The Cruel Stars of the Night

Twenty-two

Once more Berglund stood over a corpse. For which time in his professional life he was not sure. He had worked as a police officer for thirty-five years, the past fifteen in the Violent Crimes Division.

“Can someone cut the music?”

His voice echoed in the stables. One of the horses in the box next to them answered with a whinny. Berglund turned and looked at the mare whose eyes were fixed on him.

“Poor bastard,” he said and Ola Haver didn’t know if he meant the man at their feet or the horse.

Ola Haver hadn’t even registered the soft music playing from the loudspeakers in the ceiling.

“Thanks,” Berglund said when the music stopped.

“Could he have been kicked to death?”

Berglund made a gesture with his head and shoulders to show that it was perhaps possible but that he personally thought they had a new case of murder on their hands.

“You sure got that horse out easily.”

“I grew up with horses,” Berglund said, still in the somewhat whiny voice that Ola Haver found increasingly irritating. It was hardly his fault that the guy had kicked the bucket, murdered or not.

“Don’t you like Britney Spears?”

Berglund stared at Beatrice, who came walking down the corridor, as if she had insulted him.

“I hate Muzak,” he said, with equal emphasis on each word, “regardless of whether it is in an elevator, in a department store, or at a crime scene.”

“Maybe it calms the horses,” Beatrice said lightly and smiled.

I can’t believe they have the energy for this, Haver thought and gave Beatrice a look that clearly said: give it a rest.

She smiled at him but it was a sad smile. Haver suddenly saw that the wrinkles around Beatrice’s eyes and nose did not simply testify to a temporary fatigue but also to a continuing aging process. The freshness that had always been Bea’s signature was disappearing. The earlier always-so-healthy skin was no longer youthfully smooth. The rosy glow had been replaced by a hint of gray.

Bea’s expression revealed that she had noticed his searching look and she tried to maintain her smile, adjust the sadness to a superior confidence that was not, however, there. The smile became a grimace and she looked away.

Ola Haver was both embarrassed and distraught over his unchecked examination of his colleague and friend. He had the feeling that he had betrayed her but knew at the same time that it could not be undone and that there was nothing to say to assuage Bea’s apparent discomfort over being looked over in that way.

“I’m calling Ann,” he muttered and pushed his way out of the box.

Haver ended up standing with the phone in his hand out in the yard, watching how a couple of crows were picking at a plastic bag lying on the ground. They pulled and tugged, each from their own side, paused for a second or so but continued with an energy and drive that was in marked contrast to his own state of mind. Even the crows are cooperating, he thought, and engaged the speed dial to reach Ann Lindell.

“Of course it’s murder,” Ryde said. “You can see that yourselves! A horseshoe would not have made this kind of imprint.”

The pathologist grinned. Up yours, Berglund thought, but kept quiet.

“Only one blow was needed,” Ryde continued, who had spent a couple of hours together with Charles Morgansson and three other technicians combing the stables.

Now the body was to be taken away. As usual it was Fridh who was taking care of this. His slow and mild manner made him suited to this task, everyone was in agreement about this, and when he came walking down the corridor the police officers grew quiet and pulled back.

Fridh nodded, took a first look, and then went to work.

“This is getting to be a regular occurrence,” he said laconically as he bent down over the dead man. “Who is this one then?”

“Carl-Henrik Palmblad,” Berglund said. “Born in 1936, dead today.”

“The Berlin Olympics,” Fridh said.

Berglund would have wanted to go home but knew it would be a late night. The others looked as if they shared his feelings. Only Lindell seemed to be in a good mood. She had taken the initiative directly and assigned the tasks.

Now she was outside talking to a couple who lived a few hundred meters away. The man spoke unusually loudly and Berglund couldn’t help hearing how vividly and wordily he talked about the car he had seen parked in the woods.

“I thought it was mushroom pickers,” he said with a thunderous voice. “There are a lot of people running around these woods.”

“The car, what color?” Lindell shouted and Berglund realized the man was hard of hearing.

“Red, I think or… maybe… a little thing in any case…”

Berglund walked out. The man was still hesitating. Lindell was patiently waiting for a continuation but instead it was the woman who spoke.

“It was blue,” she said firmly. “One of those that Agnes has.”

“No, no!” the man yelled. “They have one of those Japanese.”

Berglund turned away, walked around the corner, and kept going aimlessly. He heard the waffling continue. He knew he would be getting a report on this before long.

All at once Berglund was gripped by an anger that almost made him return to the woolly-headed witness, take hold of him, and shake him until he could at the very least decide what color the car was. “The color, for the love of God! Is it so damn hard to remember a color!” he wanted to scream so even a person hard of hearing could understand.

It was a surprising, unfamiliar feeling for Berglund, who was otherwise quite timid in his interactions with others.

I need a holiday, he thought, and remembered, not without some bitterness, how he had bumped into a smiling Riis in the city the other week. Riis was on sick leave because of vague abdominal pains. A load of shit, Berglund had thought uncharitably when he heard the colleague’s friendly chatter about a boat he had bought for a good price and was renovating. That bastard is healthy as a horse.

Now the thoughts of Riis returned. A boat. Sure, don’t we all have something we would like to buy cheap and fix up?

But what would he do with a holiday? What would he do?

A car came down the small road to the stables. It was Sammy Nilsson. Berglund raised his hand in greeting, walked with rapid steps even farther away from the crime scene, and sat down on a rock at the edge of the forest. He knew that a few minutes alone could cure him-at least temporarily-of the paralysis of hopelessness.