The Hand that Trembles

THIRTY-FOUR

One of the advantages of police work, Ann Lindell thought, was that no environment was inconceivable. For the first time in her life she stood leaning over a snowblower.

‘You have to prepare yourself,’ she heard a voice say, and turned.

‘How does it work, anyway? No, forget it. What I really want is to discuss chainsaws. I see that you carry both Stihl and Jonsered.’

The young salesman nodded. I started wrong, Lindell thought, as she saw his watchful, possibly defensive stance.

‘I’m from the police,’ she continued, ‘and I am certain that you can help me. I think you can tell me about almost anything in this shop.’

She smiled and was rewarded with a self-conscious grin.

‘What is your name?’

‘Daniel Andersson.’

‘Daniel, I would like you to look at a photograph,’ she said, and took a folder out of her bag.

She held up the photograph. The picture of Tobias Frisk was one year old, enlarged from a group photo taken at a party in Östhammar. It was Frisk’s employer who had produced it. Conny Ahlén had claimed it was very like Frisk.

‘No, it’s no one I know. But maybe Martin would, he has worked here a little longer.’

They walked inside the counter and arrived almost immediately at a small office. A middle-aged man was sitting at a desk, leant over a folder.

Lindell presented herself and her reason for being there. He took the photo without a word and examined it for a couple of seconds.

‘He’s one of our customers,’ he said, and then returned the picture.

‘Are you sure?’

Daniel grinned again.

‘Okay,’ Lindell said, and smiled. ‘You are sure. You’re often sure, right?’

Martin closed his folder, rubbed his hand over his face, and looked at Lindell.

‘I’ve sold chainsaws and all manner of other things to half of Uppsala’s inhabitants. I remember the faces of eighty per cent of them.’

‘What about the other twenty per cent?’

‘They only come one time, so I don’t need to remember them.’

‘That’s a good ratio: eight of ten return.’ He nodded.

‘Good ratio,’ he said. ‘Not that it helps.’

‘Do you know what his name is?’

‘No, we’re not the KGB, but I think he is from Roslagen.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘His dialect.’

‘He bought his Stihl here.’

‘I see… if you say so. We carry Stihl, so that sounds plausible.’

‘Why would a person change the blade? Aren’t they expensive?’

‘The blade can be damaged. Amateurs aren’t careful. They get the saw caught and bang it and bend it so it ends up crooked.’

‘Was he an amateur?’

‘What’s happened? You said “was”.’

Lindell tucked the folder into her bag. ‘That’s true, he doesn’t use his saw anymore. But was he an amateur?’

‘I don’t know,’ Martin said. ‘What happened?’

‘An accident,’ Lindell said. ‘Thanks for your help.’

‘What help?’

Yes, what help, Lindell thought when she was standing outside the shop. The third salesman, Thomas, had a faint recollection of Tobias Frisk, but could not recall if he had seen him in the shop recently.

The visit to Såma had been a shot in the dark, and was probably a waste of time. They had the saw, and that was the most important thing. Where it had been purchased was of less significance. It would have been reassuring to establish that Tobias Frisk had bought a new blade and chain during the autumn. On the other hand there were probably a number of other places where he would have been able to pick up replacement parts.

Lindell hated the very idea that a chainsaw had been used to butcher a young woman. Through the shop window, she saw the rows of chainsaws hanging on the wall. Saws were tools and not to be used as weapons other than in horror films, and definitely not by a bakery employee in the outer coastal area.

‘Not that it helps for shit,’ she muttered, and hunted around until she found Conny Ahlén’s number.

The bakery owner only picked up on the fifth signal. He sounded stressed, so Lindell skipped over the polite phrases.

‘Hi! Lindell, Uppsala police, a quick question. What was Tobias Frisk doing last autumn, in August and September?’

‘Working, of course.’

‘Was there any change in his routine, no new employee who started at the bakery, or anything else that you can remember? Was his mood different during this period?’

Conny Ahlén was silent for a couple of seconds. Music and clattering sounds could be heard in the background.

‘Now that you bring it up,’ he said finally. ‘He went to Norrland for a bit of fishing. He used to go up for a week or so every year.’

‘When was that?’

‘I can’t really remember, but I can check if I go into the office.’

Lindell heard Ahlén’s steps and he talked to someone else. She caught the word ‘dinner rolls.’ When he returned to the receiver he was out of breath.

‘It is amazing. Sometimes everything gets messed up.’

‘I know how it is,’ Lindell said. ‘But I won’t keep you long.’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ Ahlén assured her. ‘Now let’s see… That was at the end of August 2004. He was away from work for eight days and returned at the beginning of September.’

‘How was he then?’

‘He was always pleased after his fishing trips.’

‘Do you know where in Norrland?’

‘If there’s a place called Sorsele then he was there somewhere. I think he mentioned something like that, but it may have been the year before. The fact is, I didn’t listen so closely to his fishing stories.’

‘He didn’t tell you anything else, that he had met anyone or experienced anything unusual?’

‘No, not that I remember, but he was pleased, as I said.’

Lindell was about to ask if Frisk’s scent had changed after his fishing trip but she changed her mind, thanked him for the information, and brought the conversation to a close.

Back at work she went straight to her office and turned on the computer. She had no idea where Sorsele was but she thought the name sounded good somehow. The fact was that this fishing trip was the only thing she had encountered so far that made Tobias Frisk into a human being. His home and for all appearances non-existent social life gave no clues and made him appear strangely anonymous.

But now she had something to go on: Frisk’s interest in fishing, coupled with a trip that had changed him, if Lisen Morell’s judgment and sense of smell were anything to go on.

After fifteen minutes’ worth of surfing on the Net she had located Sorsele on the map and familiarised herself with rivers and fishing camps in the area, and even turned up the name of a fishing consultant.

She called Torsten Stenberg and explained what she was after.

‘I see,’ the consultant replied hesitantly, ‘there are many who come to Sorsele to fish. And it is over a year ago. Was it trout or something else?’

‘I don’t know,’ Lindell replied. ‘I only know he went up to fish.’

‘Is he a fly fisherman?’

Lindell didn’t have an answer.

‘If it was trout or charr then it had to be before the middle of September.’

‘Why?’

‘Because the season ends,’ Torsten Stenberg said. ‘But it was probably grayling.’ He sounded surer now, as if simply the names of the various species of fish had given him a shot in the arm, or as if Lindell’s lack of fishing knowledge made him chatty.

‘It’s a nice fish,’ he continued, ‘but it needs immediate consumption because it loses its taste almost immediately. Do you know it tastes a little of thyme?’

He told her about the various offerings that a visiting fisherman had to choose between. Lindell made a written note of the Laisa and the Vindel rivers, as well as a number of different options for guest accommodations. There were fishing campsites, hotels, private cottages, and youth hostels. She had her hands full making the notes as he spoke and realised that it would probably take a while to establish where Tobias Frisk had stayed.

‘Maybe at the campsite,’ Stenberg said calmly. ‘I would call them first. Who did you say you worked for?’

‘I’m with the police,’ Lindell said, astonished.

‘I got that, but what kind? You’re probably not solving bicycle thefts.’

‘I work at the unit for violent crimes.’

‘That’s what I thought, that it would be something big. What has he done, your fisherman?’

‘We don’t know,’ Lindell said, and could not repress a deep sigh. ‘We are only the beginning of the investigation. I think I’ll come up to you for a while and fish. It sounds relaxing.’

Stenberg chuckled. ‘You should be happy that you…’

He stopped himself and Lindell waited a few seconds for a continuation.

‘I mean about the work,’ he said. ‘It’s worse up here. I would welcome a little stress sometimes. And we need the police. Now there are only two of them and soon they’ll be down to one.’

‘In Sorsele?’

‘Yes. Do you know how large the county is? At least two hundred kilometres long and fifty or sixty kilometres wide. And we have two policemen, Hallin and Lindgren, and neither of them is young anymore. It’s probably fifty years since we had a murder and soon there will be no one around to kill. But go on and call the campsite. And if you want to fish, all you have to do is come on up.’

Lindell ended up sitting for a while after the phone call. She studied her scrawls in the notepad and thought about what the fishing consultant had said. She tried to imagine him, a telephone voice, an unfamiliar person in the same country, speaking the same language – even if he did so with another dialect. Nonetheless Sorsele seemed foreign. She tried out the word ‘charr’ and smiled to herself. The unfamiliar word echoed in the room. She said it again, louder this time. It sounded like a promise.

He had told her about his county, where the police had seventy kilometres to the nearest colleague – was that Arjeplog? – and two hundred and sixty kilometres to backup, the day such was needed. I will never again complain about distance, she thought. Östhammar and Bultudden are right around the corner.

The conversation with Torsten Stenberg had affected her mood in two ways. The feeling that there was another life, in a foreign landscape, with a different sound, but still so recognisable and near. If she stretched out her hand, her life with charr would be there.

‘Damn Bultudden,’ she mumbled, but it was the bay at Gräsö she saw before her.

At the same time this initial contact with Sorsele meant a small break. Something that was immediately confirmed with her next call. Sorsele Campsite was first on the list of likely accommodations for a visiting sport fisherman. Ten or so signals rang out. Lindell was about to hang up when someone picked up.

Lindell said what she was looking for.

‘That’s easy enough to take care of,’ said the man who had answered the phone, and introduced himself as Gösta Ohlman. ‘I’ll look him up in the book. What was it you said he was called?’

‘I didn’t mention it yet, but the name is Tobias Frisk.’

‘Has he gone missing?’

‘Not really,’ Lindell said. ‘I just wanted to check if he-’

‘Fishermen are good people,’ Ohlman said.

Lindell heard the receiver put down and thereafter the sound of footsteps. Several voices in the background, perhaps a radio. How did a campsite in Västerbotten in northern Sweden look at the end of December? She had never been so far north.

‘They don’t cause any trouble.’

His voice reappeared quite unexpectedly in her ear and it took a second for her to realise that he was continuing his argumentation about fishermen.

‘He was definitely here,’ Gösta Ohlman went on. ‘He arrived at the end of August and left a week later. I think I remember him. He’s from the coast, isn’t he?’

‘Yes, from Roslagen. Why do you remember him?’

‘He caught a grayling that was almost three kilos.’

‘And is that a lot?’

‘I should think so.’

‘Do you remember anything else?’

The silence at the other end spoke vividly and Lindell could almost see how Ohlman hesitated.

‘You don’t have to feel that you…’

‘He met a girl up here,’ he said abruptly. ‘We weren’t too excited about that.’

‘A girl from Sorsele?’

‘Not exactly,’ he said. ‘Quite the opposite, in fact.’