Before the Frost (26 page)

“Could he be staying with someone?”

“I know everyone who lives here, whether or not they are on
the lease. It's been forty years, believe it or not, since they built this house. Now there are all kinds of people here, of course.”

She leaned closer to Linda and lowered her voice:

“They sell drugs here. And no one does anything about it.”

Mrs. Andersen insisted on inviting her in and serving her coffee that she poured from a pot in the narrow kitchen. Linda managed to leave after half an hour. By then she knew all about what a wonderful husband Mr. Andersen had been, a man had who died far too young.

 

Linda walked down the stairs. The music had stopped. Instead there was the sound of a child wailing. Linda walked out the front door and looked each way before crossing the street. She sensed someone's presence in the shadows and turned her head. It was the man with the hooded sweatshirt. He grabbed her by her hair. She tried to get away but the pain was too great.

“There is no Torgeir,” he said through clenched teeth. “No Torgeir Langaas. Drop it.”

“Let me go!” she screamed.

He let go of her hair, but punched her hard in the temple. Linda fell headlong into darkness.

28

She was swimming as fast as she could, but the great waves had almost caught up with her. Suddenly she saw rocks in front of her, big black prongs sticking out of the water ready to spear her. Her strength ebbed away and she screamed. Then she opened her eyes.

Linda felt a sharp pain in her head and wondered what was wrong with the bedroom light. Then she saw her father's face looming over her and wondered if she had slept in. But what was she supposed to do today? She had forgotten.

Then she remembered. What caught up with her was not the great waves but the memory of what had happened right before she plunged into darkness. The stairwell, the street, the man who stepped out of the shadows, delivered his threat, and hit her. She winced. Her dad laid a hand on her arm.

“It's OK. Everything's going to be OK.”

She looked around the hospital room, the dim lighting, the screens, and the rhythmic hissing of medical equipment.

“I remember now,” she said. “But how did I get here? Am I hurt?”

She tried to sit up while at the same time testing all her limbs to make sure nothing was broken. Wallander tried to restrain her.

“They want you to stay lying down. You were knocked unconscious, though there doesn't appear to have been any internal damage, not even a concussion.”

“How did you get here?” she asked and closed her eyes. “Tell me.”

“If what I've heard so far from my Danish colleagues and one of the emergency-room physicians here at the Rikshospital is correct, you were extremely lucky. A patrol car was driving by and saw a man knock you down. It only took a few minutes for the
ambulance to arrive. The officers found your driver's license as well as your ID card from the police academy. They contacted me in half an hour. I drove over as soon as I heard about it. Lindman is also here.”

Linda opened her eyes and looked at her dad. She thought in a fuzzy way that she was maybe a little in love with Stefan Lindman even though she had hardly spent any time with him.
Am I delirious? I return to consciousness after some lunatic has knocked me out and the first thing I think about is that I've fallen in love, and much too quickly at that
.

“What are you thinking about?”

“Where's Lindman now?”

“He went to get a bite to eat. I told him to go home, but he wanted to come with me.”

“I'm thirsty.”

Wallander gave her some water. Linda's head was clearer now; images from the moments before the assault were coming back.

“What happened to the creep who assaulted me?”

“They arrested him.”

Linda sat up so quickly that her father couldn't stop her.

“Lie down!”

“He knows where Anna is. Or perhaps he doesn't know that—but he does know something.”

“Calm down.”

She reluctantly stretched out on the bed again.

“I don't know his name, it could be Torgeir Langaas, but I can't know for sure. But he knows something about Anna.”

Her father sat down on a chair beside the bed. She looked at his watch. It was a quarter past three.

“Is it day or night?”

“It's night. You've been sleeping like a baby.”

“He grabbed my hair and then he threatened me.”

“What I don't understand is what you were doing here in the first place. Why Copenhagen?”

“It'll take too long to explain. But the bastard who attacked me may know where Anna is. Maybe he assaulted her too. Or he may have something to do with Birgitta Medberg.”

Wallander shook his head.

“You're tired. The doctor said your memory would come back in bits and pieces, and things may be jumbled for a while.”

“Don't you understand what I'm saying?”

“I do. As soon as the doctor checks you again we can go home. Stefan can drive your car home.”

The truth was starting to dawn on her.

“You don't believe a word I've told you, do you? That he threatened me?”

“No, I know he threatened you. He's admitted to that.”

“Admitted to what, exactly?”

“That he threatened you because he wanted to get the drugs that he assumed you had bought while you were in the apartment building.”

Linda stared at her father while her mind was trying to absorb this new information.

“He threatened me and told me to stop asking about Torgeir Langaas. He never said a word about drugs.”

“We should be grateful the matter has been cleared up, and that the police were nearby at the time. He's going to be charged with assault and attempted robbery.”

“There was no robbery. It's all about the man who owns the house behind the church in Lestarp.”

Wallander frowned.

“What house is that?”

“I haven't had time to tell you about this before. I went to Anna's house in Lund and found a lead that pointed to Lestarp and a house behind the church. After I was there asking about Anna, everyone disappeared. The only thing I managed to find out was that the house is owned by a Norwegian by the name of Torgeir Langaas, and his address is in Copenhagen.”

Her father looked at her for a long time, then took out his notebook and started reading from one of the pages.

“The man they arrested is one Ulrik Larsen. If my Danish colleague is to be believed, Larsen is hardly the kind of man who owns very many country houses in Sweden.”

“Dad, you're not listening to me!”

“I am listening, but what you don't seem to understand is that
there's a man who has confessed to trying to steal drugs from you.”

Linda shook her head desperately. Her left temple throbbed. Why didn't he understand what she was trying to tell him?

“My mind is completely clear. I know I was knocked out but I'm telling you what actually happened.”

“You
think
you are. What I still don't understand is what you were doing in Copenhagen—after barging in on Mona and upsetting her like that.”

Linda went cold.

“How do you know about that?”

“She called me. She was in a terrible state. She was crying so hard she couldn't speak clearly, so at first I thought she was drunk.”

“She
was
drunk, damn it. What did she say?”

“That you had accused her of all manner of things and complained about both her and me. She's crushed. And that banker husband was apparently not there to comfort her.”

“I caught Mom naked in the kitchen with a bottle of vodka in her hand.”

“She said you snuck into the house.”

“I walked in through the veranda doors, which hardly qualifies as sneaking in. She was as high as a kite, whatever she may have told you on the phone.”

“We'll talk about this later.”

“Thanks.”

“What were you doing in Copenhagen?”

“I've already told you.”

Wallander shook his head.

“Can you explain why a man has been arrested for trying to rob you?”

“No. But I also can't explain why you refuse to believe me.”

He leaned over.

“Do you understand what I went through when they called me? When they told me you had been admitted to a hospital in Copenhagen after an assault—do you know what that felt like?”

“I'm sorry that you had to worry about me.”

“Worry? I was scared out of my mind—more frightened than I've been in years.”

Maybe you haven't been so scared since I tried to kill myself,
she thought. She knew his greatest fear was that something should happen to her.

“I'm sorry, Dad.”

“I wonder what it will be like when you start working, of course,” he continued. “If that will turn me into a worried old man who can't sleep when you're working the night shift.”

She tried to tell her story again, slowly, with painstaking care, but he still didn't seem to believe her.

She had just finished when Stefan Lindman walked into the room. He had a paper bag with sandwiches. He nodded happily at her when he saw she was awake.

“How are you doing?”

“Fine.”

Lindman handed the paper bag to Wallander, who immediately started to eat.

“What kind of car do you have? I'm going to get it for you,” Lindman said.

“A red VW Golf. It's parked across the street from the apartment building on Nedergade. I think it's in front of a smoke shop.”

He held up the key.

“I took this out of your coat pocket. You were lucky, you know. Desperate drug addicts are about the worst thing you can run into.”

“He wasn't a drug addict.”

“Tell Lindman what you told me,” her father said in between bites.

She proceeded through her account again, calmly and methodically, just as she had been taught.

“This doesn't exactly jibe with what our Danish colleagues reported,” Lindman said when she was done. “Nor with what the thug said either.”

“But I'm telling you what really happened.”

Wallander carefully wiped his hands with a paper napkin.

“Let me put this a different way,” he said. “It's unusual for people to confess to crimes they haven't committed. It does happen, admittedly, but not very often, and least of all by convicted drug offenders, since what they fear most is incarceration and the possibility
that they will be cut off from their lifeline of drugs. Do you see what I'm saying?”

Linda didn't answer. A physician walked into the room and asked her how she felt.

“You can go home,” he said. “But take it easy for a few days, and call a doctor if the headache doesn't subside.”

Linda sat up. Something had just occurred to her.

“What does Ulrik Larsen look like?”

Neither Lindman nor her father had seen him.

“I'm not leaving until I know what he looks like.”

Her father lost his temper.

“Haven't you caused enough trouble? We are going home—now.”

“Surely it can't be hard to get a description of him. Can't you ask one of these Danish colleagues you keep talking about?”

Linda realized she was shouting. A nurse popped her head in and gave them a stern look.

“We need this room for another patient,” she said.

There was a bleeding woman lying on a stretcher in the corridor, banging her fist against the wall. A waiting room was empty and they walked in.

“The man who hit me was about one hundred and eighty centimeters tall. I couldn't see his face since he was wearing a sweatshirt with the hood pulled up. The sweatshirt was either black or dark blue. He had dark pants and brown shoes. He was thin. He spoke Danish and had a high-pitched voice. He also smelled of cinnamon.”

“Cinnamon?” Lindman said.

“Maybe he had been eating a cinnamon bun, how should I know? Anyway, call your colleagues and find out if the man they have in custody matches this description. If I can just find that out, I'll keep my mouth shut for the time being.”

“No,” Wallander said. “We're going home.”

Linda looked at Lindman. He nodded carefully after Wallander had already turned his back.

 

The doorbell rang. Linda sat up in a daze and looked at the alarm clock. It was a quarter past eleven. She climbed out of bed and put
on her robe. Her head was sore, but the throbbing pain was gone. She opened the front door. It was Lindman.

“I'm sorry if I woke you up.”

She let him in.

“Wait in the living room. I'll be right back.”

She ran into the bathroom, splashed water on her face, brushed her teeth, and combed her hair. When she returned he was standing in front of the balcony door. It was open.

“How are you feeling today?”

“I feel OK. Would you like some coffee?”

“I don't have time. I just wanted to tell you about a phone call I made about an hour ago.”

Linda waited. He must have believed what she told him back at the hospital.

“What did they say?”

“It took a little while to get to the right officer. I had to wake somebody called Ole Hedtoft who had worked all night. He was one of the patrol officers who found you, and who arrested the guy who did it.”

Lindman took out a piece of paper from the pocket of his leather jacket and looked at her.