“Berggren?”
“It seems to him that she must know the answer, so he tries to put pressure on her. She attacks him when he gets threatening. He runs away, but I happen to be there. You know the rest.”
Larsson opened a window and left it ajar.
“Who is this man?”
“I don’t know. But we can make another assumption. And it could prove that I’m right.”
Larsson said nothing, but waited for what was coming next.
“We think we know the murderer camped by the lake. Once he’s killed Molin, he goes away. But then he comes back again. He’s not going to put up his tent in the same place. So the question is: where’s he living?”
Larsson looked doubtful.
“You mean he might have checked into a hotel?”
“That possibility could be worth following up.”
Larsson checked his watch. “When’s breakfast?”
“They start serving at 6:30.”
“That means we might be in luck. Let’s go.”
A few minutes later they were in the hotel lobby. The girl at the desk looked at them in surprise.
“Two early birds looking for breakfast?”
“Breakfast can wait,” Larsson said. “Do you have a guest list for last week? Do you have your customer records in a ledger, or on loose sheets of paper?”
The girl looked worried. “Has something happened?”
“This is a routine inquiry,” Lindman said. “Nothing to worry about. Have you had any foreigners staying here in the last week or so?”
She thought for a moment. “There were four Finns here for two nights last week, Wednesday and Thursday.”
“Nobody else?”
“No.”
“He might have checked in somewhere else, of course,” Larsson said. “This isn’t the only place to stay in Sveg.”
He turned to the girl. “When we had dinner here, quite late, you may remember another customer in the dining room. What language did he speak?”
“English. But he came from Argentina.”
“How do you know?”
“He paid by credit card. He showed me his passport.”
She went into a back room and eventually came back with a Visa receipt. They read the name. Fernando Hereira. Legible even in the signature.
Larsson grunted with pleasure. “We’ve got him,” he said. “Always assuming it is him.”
“Has he been here before?” Lindman said.
“No.”
“Did you see what kind of car he had?”
“No.”
“Did he say where he’d come from? Or where he was going to?”
“No. He didn’t say much at all. He was friendly, though.”
“Could you describe him?”
The girl thought for a moment. Lindman could see she was trying hard.
“I have such an awful memory for faces.”
“But you must have seen something. Did he look like one of us?”
“Not at all.”
“How old was he?”
“Sixty, perhaps.”
“Hair?”
“Gray hair.”
“Eyes?”
“I wouldn’t remember that.”
“Was he fat or thin?”
“I don’t think he was fat.”
“What was he wearing?”
“A blue shirt, I think. And a blazer — I’m not sure.”
“Can you remember anything else?”
“No.”
Larsson shook his head and sat down on one of the brown sofas in the lobby with the Visa slip in his hand. Lindman joined him. By now it was 6:25 A.M. on November 11. Eight days to go before Lindman was due to report to the hospital in Borås. Larsson yawned and rubbed his eyes. Neither of them spoke.
A door leading to the bedrooms opened. Lindman looked up and saw Veronica Molin.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Silberstein watched the dawn approaching. For a while it was like being at home. The light was the same as what he had often seen while the sun rose over the horizon and spread its rays over the plains to the west of Buenos Aires, but after a few minutes, the feeling had gone. He was in the Swedish mountains, not far from the Norwegian border. He had gone straight back to Frostengren’s chalet after the botched visit to the Berggren woman. The man he’d seen behind the house and had no choice but to knock down and frighten with a pretended attempt to strangle him was one of the police officers he’d seen at the hotel when he was having dinner. He couldn’t understand what the man was doing there at night. Was the woman’s house being guarded after all? He had kept a careful watch on it before knocking on the door and pushing his way in.
He forced himself to consider the possibility that he had squeezed too hard and that the policeman was dead.
He had driven fast through the night, not because he was afraid somebody might be chasing him, but because he could no longer control his craving for alcohol. He had bought both wine and hard liquor in Sveg, as if anticipating a disaster. Now he accepted that he could no longer survive without alcohol. The only restriction he would apply was that he would not open any of the bottles until he got back to the chalet.
It was 3 A.M. by the time he drove the last difficult stretch up to Frostengren’s chalet. It was pitch-black on all sides as he made his way to the door. The moment he was inside, he opened a bottle of wine and downed half of it. Calm gradually settled in him. He sat at the table next to the window, without moving a muscle, without a thought in his head, and steadily drank. Then he drew the telephone towards him and dialed Maria’s number. There was a buzzing and scraping on the line, but her voice sounded very close even so. He could almost smell her breath through the receiver.
“Where are you?” she asked.
“I’m still here.”
“What can you see through your window?”
“Darkness.”
“Is what I’m afraid of true?”
“What are you afraid of?”
“That you’ll never come back?”
The question worried him. He took another drink of wine before answering.
“Why shouldn’t I come back?”
“I don’t know. You are the only one who knows what you’re doing and why you aren’t here. You’re lying to me, Aron. You’re not telling me the truth.”
“Why should I lie to you?”
“You haven’t made this journey to look at furniture. There’s some other reason. I don’t know what it is. Perhaps you’ve met another woman. I don’t know. The only one who knows is you. And God.”
He realized that what he’d told her before hadn’t sunk in — that he had killed a man.
“I’ll be home soon.”
“When?”
“Soon.”
“I still don’t know where you are.”
“I’m high up in the mountains. It’s cold.”
“Have you started drinking again?”
“Not very much. Just so that I can sleep.”
The connection was cut off. When Silberstein dialed the number again, he couldn’t get through. He tried several times without success. Then he prepared to wait for the dawn. Things had now entered the crucial stage, that was clear. The Berggren woman had seen his face when she pulled the hood off. He hadn’t expected that, and he had panicked. He should have stayed there, put the hood on again, and forced her to tell him what he was certain she knew. Instead he had fled and run into the policeman.
Although he was filling his body with alcohol, he was still able to think during the long wait for the dawn. He always experienced a moment of great insight before he became intoxicated. He had learned how much he could drink, and how quickly, while still being in control of his thoughts, and he needed to think clearly now. The endgame was starting. Nothing had turned out as he had thought it would. Despite all his planning, all his meticulous preparations. It was all Andersson’s fault. Or rather, it was because somebody had killed him. It had to be the woman. The question was: why? What forces had he set in motion when he killed Molin?