To his surprise he’d been accepted by the police academy on his first attempt. The training hadn’t caused him any problems. He hadn’t been outstanding in any way, but had been among the better ones in his year. One day he’d come back home to Kinna in uniform and announced that he would be working in Borås, just forty kilometers down the road.
For the first few years he’d commuted from Kinna, but when he fell in love with one of the girls at the police station, he moved into Borås. They lived together for three years. Then one day, out of the blue, she announced that she had met a man from Trondheim and was moving there. Lindman had taken the development in stride. He’d realized that their relationship was beginning to bore him. It was a little like going back to his childhood. What intrigued him, though, was how she could have met another man and started an affair without Lindman noticing.
By then he’d reached the age of thirty, almost without noticing it. Then his father had a heart attack and died, and a few months later his mother died as well. The day after her funeral he’d posted a personal ad in the local paper. He had four replies, and met the women one after the other. One of them was a Pole who had lived in Borås for many years. She had two grown-up children, and worked as a meal supervisor at the high school. She was nearly ten years older than Lindman, but they never really noticed the difference. He couldn’t understand at first what there was that had immediately attracted him to her, made him fall in love with her. Then it dawned on him: she was completely ordinary. She took life seriously, but didn’t fuss about anything unnecessarily. They had started a relationship, and for the first time in his life Lindman discovered that he could feel something for a woman that was more than lust. Her name was Elena and she lived in Norrby. He used to spend the night there several times a week.
It was there, one day, while he was in the bathroom, that he discovered he had a strange lump on his tongue.
He interrupted his train of thought. He was in front of the hospital. It was still drizzling. It was 7:56 by his watch. He walked past the hospital and speeded up. He had made up his mind to walk around it twice, and that was what he was going to do.
It was 8:30 by the time he sat down in the cafeteria with a cup of coffee and the local paper. But he didn’t read a word, and never touched his coffee.
He was scared stiff by the time he got as far as the doctor’s door. He knocked and went in. The doctor was a woman. He tried to work out from her face what he could expect: a death sentence, or a reprieve? She gave him a smile, but that only confused him. Did it denote uncertainty, sympathy, or relief at not needing to tell somebody that they had cancer?
He sat down. She organized some papers on the desk.
“I’m afraid I have to tell you that the lump you have on your tongue is a malignant tumor.”
He swallowed. He’d known all along, ever since that morning in Elena’s apartment in Norrby. He had cancer.
“We can’t see any sign of it spreading. Since we’ve found it in the early stages, we can start treating it right away.”
“What does that mean? Will you cut my tongue out?”
“No, it will be radiation therapy to start with. And then an operation.”
“Will I die of it?”
This wasn’t a question he’d prepared in advance. It burst out without him being able to stop it.
“Cancer is always serious,” the doctor said, “but nowadays we can take measures. It’s been a long time since diagnosing cancer meant passing a death sentence.”
He sat with the doctor for more than an hour. When he left her office he was soaked in sweat. In the pit of his stomach was a spot as cold as ice. A pain that didn’t burn, but felt like the hands of that psychopath on his throat. He forced himself to be calm. He would go for coffee now and read the paper. Then he’d make up his mind whether or not he was dying.
But the paper was no longer there. He picked up one of the previous day’s national papers instead. That ice-cold knot was still there. He drank his coffee and thumbed through the paper. He forgot all the words and the pictures the moment he turned over a page.
Something caught his attention. A photograph. A headline about a brutal murder. He stared at the photograph and the caption. Herbert Molin, age about 76. Former police officer.
He pushed the paper aside and went for another cup of coffee. He knew it cost two kronor, but he didn’t bother paying. He had cancer and was entitled to take certain liberties. A man who had shuffled quickly up to the counter was pouring himself a cup of coffee. His hands shook so badly that hardly any coffee made it into the cup. Lindman helped him. The man gave him a grateful look.
He picked up the paper again, and read what it said without any of it really sinking in.
When he’d first arrived in Borås as a probationer, he’d been introduced to the oldest and most experienced detective on the staff, Herbert Molin. They had worked together in the serious crimes division for some years until Molin retired. Lindman had often thought about him afterwards. The way in which he was always looking for links and clues. A lot of people spoke ill of him behind his back, but he’d always been a rich source of learning as far as Lindman was concerned. One of Molin’s main lessons was that intuition was the most important and most underestimated resource for a true detective. The more experience Lindman accrued, the more he realized that Molin was right.
Molin had been a recluse. Nobody Lindman knew had ever been to Molin’s house opposite the district courthouse in Bramhultsvagen. Some years after he’d retired, Lindman heard quite by chance that Molin had left town, but nobody could say where he had moved.
Lindman put the newspaper down.
So Herbert Molin had moved to Härjedalen. According to the paper, he had been living in a remote house in the middle of the forest. That is where he had been murdered. There was apparently no discernible motive, nor any clues as to who the killer might have been. The murder had been committed several days ago, but Lindman’s nervousness about his hospital appointment had meant that he shied away from the outside world and the news had only gotten through to him via this much-thumbed evening paper.
He got to his feet. He’d had enough of his own mortality to deal with. He left the hospital and met with a heavy drizzle. He started downhill to the town center. Molin was dead, and he himself had been informed that he belonged to the category of people whose days might be numbered. He was thirty-seven years old and had never really thought about his own age. Now it felt as if he’d suddenly been robbed of all perspective. A little like being in a boat on the open sea, then being cast into a narrow fjord surrounded by high cliffs. He paused on the pavement to get his breath back. He wasn’t just scared; he also had the feeling that somehow or another he was being swindled. By something invisible that had smuggled its way into his body and was now busy destroying him.
It also seemed to him rather ridiculous that he should have to explain to people that he had cancer of the tongue, of all places. People got cancer, you heard about that all the time. But in the tongue?
He started walking again. To give himself time he decided to make his mind completely blank until he got as far as the high school. Then he’d decide what to do. The doctor had given him an appointment for further tests the next day. She also had extended his sick leave by a month. He would start his course of treatment in three weeks’ time.