The Cruel Stars of the Night - Kjell Eriksson [111]
“What did he say?”
“ ‘The coat,’ I thought,” Haver said. “Did you say ‘coat,’ Allan?”
Fredriksson nodded very slightly. He was as white as a sheet and Lindell was afraid he was about to throw up.
“I’ll check with the staff,” she said and left the room.
They found Frediksson’s coat in a plastic bag in a nearby room. It had been cut to pieces and stained and Lindell shivered when she realized the dark spots were blood. She put it back in the bag and returned to the room.
Fredriksson appeared to have sunk back into his dormant state.
“Here it is,” Lindell said and pulled out the coat.
“Check the pockets,” Ottosson said.
“You’ll have to do that,” Lindell said.
In the left pocket Ottosson found an evidence bag containing a chess piece. A white pawn.
All three officers stared at the sleeping Fredriksson.
“Chess,” Lindell said stupidly.
“The question is where he found it,” Haver said.
Again they looked at their colleague.
“Check if he has the keys to Alsike on him,” Lindell said.
Ottosson shook the coat. There was a rattling sound.
At that moment a nurse entered the room. Her name was Beatrice and Lindell took this as a good sign.
“Is he going to make it?” Ottosson asked.
“Is he going to make it? What did you think, that he was dying?”
Ottosson became noticeably embarrassed.
“Allan is a good friend,” he said. “I was just worried.”
“He has broken his arm, injured his neck and back, and banged his head pretty hard but he’ll be watching birds again in a few weeks.”
The three police officers looked inquisitively at her.
“He’s been raving about smews and buzzards the whole time.”
“And chess?”
“No, just birds, birds, birds.”
She adjusted the IV tube that was connected to Fredriksson’s arm, patted his cheek, and swept out as swiftly as she had entered.
“Ola, you stay here and when he wakes up you’ll ask him how and why.”
“Ask him what?” Haver said with an uncomprehending look.
Ottosson stared at him.
“I was just joking,” Haver said and laughed.
He liked the idea of sitting at his colleague’s side when he regained consciousness.
Ottosson’s eyes were moist. Lindell knew that it was in response to the nurse’s friendly chatter and care of her patient. Her boss had a soft spot for TLC.
Ottosson and Lindell went separate ways in the hospital parking lot. Ottosson had to meet the district attorney and Lindell answered evasively when Ottosson asked what she would do.
She drove through the hospital area, came out onto Dag Ham-marskjöld’s Way and turned onto the road to Kåbo. She couldn’t get Laura Hindersten out of her thoughts. There was really nothing that indicated that this strange woman had anything to do with the three murders but this morning she had studied a self-drawn map where Jumkil, Alsike, and Skuttunge were marked with crosses. Between these points she drew straight lines and they intersected in Kåbo. Lindell did not put much stock in coincidences, and when the September disappearance of a seventy-year-old man was followed in October by the murders of three men around the same age, she did not believe it to be a coincidence.
Certainly, Ulrik Hindersten could have disappeared from natural causes, gotten lost, or simply run away of his free will, but in spite of intense searching he remained swallowed up by the earth. The City Forest was not that big. He would have been found, especially since police dogs had been used. The police had received help both from the military and the Uppsala Kennel Club. As far as Lindell could tell every square centimeter had been searched.
That he had left of his own free will was more implausible. His passport was still in the house, no personal effects were missing, and no withdrawals or purchases had been made with his bank cards since the disappearance.
Lindell played with the idea that Ulrik Hindersten was the perpetrator and that perhaps his daughter either sensed it or was even party to it.
Her behavior was odd, to say the least. To burn up all his belongings,