‘I barely know where Nepal is,’ said Birgitta. ‘I have to admit that I’ve become lazy. But sometimes I still long for that feeling of goodwill that was everywhere. We weren’t just crazy students who thought we were at the centre of the world, where nothing was impossible. There really was such a thing as solidarity.’
Karin burst out laughing.
They made dinner together. Karin mentioned that the following week she would be going to China to take part in a major conference on the early Qin dynasty, whose first emperor laid the foundations for China as a united realm.
‘What was it like when you first visited the land of your dreams?’ Birgitta asked.
‘I was twenty-nine when I went there for the first time. Mao had already gone, and everything was changing. It was a big disappointment, difficult to cope with. Beijing was a cold, damp city. Thousands and thousands of bicycles that sounded like an enormous swarm of grasshoppers, but then I realised that, even so, an enormous change had come about. People had clothes to wear. Shoes on their feet. I never saw anybody in Beijing starving, no beggars. I remember feeling ashamed. I had flown into this country from all the riches we take for granted; I had no right to regard developments in China with contempt or arrogance. I began to fall in love with the thought that the Chinese had won the trial of strength in which they had been embroiled. That was when I finally made up my mind what I was going to do with my life: become a Sinologist. Before that moment I’d had other ideas.’
‘Like what?’
‘You’ll never believe me.’
‘Try me!’
‘I’d thought of becoming a professional soldier.’
‘Whatever for?’
‘You became a judge. How does anyone make these decisions?’
After dinner they returned to the conservatory. The lights made the white snow outside glow. Karin had lent her a sweater, as it was becoming rather cold. They had drunk wine with the meal, and Birgitta was feeling a bit tipsy.
‘Come with me to China,’ said Karin. ‘The flight doesn’t cost an arm and a leg now. I’m bound to be given a big hotel room. We can share it. We’ve done that before. I remember the summer camps when you and I and three others shared a little tent. We were lying more or less on top of one another.’
‘I can’t,’ said Birgitta. ‘I’ll probably be cleared to go back to work.’
‘Come with me to China. Work can wait.’
‘I’d like to. But you’ll be going there again sometime, right?’
‘Of course. But when you get to our age, you shouldn’t put things off unless you have to.’
‘We’ll live for a long time yet. We’ll live to an old age.’
Karin said nothing. Birgitta realised that she’d put her foot in it. Karin’s husband had died at the age of forty-one. She had been a widow since then.
Karin understood what her friend was thinking. She stretched out her hand and stroked Birgitta’s knee.
‘It’s OK.’
They continued talking. It was almost midnight when they retired to their rooms. Birgitta lay down on her bed with her mobile phone in her hand. Staffan was due home at midnight and had promised to call.
She had almost dozed off when the telephone in her hand began to vibrate.
‘Did I wake you up?’
‘Nearly.’
‘Did everything go well?’
‘We’ve been talking non-stop for more than twelve hours.’
‘Will you be coming home tomorrow?’
‘I’ll sleep as long as I can. Then I’ll head home.’
‘I assume you’ve heard what’s happened? He’s said how he went about it.’
‘Who?’
‘The man in Hudiksvall.’
She sat up immediately.
‘I know nothing at all. Tell me!’
‘Lars-Erik Valfridsson. The man they charged. The police are looking for the weapon at this very moment. He evidently told them where he’d buried it. A home-made samurai sword, according to the news.’
‘Is that really true?’
‘Why would I tell you something that isn’t true?’
‘Of course you wouldn’t. But anyway. Has he said why?’
‘Nobody has said anything apart from it being revenge.’
When the call was over, she remained sitting up. During the whole day with Karin she hadn’t devoted a single thought to Hesjövallen. Now everything that had happened came flooding back into her mind.
Perhaps the red ribbon would have an explanation that nobody had foreseen?
Why couldn’t Lars-Erik Valfridsson also have eaten at that Chinese restaurant?
She lay down and switched off the light. She would go home tomorrow. She would send the diaries back to Vivi Sundberg and start work again.
There was no way she would go to China with Karin, even if that was what she would really like to do above all else.
20
When Birgitta Roslin got up the next morning, Karin Wiman had already left for Copenhagen, as she had an early lecture. She had left a note on the kitchen table.
Birgitta. I sometimes think that I have a path inside my head. For every day that passes it gets a bit longer and penetrates deeper into an unknown landscape where it will eventually peter out one of these days. But that path also meanders backwards. Sometimes I turn round, like I did yesterday during all the hours we were talking, and I see things that I’d forgotten about, or prevented myself from remembering. I want us to continue with these conversations. The bottom line is that friends are all we have left. Or rather, perhaps, the last line of defence we can fight to maintain. Karin.
Birgitta put the letter in her bag, drank a cup of coffee and prepared to leave. Just as she was about to close the front door, she noticed some flight tickets on a table in the hall. She noted that Karin was booked to fly with Finnair from Helsinki to Beijing.
She took the ferry from Elsinore. It was windy. After landing she stopped at a corner shop displaying placards announcing that Lars-Erik Valfridsson had confessed. She bought a bundle of newspapers and drove home. Her reserved, taciturn Polish cleaning lady was waiting for her in the hall. Birgitta had forgotten that this was the day she was scheduled to come. They exchanged a few words in English as Birgitta paid her. When she was finally alone in the house, she sat down to read the newspapers. As usual, she was amazed to see how many pages the evening papers could devote to facts that were extremely sparse. What Staffan had said in their brief telephone conversation the previous evening contained at least as much information as the newspapers made a fuss about.
The only new item was a photograph of the man assumed to have committed the murders. The picture was probably an enlargement of a passport or driver’s licence photograph and showed a man with a featureless face, narrow mouth, high forehead and thin hair. She found it hard to imagine this man committing the barbaric murders in Hesjövallen. He looks like a Low Church pastor, she thought. Hardly a man with hell in his head and his hands. But she knew that she was going against her better judgement. She had seen so many criminals come and go in her court whose appearance suggested they couldn’t possibly have committed the crimes they were charged with.
It was only when she had discarded the newspapers and switched on teletext that her interest was really aroused. The main item there was the discovery by the police of what was presumably the murder weapon. The precise location had not been revealed, but it had been dug up where Lars-Erik Valfridsson had said they would find it. It was a rather poor home-made copy of a Japanese samurai sword. But the edge was very sharp. The weapon was currently being examined in the hope of finding fingerprints and, above all, traces of blood.