The Cruel Stars of the Night (12 page)

Mother and daughter, united for a few minutes of conversation, knew their husband and father all too well. He would never make his peace, accept the way things were, and be content to end his career as an associate professor.

Laura allowed her gaze to glide from the figurine to the garden. A line of snow that rested on the lowest branch of the pear tree blew down at that moment and for an instant the air was filled with a whirling white smoke cloud.

There would never be a house in Arguà, never any day trips to Venice, never walks among olive trees. She knew this in the moment her mother got up from the table without a word of comfort. Not even when Laura picked up the china figurine and dropped it on the ground did her mother turn around. She walked into the kitchen. It was almost dinnertime.

Laura got up on stiff legs. Her body felt foreign to her. Her face flamed and grew hot, her limbs felt prickly, and she felt slightly dizzy. It wasn’t just the lack of sleep and food; it felt like the time she had taken a medication that did not agree with her. It had given her nightmares and she had vomited violently in the morning.

She put a hand on her crotch, which still ached. Stig would return, he had said this several times. She smiled suddenly. He loved her, she knew that now. And only Jessica stood in their way, the only thing that prevented him from coming back to her forever.

“Ulrik!” she yelled, as if to convince herself that her father was not there.

She dragged in the grocery bags from the terrace. A jar of honey fell out of a bag but she left it there. The exertion made her sweat. She unpacked the items in a trance-like state. The kitchen was one big mess. Masses of unwashed dishes were piled up on the counter, as well as glasses, teacups, and pots. On the kitchen table there were newspapers and unopened mail.

She ended up standing in front of the refrigerator. Inside it some shriveled vegetables, containers of margarine without lids, and dried heels of cheese were living their own life. Several slices of salami were covered in a green film of mold.

“Mrs. Simonsson,” she called out helplessly, but in an attack of will she pulled a garbage bag out of the pantry and filled it with all the leftover food.

Before replacing them with the newly bought items she had to sit down and rest.

She read the headline in the newspaper that was lying on top of the pile. The preamble talked about the “country butcher” who had struck again.

Laura unfolded the paper. The photograph on the front page made her wince. She felt that swinging sensation from her childhood. The stale air in the kitchen was replaced with the smell of freshly cut grass.

She put her hand over the picture and looked out through the window, and the longing for a diffuse sense of something, a possibility, missed many years ago, blocked her thoughts for a few moments as if a temporary electric error had created a short circuit in her brain.

Fifteen

Someone had laid flowers by one of the fence posts by the entrance to Petrus Blomgren’s house. Ann Lindell slowed down and stopped. There were fresias and something green. They looked frozen. A note was attached to the bouquet. “All the good ones die. Thank you for your solicitude.” No signature. Ann reread the two sentences. “Solicitude” was such a beautiful word. Had Blomgren been a caring person? Many things suggested this, not least Dorotea Svahn’s testimony.

The house already looked abandoned, as if it had aged a great deal in only a few days. The foundation appeared to have settled and sunk several inches and the roof tiles appeared to have taken on a darker shade, or so Ann imagined, and she had the feeling that the whole place was going to be transformed over the course of the winter into a gray, moss-clad boulder that rested in an increasingly wild terrain, that the vegetation was going to take over and erase all traces of settlement and human life.

She did not really find it that remarkable. The farmer Petrus Blomgren no longer existed so why should his house remain? Lindell stepped out of the car, struck by the thought that the house should not be touched, that no one should be allowed to step through a murdered person’s door, taking control of the hall, kitchen, and room. Never ever. Everything should be allowed to deteriorate as dictated by nature.

She smiled at her own thoughts and realized that it was the absence of human voices and the quietness of the place that had made her reflective. She would not have been surprised if an animal had appeared out of the forest and communicated in some way.

Ann was searching for a complete picture and felt she sensed who Blomgren had been and what it was that had been lost. The hillside in Jumkil drew heavy breaths. Maple leaves floated to the ground. No creature emerged from the forest, not even a hint of wind altered the scene in any way.

It was with a feeling of melancholy grandeur that Ann Lindell knocked on Dorotea Svahn’s door. The old woman opened the door immediately and Ann guessed she had been spotted a long time ago.

“Come in,” Dorotea said. “I’ve put on coffee.”

Ann made small talk while Dorotea poured out the coffee and filled the bread basket with half a dozen sweet rolls that she had warmed up in the microwave.

“I saw you linger at the gate for a while,” Dorotea said. “It’s easy to get caught up in one’s thoughts.”

“Yes, I was thinking about the silence,” Ann said, “how it comes over you. I’m so used to stress and noise that the silence impresses me with another reality. I sometimes feel that I don’t have the concepts I need to express what is happening when I experience silence. Does that make any sense?”

Dorotea nodded but didn’t say anything.

“Did you leave those flowers by the gate?”

“No.”

“Anyone you know?”

Dorotea shook her head.

“I don’t know who it is,” she said curtly and Lindell dropped it, not convinced she was telling the truth.

“I’ve read my colleague’s, Beatrice Andersson’s, notes on her conversation with you,” Lindell said, starting over. “You and Petrus seem to have been very close. Maybe you were the person who knew him best.”

Dorotea nodded again.

“You said something to her about Petrus going abroad once, I think it was to Mallorca. Do you know anything else about that trip?”

Dorotea took a sugar cube and mixed the coffee with a spoon before she answered.

“Not any more than just that Petrus was a changed man when he came home.”

“How do you mean?”

“He was . . . happier,” Dorotea said after a couple of seconds of hesitation.

“Tell me!”

“He never used to go anywhere and then suddenly he was off to Spain.He was anxious about it beforehand, all the business with ordering his passport, but he got away. One week he was gone. The car gone too, he parked it at the airport. That cost him two hundred
kronor
right there. He said he had had fun down there. He managed with the language. They could almost speak Swedish down there.”

“Did he go alone?”

The question caused Dorotea to squeeze her eyes together momentarily.

“I think so,” she said and Lindell saw she was lying.

“Did he talk a lot about Spain when he returned?”

“Yes, the first while maybe.”

“Did Petrus have difficulties sleeping?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Dorotea said. “Why do you ask?”

“We found an old package of sleeping pills in the house.”

“I don’t know anything about that.”

“What year did he travel to Mallorca?”

“It was about twenty years ago. I don’t think he had turned fifty? No, he didn’t until the next fall, or . . . perhaps it was . . .”

“Was it 1981?”

“In May,” Dorotea said and nodded. “After the spring planting season.”

“The sleeping pills were prescribed in June 1981,” Lindell said.

She paused for several seconds, letting the information sink in, before she continued.

“Can’t you tell me? It’s important to understand what happened to Petrus.”

Dorotea suddenly stood up and left the room with surprising agility. She returned with a postcard in her hand that she placed on the table in front of Lindell.

The card showed a beach in front of a hotel. There was everything one would associate with a charter trip: a bar in the background shaped like a giant shell, sun umbrellas, and lounge chairs in the foreground.

Lindell flipped the postcard over. It was addressed to “Dorotea Svahn, Vilsne village, Jumkil, Sweden.” The text was brief: “Hi Dorotea! I am so happy and having a good time.” Signed, “Petrus.”

Dorotea stood with her hand held out and as soon as Lindell looked up she took the postcard from Lindell’s hand.

“I want to keep it,” she said.

“Of course,” Lindell said.

Dorotea left again and returned, sitting down and looking at Lindell.

“I think he met a woman.”

“It seems like it,” Lindell said. “He used the word ‘happy.’ He didn’t say anything when he came home?”

“No, and I didn’t want to pry.”

“Were you upset?”

Dorotea shook her head.

“Then he got a prescription for sleeping pills,” Lindell continued. “You didn’t notice anything, like him being down or anything?”

“Nothing. Petrus was not the kind to talk about himself.”

Ann Lindell trusted Dorotea’s judgment. Even if Petrus had not said anything about a woman Lindell was convinced that Dorotea had reasons for her suspicions.

“Do you have any idea who the woman might have been?”

“I don’t know anything else,” Dorotea said firmly and Lindell understood there was nothing more to say on the subject.

Lindell stayed for another half an hour before taking her leave. On her way to her car, which she had parked on Petrus Blomgren’s property, she wondered if he had met the woman in Mallorca or if she had been his travel companion from the start.

The possibilities of checking passenger lists from May 1981 were slim, but she would look into it.

Next stop was Arne Wiikman. With the help of Dorotea’s directions she found the small freestanding house close to the highway between Uppsala and Gysinge almost immediately.

Arne Wiikman was standing in his garden with a rake in his hand.

When Lindell parked the car he stopped working, leaning the rake up against a tree.

“What a pleasure,” he said as Lindell came walking up. “I hate leaves.” He looked as if he meant it. He glared at his garden. “It’s these damn poplars. Soon I’ll take down the damn lot of them.” Lindell smiled and started to explain the reason for her visit.

“Yes, yes,” Wiikman interrupted her, “I know why you’re here. Let’s go in. Why stay around this shit.”

He kicked at a pile of leaves and walked over to the front steps.

“You’ve talked to Dorotea, I understand,” he said and opened the door, letting Lindell enter first.

“No, don’t take your shoes off. Just walk right in.”

He more or less shoved Ann Lindell into the living room, a small room that was dominated by a sectional pine sofa, upholstered in brown cloth. The largest elk head she had ever seen was hanging on one wall.

“Not so cheeky anymore,” Arne Wiikman said with pride in his voice, when he saw her gaze. “Sit down. You want to talk about Blomgren, I assume. Do you want coffee?”

Lindell shook her head.

“Good! Well, have you gotten the murderer? No, of course not or you wouldn’t be here. That’s a pity, and a shame. It’s probably some foreigner or drug addict who . . .”

He stopped and looked at her.

“What did it feel like to shoot that addict? Yes, I recognize you from the paper.”

“It feels like hell,” Lindell said emphatically.

Arne Wiikman grinned.

“Would think so,” he said.

Lindell flipped open her notepad.

“Who would want to kill Petrus Blomgren?”

Wiikman’s expression shifted quickly. The grin was replaced for a moment by something that Lindell read as surprise.

“I don’t know,” he said and coughed.

“About twenty years ago Petrus traveled to Mallorca and had a love affair there. Do you know who the woman was?”

Wiikman looked up.

“Is that the kind of thing you dig up?”

“We dig into everything.”

The man leaned over the low coffee table.

“See that elk head? Blomgren was with me when I shot the bastard. We were positioned next to each other. I spotted the creature approaching but he was too far away for me. Petrus had the perfect shot. He had a clear field of vision, maybe fifty meters. He just had to raise his rifle. Hell, he could have shot from the hip, but he let it pass. Do you know why? He let it go to me. He wanted me to take it. That’s what a good friend does. He had bagged a giant a few years before and now he wanted to give me the same pleasure. See?”

Wiikman glanced at the trophy above his head. Lindell saw the emotion and anger in the man’s face.

“Who would want to club a man like that to death?”

“Do you know who the woman was?”

Wiikman shook his head.

“Petrus didn’t tell you anything about his trip to Spain?”

“He might have mentioned it, that he had been to Mallorca, but I didn’t live here back then. He didn’t tell me anything in particular. I don’t think he thought it was much to boast about.”

Lindell decided not to say anything about Blomgren’s farewell letter but asked if Petrus had appeared depressed over the last while. Arne Wiikman hesitated a few seconds before answering.

“He was a bit thoughtful,” he said finally.

But he could not supply any reasons why. They hadn’t seen each other for a few weeks. The contact between the two men had been limited to a phone call some weeks earlier. They had talked about an acquaintance they both had in common who had been run over by a bus in town and who was now in the hospital. During the conversation Petrus Blomgren had not brought up anything out of the ordinary or appeared despondent.

Before Ann Lindell got ready to leave she asked if Blomgren had ever talked about women.

Arne Wiikman smiled for the first time.

“He wasn’t bad looking in his day, so I’m sure he had a lady friend at some point, I’m sure he did. Who hasn’t, after all, but that’s not something you run off at the mouth about, especially if things seem to have dried up.”

“I thought that was when the talk really got started,” Lindell said.

Wiikman chuckled.

“You want to hear some?”

“Let’s do it another time.”

Wiikman quickly became serious again.

“I wish he had found some peace.”

“Is there anyone else who would be able to give me information about Petrus?”

“No,” Wiikman said immediately.

“One last question: Petrus regularly sent money to Doctors Without Borders. Do you know why?”

“No idea,” Wiikman said. “I don’t even know what that is.”

Back in the car Lindell took the Gysinge Road toward Uppsala, made a few phone calls, among others to Freddie Asplund, a new recruit, and asked him to check if it was possible to find twenty-two-year-old records of passengers on charter flights to Mallorca.

When she reached the roundabout at Ringgatan she made a turn in the direction of the Savoy, a bakery cafe. She needed to think.