With his clumsy fingers he sent a red heart instead of a smiley. That could perhaps be misconstrued. But what the hell…there had been inflation there too, he thought. These days an emoji heart didn’t mean anything, did it? He went to shower and shave, and put on jeans and a summer shirt.
There was a clear blue sky and brilliant sunshine, and he took the stone steps down to Hornsgatan, swung out into Mariatorget and looked around. He was surprised to see so few signs of the previous evening’s festivities. Not even a cigarette butt on the gravel paths. The trash cans had been emptied and over to the left, outside the Rival Hotel, a young girl in an orange vest was picking litter off the grass with some elongated tongs. He passed her and then the statue in the middle of the square.
It was a statue he walked past more often than any other in town. Yet he could not have said what it represented, as with so many things in front of our noses. If anyone had asked him, he would probably have guessed at St. George and the Dragon. But it was Thor slaying the sea serpent Jörmungandr. During all these years he had never even read the inscription, and this time too he looked past the statue at a young father pushing his son on a swing in the playground, and at the benches and the grass on which people were sitting with their faces turned to the sun. It looked like any Sunday morning. And yet he sensed that there was something missing. It must be his memory playing tricks, he thought, and he had already set off again, turning into St. Paulsgatan, when it dawned on him.
What was missing was a figure he had not seen for a while now, but who used to sit on a piece of cardboard by the statue, motionless, like a meditating monk. A man with some fingers no more than stumps, with a weather-beaten, ancient face and a bulky, blue down jacket. For a while he had been a part of the scenery of Blomkvist’s daily life, although, as so often when his work was intense, only by way of a backdrop.
He had been too wrapped up in himself to really see. But the poor devil had been sitting there all the time, something that he was not even conscious of, and only now that he was gone was he more visible, oddly. Now Blomkvist had no difficulty in conjuring up a number of details about him: the dark patches on his cheeks, the cracked lips and a dignity about his demeanour, in contrast to the suffering that was manifest in his body. And even when the medical examiner had been asking him about the man who had died, he had not made the connection.
How could he have so completely blocked him out? Somehow, he knew the answer.
In the past, a presence like his in the street would have been painfully obvious. But nowadays you could hardly walk more than fifty yards without someone trying to touch you for a few kronor. There were women and men begging everywhere on pavements, outside shops, at recycling centres and on the steps leading down into the tunnelbana. A whole new broken Stockholm had emerged, and in no time at all everyone had got used to it. That was the sad truth.
The number of beggars had grown at around the same time that Stockholmers had stopped carrying cash, and just like everybody else he had learned to look away. Often he did not even feel guilty, and he was overcome by melancholy, not necessarily because of the man or even the plight of beggars in general; it was perhaps rather the transience of time, and how life changes and we barely notice it.
A truck was parked outside Kaffebar, in such a tight spot that he wondered how it would ever be able to get out. As usual he knew far too many people in the café. He was in no mood for chatting, so he gave them only the most perfunctory of greetings before ordering a double espresso and a chanterelle toast, and he sat down at a window table facing St. Paulsgatan and let his thoughts carry him away. A moment later he felt a hand on his back. It was Sofie, who smiled at him cautiously. She ordered tea with milk and a bottle of Perrier, and then held out her mobile with the red heart.
“Flirting? Or just staff motivation?”
“Clumsy fingers,” he said.
“Wrong answer.”
“In that case, good HR instructions from Erika.”
“Still wrong, but better.”
“How’s the family?” he said.
“The mother thinks that the summer holidays have been way too long. You have to keep those kids entertained the whole time, the little hooligans.”
“How long have you been living here now?”
“Almost five months, and you?”
“Oh, a hundred years.”
She laughed.
“I sort of mean it,” he said. “When you’ve lived here as long as I have, you end up not seeing anything anymore. You walk around in a kind of daze.”
“You do?”
“I do, at least. But when you’re new to the area your eyes are probably wide open.”
“Maybe.”
“Do you remember a beggar sitting in a big quilted jacket in Mariatorget? He had dark patches on his face and was missing most of the fingers on one hand.”
She gave a sad smile.
“Oh yes, very well.”
“Why do you put it like that?”
“Because he wasn’t easy to forget.”
“Well, I forgot him.”
Sofie looked at him in surprise.
“How do you mean?”
“I must have seen him at least ten times, yet I never really registered it. Only now that he’s dead does he seem alive to me.”
“He’s dead?”
“The medical examiner called me yesterday.”
“Why you, of all people?”
“Because my mobile number was in the man’s pocket and she was probably hoping I could help identify him.”
“But you couldn’t?”
“Not at all.”
“He probably thought he had some story for you.”
“Presumably.”
Sofie finished her tea and they sat quietly for a little while.
“He accosted Catrin Lindås a week ago,” she said eventually.
“He did?”
“He went berserk when he caught sight of her. I saw it from some way off, on Swedenborgsgatan.”
“What did he want from her?”
“He’d probably seen her on TV.”
Catrin Lindås did appear on television every now and then. She was a leading writer and columnist, a conservative who often took part in debates about law and order, or on school discipline and teaching standards. She was good-looking in an elegant sort of way. She wore beautifully tailored suits and silk pussy-bow blouses, and never had a hair out of place. Blomkvist thought of her as serious and unimaginative. She had been critical of him in Svenska Dagbladet.