The Cruel Stars of the Night

Thirty-four

A rough-legged buzzard sailed over the fields at the Krusenberg farm. The ease of its flight made Allan Fredriksson smile joyfully to himself. He leaned forward, searching the sky through the windshield. For a few moments the buzzard couldn’t be seen but then it returned and swooped very close to one of the ash trees at the edge of the road. It was almost the death of him.

As the car cut down into the ditch he was thinking about smews. Inge-mar Andersson, the ornithologist from Buckarby, the most inbred village in Uppland, as he himself put it, had called the night before. He had spotted a couple of hundred resting smews at Lake Tämnaren and more were expected. Perhaps the record from 1978 would be broken?

The car dashed into the ash tree, made a quarter turn, flipped, and spun around on the newly plowed field.

Fredriksson flew forward in the seat belt, put his hands in front of his face, and the only thing he could later recall was the sound of metal buckling.

In the ambulance he said a few words that the emergency technician thought were “common barrow.”

“That’s a hybrid,” Fredriksson whispered, half unconscious.

In his coat pocket there was something that would come to alter the investigation of the three murders. That morning he had dropped by Jan-Elis Andersson’s house in Alsike and he was on his way back to Uppsala when the rough-legged buzzard turned up and played this trick on him.

Now, he had seen quite a few buzzards in connection with the spring and fall migrations as well as the occasional wintering bird, the last one in a field outside Åkerby Church in February, but a buzzard is a buzzard. Or rather, a bird is a bird, and Fredriksson couldn’t get enough of them.

Fredriksson’s early morning visit in Alsike was not due to his work ethic but his forgetfulness. The last couple of days he had been missing his cell phone. However much he looked he was unable to find it. It was embarrassing. It was the third phone he had lost recently. The first was in a washing machine and the second during a hunt for chantarelles in Lun-sen. His sloppiness had become a refrain at work, not to speak of the caustic comments from his wife.

He knew that he had used his phone when he was at the home of Jan-Elis Andersson. It was his last chance. If it wasn’t there he would yet again be forced to buy a replacement.

He had not found his phone but he had found a small object that had made his heart skip a beat. Gusten Ander’s theory immediately took on a new light. Fredriksson jumped in the car in order to drive to the station. He had already forgotten about the phone.

Then the rough-legged buzzard came sailing by and now Fredriksson was lying on a stretcher at the Emergency Room entrance at the Academic Hospital. He was conscious. The ceiling fluttered by above his head.

“Am I paralyzed?” he mumbled and pulled off the oxygen mask.

A woman leaned over him.

“What is your name?”

“Allan.”

“Hi Allan, my name is Ann-Sofie, and I’m a nurse. You have been in a car accident and have some injuries.”

Fredriksson thought it was strange that she was smiling.

“What’s your date of birth?”

“Alsike,” Allan whispered, and threw up.

Nurse Ann-Sofie started to cut Fredriksson’s coat while the others examined his body. Someone washed the blood from his head and carefully cut away the clotted tufts of hair.

“Is there anyone we should call?”

“Ottosson at Crimes,” Fredriksson got out.

“Ottosson, as in the police?”

“My boss. He knows.”

Allan Fredriksson felt as if a thousand hands went over his battered limbs. The pain in his back and neck were the worst, or rather, the fear that he was so seriously injured he would have to spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair.

“X-ray,” he heard someone say.

The words dripped onto him. Some he understood, while others only conjured up pain and confusion.

“My coat,” he said, between the waves of nausea.

“It will be allright,” he heard a voice say.

“This will hurt a little,” another one said.

It was a man with a beard.

“… blood… we have to…”

“I can’t move.”

“You’re restrained,” the man with the beard said.

Fredriksson thought he smelled strange.

“I’m a police officer.”

“Okay.”

“There’s something I have to…”

“It was a simple car accident, wasn’t it?”

The bearded man’s breath wafted over him.

“I mean…”

“I was thinking about a bird,” Fredriksson said and had an image of hundreds of smews. He and Ingemar Andersson had been at Lake Tämnaren that beautiful October day. The twenty-third of October 1978, to think he still remembered the date. Fredriksson tried to figure out how many years ago that was, and failed. It was a long time ago. The children were young. Ingemar and he… to think that he called. There ought to be more like Ingemar. Pity about his wife. Ellen was her name.

The coat! He tried to get up. Someone put a hand on his shoulder. His head spun and he felt the mask over his mouth again.

His left arm was broken in two places, and the blow to his head had given him a strong concusssion and an open wound on his forehead.

He had woken up again but the pain in his back was so unbearable that when he tried to say something he fainted for a third time.

The breaks in his arm were complicated. The bone in his upper arm was protruding. Fredriksson had lost a great deal of blood. The injuries to his back and neck were not visible but would soon be determined with the help of an X-ray. His whole body would be X-rayed and every little fracture would be documented.

The bones in his arm received a preliminary adjustment and were bandaged. That had to be sufficient until they received a complete picture of his injuries.

The staff, a whole team, were both methodical and experienced in their work. Fredriksson embarked on his long journey back.

His coat had been tucked away into a plastic bag under the stretcher.