The Cruel Stars of the Night

Four

The task of going door-to-door in the area around Petrus Blom-gren’s house did not take long. Sammy Nilsson and Bea Andersson, who were in charge of this, could afterward report that there were altogether some twenty properties. Fourteen of these were permanent residences and the rest were summer cottages.

No one had seen or heard anything. There was not even any gossip, no hints or speculation, simply disbelief that something so horrible could happen in Vilsne and that it was Petrus Blomgren who was the victim. No one had a bad word to say about the victim. Sammy and Bea listened to the testimony without being able to discern any criticism between the lines. Blomgren was well-liked, highly thought of even, in the area. Neighbors had only praise for his still life, his industriousness, and concern for his nearest neighbor, Dorotea. An older man talked about Blomgren’s love of nature, another about how admirable it was that even though Blomgren was a bachelor he managed to keep everything as clean and tidy as he did, and a third, the Kindblom couple, told them that their children when they were young would go up to “Uncle Petus” and there be treated with candy and sometimes, on Thursdays, with freshly made pancakes and homemade jam.

“Jumkil’s Mother Theresa,” Sammy Nilsson summarized and glanced at Bea to see if she had anything to add, but she only nodded.

“I see,” Ottosson said and turned to Lindell.

She and Fredriksson had spent the day trying to bring order to the state of Petrus Blomgren’s paperwork.

“At the Föreningsspar Bank they were unusually helpful,” she said after a moment’s hesitation.

She and Fredriksson had decided that he was the one who would present their findings but he had not turned up.

“Actually Allan is the one who was supposed to…” Lindell began.

“Take us through what you know,” Ottosson said, unusually brusque.

“All right, as you like. Blomgren had seventy-six thousand kronor in his savings account. There are very few transactions. He received his pension, took out a couple of thousand every month. The last withdrawal was six days ago. Two thousand. In the house we have recovered around nine hundred kronor in cash.”

“No cards?”

“No, he only had one account and no bank cards.”

“Could there be accounts at other banks?” Sammy Nilsson asked.

“No, the guy at the bank didn’t think so. Blomgren had been with the Föreningsspar Bank his whole life, though it was called something else before.”

“The Förenings Bank,” Fredriksson said, who had just come through the door. “It became the Föreningsspar Bank a good many years ago,” he continued and sat down at the table.

“In addition, for many years Blomgren had a donation by direct deposit set up with Doctors Without Borders. They received four hundred kronor every month. He recently raised the amount. Earlier it was three hundred.”

“That’s strange,” Ola Haver inserted. “I would have expected Save the Children or converting the heathens, but Doctors Without Borders is unexpected.”

“The guy at the bank also asked about this, but Blomgren gave no particular reason,” Fredriksson said. “Maybe he saw a TV program about them?”

“No large withdrawals recently?”

“No,” Lindell said. “As we said, everything was in order. No unexpected transactions.”

“He kept a will at the bank,” Fredriksson said. “I talked to the lawyer who drew it up three years ago. It was at Blomgren’s behest. He came alone to the lawyer’s office and had a prepared document that he wanted the lawyer to look through. It didn’t take long. All assets go to Doctors Without Borders, with the exception of twenty thousand to his neighbor, Dorotea Svahn, and ten thousand to Jumkil Church.”

“Damn,” Sammy said.

“It’s hardly credible that Doctors Without Borders or the church board have death squads posted in the countryside,” Haver said, “and Dorotea probably can’t kill a fly.”

“That was sweet of Petrus,” Bea said. “I don’t think Dorotea is so well off.”

“The church is,” Sammy said.

“Not in Jumkil,” Ottosson objected.

The last maple leaves are falling right now, Fredriksson thought. No one will be raking Blomgren’s yard today. As he often did, he fell into a few moments of thought. His colleagues were used to these short pauses and waited patiently for the continuation.

“I think we can rule out a planned financial motive,” Fredriksson continued, “but of course it’s always possible that a passerby had the idea to attack this old man in the hopes that there was money to be gained.”

“But nothing in the house was touched,” Haver said.

“The killer was scared off,” Fredriksson determined laconically.

It seemed he felt there was no more to say on the topic.

For another hour the group discussed possible motives and how they should proceed with the investigation. They did this in an unusually calm manner, as if Petrus Blomgren’s quiet and retiring lifestyle had influenced the assembled homicide detectives.

Everything went according to procedure. The drama that Ann Lindell had once thought she would experience when she started as a police officer fell away as the years went by. The difference was noticeable. The first investigations in the Violent Crimes Division in Uppsala had thrown her into a state of intensity, had claimed her thoughts day and night. Many times it had rendered her unable to live a normal civilian life. It was, she now realized, one of the reasons that she and Edvard had never really become close. In spite of their mutual love and their longing for that intimacy. Now he was lost to her and she steeled herself not to let the bitterness and regret poison the rest of her life.

They had not been in touch since last spring. She had called him right before Pentecost, enraptured and almost completely convinced that a reconciliation was possible. But Edvard was no longer interested. She could hear it in his voice. All summer she had cursed herself, consumed with self-pity and distaste for her life. Only her son, Erik, could make her really happy.

The fall had started with a rape and a case of assault. No excitement, only routine, and a nauseating feeling of indifference.

Now it was October. Her blues month. A new murder. No suspense, only sorrow. She pictured Dorotea on the gravel road, struggling up the hill to Blomgren’s house, on her way to say good-bye.

“Hello, Earth to Ann.” Ottosson interrupted her chain of thought.

“Sorry,” Lindell said quickly, suddenly intensely embarrassed at her distraction.

“I wonder if you could draft a media statement?”

“Of course,” she said, “I’ll talk to Lise-Lotte.”

The meeting broke up.

“We’ll fix this,” Allan Fredriksson said to Lindell as they left the room.

“Think so?”

“Sure thing, Allan. After all, crime doesn’t pay.”

Sammy Nilsson was snickering behind them. Lindell turned around.

“What do you think?”

“Allan’s the gambler, but I say two weeks. Are you in? I’ll wager a hundred.”

“Okay,” Fredriksson said, who during the last year had won large sums on horses.

Ann Lindell left the group with a feeling of isolation. All too often she felt they simply talked past each other, that the indispensable feeling of teamwork was lost. She didn’t know if this simply had to do with her or if the others felt the same way.

For Lindell this feeling had a physical manifestation. She would get warm, sometimes glowing red, her sight altered so that she saw the room as a sealed space where the objects and words were bent inward toward an imaginary center that was Ann Lindell, single mother and investigative detective. The walls in the room were at the same time protection and limitation.

At first she thought she was sick. Now she had accepted that her psyche played these tricks on her. She sometimes lived as if inside a container. When she spoke she heard an echo and was surprised when the people in her surroundings reacted to her words. And despite all this she went on.

She stopped, slightly nauseated, feeling sad and sweaty. At that moment Sundelin, a colleague from the policing division, came hurrying down the corridor. He halted and asked her how the investigation was going. Lindell replied that it was probably going to be difficult.

“You’ll crack it,” the colleague said confidently “You usually do.”

He smiled and Lindell smiled back.

Sundelin hurried off. She watched him and wished they could have talked for a while. Sundelin had been one of Munke’s acolytes. Munke, whom Lindell had always thought of as somewhat of a buffoon, competent, of course, but not someone she particularly enjoyed working with.

They had worked during the spring on a murder investigation and that was when their mutual respect for each other’s professional expertise had developed into the beginnings of a friendship. Munke had died of a heart attack at the tail end of the investigation and Lindell felt as if someone from her inner circle had passed on.

She had taken everyone by surprise when she gave a speech at his funeral in Vaksala Church, touching on the small connections that contained the large. Only very few members of the audience had probably understood what she was trying to get at. Berglund, the old dog, perhaps, and Ottosson definitely, who had afterward taken her aside and told her he was going to step down as head of the Violent Crimes Division.

“There are other things,” he had said, and Ann sensed that behind his talk of his summer cottage and the grandchildren there was a fear for the direction society was taking and also, at a very personal level, of death.

“Ann, you are a sensitive soul,” he had said, “but don’t break down,” and Lindell just wanted to fall into his arms. “In that case it would be better for you to quit the force,” he had added.

“The force.” How many people called it “the force” these days? It sounded like a brotherhood held together with a unified spirit. For better or for worse it had bound policemen together, for that was what they were: men. Men like Munke. Boorish, sometimes real pigs, many times recruited from the military, most of them politically conservative. From these some real police officers appeared. Like Munke. Lindell and he were rarely in agreement when talking about current events, but there was a genuine honesty in her deceased colleague that she had appreciated a great deal.

The unifying spirit was no longer there, she knew. Not so much because of the individual colleagues but more because of the pressure from above. Lindell thought it was mostly for the good-the homogenous group of men functioned fairly well in the old days but no longer. She was needed, Beatrice also. Ditto Ola Haver and Sammy Nilsson. They had seen themselves as young officers with a new way of looking at things and new insights. Now they had all entered middle age and soon they would make up the ranks of the veterans.

She continued on down the corridor, still very warm and aware of her own body.

“Am I sick?” she muttered to herself, heading to the cafeteria, aware that if she could only hear other voices she would return to a state of relative normalcy. The loneliness made her feel even worse.

The cafeteria was mostly empty. Four patrol officers of unusually strong build were sitting close together at the far end of the room. They resembled a group of black animals, pressing up against each other in a tight circle, united, encircling a fallen prey, on their guard at their surroundings but also against others in their flock.

Lindell watched the one who was currently holding forth. He was gesticulating, emphasizing his story with large movements and conscious of his own importance. The others watched until they all burst into a roar of laughter that filled the whole room.

Lindell did not need these thundering hulks, not now. She sat down behind a big green plant, curled up with a cup of coffee and a pastry shielding her from the world, took a bite of the chocolate-dipped marzipan treat, looked down at her watch, and sighed heavily.

“Doesn’t it taste good?” came a voice from behind.

Lindell turned around.

“Mind if I sit here?”

It was Charles Morgansson from Forensics. Lindell nodded. Her colleague sat down. He also had a cup of coffee and an identical little pastry on his tray.

“Great minds think alike,” he said when he noticed her gaze.

He made a very light impression. It wasn’t simply his hair color and pale skin, he was also wearing a dazzling white T-shirt, with a Hugo Boss logo. A thin silver chain wound around his neck.

“How’s it looking?” he asked.

“A bit complicated. Blomgren hasn’t yielded many avenues of investigation and no one seems to have seen anything of interest.”

“And we couldn’t contribute much either,” Morgansson said and halved his treat with one bite.

“I know,” Lindell said.

Morgansson shot her a look, devoured the last of his pastry, and washed it down with coffee. Don’t go, she thought.

He put down his cup and looked at her. “Want to go to the movies?”

“What?”

“The movies, you’ve heard of them.”

He smiled. It was as if the police station did not exist, no investigations and no red-marked files, no bringing in for questioning, no preliminary investigations, everything that was Lindell’s life. She couldn’t answer.

“Are you okay?”

“Yes, of course, I was just a bit taken aback.”

Ann felt that she was blushing and was suddenly furious. At herself, at him, at the whole situation, in fact.

“I was planning to go tonight, take it easy, but it’s not as much fun to go alone. It’d be more fun if it was you and I.”

“You and me. Not you and I,” Ann said.

He smiled again. I don’t like that smile, she thought.

“You and me,” Morgansson repeated. “How about it?”

Is he hitting on me, she thought in amazement. It was as if a relay had kicked into place, admittedly in a system that was somewhat rusty but that nonetheless-after an initial resistance-started to function; energy pulsed into the cable network inside her and a fear-filled pleasure suffused her chest.

“Maybe,” she said, “but I have a son who I would have to find a sitter for.”

He nodded.

“But that shouldn’t be a problem,” she added.

Morgansson crumpled up the plastic wrap that had surrounded the pastry. He wore a metal band on the ring finger of his right hand.

“I don’t ask my friends for babysitting favors very often, so it should be fine.”

He nodded again.

“His name is Erik.”

“I know,” he said, “that you have a boy, I mean.”

“What were you planning to go see?”

Ann wished he would start talking so she didn’t have to say anything.

“I’ll take a look in the paper,” he said, “and give you a call. Catch you later.”

He got up, picked up his tray, and left. She looked at his powerful body. When he had left the cafeteria, the fury inside her grew. Who did he think he was? He had gone to the trouble of asking her, of course, but he also took her for granted. “Look in the paper.” “Give you a ring.” His casual speech and attitude diminished her. As if it were a given that she would go with him, accept his choice of film, just give her a time, and voila! There she would be, picked up by the most self-confident northerner there ever was.

And anyway, she had a murder investigation to solve. It was typical. The forensic technicians could do their job and go home. In the Violent Crimes Division there were no such opportunities to rest. Should she go to the movies when Petrus Blomgren’s body had just been deposited in the deep freeze a few hours ago?

Then it hit her: how many people had she made an impression on in the past little while? The past year?

She looked down at the table and arranged the crumbs in a long line.

Charles was the first man in a long while to take the initiative. The last one was “the abominable man from Svartbäcken” as she called Erik’s father. He had asked her to dance when she was out once with some female colleagues. He was a good dancer but that was the only bright spot. The night they spent together was not particularly memorable. He had probably forgotten everything, an episode, perhaps one of many. For Ann’s part the whole thing resulted in an unexpected pregnancy.

Since that night they had had no contact. The man probably did not even know he was Erik’s father, and Ann had no particular wish to inform him of this. She knew he lived in Svartbäcken, that he was married and the father of two teenage children and that he was an engineer.

Charles Morgansson. She tried out the name. It was not particularly attractive, a little heavy and a mouthful. People would talk if they saw them together at the movies. Everyone would be surprised. Lindell wasn’t someone you flirted with.