The Hand that Trembles

SIXTEEN

The label read ERIK AND ANN LINDELL. Next to it was a sticker with the wholesome message Noadvertisements, publicnoticesok.

She had asked the building manager to put up both names. Maybe in order to give the impression that a couple lived in the slightly cramped two-bedroom flat, and for this reason the man – even though he was preschool age – had come first.

The bone-white letters had ended up slightly askew. The last L had a phallic look, pointing up at an angle, or else it was a leg about to march off, out of the sign.

A female neighbour had once asked her if she was from Jönköping. Lindell had explained she was from Eastern Götaland.

‘I was thinking of the scales,’ the neighbour said. ‘You know, the scales.’

Ann did not know what she was talking about, but the woman was a bit peculiar, as Sund – another neighbour – liked to point out. She received an explanation much later. It was in an antique shop, into which she had been tempted by an assortment of glasses in the window. On a sideboard there were some scales, manufactured by Lindell’s in Jönköping.

She flicked the glass in front of the names. The L toppled forward and onto its back. A jumped and ended up somewhat inclined to the left.

‘Why are you doing that?’ Erik asked.

He asked many questions, almost all the time.

‘I don’t know,’ she answered.

He was satisfied with the answer, but took the opportunity to flick the sign himself. The second L followed its friend and fell forward, while the A jumped back up.

Ann chuckled. Encouraged by having made her laugh, he knocked it again. Now the E fell down completely.

‘-rik,’ Erik read.

He could read well even though he had not started school. He knew all his letters and could sound out the most difficult words, so ‘rik’ or ‘rich’ presented no problems.

‘Are we rich?’

Ann shook her head, took out her keys, and unlocked.

‘No,’ she said. ‘But we aren’t poor either.’

She decided she would talk to the property manager. Even if the flat looked a bit messy, the sign on the door didn’t have to.

Erik went into his room. The floor in there was right now covered in small plastic men that he arranged in long rows according to an intricate system that she – despite Erik’s long explanations – could not manage to make head nor tail of.

Ann unpacked the bags from the grocery shop, but it was the foot that occupied her thoughts. It had been sawed off, that much was clear. ‘A big-toothed saw, perhaps a power saw, or possibly a bandsaw,’ the pathologist had written in his report. There were traces of vegetable oil on the foot.

She realised that up to this point she had spent much too much time thinking about whom the foot belonged to and not about the perpetrator. Who saws off a foot, and why? A psychotic killer? Someone who has been wronged?

She fetched the map of Östhammar, its archipelago, and found the bay, Bultudden Point, and the places that Marksson had mentioned. She now saw that the Östhammar police had covered a considerable area in their door-to-door investigation.

Assume approximately one thousand people lived in the area – excepting Östhammar city – as well as summer residents. One of these was crazy enough to take out a big-toothed saw and sever the limbs of a woman with a shoe size of five. She was convinced the body had been cut up in order for the perpetrator to have an easier time getting rid of it. Or else it was a result of the fact that the killer, even in death, wanted to humiliate his victim, a ritualistic completion, as if the murder itself was not enough.

Lindell pushed the grocery items aside, sat down at the kitchen table, and let her gaze sweep over the map. The remarkable thing was that no one who could be a match had been reported missing during this time, now almost two weeks since the foot had been found.

She searched with a finger across the map, tracing the roads curling through the landscape, turning in to farms and groups of holiday houses, stopping at road crossings, taking turns, turning around and going another way; trying to imagine a crazed driver, perhaps desperate and careless – a foot had been misplaced, after all – maybe cold and calculating, pieces of a woman’s body in the trunk. Maybe a red car.

Had the foot been put on the beach deliberately? No, she reasoned, no one was crazy enough to leave such traces after himself. But if there was something really twisted behind the deed, then perhaps the foot should be seen as a kind of message? Would more feet turn up, haphazardly strewn around the area?

‘Mama, I’m hungry.’

Erik had snuck up behind her back without her noticing.

‘Of course,’ she said, putting the map away. ‘I’m just putting dinner on. We’re having lentil stew.’

‘I want sausages and mashed potatoes,’ Erik grumbled.

She had made the stew the night before so all she had to do was heat it up. She stood up and put away the remaining grocery items left on the table, setting the table while the stew simmered on the stove, and prepared a pitcher of lingonberry cordial, Erik’s favourite.

Erik plunged into ‘twenty questions’ while they ate. He had started to take a serious interest in her work. Having a mother who was a police officer afforded a little bit of status at day care. In part it made up for the unfortunate fact that he did not have a father to brag about.

‘If a thief gets nice again, is he let out of prison?’

‘Sure,’ Lindell said, who did not add the fact that most thieves never ended up in prison.

‘Can you tell if a guy is a thief by the way he looks?’

‘No, they can look like anyone.’

‘Johannes says that all thieves have a screwdriver in their pocket.’

‘Maybe some, but not all of them.’

‘It’s for breaking in,’ Erik explained.

If only it were that easy, she thought. That everyone with a screwdriver was a bandit.

‘Have you ever caught a thief?’

‘Once or twice, but most of the time I work on people who have done other dumb stuff they shouldn’t have.’

Erik looked at her.

‘Eat a little salad,’ she said.

‘Murderers,’ he said abruptly. ‘The guys who shoot people.’

‘Eat,’ Lindell said, even though she knew very well he wouldn’t drop the topic.

‘I know you catch murderers,’ he said. ‘That’s what my teacher says.’

‘What teacher?’

Erik heard from her voice that he was out in unchartered waters, skillfully dropped the question, and started on another line of inquiry.

‘If all the nice people had police cars, then that would scare the bad guys,’ he said.

‘Yes, maybe that would be a good idea,’ Ann said, and scraped the last bit of food from the plate. ‘Did you eat any salad?’

Erik sighed and took a piece of cucumber from the bowl.

After dinner, Erik turned on the television, inserted a video, and sat down. Ann had made a cup of coffee and stood in the doorway to the living room. She observed her son, who was engrossed in Monsters, Inc.

He would start school next autumn. He was looking forward to it, often bringing up the exciting subject of starting school. Maybe he was hoping to find the answers to all of his questions there. His mother unfortunately did not know everything.

Where do you get all of your energy and unflagging curiosity, she wondered. Maybe your father was a little rascal too. ‘The Engineer,’ as Ann secretly referred to Erik’s father. She had no name and barely any memory of how he looked. Erik was the result of a couple too many glasses of wine, a desire for skin and a sweaty night.

Ann Lindell had been a shy and quiet child. She only came to life in her teens, as far as that was possible in a place like Ödeshög.

She returned to the kitchen, worried that she did not know what she should do with Östhammar. If she became engaged in it, the trips back and forth would pose a complication. Not that Erik would suffer, she would drop him off and pick him up at day care the same time as she had been doing all autumn.

But long drives were tiring, as was a murder – as she and everyone else assumed – investigation. It devoured energy, she had noticed that after only one day. She could say no, she knew Ottosson would give in. But how fair was it to dump the foot on someone else? Haver had his hands full, on the job and at home. Sammy Nilsson was overladen with work and the bandy season was in full swing. He trained kids and youths two nights a week. Fredriksson had grown too tired. Lindell could not imagine him driving back and forth to the coast, and he would not get along so well with Marksson. They would not function well together. Berglund was laid up for a while and Beatrice, no, that wouldn’t work.

She got out the pad of paper that she kept on her bedside table, flipped to a clean sheet, and started to write down questions.