Before the Frost (37 page)

39

Zeba's son played happily with a toy car that squeaked because it was missing two of its wheels. Linda looked at him. Sometimes he could be almost unbearably needy and attention-seeking. Other times, like now, he was peaceful, lost in thought about the invisible roads his little yellow car was traveling.

The café was almost empty at this time of day. A few Danish sailors in one corner were hunched over a nautical map. The young woman behind the counter yawned.

“Girl talk,” Zeba said suddenly. “Why don't we have more time for that?”

“Talk away,” Linda said. “I'm listening.”

“What about you?” Zeba asked, turning to Anna. “Are you listening?”

“Of course.”

They were quiet. Anna pushed a teaspoon around in her cup, Zeba folded a pinch of snuff into her upper lip. Linda sipped her coffee.

“Is this all there is?” Zeba asked. “In life, I mean.”

“What are you thinking of?” Linda asked.

“All our dreams. What became of them?”

“You dreamed of having children,” Anna said. “At least that seemed like your main goal.”

“You're right. But all the other stuff. I was such a dreamer! Especially when I was drunk out of my mind, you know the way you drink when you're a teenager, when you end up on your hands and knees, throwing up in a bush, having to fight off a guy who's looking to take advantage of the situation. But I never even realized any of my dreams. I drank them away, you could say. When I think of
all the things I was going to do: be a fashion designer, rock star—fly a jumbo jet, for God's sake.”

“It's not too late,” Linda said.

Zeba put her chin on her hands and looked at her.

“Of course it is. Did you really dream about becoming a policewoman?”

“Never. In my dreams, if you can call them that, I was always going to devote my life to theater or refinishing old furniture. Not very exciting.”

Zeba turned her head to Anna.

“What about you?”

“I wanted to find a meaning with my life.”

“Did you find it?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

Anna shook her head.

“It's not the kind of thing you can talk about. You either find it or you don't.”

Linda thought Anna seemed to be on her guard. From time to time she looked at Linda as if she was thinking: “I know you're trying to see through me.”
But I can't be sure,
Linda thought.

The Danish sailors got up to leave. One of them patted Zeba's boy on the head.

“His existence hung by a thread for a while,” Zeba said.

Linda raised her eyebrows.

“What do you mean?”

“I was close to having an abortion. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat and think I really did it, that he doesn't exist.”

“I thought you wanted a baby.”

“I did. But I was scared. I didn't think I'd be up to it.”

“Thank God you didn't do it,” Anna said.

Both Zeba and Linda were taken aback by her emphatic declaration. She sounded stern, almost angry. Zeba was immediately put on the defensive.

“Something as abstract as god makes no sense in that context. Maybe you'll understand when you get pregnant one day.”

“I'm against abortion,” Anna said. “That's just the way it is.”

“Having an abortion doesn't mean you're ‘for' abortion,” Zeba said calmly. “There can be other reasons for it.”

“Like what?”

“Like being too young. Or too sick.”

“I'm against abortion, period,” Anna repeated.

“I'm happy I had my boy,” Zeba said. “But I don't regret the abortion I had when I was fifteen.”

Linda was taken by surprise, and so was Anna. She seemed to stiffen and stared at Zeba.

“Why are you staring at me like that?” Zeba said. “I was fifteen years old—what would you have done?”

“Probably the same thing,” Linda said.

“Not me,” Anna said. “It's a sin.”

“Now you sound like a priest.”

“I'm just telling you what I think.”

Zeba shrugged.

“I thought this was girl talk. If I can't talk about my abortion with my friends, who am I supposed to talk to?”

Anna stood up.

“I have to go now,” she said. “I forgot about something I have to do.”

She disappeared out the door. Linda thought it was strange that she left without even saying good-bye to Zeba's son.

“What got into her?” Zeba said. “It's enough to make you think she had an abortion herself and can't talk about it.”

“Maybe she did,” Linda said. “You think you know everything about a person, but the truth often comes as a surprise.”

Zeba and Linda ended up staying longer than they had planned. With Anna gone, the atmosphere became more lighthearted. They giggled like teenagers. Linda followed Zeba home, and they said good-bye outside Zeba's building.

“What do you think Anna will do?” Zeba asked. “Say that we can't be friends anymore?”

“I think she'll realize she overreacted.”

“I'm not sure about that,” Zeba said. “But I hope you're right.”

 

Linda went home. She lay down on the bed, closed her eyes, and drifted off. Now she was walking to the lake again, where someone
had seen burning swans and called the police. Suddenly she opened her eyes. Martinsson had said they would check the phone log of calls to the station that night. That meant the conversation was preserved on a cassette tape. Linda couldn't recall anyone commenting on what the man had sounded like.
It was a Norwegian by the name of Torgeir Langaas.
Amy Lindberg had also heard someone who spoke either Norwegian or Danish. She got out of bed.
If the man who called in had an accent, we may be able to determine a link between the burning animals and the man who bought the house behind the church in Lestarp.

She walked out onto the balcony. It was ten o'clock and the air was chilly.
It will be fall soon,
she thought,
the frost is on its way. It will crunch under my feet by the time I become a police officer.

The phone rang. It was her dad.

“I just wanted to let you know I won't be home for dinner.”

“It's ten o'clock, Dad. I ate dinner hours ago.”

“Well, I'll be here for another couple of hours.”

“Do you have time to talk?”

“What's up?”

“I was thinking of taking a walk down to the station.”

“Is it important?”

“Maybe.”

“I can't give you more than five minutes.”

“I only need two. Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't all emergency calls to the police get recorded and stored?”

“Yes. Why?”

“How long are they kept?”

“For a year. Why are you asking?”

“I'll tell you when I get there.”

 

It was twenty to eleven when Linda walked into the station. Her dad came out into the deserted reception area and met her. His room was full of cigarette smoke.

“Who's been here?”

“Boman.”

“Who's that?”

“He's our D.A.”

Linda was suddenly reminded of another district attorney.

“Where did she go?”

“Who?”

“The one you were in love with? She was a D.A. back then.”

“That was a long time ago. I flubbed my chances.”

“How?”

“One's worst embarrassments should be kept to oneself. There are other attorneys here now, and Boman is one of them. I'm the only one who lets him smoke.”

“You can't even breathe in here now!”

Linda opened the window.

“What was it you wanted?”

Linda explained.

“You're right,” he said when she had finished.

Wallander stood up and motioned for her to follow. They bumped into Lindman in the corridor. He was carrying a stack of folders.

“Put those down and come with us,” Wallander said.

They went to the archive where the cassette tapes were stored. Wallander gestured for one of the officers on duty to come over and talk to him.

“The evening of the twenty-first of August,” he said. “A man called and reported sighting burning swans at Marebo Lake.”

“I wasn't working that night,” the officer said after studying a log book. “It was Undersköld and Sundin.”

“Call them.”

The officer shook his head.

“Undersköld is in Thailand and Sundin is at a satellite intelligence conference in Germany. It'll be hard to get hold of them.”

“What about the tape?”

“I'll find it for you.”

They gathered around a cassette player. Between a call about a suspected car theft and a drunk man who was calling for help “looking for Mom” was the call about the burning swans. Linda flinched when she heard the voice. It sounded as if he was trying to speak Swedish without an accent, but couldn't disguise his origins. They played the tape several times.

That was the end of the call. Wallander was listening through headphones that he then passed to Lindman.

“He has an accent, no doubt about it. I think he sounds Danish.”

Or Norwegian,
Linda thought.
What's the difference?

“I'm not sure it's Danish,” Lindman said and passed the headphones to Linda.

“The word he uses for ‘burning,'” she said. “Is it the same in both Norwegian and Danish?”

“We'll find out,” Wallander said. “But it's embarrassing that a police cadet has to be the one to bring this up.”

They left the room after Wallander had left instructions about keeping the tape readily available. He led the others to the lunchroom. A group of patrol officers sat around one table, Nyberg and some technicians around another. Wallander poured himself a cup of coffee, then sat down by a phone.

“For some reason I still remember this number,” he said.

He held the receiver to his ear. It was a brief conversation. Wallander asked the person he was speaking with to come down to the station as soon as possible. It was clear that this person was resistant to the idea.

“Perhaps you would prefer I order a patrol car with blaring sirens,” Wallander said. “And have the officers handcuff you so your neighbors wonder what you've been up to.”

He hung up.

“That was Christian Thomassen,” he said. “He's first mate on one of the Poland ferries. He's also an alcoholic, though currently dry. He's Norwegian and should be able to give us a positive identification.”

 

Seventeen minutes later, one of the largest men Linda had ever seen entered the station. He had huge feet stuffed into enormous rubber boots, was close to two meters tall, and had a beard down to his chest and a tattoo on his bald pate. When he sat down, Linda
discreetly stood up to see the tattoo more clearly. It depicted a compass card. Christian Thomassen smiled at her.

“It's pointing south-southwest,” he said. “Straight into the sunset. That way the Grim Reaper will know which way to take me when the time comes.”

“This is my daughter,” Wallander said. “Do you remember her?”

“Maybe. I don't remember too many people, to be honest. I've survived my drinking, but most of my memories haven't.”

He stretched out his hand so she could shake it. Linda was afraid he would squeeze too hard. His accent reminded her of the man on the tape.

“Let's go in,” Wallander said. “I want you to listen to a recording for us.”

Thomassen listened carefully. He asked to hear the conversation four times, but stopped Lindman when he was about to play it for a fifth time.

“He's Norwegian,” Thomassen said. “Not Danish. I was trying to hear where in Norway he's from, but I can't pinpoint it. He's probably been away from Norway for a long time.”

“Do you think he's been here a long time?”

“Not necessarily.”

“But you're sure that he's Norwegian?”

“Yes. Even if I've lived here for nineteen years and drunk myself silly for eight of those years, I haven't completely forgotten where I came from.”

“That's all we needed to know,” Wallander said. “Do you need a ride back?”

“I came down on the bike,” Thomassen said, smiling. “I can't ride when I've been drinking. I just fall over and hurt myself.”

“A remarkable man,” Wallander said to Linda after he left. “He has a beautiful bass voice. If he hadn't been so lazy and drunk so heavily he could have been an opera singer. I suspect he would have become world famous, for his sheer size if nothing else.”

They went back to Wallander's office.

“So he's Norwegian,” Wallander said. “And we know that the man who set fire to the swans was the same as the one who
set fire to the pet store, just as we suspected. It will probably turn out to be the same man who set fire to the calf. The question is whether he was the one who was hiding out in the hut in the forest.”

“The Bible,” Lindman said.