When they met for the meeting Rundström surprised Lindman by giving him a friendly handshake. Johansson took off a pair of muddy rubber boots; a dog handler from Östersund asked angrily if somebody by the name of Anders had been in touch. Larsson tapped the table with his pen and started the meeting. He made a brisk and clear summary of what had happened the night before.
“Berggren has asked us to wait until this evening before questioning her in any more detail,” he said. “That seems reasonable. In any case, we have lots of other things that are just as pressing.”
“We have some footprints,” Johansson said. “From inside Elsa’s house, and from the garden. Whoever it was that broke in and then knocked Lindman on the head was rather careless. We have footprints from the Molin and Andersson murders. That will be a priority for the forensic boys now: establishing whether there’s a match. That and the tire tracks.”
Larsson agreed. “The dogs picked up a scent,” he said. “It went as far as the bridge. Then what happened?”
The dog handler answered. He was middle-aged, and had a scar across his left cheek. “It went cold.”
“No finds?”
“Nothing.”
“There’s a parking lot there,” Johansson said. “In fact, it’s just a grass shoulder that’s been concreted over. Anyway, the scent petered out. We can assume that his car was parked there. Especially if we bear in mind that it’s not easy to see anything there in the dark. The street lighting is pretty poor just there. It’s by no means unheard of, especially in summer, for people to park there and do some making out in the backseat.” Chuckles from all round the table. “Occasionally we find ourselves facing more intricate problems based on happenings there,” he said. “The kind of thing that used to take place off remote forest roads and kept the magistrates busy with paternity suits.”
“Somebody must have seen this man,” Larsson said. “The name on his credit card was Fernando Hereira.”
“I’ve just been talking to Östersund,” Rundström said, who’d been quiet until now and let Larsson chair the meeting. “They’ve triggered a computer search and come up with a Fernando Hereira in Västerås. He was arrested for VAT evasion some years ago — but he’s over seventy now, so we can probably take it that he’s not the man we’re after.”
“I don’t know any Spanish,” Larsson said, “but I have an idea that Fernando Hereira would be quite a common name.”
“Like mine,” Johansson said. “Every other bastard’s called Erik, up here in Norrland at least, and in my generation.”
“We don’t know if it’s his real name,” Larsson said.
“We can track him through Interpol,” Rundström said. “As soon as we have some fingerprints, that is.”
Several phones started ringing at once. Larsson proposed a ten-minute break and stood up. He also indicated to Lindman that they should go out into the corridor. They sat down in the reception area. Larsson eyed the stuffed bear up and down.
“I saw a bear once,” he said. “Not far from Krokom. I had been dealing with a few moonshiners and was driving back to Östersund. I remember I was thinking about my father. I had always thought it was that Italian crooner, but when I was twelve my mom told me it was some con man from Ange, who disappeared the moment he heard Mom was pregnant. All of a sudden, there was this bear by the side of the road. I slammed on the brakes, and thought, ‘For Christ’s sake! That can’t be a bear. It’s just a shadow. Or a big rock.’ But it was a bear all right. A female. Her fur was very shiny. I watched her for a minute or so, then she lumbered off. I remember thinking: ‘This simply doesn’t happen! And if it does, it’s a once-in-a-lifetime event.’ Kind of like getting a royal flush in poker. They say Erik was dealt one twenty-five years ago. The rest of the deal was worthless, there were only five kronor in the pot and everybody else discarded.”
Larsson stretched and yawned. Then he was serious again.
“I’ve been thinking about our talk,” he said. “That stuff about having to think again. I have a problem with the fact that we might be looking for two different killers. It seems so unlikely. Such a metropolitan way of looking at things, if you get my meaning. Out here in the wild, things generally happen in accordance with a simpler pattern. Then again, I can see that a lot of the evidence suggests you might be right. I talked to Rundström about it before the meeting.”
“What did he say?”
“He’s a proper bastard with both feet on the ground, never believes anything, never guesses, always sticks to the facts. He shouldn’t be underestimated. He catches on fast, possibilities and pitfalls.”
Larsson watched a group of children.
“I’ve tried to map things out in my head,” he said when the last of the children had filed into the library. “A man speaking broken English shows up here and kills Molin. That nonsense his daughter goes on about — owing money to some woman in the UK — I don’t believe that for a moment. What you suggest could be right, especially if you read that awful diary — that the motive can have its source a long time ago, during the war. The brutality, the fury we’ve witnessed might suggest revenge. So far so good. That means we are after a killer who was very clear about what he was undertaking. But then he hangs around. That’s what I can’t work out. He should be running away as fast as he can.”
“Have you uncovered any links at all with Andersson?”
“Nothing. Our colleagues in Helsingborg have talked to his wife. She claims that Abraham told her everything. He had mentioned Molin now and then. They were worlds apart. One played classical music and wrote pop songs as a hobby. The other was a retired police officer. I don’t think we’re going to work out how all this fits together until we find the bastard who knocked you out. How’s your head, by the way?”
“It’s okay, thanks.”
Larsson stood up. “Andersson wrote a song called ‘Believe Me, I’m a Girl.’ Erik remembers it. That pseudonym, Siv Nilsson. He had a record by some dance band or other — Fabians, or something like that. All very odd. He played Mozart one day, made up pop music the next. Erik figures the pop songs were utter crap. I suppose that’s life. Mozart on Monday, drivel on Tuesday.”
They went back to the conference room where the rest of them were assembled, but the meeting never got going again. Rundström’s cell phone rang. He answered, then raised his hand.
“They’ve found a rental car in the Funäsdalen mountains,” he said.
They gathered around the wall map. Rundström pointed to the spot.
“There. The car was abandoned.”
“Who found it?” It was Larsson who asked.
“A man called Elmberg, he has a summer place there. He went to check that his cottage was okay. Somebody had been there, and he thought it was a bit strange at this time of year. Then he found the car. He suspects the chalet where the car’s parked has been broken into too.”
“Did he see anybody?”
“No. He didn’t hang around. I suppose he was thinking of Molin and Andersson. But he did notice a few other things. The car had an Östersund license plate. Plus he saw a foreign newspaper on the backseat.”
“Let’s go,” Larsson said, putting on his jacket.
Rundström turned to Lindman.
“You’d better come too. I mean, you more or less saw him. Assuming it was him.”
Larsson asked Lindman to drive because he had calls to make from his cell phone.
“Forget the speed limit,” Larsson said. “As long as you keep us on the road.”
Lindman listened to what Larsson was saying on the phone. A helicopter was on its way. And dogs. They were about to drive through Linsell when Rundström called: a salesperson in Sveg had told the police that she’d sold a knitted woolen hat the previous day.