Before the Frost (6 page)

“Something came up.”

“What is it?”

“Something personal.”

Her father growled on the other end.

“I had a meeting with Martinsson today.”

“I know.”

“How do you know that?”

“He told me—only that you met. Nothing else. Don't worry.”

Linda went back to the couch. At eight she called Zeba and asked her if she knew where Anna could be, but Zeba hadn't heard from Anna in several days. At nine o'clock, after she had helped herself to food from Anna's small pantry and fridge, she dialed Henrietta's number. The phone rang a number of times before Anna's mother answered. Linda tried to approach the subject as carefully as possible so as not to alarm the already fragile woman. Did she know if Anna was in Lund? Had she planned a trip to Malmö or Copenhagen? Linda asked the most harmless questions she could think of.

“I haven't talked to her since Thursday.”

That's four days ago,
Linda thought.
That means Anna never told her about the man she saw through the hotel window, even though they're close.

“Why do you want to know where she is?”

“I called her and there was no answer.”

She sensed a tinge of anxiety on the other end.

“But you don't call me every time Anna doesn't answer her phone.”

Linda was prepared for this question.

“I had a sudden impulse to have her over for dinner tonight. That was all.”

Linda steered the conversation over to her own life.

“Have you heard I'm going to start working here in Ystad?”

“Yes, Anna told me. But neither one of us understands why you would want to be a policewoman.”

“If I'd gone on learning how to refinish furniture as planned, I'd always have tacks in my mouth. A life in law enforcement just seemed more entertaining.”

A clock struck somewhere in Anna's apartment and Linda quickly ended the conversation. Then she thought it all through again. Anna wasn't a risk-taker. In contrast to Zeba and herself, Anna hated rollercoasters, was suspicious of strangers, and never climbed into a cab without looking the driver in the eye first. The simplest explanation was that Anna was still disconcerted by what she thought she had seen. She must have gone back to Malmö to look for the man she thought was her father.
This is the first time she's ever stood me up,
Linda thought.
But this is also the first time she's been convinced she saw her father walking down the street.

Linda stayed in the apartment for several more hours.

By midnight Anna had still not returned.

Then she knew. There was no good explanation for Anna's absence. Something must have happened. But what?

7

When Linda got home shortly after midnight, she found her father asleep on the couch. He woke up at the sound of the closing door. Linda eyed the curve of his belly with disapproval.

“You're getting fatter,” she said. “One day you're just going to pop. Not like an old troll who wanders out into the sunshine but like a balloon when it gets too full of air.”

He pulled his robe tighter across his chest protectively.

“I do the best I can.”

“No, you don't.”

He sat up heavily.

“I'm too tired to have this conversation,” he said. “When you walked in I was in the middle of a beautiful dream. Do you remember Baiba?”

“The one from Latvia? Are you still in touch with each other?”

“About once a year, no more. She's found someone else, a German engineer who works at the municipal waterworks in Riga. She sounds very much in love when she talks about him, the wonderful Herman from Lübeck. I'm surprised it doesn't drive me insane with jealousy.”

“You were dreaming about her?”

He smiled.

“We had a child in the dream,” he said. “A little boy who was building castles in the sand. An orchestra was playing in the distance and Baiba and I just stood there watching him. In my dream I thought, ‘This is no dream, this is real' and I was incredibly happy.”

“And you complain about having too many nightmares.”

He wasn't listening.

“The door opened—that was you, of course—a car door. It was summer and very warm. The whole world was full of light like an overexposed picture. Everyone's face was white and without any shadows. It was beautiful. We were about to drive away when I woke up.”

“I'm sorry.”

He shrugged.

“It was just a dream.”

Linda wanted to tell him about Anna, but her dad lumbered out into the kitchen and drank some water from the faucet. Linda followed him, and when he was done he stood up and looked at her, smoothing his hair down in the back.

“You were out late. It's none of my business, I know, but I have an idea you want me to ask you about it.”

Linda told him. He leaned against the refrigerator with his arms crossed.
This is how I remember him from my childhood,
she thought.
This is how he always listened to me, like a giant. I used to think my dad was as big as a mountain. Daddy Mountain.

He shook his head when she finished.

“That's not how it happens.”

“What do you mean?”

“That's not how people disappear.”

“But it's not like her. I've known her since I was seven. She's never been late for anything.”

“However idiotic it sounds, some time has to be the first. Let's say she was preoccupied by the fact that she thought she had seen her father. It's not unlikely that she—as you suggested yourself—went back to look for him.”

Linda nodded. He was right. There was no reason to assume anything else had happened.

Wallander sat down on the sofa.

“You'll learn that all events have their own logic. People kill each other, lie, break into houses, commit robberies, and sometimes they simply disappear. If you winch yourself far enough down the well—that's how I often think of my investigations—you'll find the explanation. It turns out that it was highly probable that such and such a person disappeared, that another robbed
a bank. I'm not saying the unexpected never happens, but people are almost never right when they say ‘I never would have believed that about her.' Think it over and scrape away the layers of exterior paint and you'll find other colors underneath, other answers.”

He yawned and let his hands fall onto the table.

“Time for bed.”

“No, let's stay here a few more minutes.”

He looked at her intently.

“You still think something happened to your friend?”

“No, I'm sure you're right.”

They sat quietly at the kitchen table. A gust of wind sent a branch scraping against the window.

“I've been dreaming a lot recently,” he said. “Maybe because you're always waking me up in the middle of the night. That means I remember my dreams. Yesterday I had the strangest dream. I was walking around a cemetery. Suddenly I found myself in front of a row of headstones where I started recognizing the names. Stefan Fredman's name was among them.”

Linda shivered.

“I remember that case. Didn't he break into this apartment?”

“I think so, but we were never able to prove it. He never told us.”

“You went to his funeral. What happened?”

“He was sent to a psychiatric institution. One day he put on his war paint, climbed up on the roof, and threw himself off.”

“How old was he?”

“Eighteen or nineteen.”

The branch scraped against the window again.

“Who were the others? I mean on the headstones.”

“A woman called Yvonne Ander. I even think the date on the stone was right, though it happened a long time ago.”

“What did she do?”

“Do you remember that time when Ann-Britt Höglund was shot?”

“How could I forget? You left for Denmark after that happened and almost drank yourself to death.”

“That's an extreme way of putting it.”

“On the contrary, I think that's hitting the nail on the head. Anyway, I don't remember Yvonne Ander.”

“She specialized in killing rapists, wife-beaters, men who had been abusive to women.”

“That rings a bell.”

“We found her in the end. Everyone thought she was a monster. But I thought she was one of the sanest people I had ever met.”

“Is that one of the dangers of the profession?”

“What?”

“Do policemen fall in love with the female criminals they're hunting?”

He waved her insinuations away.

“Don't be stupid. I talked to her after she was brought in. She wrote me a letter before she committed suicide. What she told me was she thought the justice system was like a fishnet where the holes were too big. We don't catch, or choose not to catch, the perpetrators who really deserve to be caught.”

“Who was she referring to specifically? The police?”

He shook his head.

“I don't know. Everyone. The laws we live by are supposed to reflect the opinions of society at large. But Yvonne Ander had a point. I'll never forget her.”

“How long ago was that?”

“Five, six years.”

 

The phone rang.

Wallander jumped and he and Linda exchanged glances. It was four o'clock in the morning. Wallander stretched his hand out for the kitchen phone. Linda worried for a moment that it was one of her friends, someone who didn't know she was staying with her dad. Linda tried to interpret who it could be from her father's terse questions. She decided it had to be from the station. Perhaps Martinsson, or even Höglund. Something had happened in the vicinity of Rydsgård. Wallander signaled for her to get him something to write with and she handed him the pencil and pad of paper lying on the windowsill. He made some notes with the
phone pressed into the crook of his neck. She peered over his shoulder.
Rydsgård, turn off to Charlottenlund, Vik's farm.
That was close to the house on the hill they had looked at, the one her father wasn't going to buy. He wrote something else:
burned calf. Åkerblom
. Then a phone number. He hung up. Linda sat back down across from him.

“A burned calf? What's happened?”

“That's what I want to know.”

He got up.

“I have to go out there.”

“What about me?”

He hesitated.

“You can come along if you like.”

 

“You were there for the start of this thing,” he said as they got in the car. “You might as well come along for the rest.”

“The start of what?”

“The report about burning swans.”

“It's happened again?”

“Yes and no. Some bastard let a calf out of the barn, sprayed it with gasoline, and set it on fire. The farmer was the one who called the station. A patrol car was dispatched but I'd left instructions to be contacted if anything along these lines happened again. It sounds like a sadistic pervert.”

Linda knew there was more.

“You're not telling me what you really think.”

“No, I'm not.”

He broke off the conversation. Linda started wondering why he had let her come along.

They turned off from the main highway and drove through the deserted village of Rydsgård, then south toward the sea. A patrol car was waiting at the entrance to the farm. Together the two cars made their way toward the main buildings at Vik's farm.

“Who am I?” Linda asked quickly.

“My daughter. No one will care. As long as you don't start pretending to be anything else—like a police officer, for instance.”

They got out. The two officers from the other car came over and
said hello. One was called Wahlberg, the other Ekman. Wahlberg had a bad cold and Linda wished she didn't have to shake his hand. Ekman smiled and leaned toward her as if he were shortsighted.

“I thought you were starting in a couple of weeks.”

“She's just keeping me company,” Wallander said. “What's happened out here?”

They walked down behind the farmhouse to a new-looking barn. The farmer was kneeling next to the burned animal. He was a young man close to Linda's age.
Farmers should be old,
she thought.
In my world there's no place for a farmer my own age.

Wallander stretched out his hand and introduced himself.

“Tomas Åkerblom,” the farmer said.

“This is my daughter. She happened to be with me.”

As Tomas Åkerblom looked over at Linda, a light from the barn illuminated his face. She saw that his eyes were wet with tears.

“Who would do anything like this?” he asked in a shaky voice.

He stepped aside to let them see, as if displaying a macabre art installation. Linda had already picked up the smell of burned flesh. Now she saw the blackened body of the calf lying on its side in front of her. The eye socket closest to her was completely charred. Smoke still rose from the singed skin. The fumes were starting to make her nauseated and she took a step back. Wallander looked at her. She shook her head to indicate that she wasn't about to faint. He nodded and looked around at the others.

“Tell me what happened,” he said.

Åkerblom started talking. He still sounded on the verge of tears.

“I had just gone to bed when I heard a sound. At first I thought I must have cried out in my sleep—that happens sometimes when I have a bad dream. Then I realized it came from the barn. The animals were braying and one of them sounded bad. I pulled the curtains away and saw fire. It was Apple—of course I couldn't identify him immediately, just that it was one of the calves. He ran straight into the wall of the barn. His whole body and head were consumed by flames. I couldn't really take it in. I pulled on a pair of old boots and ran down there. He had already collapsed when I reached him. His legs were twitching. I grabbed an old piece of tarp and tried to put out the rest of the fire, but he was
already dead. It was horrible. I remember thinking, ‘This isn't happening, this isn't happening.' Who would do something like this?”