Stone Coffin Part 21

Back in her office, Lindell forced herself to work. She called the prosecutor and told him what they had decided. As the pre-investigative lead, he was the one who formally made the decisions, but it was usually never a problem. Their collaboration was smooth and painless.

He had a wise gaze and a pleasant voice. The prosecutor chose his words with a great deal of deliberation, seemingly weighing every possible option before he carefully made his case. Sometimes Lindell would get irritated by his slowness, but she always appreciated his thoughtfulness and good judgment.

They ended the conversation in agreement. Lindell sat down at her desk and pulled out her notepad, which she had filled more than halfway with various jottings and doodles about MedForsk and the Cederen family. She went through it and studied the large question marks that she always wrote in after the questions she thought to be most significant.

The problem with the case was that all the original question marks remained and now new ones had been added. She put down the notepad. There was nothing new to be learned from it. Instead she took out the reports of yesterday's interrogations with the seven young people.

She thought she could recognize the various personalities behind the answers. Some were clearly frightened by the situation. Others were more nonchalant and confident. You could never be sure what the various att.i.tudes stood to hide. Lindell tried to see something behind the words but found nothing. All of them had reasonable alibis. Beatrice, Wende, and a couple of others were busy checking the rest of the information that had been provided. It would surprise her if something of interest turned up.

She tried to imagine what it would be like to be let go after having been apprehended and held for one night. They had to feel triumphant, regardless of whether they had been cool or anxious in the sessions. Probably they would consider their having been interrogated and locked up in a cell as a feather in their cap.

The phone rang and interrupted her train of thought. Edvard, she thought, and the lump in her stomach that she had battled so successfully that morning returned.

"It's me again," said a woman's voice.

Lindell immediately reached for her notepad. "It's good that you called. I've been thinking about what you said."

"Do you believe me?"

"I have very little to go on. You have to tell me more."

There was a long silence. Lindell could hear the woman breathe. She thought she heard a faint roar in the background. Perhaps of traffic or from a dishwasher.

"Sven-Erik was my friend. I knew him very well, and I know that he wasn't capable of killing anyone."

"What makes you so sure?"

"His entire nature. Sven-Erik was a very caring person."

The woman's voice changed. "He didn't take his own life. I know that."

"How do you know?"

Lindell felt a growing excitement. She drew a few strong lines on the notepad.

"Sven-Erik hated gin. He never drank it."

"What do you mean?"

"He never drank gin," the woman repeated, as if it explained everything.

Then Lindell remembered the almost empty bottle that they had recovered from the car. Cederen had had a high blood alcohol content and must have been extremely intoxicated when he died.

"How do you know what kind of alcohol was found in the car?"

"That doesn't matter."

"Why did he never drink gin?"

"He had drunk it in his youth, when he was fifteen or sixteen years old, his first real binge, and it made him very sick. I think he was also beaten by his father."

Lindell thought about Cederen's father, so despondent and helpless. Had he beaten his son?

"After that, he never tasted another drop."

Lindell felt in her gut that the information was true.

"I like gin and tonics but could never drink them when Sven-Erik was with me. He even hated the smell."

"How did you know that we found a bottle of gin?" Lindell repeated.

"I know. That's the main thing."

"So what do you think happened?"

"He was forced to drink it. If he had wanted to get drunk, he would have chosen a malt whisky."

The woman now sounded almost irritated with Lindell's hesitation.

"Ask anyone who knew Sven-Erik."

"Maybe he chose gin in order to punish himself?"

The woman ignored Lindell's question as if it were not even worthy of consideration. "I knew him and you didn't."

"We need to meet," Lindell said. "Just you and me," she added quickly. "I need your memories."

A new silence. The breathing grew more heavy. Lindell searched for the right words. The woman hung up.

With the help of seven colleagues, Haver worked his way through the part of Rasbo that they had decided to search. Rasbo was not known for much. Haver thought he remembered that Strindberg had written about this parish and used it to express his venom. The church lay some distance from the highway and Haver had never liked it. There he and Strindberg were in agreement. It shone fat and white and was of a more modern style, perhaps 1800 or so. Haver preferred the low gray stone churches from the Middle Ages that almost blended into the landscape. They seemed less pretentious.

A two-kilometer radius from the clearing where they had found Cederen meant a number of gravel roads and perhaps a couple of hundred houses-everything from farmhouses to modern construction and summer cottages.

Frode Nilsson, on loan from Surveillance, was originally from Rasbo and entertained Haver with anecdotes and more or less true stories. Haver glanced over at him. He was driving jerkily, braking often, accelerating quickly only to have to brake again. Haver wished his colleague would talk less and drive better. But at least he was visibly energized by his childhood memories. In contrast to Strindberg, he liked Rasbo. And he should be a better judge, Haver thought.

They had only just come out onto Jallarkan right outside of town when Nilsson launched into his accounts of Rasbo. He spoke warmly of berry patches and mushroom picking.

"But the church is ugly," Haver said.

Frode Nilsson braked abruptly and violently behind a garbage truck from Ragn-Sells.

"Why doesn't it pull to the side?" he exclaimed and swerved to the left to see if there was oncoming traffic.

"The speed limit is seventy," Haver said.

"Sure, the church may not be a winner, but there's so much else."

"You should become an amba.s.sador for Rasbo."

"I'm a member of the local preservation society," Nilsson said and overtook the truck in a risky maneuver. "We put out publications from time to time. Glimpses of Rasbo."

Haver nodded. It was getting to be a bit too much Rasbo talk.

"Frotuna is kaput. Have you heard? The count declared bankruptcy. He deserved it. He was a pretty dim bulb."

Nilsson was quiet for a while after this and also drove more calmly.

"My dad worked there for a couple of years."

He paused again.

"There were some modern versions of indentured farmhands out there on the count's estate. Related to the royal family, apparently. Such trash."

The bitterness in Nilsson's voice bothered Haver in some way. Perhaps it reminded him too much of his father-in-law, the old shoemaker. He tried to get Nilsson to drop the count by asking him about mushroom picking.

We should all have the kind of local knowledge that Frode has, he thought as they pa.s.sed Vallby and the ICA grocery store, where his greatest hope-the young clerk-worked. He stared in through the window in order to catch a glimpse of her.

The officers were traveling two by two in four cars. Back at the station they had divided the district between them. Haver and Nilsson's area lay to the north, and they had started at the four-way intersection in Kallesta.

Haver gazed out at the landscape he bore no relation to. He was extremely urban, a city boy four generations back, and had an awkward relations.h.i.+p with forests, meadows, and fields. While he did make a mushroom-picking trip every fall, this was more in order to please his wife.

Nilsson unfolded the map and together they decided the best course. Haver read out the names of the villages and farmsteads. He was convinced that Cederen's mistress was out here somewhere. At one of these black dots on the map, there was a grieving woman waiting for a visit. For she most certainly wanted to be found. She wanted to talk, to vindicate Sven-Erik.

Nilsson drove the car to the first farm. Haver was going to check off the places and keep notes. First they saw a small cottage. There was a Hoganas pot filled with flowers on the front step; a peaceful silence enveloped the place.

"This was an old soldier's cottage," Nilsson said.

He walked gingerly across the yard, sizing up the exterior walls as if he were an interested buyer.

"Some ten or more people must have lived here back then. And it was a one-room cottage."

Haver peered in through one of the windows. A newspaper lay open on a table. A cup of coffee.

"Let's go," he said, but Nilsson had already disappeared.

Haver walked toward the car and glanced back, but his colleague remained out of sight. Haver drummed his fingers against the roof of the car. They were not out on a preservationist cataloging trip. Many more houses and cottages awaited them.

"I think the last soldier's name was Sandberg," Nilsson said when he returned after a couple of minutes.

"When was that?"

"Maybe a hundred years ago. Then the cycling society took it over it. That was in the fifties."

"You are like a walking encyclopedia," Haver said.

"A beautiful place," said Nilsson, with a final glance back.

They drove along the roads, stopping to knock on doors and greet people, explaining their errand: Had anyone seen anything that might be connected with the suicide in the clearing? This was their official mission.

There was a great deal of chatter. Nilsson asked about everything and shared his knowledge. Sometimes they encountered people who had known his father. He established an instant rapport with those they encountered. The people they visited were clearly cheered up.

It seemed to Haver that Nilsson's voice changed. He had a different dialect when he conversed with the people of Rasbo. This is how it ought to be, he thought. We should have a person from each district, someone who speaks the language. Then we could talk about neighborhood policing. He became less and less irritated.

They covered fourteen houses in one hour. At nine of them, they were greeted at the front door. They could eliminate all of these houses, Haver noted. Through their conversations they were also able to eliminate the other five. None of the owners matched what they were looking for. Retired couples occupied three of the five, and the other two were middle-aged.

Haver started to lose hope. Finding Cederen's woman had been his thing. He was the one who had found his way to the ICA store in Vallby from the gas receipts. He was the one who had through the clerk been told that the woman most likely lived somewhere along the sthammar road.

He called the other three cars. No one had found anything. Fridman thought that he had caught a masked odor at one of the places and was convinced that they engaged in home brewing. Drop it, Haver told him, to which Fridman grunted.

The fifteenth house was a built-out cottage. It lay high up, pleasingly surrounded by old pastures. A small stream ran parallel to the road and they drove across a small stone bridge before they arrived at the house. A blue Opel, perhaps ten years old, was parked outside what looked to Haver to be the woodshed.

As they pulled into the yard, it started to rain. They caught sight of a figure, or rather, a movement, behind a bush. Haver nodded in that direction.

"This must be Sodergren's old place," Nilsson said. "But it's been redone."

The woman, who must have heard their car, was standing with her back to them. She carried a green basket on her hip. Haver coughed and she turned around. Haver knew immediately that they were in the right place. She had been expecting them.

"h.e.l.lo, I'm Ola Haver with the Uppsala police. We're in the area because of the unfortunate event in the woods over there," he said and pointed vaguely. "You may have heard about it."

The woman put down her basket and rubbed her hands against her pants. She was blonde, about thirty-five. She nodded but looked very reserved if not completely dismissive.

"You've been weeding," Nilsson observed and looked around.

"You may have seen something?"

"What do you mean?" Her voice was low and revealed that she came from somewhere in southern Sweden.

"Something unusual."

"I heard he killed himself."

"That's right," Nilsson said, "but we don't really understand why. You've probably read about it in the papers. And we don't like unanswered questions."

His tone was friendly, and when he kneeled next to a bed of sprouting plants, Haver was afraid that he would start to talk about gardening again.

"Maybe he didn't take his own life," Nilsson said and looked up from the radishes.

She did not change her expression, and for a moment she stared out over the meadow as if she had heard something.

"I don't know anything," she said curtly, in a definitive way that would have put a stop to most conversations.