And then there was Berglund, the most experienced of them, with an extended, fine-mesh network in the Uppsala he knew so well. He had a way of talking that got people to listen and then talk themselves, perpetrators as well as crime victims and valuable witnesses. He could dig up some superannuated school janitor who could contribute a few puzzle pieces in a “rowdy” student’s youth, pieces that might give a hint about where the police should search for answers. Vital information could be obtained from a construction worker with a father who, like Berglund’s, had worked at the Ekeby mill, and that solely thanks to the phrasing in his distinctive Uppsala dialect, and with a common circle of acquaintances that was thoroughly thrashed out over a couple of cups of coffee. He did have a weak point and that was the opposite sex; what he so masterfully executed in his contacts with men he never really succeeded in where women were concerned.
Ottosson and Berglund were gone now, both from the force and from earthly life. Sammy thought that had contributed to Lindell quitting as a police officer. She had been dependent on those two father figures, in many people’s opinion.
The Violent Crimes Unit had gotten younger. He himself was one of the veterans, but he didn’t feel any more secure because of that; on the contrary. These were new times, a new language, new codes for how society and the mutual relationships of people could be understood. Berglund would have immediately embarrassed himself, and the fact was that Sammy Nilsson had thought about resigning. But where would he go?
“There was something in his voice that made me scared,” Regina said, interrupting Sammy’s train of thought. “It was serious, maybe someone would die.”
“How old do you think he is?”
“Between twenty-five and thirty-five, no older. It was the way he talked, this was a young person. A desperate young man. Certainly born, in any event raised in Sweden, in Uppsala actually. No dialect, no accent.”
Sammy Nilsson agreed. That was his conclusion too.
“Someone is going to die,” Regina said, and he understood that she would brood a lot about that call. She would receive more, she would get to hear a lot of frightening things, but this was her first truly scary call, one that suggested a future violent crime and a person’s death.
They listened to the short exchange of words together, one time, twice.
“Maybe that Lindell woman will have an idea.”
“I’ll talk with her.”
“Does she still live in town?”
Sammy only smiled in response.
“Can you make me a copy of the call?”
Six
She sniffed the bare skin on her forearm to confirm that she was no longer a police officer. It smelled different. Everything was different. Sammy Nilsson’s call hadn’t changed that, of course, but even so it felt a little strange. Like in the past, a message on the phone, a colleague who peeked in and told her something. Ottosson asking her to come to his office. A new investigation, fresh excitement, worry. She’d loved it. Until the love ended, and she went her way. Now it was there again, the curiosity and along with it the worry. Sammy would come out in the afternoon and have a voice sample with him. He didn’t want to say what it concerned, other than that someone had been looking for her, and only her.
* * *
Outside the window spring was singing; she had also experienced it that way the first time she was here. Then a real estate agent was standing behind her, talking uninterruptedly. She asked him to stop, said that she wanted to observe the view for herself, in silence. The whole landscape was singing. She understood immediately, after a lengthy search, that this was the cottage she had to buy. At first it was a summer cottage, before she moved there for good. Then she’d received a half promise of work, 528 steps, and 22 mailboxes in a due-north direction.
She put a post in the ground, set up her own mailbox with her name in red: Ann Lindell. The moving truck came, the three Estonians loaded her household goods in no time. She lit a fire in the newly inspected and approved fireplace. “This is probably the twentieth fireplace by the same mason,” the chimney sweep said. “Lundin was his name. My name’s Sundin.” It was these kinds of contexts and information she liked and had missed.
The first evening the loneliness struck her with full force, but she knew that she would manage it. Maybe. The clock was ticking toward ten when she opened a bottle of wine, even though she’d promised herself to abstain.
* * *
Sometimes she thought about Edvard, in some periods fairly often. He’d come to visit a few times. “You can spend the night” had come out of her mouth the last time. Then he was in a hurry to leave.
They were both free to do what they wanted. He hesitated, looked lost the way he had fifteen years ago, but departed, under the pretext that he had things to do on Gräsö early the next morning.
The other day she’d sent a message, asked if he might be in the neighborhood. He had replied that he would come on the weekend. “I’ll bring Baltic herring,” he’d added, and she had herself a good laugh. That was typical Edvard, who always had to see to the “use” of a trip, or a visit.
Love was hard, lots of things were hard, but work was a success. The 528 steps were easy to take. When after 300 steps she passed the burned-down school, she was returned for a moment to her old profession, as a police investigator. Like all the villagers, she had wondered about what happened, if it was an accident or arson. At the scene she had met some of her old colleagues, including from Forensics. They were convinced that a crime had been committed, not least because camps and refugee housing had a tendency to catch fire—two out of three fires are set, Olle Wikman maintained—but they could not speak with certainty based on the technical investigation.
They stood there and discussed the case like they used to. Suddenly Wikman started laughing. “Are you on duty again now, Ann?” He was one of the few who called her by her first name. The next day she’d brought him a couple of cheeses. She knew that he would never gossip at work, about what she’d said, what she looked like nowadays. There were colleagues she missed. And now perhaps her closest ally of all was coming for a visit, Sammy Nilsson.
Should she tell him about the birds? Sometimes he could overreact, and actually there was not much to talk about. First a dead bird in the mailbox, and to be on the safe side one more the following day, if she had the idea that the first one had squeezed down into the mailbox on its own and died there. She had photographed the second one, a dove, but it was definitely not a dove of peace. The neck was broken.
There was someone or more than one who did not wish her well. She was a stranger. A cop, admittedly a former one, but someone who asked around, didn’t sidestep old obstructions and considerations.
Matilda at the creamery had warned her about being too inquisitive, but there was actually nothing that linked the dead birds to her interest in arson. Maybe it was kids who wanted to play a joke and chose an outsider for their tasteless prank?
* * *
“Of course I’m curious,” she said.
“Shall we listen to how he sounds?”
They listened together. Three times. “No,” she said every time after the final words “someone may die.”