Before the Frost (41 page)

He looked at her for a long time.

“Can you explain what you mean?”

“No.”

“We'll give Zeba a few more hours,” he said. “If she's not back by then, we'll have to do something. I want you to stay here.”

 

Linda followed him to the conference room. When everyone was gathered and the door was closed, Wallander started by telling everyone about Zeba's disappearance. The tension in the room mounted.

“Too many people are disappearing,” Wallander said. “Disappearing, reappearing, disappearing again. By coincidence or because of factors as yet unknown, all this seems to involve my daughter, a fact that makes me like this even less.”

He tapped a pencil on the tabletop and continued:

“I talked to Mrs. Tademan. She is not a particularly pleasant woman. In fact, she's about as good an example of an arrogant, conceited Scanian aristocrat I've ever had the misfortune to meet. But she did the right thing in getting in touch with us. A distant cousin who lives on the Rannesholm grounds saw a band of people near the edge of the forest. There were at least twenty of them, and they came and went very quickly. They could have been a group of tourists, but their actions, especially the fact that they were anxious not to attract attention, means they could also have been something else.”

“Such as?” Höglund asked.

“We don't know. But keep in mind that we found a hideout in the forest and a woman was murdered there.”

“That hut could hardly house twenty people or more.”

“I know. Nonetheless, this is important information. We have suspected that there were at least several people involved in the Frennestad Church fire and murder. Now there seem to be indications that there are even more.”

“This doesn't make sense,” Martinsson said. “Are we dealing with a kind of gang?”

“Or a sect,” Lindman said.

“Or both,” Wallander said. “That's something we don't know yet. This piece of information may turn out to lead us in the wrong direction, but we're not drawing any conclusions. Not yet, not even provisional ones. Let's put Mrs. Tademan's information aside for the moment.”

Lindman reported on his meeting with HÃ¥kan Holmberg and his keys. He didn't mention the fact that Linda had been with him.

“The man with an accent,” Wallander mused. “Our Norwegian or Norwegian-Danish link. He turns up again. I think we can safely accept Mr. Holmberg's assurance that these were the keys to both the Hurup and Frennestad churches.”

“We know that already,” Nyberg said. “We've compared them.”

The room fell silent.

“A Norwegian orders copies of some church keys,” Wallander said. “An American woman is later strangled in the church. By whom and why? That's what we need to find out.”

He turned to Höglund.

“What do our Danish colleagues say about Frans Vigsten?”

“He's a piano teacher. He was a rehearsal pianist at Det Kongelige Theater and apparently very much admired as such. Now he's getting increasingly senile and has trouble taking care of himself. But no one has any information indicating that anyone else lives in the apartment, least of all Vigsten himself.”

“And Ulrik Larsen?”

“He stands by his confession—and still says he was trying to steal drugs.”

Wallander threw a hasty glance at Linda before continuing.

“Let's stay in Denmark for a moment. What about this woman Sylvi Rasmussen? What do we have on her?”

Martinsson rifled through his papers.

“Her original name was something else. She came to Denmark as a refugee after the collapse of Eastern Europe. Drug addict, homeless, the same old story leading to prostitution. She was well-liked by clients and friends. No one has anything bad to say about her. There was nothing else unusual about her life, even the sheer predictable tragedy of it.”

Martinsson looked through the papers again before putting them down.

“No one knows who her final client was, but he must be the murderer.”

“She kept no written record?”

“No. There are the prints of twelve different people in her apartment. They're being examined, and the Danes will let us know what they find.”

Linda noticed that her father was trying to pick up the pace of the meeting. He tried to interpret the information that was brought in, never receiving it passively, always looking for the underlying message.

Finally he opened the floor for general discussion. Linda was the only one who didn't say anything. After half an hour they took a short break. Everyone left to stretch their legs or to get some coffee, except Linda, who was assigned to guard the window.

A gust of wind blew some of Martinsson's papers onto the floor. Linda gathered them up and saw a picture of Sylvi Rasmussen. Linda studied her face, seeing fear in her eyes. She shivered when she thought of her life and fate.

She was about to put the papers back when a detail caught her eye. The pathologist's report stated that Sylvi Rasmussen had had two or three abortions. Linda stared at the paper. She thought of the two Danish sailors who had been sitting in the corner, Zeba's son playing on the floor, and Zeba, telling them about her abortion. She also thought about Anna's unexpected reaction. Linda froze, holding her breath and Sylvi Rasmussen's photograph.

Wallander came back into the room.

“I think I get it,” she said.

“Get what?”

“I have one question. That woman from Tulsa.”

“What about her?”

Linda shook her head and pointed to the door.

“Close it.”

“We're in the middle of a meeting.”

“I can't concentrate if everyone comes back in. But I think I'm onto something important.”

He saw she meant what she was saying and went to close the door.

43

Wallander put his head out the door and told someone that the rest of the meeting would be postponed a little while. Someone started to protest but he shut the door.

They sat down across from each other.

“What did you want to ask?”

“Did Harriet Bolson ever have an abortion? Did Birgitta Medberg? If I'm correct, the answer will be yes for Bolson, but no for Medberg.”

Wallander frowned, at first perplexed, then simply uncomprehending. He pulled his stack of papers over and started looking through them with growing impatience. He tossed the file to the side.

“Nothing about an abortion.”

“Are all the facts there?”

“Of course not. A full description of a person's life, however uneventful or uninteresting, still fills a much larger folder than this. Harriet Bolson does not seem to have had a particularly exciting life, and certainly there's nothing as dramatic as an abortion in the material we received from Clark Richardson.”

“And Medberg?”

“I don't know, but that information should be easier to get. All we have to do is talk to her unpleasant daughter—although perhaps it's not the kind of thing mothers tell their children? I don't think Mona ever had an abortion. Do you know?”

“No.”

“Does that mean that you don't know if she did or that she never had one?”

“Mom never had an abortion. I would know.”

“I don't understand what you're getting at. Why is this important?”

Linda tried to clear her head. She could be wrong but every instinct told her she was right.

“Can you find out about the abortions?”

“I'll do it when you've told me why it's important.”

Something inside of her burst. Tears started to run down her face and she banged her fists into the table. She hated crying in front of her dad. Not just in front of him, in front of everybody. The only person she had ever been able to cry in front of was her grandfather.

“I'll ask them to do it,” Wallander said and stood up. “But I expect you to tell me what this is all about when I get back. People have been murdered, Linda. This isn't an exercise at the police academy.”

Linda grabbed an ashtray from the table and threw it at him, hitting him right above the eyebrow. Blood ran down his face and dripped on Harriet Bolson's file.

“I didn't mean to do that.”

Wallander pressed a fistful of napkins against the gash.

“I just can't stand it when you needle me,” she said.

He left the room. Linda picked up the ashtray from the floor, still trembling with agitation. She knew he was furious with her. Neither of them could stand to be humiliated. But she didn't feel any regret.

 

He came back after fifteen minutes with a makeshift bandage over his wound and dried blood still smeared across his cheek. Linda expected him to yell at her, but he simply sat down in his chair.

“Does it hurt a lot?” she asked.

He ignored her question.

“Höglund called Vanya Jorner, Medberg's daughter. She found the question deeply insulting and threatened to call the evening papers and complain, but Höglund did establish that she has no knowledge of any abortion.”

“That's what I thought,” Linda said. “And what about the other one? The one from Tulsa?”

“Höglund is contacting the U.S.,” he said. “We're not entirely in agreement about the time difference, but in order to speed things along she's going to call them on the phone rather than send a fax.”

Wallander felt the bandage with his fingertips.

“Your turn,” he said.

Linda started speaking slowly to keep her voice from wobbling but also so she wouldn't leave anything out.

“There are five women,” she said. “Three of them are dead, one of them has disappeared, and the last one disappeared and then returned. I'm starting to see a connection between them, apart from Medberg, who we're assuming was killed because she found herself in the wrong place at the wrong time. But what about the rest? Sylvi Rasmussen was murdered; she had also had two or three abortions. Let's assume that information from Tulsa confirms that Bolson had an abortion. It's also true for the person who's just gone missing: Zeba. She told me only a few days ago that she had one. I think this may be the connection between these women.”

Linda paused and drank some water. Wallander tapped his fingers and stared at the wall.

“I still don't get it,” he said.

“I'm not finished yet. Zeba didn't just tell me about her abortion, she told Anna too. And Anna had the strangest reaction. She was upset by it in a way I couldn't relate to, nor could Zeba. To say that Anna strongly disapproved of women who had abortions would be an understatement. She walked out on us. And when Anna later found out that Zeba was missing, she clung to my arm and cried. But it was as if she wasn't so much afraid for Zeba as for herself.”

Linda stopped. Her dad was still fingering his bandage.

“What do you mean, she was afraid for herself?”

“I'm not sure I know.”

“Try.”

“I'm telling you all I know.”

Wallander gazed absently at the wall. Linda knew that staring at a blank surface was a sign of intense concentration on his part.

“I want you to tell the others,” he said.

“I can't.”

“Why not?”

“I'll get nervous. I might be wrong. Maybe that woman from Tulsa never had an abortion.”

“You have an hour to prepare,” Wallander said and stood up. “I'll tell the others.”

He walked out and closed the door. Linda had the feeling that she was imprisoned, not physically with a lock and key, but by the imposed time limit. She decided to write down what she was going to say in a notebook, and pulled a pad of paper toward her. When she flipped it open, she was confronted with a bad sketch of a seductively posed naked woman. To her surprise, she saw that it was Martinsson's notepad.
But why should that surprise me?
she thought.
All the men I know spend an enormous amount of mental energy undressing women in their minds.

She reached for an unused notepad beside the overhead projector and jotted down the five women's names.

 

After forty-five minutes, the door opened. Everyone marched in like a delegation led by her father. He waved a piece of paper in front of her.

“Harriet Bolson had two abortions.”

Wallander sat down, as did everyone else.

“The question of course is why this matters to our investigation. That's what we're here to discuss. Linda is going to present us with her ideas. Over to you, Linda.”

Linda drew a deep breath and managed to present her theory without stumbling over her words even once. Wallander took over when she finished.

“I think it's clear that Linda is onto something that may be very important. The terrain is still far from mapped, but there is enough substance here to merit our attention, more substance than we have managed to uncover thus far, in fact, in other facets of the investigation.”

The door opened and Lisa Holgersson slipped in. Wallander put his papers down and lifted his hands as if he were about to conduct an orchestra.

“I think we can glimpse the outline of something that we do not yet understand but is there nonetheless.”

He stood up and pulled over a large notepad set on an easel, with the words HIGHER WAGES DAMMIT scrawled across it. Chuckles broke out across the room. Even Holgersson laughed. Wallander turned to a clean sheet.

“As usual I ask that you hold your thoughts until I'm done,” he said. “Save the rotten tomatoes and catcalls.”