Black Lies, Red Blood

Five

As soon as Ottosson left, Lindell took out the phone book and looked up Anders Brant’s number.

With increasing agitation she punched in the numbers. She wished he would pick up the phone and explain how it all fit together, but after a half-dozen rings an answering machine came on: “Hi, you’ve reached Anders Brant. I can’t come to the phone right now. Please leave a message.” Anders Brant, the man who made her feel pleasure like never before, the man who made her feel hopeful. When she heard his voice the thrill from the morning returned, the satisfaction and excitement. He didn’t say he wasn’t at home, just that he couldn’t come to the phone.

She had never called him before. She did not even have his cell phone number. He was always the one who made contact, and until now she had not found that strange. Now it felt all the more peculiar.

Now he did not pick up the phone and what was worse, he was involved in a murder investigation. He had suddenly gone away. She called again, with the same result. For a moment she considered leaving a message, but decided not to.

Someone other than Anders Brant might listen to the message.

Who was he? A journalist, he said, freelancing now after resigning from a magazine she had never heard of, much less read. A cultural magazine, he explained, which in his taste had become a little too stuck-up. He mentioned something about a “battle-ax” in the editorial office he didn’t get along with.

What did he write about? She didn’t know. Cultural articles was the most likely candidate. Here Ann felt that she was in foreign territory and no doubt that was also the reason she had not shown any great curiosity. She did not want to admit how ignorant she was in that area.

They had not talked that much really, mostly cuddled and made love, and Ann had not protested, starved as she was for skin and touch.

And now he had gone somewhere. She did not know where and she did not know how she could quickly and easily find that out. A week, maybe two, he had said. She guessed it had to do with work. Was he in Sweden or abroad? Perhaps Görel knew something? Ann had no idea where and when they had met. Görel was not someone you immediately associated with cultural magazines.

She went to the Eniro website and searched his cell phone number. The phone was turned off and an automated message said something about a voice mailbox.

All in all, Anders Brant was one big question mark. She guessed that the reason the murdered man had a slip of paper with a journalist’s phone number on it was purely professional. But what could Bo Gränsberg have to say to a cultural journalist? Perhaps they were acquaintances from before, perhaps even related?

There were too many questions. She decided to talk with Sammy Nilsson and then Görel, but that would have to wait until this evening. Reaching her at work was difficult and not greatly appreciated.

It struck her that her girlfriend had not called during the time Brant was tumbling around in Ann’s bed. Didn’t she know that they had met? She must be curious, but if Brant hadn’t said anything to her, then Görel must have guessed that her attempt at procurement had not succeeded. She usually called now and then, but the past few weeks there had been complete silence, and Ann had not thought about contacting her. I’ve had my hands full, she thought, and could not help smiling to herself, on some level very satisfied with the experiences of the past few weeks. And she did not want to believe that it was over. It couldn’t be over. But why this aching, unpleasant feeling, which also expressed itself physically, that the whole thing was over, that for a few weeks she had been able to look out over landscapes that were not her true domains. A temporary visit.

Ann Lindell got up with a heavy sigh. Never, she thought, it can never be really good, never uncomplicated.

Sammy Nilsson did not answer either. In Lindell’s experience, that could be due to two things; either he was talking with a “customer,” as he insisted on saying, or he was exercising. Considering the circumstances she believed in the first alternative. She left a message and asked him to call her as soon as possible.

Then she sat down at the computer to do some research. She typed “Anders Brant” in the search field and after a moment or two the screen was filled with information. There was a total of 2,522 hits, even if many of course came from the same source.

The first entry was a short article published in the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation magazine, about biofuel, followed by some longer articles about Putin and Russia printed in a magazine she was not familiar with, followed by an opinion piece on the same subject published in Dagens Nyheter.

Lindell skimmed through the text. A different Anders Brant emerged than the one she knew. His tone was polemical, but quiet nonetheless. He formulated himself well, she thought, and felt a touch of pride in his ability. We were fucking that same day, she thought. Dagens Nyheter inserted his article on the editorial page and Anders inserted a different article in me, she thought, smiling in the midst of her confusion.

The phone rang and she saw that it was Sammy Nilsson.

“Good,” she said. “I’m wondering about that Brant.”

“I am too,” said Sammy. “I’m actually at his residence.”

Lindell’s face turned red.

“Where does he live?”

“In Svartbäcken. No one’s home. I’ve talked with some of his neighbors and one of them saw him leave the house with a suitcase yesterday morning. He came home at eight in the morning in a taxi. It’s good to have old ladies around who keep an eye on things. But this time it was a guy, Mr. Nilsson, like Pippi Longstocking’s monkey.”

“Suitcase,” she said stupidly and could not hold back her disappointment, even though he said he was going away.

For a brief moment she considered telling about her relationship with Brant. Sammy was someone who could take it without getting upset or criticizing her. On the contrary, he would think it was exciting. He would congratulate her and say that there was nothing to worry about. Lie low, he would encourage her, you’re not working on the case. We’ll find Brant, question him, and remove him from the investigation.

Just as the words were on the tip of her tongue, ready to be spit out, because that was how she felt now, she had to spit Brant out, get rid of the bitter taste in her mouth, Sammy continued.

“Well, sure, that messes everything up. He was only carrying a small suitcase, which the neighbor believed was a computer case.”

“He’s a journalist,” said Lindell.

Sammy laughed.

“We know that,” he said. “How’s it going?”

“Super!” said Lindell.

It struck Lindell that Brant must have called for a taxi when he left her apartment. Now he was Brant and not Anders.

“Then he took off in another taxi half an hour later,” Sammy continued.

“Have you checked the fare?”

“Will do. He took Uppsala Taxi. The monkey noticed that.”

Lindell took a deep breath, trying to think of something intelligent to say.

“I see,” she managed to say.

“Why do you ask? Do you have anything new concerning our writer friend?”

“No, no, I was just curious, I knew you would be checking up on him. Ottosson mentioned something about it.”

Sammy Nilsson did not say anything. Perhaps he was waiting for more? But why did he say “monkey”? Sammy’s last name was Nilsson too.

“We’ll be in touch,” said Lindell at last, when the silence became too tangible.

“We’ll do that! Bye!”

After the call Lindell sat for a long time, brooding about whether she should go to see Ottosson and tell him what she had been unable to say to Sammy. But she decided to lie low. On the screen his name was shining and she shut down the computer.

“Jerk,” she said.

Listlessly she opened a folder that contained the latest about Klara Lovisa. At the top was the photograph and as usual Lindell studied it carefully before she browsed further and produced the hastily jotted down notes from yesterday.

A man in Skärfälten, just ten kilometers west of the city, had seen a young girl in the company of a man. The description tallied, and the witness had even specified the right color of her jacket and pants. They were walking together at a slow pace on the road toward Uppsala-Näs.

A day after the disappearance, when the media had reported on the case, the man, Yngve Sandman, called the police tip line, but since then no one had shown any interest in questioning him further.

Yesterday he had called, somewhat bitter but mostly surprised at the lack of action, and was forwarded to Lindell.

“I have a daughter myself,” he said.

Lindell could not explain why no one from the police had been in touch. Carelessness, she thought to herself, but obviously could not say that. Always with disappearances, especially when young women were concerned, there was an abundance of tips and observations. Mostly they led nowhere. The man’s call had no doubt drowned in the flood of calls.

Ann Lindell got his information again and promised to be in touch within a day or two. Now it had been exactly twenty-four hours and she made the call. They agreed that she would drive out to see him right away.

“It was here,” said Yngve Sandman, pointing. “I was on my moped and they were walking there, on the other side of the road.”

Lindell looked at him.

“So they were walking on the wrong side,” Lindell observed, as if that were significant. “You were on a moped?”

“Yes, I collect mopeds and was out test-driving an old Puch. It’s older than me. It doesn’t go fast and I was able to get a good look at them.”

“Tell me how they were walking, what they looked like and that.”

“She was walking closest to the road. They weren’t walking particularly fast, didn’t look stressed. But they didn’t seem to be talking with each other, not right when I encountered them anyway.”

“How did the girl seem?”

Yngve Sandman shrugged his shoulders.

“Well, what should I say? I thought she was pretty, if you know what I mean.”

Lindell nodded.

“Did you get the impression that they knew each other? She didn’t look scared or anything?”

“Well, two friends out walking, that’s what it looked like. But actually you can be afraid of a friend too.”

“How were they dressed?”

“I’ve told you that, first in April and then yesterday to you.”

“Tell me again.”

“She had dark-green pants, almost looked military with a couple of pockets in front on the hip, and a light-blue jacket. Pretty short, I thought, it was cold that day. I didn’t think about her shoes, if I had to guess they were black, some kind of boots.”

Mr. Sandman guesses right, thought Lindell. Klara Lovisa had on a pair of short, black boots the day she disappeared.

“And him?”

“Blue jeans and a jacket with a hood, which he had pulled up. It was dark, maybe blue. Workout clothes, I think.”

“What did he look like?”

Suddenly the sky darkened and they looked up. A dark cloud passed quickly and the sun was hidden for a few moments.

“Around twenty-five, maybe younger,” said Sandman, as the sun returned. “Light hair, but the hood concealed most of his head.”

“Glasses?”

The man shook his head. He looked away along the road.

“I got the sense that he was walking a little funny, but that may be because he was walking halfway in the ditch, if you know what I mean?”

“Was he limping?”

“No, not exactly, but in some way…”

They stood quietly a moment.

“I have a daughter myself,” he said. “If she disappeared, I mean.”

“Yes,” said Lindell. “It’s too awful.”

“Does she have any siblings?”

“No.”

He shook his head and stood quietly a moment.

“Looks like rain,” he said, as another threatening black cloud drew past.

“Did you drive back the same way?”

“Yes, I turned up at Route 72. Although I stopped there awhile and adjusted the moped. It was running a little shaky and I had to tighten a brake wire.”

“How long did it take before you came past here again?”

“Ten minutes, maybe fifteen.”

“And then the two of them were gone?”

“Yes, not a soul on the road.”

“What time of day did you see them?”

“Around eleven thirty.”

Klara Lovisa had left home on Saturday the twenty-eighth of April one hour earlier. Lindell looked around. Fields, a few houses, a narrow country road that made its way down toward the valley. She had driven this way perhaps a dozen times. What was Klara Lovisa doing here? What was the likelihood that she was the one Yngve Sandman had seen? And who was the young man?

Klara Lovisa did not have a boyfriend, not officially anyway. Her girlfriends had spoken about an Andreas, whom she had dated since seventh grade, but he had been removed from the investigation long ago. The day of her disappearance he had been in Gävle with his mother.

Could the young man by her side be an unknown admirer, someone she was acquainted with, or in any event recognized? It seemed as if she had been walking on the road voluntarily. If this was even Klara Lovisa.

Sandman was her last straw. He seemed lucid and not someone who was only trying to get attention. She cursed the unknown associate who had neglected the early information. Then the observation was close to fresh, now almost two months had passed.

Ann Lindell decided to use the folder she had already put in order during the first week of the investigation.

“I want you to look at some photographs of young girls.”

“I see,” he said, not seeming particularly engaged.

Lindell browsed a little back and forth, held out the first photo. He shook his head. There was a similar reaction to photos number two, three, and four. At the fifth photo he lingered a little before shaking his head. He firmly rejected girls six, seven, and eight, and all the others that followed.

“Then we have the nineteenth and final picture,” said Lindell.

“It looks like a parade of Lucia candidates,” he said. “But I didn’t see any of them here.”

“Certain?”

Sandman nodded immediately. Lindell took out the twentieth picture, which she had left sitting in the folder.

“That’s her,” he said immediately.

He did not need to say anything because as he was looking at Klara Lovisa he took a deep breath and made a gesture with his hand as if to illustrate that it was here on the road he had seen her.

“It’s her,” he repeated. “Poor girl.”

Lindell was not convinced. Sandman may very well have recognized the picture from the newspaper, but it reinforced her impression that he was not a crackpot. All too often the “customer” was so eager to please that he, for some reason less often she, would do everything at a confrontation to “recognize” someone, perhaps not point out anyone definitively but still show some hesitation, as if it were impolite to consistently be a naysayer. He had denied any recognition, including the one he believed was the last picture.

“Thanks,” she said. “You’ve been a very big help.”

Yngve Sandman looked almost helpless.

They walked back toward the parked cars. There they remained standing awhile in silence. The sun once again broke through the clouds. It was like a staged alternation between shadow and sun, which in turns let the landscape, the stony meadowland up toward the forest, and the fields with the spiky corn on the other side of the road, bathe in light, and then be swept into a slightly mysterious darkness.

“The human factor,” he said at last.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s not allowed to happen in my work. I mean, when I called you the first time someone dropped the ball, it’s obvious, isn’t it?”

Lindell could not help but nod.

“Then perhaps she was still alive?”

“Yes, that’s how it is,” Lindell admitted. “Then we would have been in a better situation.”

“And her parents too, even if…”

Yngve Sandman looked down at the roadside. By his feet a dandelion was growing. He kicked at it so that the yellow flower was separated from the stalk.

“I live up there on the rise,” he said without prompting, and pointed. “You don’t see the house but it’s behind there. It’s a nice house, paid for. I live almost for free. The children have moved out. I get by. I tinker with my mopeds. The woods are full of berries and mushrooms.”

Lindell looked in the direction he was pointing. An area as good as any, she thought. She had a vague memory that once she had picked mushrooms in the vicinity, but maybe it was on the other side of Route 72.

“Stina left a few years ago.”

He said it without bitterness, just a statement. And he smiled.

“How many kids do you have?”

“Two. And you?”

“A boy,” said Lindell. “He’ll start school in the fall.”

“I was early,” he said. “I have a windmill on the lot,” he said with unexpected eagerness. “It’s really ugly but it was my dad who built it. I mean, if you were to come by, you’ll see the windmill.”

“What kind of work do you do?”

“Air traffic controller.”

“You’re used to details,” said Lindell, and smiled back. “You can’t miss anything.”

“That’s how it is. For me the human factor doesn’t exist.”

“It was nice to meet you,” said Lindell, extending her hand. “Although the circumstances could have been better.”

“It doesn’t feel good, I mean this,” he said, taking her hand in a slightly awkward motion and throwing out his other arm.

After a period of silence Ynvge Sandman tried to smile again, but it was more like a grimace.

Lindell sensed that he was a man without great pretensions, a man who did not let himself be surprised, whose equanimity would not be disturbed too easily. She sensed the equanimity was acquired, perhaps even forced. For behind his tinkering and berry picking she sensed a very lonely person.

And now that balance had been disturbed. A girl’s disappearance worried him, that was clear, but what exactly was going on in the man’s mind she obviously did not know.

They separated, walking to their cars. Lindell raised her hand as she drove away. He remained standing outside his car, peering along the road, and did not appear to see her greeting.

Stone dead for centuries, thought Lindell, and then comes a whole swarm of men. He had hit on her, it was quite clear: single, children moved out, a hint of solid finances, and an honorable job. And then a comment about the windmill that showed a romantic side. Yngve Sandman was no tough guy; he maintained a hideous windmill for sentimental reasons.

But he was right, if their procedures functioned then perhaps the disappearance would have been solved. If it really was Klara Lovisa he had seen. And Ann Lindell was becoming more and more convinced of that as she drove at a slow pace back toward the city.

In line with Berthåga she got an impulse to turn and drive to the home of Klara Lovisa’s parents. Her mother was probably home. She had been on sick leave from her job at the Swedish Medicines Agency since the disappearance.

But she continued toward the city. Before she visited them again she should refresh her memory, go through some of the many interviews that were filed in binders piled in her office.

Over 150 interviews had been conducted during April and May to try to chart the girl’s life, contact points, and movements during the time before she disappeared.

Perhaps in the binders there would be a single sheet of paper that might tell about a blond, young man wearing jeans and a dark-blue jacket with a hood. A man who made Klara Lovisa abandon the thought of buying a spring jacket and instead lured her out of town.