By the time he got to Sveg, he was wishing he had never come. He had to resist the urge to drive past the hotel, return to Östersund, and fly back to Borås and Elena as quickly as possible. He parked and went into the hotel. The girl at the reception desk seemed pleased to see him.
“I thought you wouldn’t be able to drag yourself away,” she chuckled.
Lindman laughed. It sounded far too shrill and loud. Even my laughter is telling lies, he thought.
“I’ve given you your old room,” the girl said. “Number 3. There’s a message for you from Ms. Molin.”
“Is she in?”
“No. She said she’d be back around 4 P.M.”
He went up to his room. It was as if he’d never left. He went into the bathroom, opened his mouth wide, and stuck out his tongue. Nobody dies of tongue cancer, he thought. It will turn out all right. I’ll take my course of radiation therapy, and I’ll be okay. Everything will be okay. There will come a time when I look back on this period of my life as a mere interlude, a sort of nightmare, nothing more.
He consulted his address book and found the telephone number of his sister in Helsinki. He listened to her recorded message, and left one of his own with his cell phone number. He didn’t have the number of his other sister, who was married and lived in France, and he couldn’t be bothered to track it down. Nor was he sure he would be able to spell her name correctly.
He looked at the bed. If I lie down I’ll die, he thought. He took off his shirt, moved a table out of the way, and started doing push-ups. He felt like giving up when he got as far as twenty-five, but he forced himself to go on to forty. He sat on the floor and took his pulse. 170. Far too high. He decided he’d have to start exercising. Every day, regardless of the weather, regardless of how he felt. He rummaged through his bag. He’d forgotten his sneakers. He put on his shirt and jacket and went out. He found his way to the one sports shop in Sveg. There was a very limited selection of athletic shoes, but he found a pair that fitted him. Then he went to the pizzeria for a meal. He could hear a radio in the background. He pricked up his ears when he heard Larsson’s voice. He was making another appeal, asking the public to get in touch with the police if they had noticed anything unusual or had any information, etc., etc. They really are in a bind, Lindman thought. He wondered if the murders would ever be solved.
He went for a walk after his meal. North this time, past a museum comprising several old houses, and then past the hospital. He walked fast so as to exert himself. He heard music playing in his mind’s ear. It was some time before he realized it was the music he’d heard at Jacobi’s. Johann Sebastian Bach. He kept going until he’d left Sveg far behind him.
He took a shower, then went down to reception. Veronica Molin was waiting for him. He noticed again what a good-looking woman she was.
“Thank you for coming,” she said.
“The alternative was bowling.”
She looked at him in surprise, then laughed.
“I’m glad you didn’t say golf. I’ve never understood men who play golf.”
“I’ve never touched a golf club in my life.”
She looked around the lobby. Some test drivers had just come in, declaring in loud voices that it was high time for a beer.
“I don’t normally invite men to my room,” she said, “but at least we can be left in peace there.”
Her room was on the ground floor, at the end of the corridor. It was different from Lindman’s — bigger, for a start. He wondered what it must be like for somebody used to staying in five-star hotels all over the world to adjust to the simplicity of a hotel in Sveg. He remembered her saying that she’d heard about her father’s death in a room with a view of the cathedral in Cologne. From the window in this room she could see the Ljusnan River and beyond it the wooded hills of Härjedalen. Perhaps this view is as beautiful, he thought, and in its way as impressive as Cologne Cathedral.
There were two armchairs in the room. She’d switched on the bedside lamp and directed it away from them so that the room was dimly lit. He smelled her perfume. He wondered how she would react if he were to tell her that what he most wanted to do just now was to remove all her clothes and make love to her. Would she be surprised? She was no doubt aware of the effect she had on men.
“You asked me to be here,” he said. “I’d like to hear what you have to tell me. That said, this conversation shouldn’t be taking place. You should be talking to Inspector Larsson, or one of his colleagues. I have nothing to do with the investigation.”
“I know. But I want to talk to you even so.”
Lindman could see that she was agitated. He waited.
“I’ve been trying to understand,” she said. “Who would have had any reason for killing my father? It was beyond all comprehension at first. It seemed as if somebody had raised his hand and brought it crashing down on my father’s head for no reason. I could see no motive at all. I was stunned. I don’t usually react like that. In my work I come up against crises every day, crises that can develop into commercial catastrophes if I don’t stay absolutely calm and make sure I’m influenced by nothing but the facts in whatever I do. The feeling passed. I was eventually able to think rationally again. And I started remembering.” She looked at him. “I read that diary,” she said. “What was in it came as a shock.”
“You mean you knew nothing about his past?”
“Nothing at all. I told you that.”
“Have you spoken to your brother?”
“He didn’t know anything either.”
Her voice was strangely toneless. Lindman felt an odd sensation of uncertainty. He concentrated harder, and leaned forward so that he could see her face more clearly.
“Naturally, it was a bolt from the sky to discover that my father had been a volunteer in Hitler’s army. Not just paying lip service to it, but very much an active Nazi. I was ashamed. I hated him. Mostly because he’d never said anything.”
Lindman wondered if he was ashamed of his own father. He didn’t think he’d come that far yet. He was in a very peculiar situation, though. He and the woman opposite him had made the same discovery about their fathers.
“Anyway, it dawned on me that there might be an explanation in that diary for why he was killed.”
A truck rumbled past in the street outside. Lindman waited eagerly for what was coming next.
“How well do you remember what was in it?” she asked.
“Pretty well. Not all the details and dates, of course.”
“He describes a journey to Scotland.”
Lindman remembered that. The long walks with “M.”
“It was a long time ago. I wasn’t very old, but I do remember my father going to Scotland to see a woman. I think her name was Monica, but I’m not sure. He’d met her in Borås and she was also a police officer, but quite a bit younger, I think. There’d been some kind of an exchange between Sweden and Scotland. They fell in love. My mother knew nothing about it. Not then at least. Anyway, he went to meet her. And he cheated her.”
“How?”
She shook her head impatiently. “I’m telling this at my own pace. It’s difficult enough as it is. He tricked her out of some money. I don’t know what he told her, of course, but he borrowed money from her, large sums of money. And he never paid it back. My father had a weakness. He was a gambler. Mostly on horses. Cards too, I think. Anyway, he lost. All her money went down the drain. She demanded the money back. There was nothing about it in writing, apparently. He refused. She came to Borås once, that’s how I know about this. She appeared at the door one evening; it was winter. My mother was at home, and my father and me. I don’t know where my brother was. Anyway, there she was at the door and, although he tried to prevent her, she forced her way into the house and told my mother everything, and she yelled at my father, threatening to kill him if he didn’t return the money. I’d learned enough English to be able to understand what they were saying. My mother collapsed and my father was wild with rage, or maybe it was fear. She promised she’d kill him in the end, no matter how long it took. I remember distinctly what she said.”