
Sundberg shook her head.
‘Nothing at all?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Do you have a suspect?’
‘As I’ve said, we’ll make an announcement at the press conference. I wanted you to stay behind for an entirely different reason.’
She stood up and left the room. When she came back she was carrying the diaries Roslin had been forced to hand over a couple of days earlier.
‘We’ve been through them,’ said Vivi Sundberg. ‘I have decided that they’re irrelevant to the investigation. And so I thought I would demonstrate my goodwill by allowing you to borrow them. You’ll have to sign for them. The only condition is that you return them when we ask for them back.’
Roslin wondered for a moment if she was about to fall into a trap. What Sundberg was doing was not permissible, even if it wasn’t criminal. Birgitta Roslin had nothing to do with the investigation. What might happen if she accepted the diaries?
Vivi Sundberg noticed that she was hesitating.
‘I’ve spoken to Robertsson,’ she said. ‘He had nothing against it provided you sign a receipt.’
‘From what I’ve read so far they contain information about the Chinese working on the transcontinental railway line in the United States.’
‘In the 1860s? That’s nearly a hundred and fifty years ago.’
Sundberg put the diaries into a plastic bag on the table. In her pocket she had a receipt that Roslin duly signed.
Sundberg accompanied her to the reception area. They shook hands at the glass door. Roslin asked when the press conference was scheduled.
‘Two o’clock. Four hours from now. If you have a press pass you can come in. It will be packed. This is too big a crime for a little town like ours.’
‘I hope you’ve made a breakthrough.’
Vivi Sundberg paused before replying.
‘Yes,’ she said eventually. ‘I think we’re on the way towards a result.’
She nodded slowly as if to emphasise what she was saying.
‘We now know that all the people in the village were related,’ she said. ‘All the dead, that is. There’s a family connection.’
‘Everybody except the boy?’
‘He was related as well. But he was just visiting.’
Birgitta Roslin left the police station, thinking hard about what was going to be announced a few hours later.
A man caught up with her on the snow-covered pavement.
Lars Emanuelsson smiled. Birgitta Roslin felt an urge to hit him. At the same time, she couldn’t help being impressed by the man’s persistence.
‘We meet again,’ he said. ‘Over and over you visit the police. The judge from Helsingborg hovers indefatigably on the periphery of the investigation. You must understand why I’m curious.’
‘Put your questions to the police, not to me.’
Lars Emanuelsson turned serious.
‘Rest assured, I already have. But I still haven’t got any answers, which is annoying. I’m forced to speculate. What is a judge from Helsingborg doing in Hudiksvall? How is she involved in the horrific things that have been happening here?’
‘I have nothing to say.’
‘Just tell me why you’re so unpleasant and dismissive.’
‘Because you won’t leave me in peace.’
Lars Emanuelsson nodded in the direction of the plastic bag.
‘I noticed that you were empty-handed when you went in the station earlier this morning. And now you’re coming out with a heavy plastic bag. What’s in there? Documents? Files? Something else?’
‘That’s none of your business.’
‘Never talk to a journalist like that. Everything is my business. What’s in the bag, what isn’t. Why don’t you want to answer?’
As Birgitta Roslin started to walk away, she slipped and fell down in the snow. One of the old diaries tumbled out of the bag. Lars Emanuelsson rushed to help, but she pushed away his hand as she put the book back. Her face was red with anger as she hurried away.
‘Old books,’ Emanuelsson shouted after her. ‘Sooner or later I’ll find out what they mean.’
She didn’t stop to brush off the snow until she reached her car. She started the engine and switched on the heater. When she came out onto the main road, she started to calm down. She put Lars Emanuelsson and Vivi Sundberg out of her mind, took the inland route, stopped in Borlänge for a meal, then turned into a car park just outside Ludvika shortly before two o’clock.
The radio news bulletin was short. The press conference had just begun. According to what they had heard, the police had arrested a man on suspicion of mass murder in Hesjövallen. More information was promised in the next bulletin.
Birgitta Roslin resumed her journey, then stopped again an hour later. She turned off cautiously onto a timber track, afraid that the snow would be so deep that her car might get stuck. She switched on the radio. The first thing she heard was Robertsson’s voice. A suspect was being interrogated. Robertsson expected him to be charged that afternoon or evening. That was all he could say at the moment.
A hubbub of sound filled the radio when he had finished speaking, but Robertsson declined to comment further.
When the news bulletin was over, she turned off the radio. Some heavy chunks of snow fell from a fir tree next to the car. She unbuckled her seat belt and got out. The temperature was still falling. She shuddered. What had Robertsson said? A male suspect. Nothing more. But he had sounded confident, just as Sundberg had given the impression of being confident that a breakthrough had been achieved.
This is not the Chinese man, she thought.
She restarted the engine and continued her journey. She forgot about the next news bulletin.
She stopped in Örebro and took a room for the night. She left the bag of diaries in the car.
Before falling asleep, she felt an almost irresistible longing for another human being. Staffan. But he wasn’t there. She could hardly remember what his hands felt like.
The following day, at about three in the afternoon, she arrived back home in Helsingborg. She put the plastic bag of diaries in her study.
By then she knew that a man in his forties, as yet unnamed, had been charged by Prosecutor Robertsson. But there were no details — the media ranted on about the lack of information.
Nobody knew who he was. Everybody was waiting.