The Cruel Stars of the Night - Kjell Eriksson [104]
“Calm down,” she spat.
“I’m going to bed,” he said and put the beer down on the counter, changed his mind and shoved it down into the garbage pail under the sink instead, struck by the thought that the beer bottle could become a weapon.
He walked toward the bedroom and awaited a physical or verbal attack from Jessica, but she had sunk down onto a chair and was staring unseeing at the new tile above the stove.
It was three o’clock, the night leading to Thursday, the twenty-third of October.
Thirty-three
It had been several years since Ann Lindell had woken up with a man by her side. The last time was Edvard. Erik’s father had left her in the middle of the night and gone off home to his wife and kids, leaving behind a used pillowcase and a pregnant woman.
If I get pregnant this time it will be a biological miracle, Ann thought and looked at the sleeping Charles. “Challe” he had called himself, and why not?
He was sleeping on his back. His chest was covered with curly hair. She didn’t like hairy men, especially if the back looked like a shag carpet.
They had been lying close together. He had pressed up next to her but had not tried anything. Ann couldn’t decide if it was because she had so explicity declared her position or if he didn’t want to. She finally decided he simply wasn’t horny. It bothered her a little because she had, when the evening began, had a thought in the back of her head that they might hook up. But now she was grateful that there had been nothing more involved than a hug.
Charles had fallen asleep after half an hour. She had not fallen asleep until around three. It was now seven o’clock and she should be more tired. Erik would wake up any second.
“Challe, it’s time.”
So damn ordinary, she thought and couldn’t help smiling at his bewildered expression when he opened his eyes.
“It’s probably best if you leave before Erik wakes up.”
After he had left Ann got in the shower. She had the door open a crack but hoped it would be a while before Erik came shuffling in.
As the water streamed over her body Ann felt her suppressed desire return. She wasn’t sure if she and Charles were going to share a bed again, or if she even wanted to, but the thought that it was actually possible made life feel brighter than in a very long time.
She smiled as she soaped up and thought about what Görel was going to say. That was the best thing: surprising Görel. It felt like restitution.
Thirty-four
A rough-legged buzzard sailed over the fields at the Krusenberg farm. The ease of its flight made Allan Fredriksson smile joyfully to himself. He leaned forward, searching the sky through the windshield. For a few moments the buzzard couldn’t be seen but then it returned and swooped very close to one of the ash trees at the edge of the road. It was almost the death of him.
As the car cut down into the ditch he was thinking about smews. Inge-mar Andersson, the ornithologist from Buckarby, the most inbred village in Uppland, as he himself put it, had called the night before. He had spotted a couple of hundred resting smews at Lake Tämnaren and more were expected. Perhaps the record from 1978 would be broken?
The car dashed into the ash tree, made a quarter turn, flipped, and spun around on the newly plowed field.
Fredriksson flew forward in the seat belt, put his hands in front of his face, and the only thing he could later recall was the sound of metal buckling.
In the ambulance he said a few words that the emergency technician thought were “common barrow.”
“That’s a hybrid,” Fredriksson whispered, half unconscious.
In his coat pocket there was something that would come to alter the investigation of the three murders. That morning he had dropped by Jan-Elis Andersson’s house in Alsike and he was on his way back to Uppsala when the rough-legged buzzard turned up and played this trick on him.
Now, he had seen quite a few buzzards in connection with the spring and fall migrations as well as the occasional wintering bird, the last one in a field outside Åkerby Church