The Cruel Stars of the Night (10 page)

Eleven

An apple fell, and then another. Muted, slightly squishy thuds as they hit the moss-infested lawn. The inside of the apple appeared green-yellow through places where the peel had split open. The consistency was mealy and the fruit was falling apart. Laura poked one with her foot. The apple broke entirely, revealing a mushy interior and the sharp smell of incipient decomposition made her pull back.

Laura walked surrounded by lilacs that grew in thickets with straggling branches whose bark had started to peel off and hung like dried strips of skin. Here, inside the bushes she was safe but felt the threat that lurked along the surrounding hawthorn hedge and through the somber treetops. The world around her made its presence known through sounds from the street, a car that slowly drove by, maybe a truck with a delivery to one of the neighbors. They seemed to be constantly renovating their houses, reinventing their gardens, and buying new furniture.

The professor’s flagpole could be seen above the trees. It rose like a reminder that there were holidays, something to celebrate. Sometimes a yellow cross on a blue background fluttered over the neighborhood, smacked in the wind, got tangled up, or hung limp like a rag.

For some reason her father had hated the flagpole and had toyed with the idea of cutting it down, taking advantage of an opportunity when the professor was away. Laura knew it was all talk. He would never have dared to do anything like that and anyway, she had trouble visualizing him with a saw.

Now he was gone. The initial feeling of freedom was more and more turning into a sense of approaching danger. It was not simply the mean, rough wind but also the fact that time seemed to devour her. The days went by. Her father’s existence started to blur around the edges, he sank more deeply into the corners of the innermost recesses of the house, transformed into dust around dissertations and loose papers. She herself went around half alive, half dead, through archways built up of repressed memories and suppressed pain.

She pulled some fruit from a spindle tree. The orange-yellow fruit capsules glowed like embers. When she was a child she used to gather them in the little cups of the doll china and pretend to serve her mother a colorful lunch. They could sit for hours at the dining room table, her mother watchful with an eye on the garden. Sometimes she glanced at Laura, or said something, but most often she was absorbed in herself, as if she was passively waiting for something, although it was not clear what it was. Laura bustled with her china. Her mother sighed occasionally, producing a soft sound.

Sometimes her father came home very late, from working at the department. Dinner was put in front of him. The stew meat had congealed and looked like dark animals captured in a gooey sauce, the potatoes had hardened and become unappetizingly chewy. The pats of butter softened, overcome with heat and strange smells, they gave up and sank into a heap.

Laura lived in a shadow world where the old radio’s green front gave off a soft light while her mother listened to classical music. Laura read the names of the radio stations over and over, sitting like a little ball by her mother’s feet, waiting for the light to come back.

Her whole childhood was about waiting. Laura waited for the light, her father for his professors’ title, her mother for the man who would one day come into the house and save her. The light never came, the title was not forthcoming, but the man appeared.

Laura shivered. It was getting colder. It felt as if it was going to snow again. She looked down at her clay-covered sneakers.

Suddenly there was life in the house, in the form of a man. He was going to help with the garden, dig new flower beds, dig holes for trees, and patch the soil and put in stone landscaping.

His thoughtful voice, not at all like her father’s virulent harangues, partly dissolved in the dark. She listened, at first up close, but later hidden behind drapes and half-closed doors. Her mother laughed and it sounded as if a stranger had taken possession of her body. The man spoke quietly. Laura rarely heard what he said, but it sounded friendly, wise in some way.

They discussed things, Laura learnt that word that fall. They presented things to each other, like small packages. Here you go. Thank you, this is for you. Thanks, that’s a good idea. They went on in this way. Conversing endlessly.

He came back the next day with new packages and windows were flung open, dust was cleared away. He was given food, and he ate, chuckling a little, it seemed. She heard her mother say that the stranger ate like a real man.

A flurry of activity, and thundering noise. Laura had to eat alone at the dining room table. She set the table with her tiny china and cleared it away, invited imaginary friends to lunch and discussed things with them. She tried to laugh like the man did.

After fourteen days he disappeared, but her mother said he would be back in the spring. Laura waited. It would be a long winter.

Then one day at the beginning of April he returned. Now he spent most of his time in the garden, spreading a white powder on the lawn. Laura was allowed to help. He pruned bushes and piled the branches into large piles. The apple trees were trimmed. Laura picked up twigs and was praised.

The professor, who had recently moved in, would come over and talk across the hawthorn hedge. They discussed different kinds of apple. Laura stood nearby. She thought the man smelled like apple. His green pants, stuffed into red boots, had marks from paint and had holes that were roughly patched with black rubber.

The professor went on about the apples. The man rested a foot on a shovel. It looked so comfortable, as if they were close friends, him and the shovel.

The rain increased. She drew closer to the French window that faced the garden, but shut it with her foot and remained standing out on the crumbling flagstone, partly shielded from the rain.

She feared the approaching afternoon. Her body was completely limp and she didn’t see how she would be able to pull herself together and call Stig.

Twelve

Later on, when they laid the investigation about the murder in Jumkil next to the investigation concerning the murder of Jan-Elis Andersson in Norr-Ededy village in Alsike, they appeared almost identical.

Both of them were elderly men living alone in the countryside, who had been farmers in the past. Andersson, just as Blomgren before him, had suffered brutal blows to the head with a murder weapon that the police had not yet found.

In the search for a possible motive the results were the same: nothing. Both men had lived a retiring, peaceful life, they lacked the ready assets attractive to a murderer, and they appeared to be without enemies, at least of the order to lead to a murder.

There was one difference: Jan-Elis Andersson had resisted. To what extent this was so it was not possible to determine but the evidence in his kitchen spoke for itself: three chairs had been knocked over, and the tablecloth had been pulled to the floor, taking a bowl of oatmeal, a spoon, and a jar of lingonberry jam with it.

“There’s someone out there who doesn’t like old men who eat lingonberries,” Beatrice said, remembering Dorotea Svahn’s words about Blomgren being a champion berry picker.

Most likely the killer had crept up on Andersson from behind. The neighbor had said he had severely impaired hearing.

Lindell could guess how it had happened. Andersson had been struck hard on the back of the head, had been thrown forward, pulled the cloth with him down onto the floor but had managed to get up and grab a chair for protection. One of the chairs had two broken legs. Ryde, the forensics specialist who was not supposed to be working but who had jumped in, was firm on that point: the chair had been used in an attempt at self-defense.

But Jan-Elis Andersson had failed in his attempts and now he lay facedown in a mess of lingonberries and blood.

Ann Lindell stood with her head bent. The technicians had— grudgingly—cleared a thin corridor of floor space in the kitchen so that she and Beatrice could come in and take a look. Morgansson sat in a crouch next to the counter, trying to secure some fingerprints. He looked up at Ann.

“Same guy?” he asked.

Ryde muttered something. He hated speculation during the work process.

“It could be a coincidence,” she said and looked out the window.

Out in the yard, Sammy Nilsson was questioning the nearest neighbor, a man of about fifty who looked noticeably upset. He paced around and Lindell saw Sammy try to calm the shocked man, who was the one who had found the body.

Lindell called Sammy and watched him reach irritably for his cell phone.

“Check out any potential connection to Petrus,” she said and Sammy groaned.

“What do you think I’m doing?”

“I was thinking of farmer associations and such,” Ann said in a docile voice. “There are things like that, aren’t there? Blomgren and Andersson may have met at some point.”

“I’m a country boy, if you recall. I’ve got this covered.”

The people gathered in the yard gave Lindell the same déjà vu feeling she had had in the kitchen.

“The question of whether or not we believe there is a real connection between the murders is crucial,” Lindell said. “If we do then what we have to set our sights on right now is to turn up everything that potentially connects these two farmers.”

She stared out over the landscape. A police officer in uniform was climbing over a barbed wire fence a couple of hundred meters away. He looked clumsy and out of place in the terrain.

The fields that bordered the farm lay fallow. Or at least that was what Lindell thought. She compared them to the Östgöta area where she came from with its wide expanses of fields and sturdy farm buildings. Here things looked paltry by comparison, thin strips of cultivated land between swathes of dark forest. The cottages that were dotted about were small, as dictated by the landscape.

“The neighbor hasn’t seen anything.” Sammy Nilsson interrupted her thought process.

“Can he see this house from his?”

“No. He lives behind that clump of trees up there. You can see the roof,” Nilsson said and pointed.

“What was he doing here?”

“Nothing in particular. He would sometimes walk over and have a little coffee and a chat with Jan-Elis. The neighbor is on disability.”

“At least we have a clue as to when the murder took place,” Bea said. “Around breakfast time.”

Lindell walked off to the side. Was it the same perpetrator? In that case what was the connection?

Again she let her gaze sweep over the area, as if the answer was to be found out there. Not a puff of wind, not a sign of life or movement. A static place, maintained by a retired farmer and a man on disability. A region that had sunk down into its own wasted and worn sparseness. Who would want to or even have the energy to think of killing someone here? Everything already seemed dead.

Why kill two seventy-year-old farmers?

Just as in Blomgren’s home, nothing here was touched. Straight into the house, bash the old man’s head in, and then leave just as fast. That’s how the whole thing must have happened.

She caught sight of Morgansson through the kitchen window. His wide back looked monumental in the tiny window. The night before she had toyed with the idea of going home with him, only for a night, in order to feel the warmth of another human being. Now that thought seemed somehow absurd.

They had said good-bye and good night and then left, each in their own direction. As she was walking down East Ågatan she had the feeling of being in a foreign city, a foreign country, as if she were on holiday, on her way to the hotel.

Pleased with the evening, she had crawled into bed and decided she would like to see him again, if for no other reason than to see another movie and have another beer.

Today is another life, she thought, not without bitterness. It was as if two consecutive days of happiness were not possible. She watched Morgansson move around inside. Then something in her changed, she felt a welling up of pride. She was standing in the yard involved in a murder investigation, yet again. She didn’t need to denigrate herself. First, she was a competent police officer and second, a pretty good mother to Erik. Her contract with life had been signed and she was going to make the best of the situation. She didn’t need to apologize for the fact that she wanted to live, wanted to laugh or go to the movies with a handsome man, who also happened to be nice and had awakened something slumbering within her.

But for now she would have to put all thoughts of movies aside. Two murders. She would not be able to relax even for a second. She turned to Sammy Nilsson.

“You’ll be responsible for charting these two farmers—you said yourself you’re a country boy. I want the minutest detail. Not a single item can go unchecked. They’re around seventy and have a past. Somewhere their lives run together. Find that point.”

Sammy looked at her and smiled.

“Full steam ahead,” he said, turned, and left.

Just then Morgansson stepped out onto the stoop.

“I think we have something,” he said and went back into the house.

Of course, Lindell thought, you have something. She followed him in. When she was in the hall Morgansson pointed to the little table right inside the door.

“A letter,” he said. “I found it in the drawer under the telephone. You don’t have to pick it up.”

It was handwritten and lacked a signature, but Lindell immediately had the impression it was written by a man. She read it. Bea appeared behind her.

“What does it say?”

“It is basically a threat,” Lindell said. “Some unresolved affair that needs to be corrected, according to the writer.”

“No envelope?” she called out to Morgansson.

“Not yet,” he called back from the room next to the kitchen.

“We don’t know who wrote it, not even if Andersson was the recipient.”

“He may be the person who wrote it,” Bea said.

“That’s easy to check,” Lindell said. “What do you think?”

“ ‘Make sure you pay up otherwise you’ll be sorry,’” Bea read again.

Lindell sighed.

“You pay,” she mumbled.

“The writer of the letter has apparently been waiting a few years,” Bea said, “and now he wants to be paid for something.”

“No dates, nothing really,” Lindell said, disappointed. “It can have been in the drawer for the past ten years.”

“Then why save the letter?”

“You know how people are.”

Bea read the letter again.

“What about this,” she said and read out loud:“ ‘When I heard that you sold I thought you were finally going to pay me.’ What was it he sold?”

“The farm, maybe,” Lindell threw out, “or the land. It has to be some bigger thing, it can hardly be a tractor or such like.”

“Can Andersson have written this to Petrus Blomgren? Didn’t he sell his land? And then it wasn’t recorded?”

“Far-fetched,” Lindell said.

“But we’re looking for connections,” Bea said eagerly. “Think about it, an older farmer doesn’t have so many dealings, it’s normally about farms and land, leases and the like.”

“Our farming expert has just left,” Lindell said.

“Blomgren owes money to Andersson, who doesn’t get paid. Anders-son kills Blomgren and then . . .”

“And then . . . Blomgren hits back,” Lindell said. “The problem is that he’s dead.”

“That suicide letter, that could have had something to do with this. He wrote something about not doing things as he should have.”

“We’ll have to check the handwriting first,” Lindell decided, “and check with the relative that’s supposed to exist. The neighbor said something about there being a niece who sometimes visits. She may know what this is all about. Maybe it’s an old story that we’ll be able to rule out.”

It had gotten dark by the time they were ready to leave Jan-Elis Andersson’s farm. Everyone was taciturn and in the faint light from the outside lamp Lindell saw how exhausted everyone was.

She took a last swing around the house, like she usually did.

Fredriksson and Bea drove away. They had loaded up the car with boxes of old papers and letters, tax returns, insurance papers, and bookkeeping from the time that Andersson had been an active farmer.

Berglund, who had come out during the course of the afternoon, hung around. He had, together with a few others from the patrol squad, gone over the various sheds and outhouses with a fine-toothed comb. The old police officer stood thoughtfully by the freestanding garage. He pulled the door shut behind him, looked at Lindell, and walked over to her.

“I’m not crazy about the dark,” he said.

Lindell nodded. They stood side by side and summed up their observations in silence. Or that was what Lindell thought Berglund was doing. She herself was thinking of Erik, who had been picked up at day care by the parents of his best friend. It was a solution that worked. Erik did not object, but Ann felt guilty. She wasn’t like the other mothers.

“Should we mosey along?”

“You’re the only one I know who says that,” Lindell said.

“It’s from my grandfather,” Berglund said. “He lived like this, exactly like Andersson, though he wasn’t really a farmer. He didn’t get around much but he was a devil with horses. Have you seen that movie about the guy who could talk to horses?”

“No, I missed that one. I rarely go to the movies.”

“Is that so?” Berglund said with a mocking smile. “In any case, we went to that one. I thought it was going to be something, but it was shit.”

“It’s often that way with films,” Lindell said.

“Granddad would have done it better.”

“How did you know I went to the movies last night?”

“Hultgren saw you,” Berglund said, “and you know how he is.”

Lindell went to pick up Erik. It still felt strange to leave her colleagues in the middle of a murder investigation. She knew that the others would stay down at the station in order to organize the material, look up databases, contact people, and do everything else that was part of the inner investigation.

She wanted to be there too, in the middle of the activity. Ottosson had brought it up as soon as she returned from maternity leave, that he didn’t want her turning up at the station at all hours, that he wanted her to focus properly on herself and Erik. Ann Lindell had tried to joke it away but Ottosson had been firm. She sensed, from the way he formulated it that he didn’t want her to repeat his own mistakes.

She played with the thought of letting Erik stay at his friend’s place for a few hours—after all, this was a murder and it was only the shame of calling and asking the parents that prevented her from going back to Salagatan.

When Erik had fallen asleep Ann Lindell turned off all the electric lights in the apartment and lit a couple of candles that she put out on the table in the living room. A glass of Portuguese wine was already out there, half empty.

A cozy evening at home, she thought, chuckled, and pulled her legs up under her. The silence was deafening. Sund, one of the few neighbors that Ann Lindell had a fairly regular contact with, had popped in with a construction set for Erik. He had bought it on sale, or so he claimed. Ann had the feeling it had not been inexpensive. It was an airplane. As usual, the neighbor had overestimated Erik’s abilities. He was simply too young for Sund’s gifts but Ann was touched by his thoughtfulness.