The Hand that Trembles (41 page)

‘Who do you think it was?’

He turned around and looked at her. She shrugged.

‘Have you talked with anyone about the fact that someone’s been sneaking around? I mean the police.’

‘I mentioned it to Ann Lindell. You’ve met her, haven’t you?’

‘Sure, she borrowed my chainsaw,’ he said.

He walked up to the front door, put his hand on the handle, then turned around and looked at her with a serious expression.

‘You should keep your eyes and ears open,’ he said. ‘If anything comes up, you should give me a call right away.’

Before she had time to answer, he had opened the door and left.

After a minute she heard the sound of his car. Why had he parked out by the turnaround, she wondered as she walked up to the door and fastened the bolt.

Lisen Morell curled up under the blankets. Her limbs were stiff and cold, her back ached. That’s how it was when she stayed up working too long. She had always had difficulties with proportions. She exaggerated, worked too much, dipped again and again until fatigue caused her hands to shake. The evening often morphed into night before she finally put away her pencil, charcoal, and brush. Now her body was punishing her for it.

She looked out in the dim light of the cottage where the white papers spread on the floor bore witness to her last session. In this chaos of attempts there was perhaps a single expression actually worth something, that carried forward and that could perhaps, after additional hours, days, or weeks of work, result in a painting that passed muster.

Lisen Morell was poised on a razor-sharp edge, teetering between total collapse, both physical and artistic, and brilliance.

She could not help but smile when she thought about her neighbour’s unexpected visit. Was his talk of smoke simply an excuse to make contact? Was he the one who had been sneaking around outside? Sunesson was harmless. He would never become threatening. She decided to invite him in for coffee one of these days. Not that she was interested in him, but to show him what she was working on. Maybe it would be the start of better contact with her neighbours.

She fell asleep late but woke up almost immediately. She sat up in bed, confused. The clock on the nightstand said 2:14 a.m.  

It was absolutely quiet. Not even the wind or the sound of the waves could be heard. Nonetheless there was something that had awakened her. She carefully turned the blankets aside, pulled her robe over, and pressed it to her body. A scraping sound somewhere outside the cottage made her gasp. She held her breath and listened. She pressed the robe even harder to her chest, where her heart was racing.

The digital numbers on the clock showed 2:15. She breathed out through her mouth and barely managed to inhale.

She knew she should search out her mobile phone from the mess on the table, but could not manage to make herself get up. She shivered with cold and fear. Paralysed with terror, she saw a severed foot walk across the floor, touch her papers and leave sooty, bloody prints on her sketches, only to disappear from view. A slender and lost foot, a woman’s foot. Lisen had the impression it was searching for its body.

‘I don’t want to,’ Lisen mumbled, as she carefully pulled on her robe. It occurred to her that perhaps it was a bird that had struck the windowpane. That happened a couple of times every year, but what birds were flying around in the December night?

She stood on trembling legs and took a couple of steps out into the room. The window to the bay was black. Suddenly there came a gust of wind so strong the cottage flinched and the sea answered with a muted thunder as it mercilessly struck the shore and the worn expanses of rock.

She walked over to the window. Someone out there wishes me ill, she thought. What have I done? Let me be in peace!

Then she glimpsed a movement outside the window. It looked like the shadow of a body, hastily fluttering past. Lisen quickly pulled herself aside and pressed up against the wall. She felt a trickle of warm urine run down her legs.

The Uppland region’s first real storm of the season came in already during the night with an intense snowfall and strong northerly winds, causing the police to close many of the roads in the areas around Tierp and Älvkarleby. The E4 motorway was open for traffic but for all practical purposes unpassable, with the result that a number of cars drove off the road. A tractor-trailer had slid off the road by Björlinge Church and the trailer blocked one lane.

It was Allan Fredriksson’s first winter as a country inhabitant and at nine o’clock when he finally managed to take himself the twenty kilometres into town, he was in a terrible mood. He had ample time to regret his move during the challenging trip.

‘It’ll be better in a couple of months.’ Sammy Nilsson tried to cheer him up, not without a certain glee.

That summer Allan Fredriksson had been lyrical about his new life in the country and had bored his listeners with descriptions of birdsong. In the autumn he talked about the crisp days and fantastic autumn colours. Now he was made to eat his words at the morning meetings.

‘But shovelling snow is good for the body,’ Beatrice said.

Allan Fredriksson gave her a crushing look. Ann Lindell glanced at Beatrice and was on the verge of saying something about keeping to her own fighting weight, but left it at a smile. She herself had left an enthusiastic Erik at day care and then slip-slided her way through a paralysed city and at one point had almost run over an older man who had stepped out into traffic, blinded by the snow.

Ottosson loved the silence in the excitable and almost anarchic atmosphere created by the winter storm.

He began by telling them of the letters they had found at Ante Persson’s. From his place at the far end of the table, Riis started to laugh.

‘What’s that all about?’ Ottosson asked.

‘Nothing,’ Riis assured him, and fought to regain a normal expression.

Ann Lindell looked at her colleague, who seemed increasingly to be losing his footing. Was he simply amused that a ‘Red’ was going to be tried for murder?

‘We’ll bring the old man in and hear what he has to say,’ Sammy Nilsson said, ‘but what puzzles me most is Sven-Arne Persson. Why did he admit to a murder that he in his own letters implied his uncle had committed?’

‘He only implies?’ Beatrice asked.

‘More than implies, but maybe not says full out,’ Allan Fredriksson said. ‘But I think the two of them were in it together, that both Sven-Arne and Ante were in the house when Dufva died. Sven-Arne said something that strengthened his own version. He claims not to remember much about what Dufva’s place looked like or what happened, but he did remember that both the radio and television were on. I checked with Berglund – he was the one who was on duty that night, and the first to arrive on the scene – and he said that both the radio and television were on. At the highest volume. Just as Sven-Arne told us.’

‘What do the letters say?’ Riis asked.

Fredriksson pulled over his notepad and read a couple of extracts.

‘“I understand, and yet I don’t. What had Dufva done to you?” That’s in a letter from the end of 1999. In another, sent a couple of weeks later: “How many Dufvas are there, anyway? He was only a thug – there must be others. Should all of them be killed?” And later in the same letter: “What are we capable of? I think about this a great deal. Here in India people die of hunger or take their own lives in desperation. What would we say if they left their slums and villages and slaughtered their oppressors and usurers as if they were dumb animals? Would I applaud such an act? To be honest, I don’t know. Who am I to judge? I have never been one for violence, you know that. Your struggle has never been mine, even if we have stood on the same side. In a way I am envious of your conviction, but I shiver when I think of what happened to Dufva.”’ Fredriksson stopped and looked up. The assembled police officers digested Sven-Arne’s words.

‘I doubt we’ll get much out of the old man,’ Beatrice said, breaking the silence. ‘He seems more than a little confused. When I—’

‘You’re wrong,’ Lindell said. ‘He’s clearer in the head than the two of us combined.’

‘Speak for yourself,’ Beatrice said, and smiled.

Bitch, Lindell thought, but did not continue the exchange. Instead she stared pointedly down into her notes. She had not told anyone that she was planning to drive out to the coast again, and while the others were discussing Ante and Sven-Arne Persson, her thoughts were on Bultudden. Ever since the morning she had been wondering if she was wrong. The brief visual impression in Lasse Malm’s shed, and the half-automatic gesture of reaching down for the rag to toss it into the rubbish bag – was that invented in hindsight by her imagination?

Was it really a pink tank top? She had been thinking so intensely that her doubts were slowly changing her memory. She knew she had to make the trip to the coast, but considering the weather she was not sure how that was supposed to work. Setting out on these roads would be hopeless. Could she call Marksson and ask him to drive out to the point alone? But given that the personnel number of the Östhammar police was so low, and that storms of this kind tended to hit the coast harder than the inland regions, he probably had his hands full. She decided to wait on a final decision until lunchtime. Maybe the snow would stop.

Lindell heard Fredriksson mention Berglund’s name again and she looked up. He was in the middle of a summation of the murder investigation from 1993. Ann Lindell suddenly felt drained, and sighed. It struck her how bored she was. Why am I sitting here? She recalled Erik’s joy as they had walked through the snow to the car. He had been ecstatic at the snowfall and she was sure he was tumbling around the day care playground with the other children at this moment.

I want to tumble around too, she muttered. Ola Haver shot her an inquisitive look. I want to tumble around, she mimed. He shook his head and smiled.  

I want to fuck, she thought. Is that the same as tumbling around? The lack of a man’s closeness, a man to tumble around with, hurt. She looked around and an antagonistic feeling grew inside her. She saw Fredriksson’s mouth move, but did not register a word of what he said. She watched Sammy Nilsson, Riis, Beatrice, and the others around the table. Everything so well-ordered, so disciplined, and so damn boring. How many cups of coffee had they drunk? How many words had been wasted in this room?  

Holiday, was her next thought. A long holiday. Sun. No snow. Sun. Heat on my body. Fredriksson kept churning on. Ottosson smiled encouragingly. Fredriksson went on.  

There isn’t much to talk about, she thought bitterly, and when Fredriksson finally stopped, she said it aloud.  

‘Book the old man, that’s all there is to it,’ she said, unable to conceal her irritation.  

Ottosson looked at her, astonished, but continued speculating what had happened on his own. It was as if he – for unknown reasons – wanted to extend the meeting, but the concentration among the assembled police officers was gone. Sammy Nilsson had pushed the chair from the table, stretched out his legs, and was staring unseeing into the ceiling. Ola Haver was doodling on a piece of paper and smiling in a silly way as if even he was able to think of more pleasant things than murder.  

After another ten minutes of discussion, they concluded the session. Everyone left in a hurry. Lindell lingered, as she usually did. Ottosson and she had a habit of exchanging a couple of words on their own.  

‘I’ve been thinking about Östhammar,’ she said. ‘I’ve thought of something. Or think I have, at any rate.’  

Ottosson nodded absently while he gathered up his notes.  

‘If the weather improves, I’ll head out there this afternoon. Is that all right?’

‘Of course,’ Ottosson said. ‘You should do that. Is it anything in particular?’

‘Just a thought,’ Lindell said.

Ottosson looked up.

‘You don’t believe that baker story, do you?’ he observed.

‘I don’t know.’

‘How are you? You seem a little tired.’

‘I just want to tumble around a little,’ she said, and left the room.

The snow stopped falling mid-morning and at eleven o’clock a pale sun shone over Uppsala. Ann Lindell called Bosse Marksson. The weather had stabilised even at the coast. About fifty centimetres of snow had fallen during the night and morning but no significant traffic issues or accidents had been reported. Lindell decided to drive out to the coast.

They arranged to meet at two o’clock at the police station in Östhammar. If things were still calm at that point, Marksson would come with her.

All morning Fredriksson and Sammy Nilsson had sat across the table from a sullen Ante Persson. The old man had not protested when they fetched him from Ramund. In fact he had been unexpectedly cooperative. He had put a great deal of care into how he should dress and had finally settled on a pair of grey trousers, a knitted cardigan, and a sport coat over that. One of the nursing home staff members, who had looked at Allan Fredriksson and Sammy Nilsson with ill-disguised contempt, had helped him dress while the two police officers waited outside.

He appeared in the corridor, a smile on his lips, pushing the walker in front of him and refusing any offers of assistance.

Later, when they had transported Ante Persson to the police station and installed themselves in an interrogation chamber, his mood had changed completely. Ante was visibly distressed and gave brief, curt answers to the policemen’s questions.

His nephew’s letters, that touched on the events in Kungsgärdet in 1993, he did not so much as comment on other than calling it a ‘family matter.’ He insisted on speaking with Sven-Arne.

After a break, after Ante complained of being hungry – he wanted oatmeal and sandwiches with egg and roe spread – the session was resumed and Allan Fredriksson again turned to the political angle.

‘You have many times claimed that Nils Dufva was a war criminal. Could you elaborate on that a little?’