Before the Frost (13 page)

“I don't know what gets into me.”

Linda stared at him, waiting to speak until he actually looked at her.

“You just need to get a little action.”

He flinched as if she had struck him, then he blushed.

“You know I'm right,” she continued. “Anyway, you should get going. I'll walk so you don't have to be embarrassed.”

“I was planning to walk myself, actually.”

“Do it tomorrow. I don't like it when you scream and yell. I need some space.”

 

Wallander set off meekly as instructed. Linda changed her top since she was drenched in sweat. She reconsidered her decision to report Anna's disappearance and had still not made up her mind by the time she left the apartment.

 

The sun was shining and there was a brisk breeze. Linda paused out on the street, unsure of what to do next. She prided herself on being a decisive person as a rule, but sometimes being around her father sapped her of willpower. She thought angrily that she couldn't wait until she was allowed to move into her apartment behind Mariakyrkan. She couldn't stand living with him much longer.

Finally she turned toward the police station. If something had really happened to Anna she would never forgive herself for not
following through on reporting it. Her career as a police officer would be over before it had begun.

She walked past the People's Park and thought about a magician she had seen there as a child when she had been out with her dad. The magician had taken gold coins out of children's ears. This memory gave rise to another, one that had to do with a fight between her parents. She had woken up in her room at the sound of their angry voices. They had been arguing about money, some money that should have been in the account, that was gone, that had been frittered away. When Linda had carefully tiptoed to her door and peeked into the living room, she had seen her mother with blood coming out of her nose. Her dad had been looking out of the window, his face sweaty and flushed. She immediately realized that he had hit her mother, on account of the money that wasn't there.

Linda stopped walking and squinted up at the sun. The back of her throat was starting to constrict. She remembered looking at her parents, thinking that she was the only one who could solve their problems. She didn't want Mona to have a bloody nose. She had gone into her bedroom and taken out her piggy bank. Then she walked out into the living room and put it on the table. The room fell silent.

 

She kept squinting up at the sun but the tears came anyway. She rubbed her eyes and changed direction, as if this would force her mind to change track. She turned onto Industrigatan and decided to postpone reporting Anna's disappearance. Instead she would swing by the apartment one last time.
If anyone's been there since last night I'll know,
she thought. She rang the doorbell—no answer. When she opened the front door her whole body tensed up, all of her antennae out. But there was nothing.

She walked around in the apartment, looking at the bed where she had lain the night before. She sat down in the living room and went through what had happened. Anna had now been missing for three days, if she really was missing.

Linda shook her head angrily and walked back into the bedroom. She apologized to the air and started looking through the diary again. She flipped back about thirty days. Nothing. The most
notable occurrence was a toothache on August 7 and 8 and a resulting appointment with Dr. Sivertsson. Linda remembered those days and furrowed her brow. On August 8, she, Zeba, and Anna had taken a long walk out at KÃ¥seberga. They had taken Anna's car. Zeba's boy was cooperative for once, and they had all taken turns carrying him when he was too tired to walk.

But a toothache?

Linda again had the feeling that there was a strange kind of double-language in Anna's diary, perhaps a code. But why? And what could an entry about a toothache possibly signify?

She kept reading and looked closely at the handwriting itself. Anna frequently changed her pen, even in the middle of a sentence. Perhaps she was interrupted by the phone and couldn't find the same pen when she was done. Linda put the journal down and went to get a glass of water from the kitchen.

When she turned the next page she drew a breath. At first she was sure she was getting it confused. But no, there it was: on August 13, Anna had written
Letter from Birgitta Medberg
.

Linda read it again, this time by the window with the sun on the page. Birgitta Medberg was not a common name. She put the diary down on the windowsill and picked up the phone book. It only took her a few minutes to confirm that there was only one Birgitta Medberg in this area of southern Sweden. She called information and asked about Birgitta Medbergs in the rest of the country; there were only a few other individuals with that name. And there was only one who was listed as a cultural geographer in Skåne.

Linda returned to the journal and read the rest of the text with impatience. She finally reached the strange message at the end:
myth fear, myth fear
. But there was no other reference to Birgitta Medberg.

Anna disappears,
she thought.
A few weeks earlier she receives a letter from Birgitta Medberg, who has also gone missing. In the middle of all this is Anna's father, whom she thinks has just reappeared on a street in Malmö after a twenty-four-year absence
.

Linda looked through the apartment for Birgitta Medberg's letter. She no longer felt guilty for violating Anna's privacy. She found a number of letters over the next three hours. Unfortunately, the letter from Medberg wasn't one of them.

Linda left the apartment with Anna's car keys. She drove herself down to the Harbor Café and had a sandwich and a cup of tea. A man her own age in oil-spattered overalls smiled at her as she was getting ready to leave. It took her a while to recognize him as a classmate from high school. She stopped and they said hello. Linda struggled in vain to remember his name. He stretched out his hand after first wiping it clean.

“I'm sailing,” he said. “I have an old boat with a dud motor. That's why I'm covered in grease.”

“I've only just moved back to town,” Linda said.

“What do you do?”

Linda hesitated without even knowing why.

“I've just graduated from the police academy.”

His name suddenly came back to her: Torbjörn. He smiled at her again.

“I thought you were into old furniture.”

“I was, but I changed my mind.”

He stretched out his hand again.

“Ystad is pretty small. I'm sure I'll see you around.”

Linda hurried up to the car, parked behind the old theater.
I wonder what they'll think,
she thought.
I wonder if they'll be surprised that Linda became a cop
.

She drove out to Skurup, parked on the main square, and then walked over to the house where Birgitta Medberg lived. There was a strong smell of cooking in the stairwell. She rang the doorbell; there was no answer. She listened, then called through the mail slot. When she was sure no one was there, she took out her pass keys and opened the door.
I'm starting my career in law enforcement by breaking and entering,
she thought. She was sweating and her heart was thumping. Alert for any noise, she carefully made her way through the whole apartment, constantly afraid that someone would come in. She didn't know exactly what she was looking for here, just something that would confirm the connection between Anna and Birgitta Medberg.

She was about to give up when she found a paper under the green writing pad on the desk. It was a photocopy of an old surveyor's map on which the lines and words were hard to make out.

Linda turned on the desk lamp and was finally able to make out the writing on the bottom of the page: Rannesholm Estate. She recognized the name, but where was it exactly? She had seen a map of southern Sweden in the bookcase. She took it out and managed to find Rannesholm, which only lay a few miles north of Skurup. Linda looked at the older map again. Even though it was a poor copy, she thought she could see the outlines of some notes and arrows. She tucked both maps into her coat, turned off the light, and checked for noise through the mail slot before leaving.

 

It was four o'clock by the time she reached a public parking lot by the nature reserve at Rannesholm.
What am I doing here?
she asked herself.
Am I just playing a game to pass the time?
She locked the car and walked down to the lake. A pair of swans were out in the middle of the lake where the wind sent ripples across the surface of the water. It looked like rain clouds were moving in from the west. She zipped up her jacket. It was still summer, but there was the unmistakable feeling of fall in the air. She looked back at the parking lot. It was empty except for Anna's car. She tossed a few pebbles into the lake.
There is a connection between Medberg and Anna,
she thought.
But what could they have in common?
She threw another stone into the water.
The only thing I can think of that links them is the fact that both of them have disappeared. The police are investigating one case, but not the other
.

The rain came sooner than she had expected. Linda ducked under a tall oak tree next to the parking lot. Raindrops started to fall all around her and suddenly the whole situation seemed completely idiotic. She was about to brace herself for a run through the rain to the car when she saw something glittering between the wet branches of a nearby bush. At first she thought it was a discarded beer can. She poked at one of the branches and saw a black tire. She started pulling the branches away with both hands and her heart beat faster. Then she ran to the car and grabbed her phone. For once her dad had his cell phone with him and turned on.

“Where are you?” he asked.

His voice was unusually gentle. She could tell he was still trying to make up for the morning.

“I'm at Rannesholm Manor,” she said. “In the parking lot.”

“What are you doing up there?”

“Dad, there's something you need to see.”

“I can't. We're about to have a meeting about crazy new directives from Stockholm.”

“Skip it. Just get over here—I've found something.”

“What?”

“Birgitta Medberg's Vespa.”

She heard her father's sharp intake of breath on the other end.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“And how did this happen?”

“I'll tell you everything when you get here.”

There was a noise on the line and the connection was broken, but Linda didn't bother calling him again. She knew he was on his way.

15

It was raining even harder now. Linda saw something flashing through the windshield and turned on the wipers. It was her father's car. He parked, ducked out, and jumped into the passenger seat next to her. He was impatient, clearly in a hurry.

“Let's hear it.”

His impatience made her nervous.

“Do you have the journal with you?” he interrupted.

“No. Why? I've given you the text word for word.”

He had no more questions and she continued her account. When she had finished, he sat and stared out into the rain.

“A strange story,” he said.

“You always say to watch for the unexpected.”

He nodded, then looked her over.

“Did you bring a raincoat?”

“No.”

“I have one you can borrow.”

He popped the door open and ran back to his car. Linda was amazed to see her large, heavyset dad move so quickly, with such agility. She followed him out into the rain. He stood at the back of the car putting on his gear. When he saw her he handed her a raincoat that fell all the way down to her feet. Then he fished out a baseball cap with the logo of a local car-repair shop and pushed it down over her head. He stared up at the sky. The rain poured down over his face.

“It's Noah and the flood all over again,” he said. “I don't remember rain like this since I was a child.”

“It rained a lot when I was young,” Linda said.

He nudged her on and she led the way over to the oak tree and
pushed the bushes away so he could see. Wallander took out his cell phone and she heard him call the police station. He grumbled when they didn't pick up right away. Wallander read out the license-plate number and waited for confirmaton. It was her Vespa. Wallander put the phone back in his pocket.

The rain stopped at that exact moment. It happened so fast it took them a while to register what had happened. It was like rain on a movie set being turned off after the take.

“God has decided to take pity on us,” Wallander said. “You've found Birgitta Medberg's Vespa.”

He looked around.

“But no Birgitta Medberg.”

Linda hesitated, then pulled out the photocopy of the old map that she had found in Birgitta Medberg's apartment. She regretted it as soon as she had taken it out, but it was too late.

“What's that?”

“A map of the area.”

“Where did you find it?”

“Here on the ground.”

He took the dry piece of paper from her and gave her a searching look.
Here comes the question I won't be able to answer,
she thought.

But he didn't ask. Instead he studied the map, looked down to the lake and the road, at the parking lot and the various paths that branched out from it.

“She came here,” he said. “But this is a big park.”

He studied the area right around the Vespa. Linda watched him, trying to read his mind.