The Cruel Stars of the Night - Kjell Eriksson [112]
Lindell had to get an answer to these questions before she could let go of Laura Hindersten.
She turned onto the street and kept her fingers crossed that Laura would be home. The driveway was full of garbage bags but there was no car.
She parked on the street and got out. A woman peeked out of the window of the neighbor’s house but quickly drew back. Lindell got the impression that she was fearful, maybe a cleaning lady working without a permit. There were rumors about a cleaning service that employed women without work permits from Poland and the Baltic states, who earned thirty-five kronor an hour. Rosén had written a memo after an investigation into the matter but nothing had been done. This female slave trade had a low priority. The clients moreover were well-adjusted Swedes in Sunnersta, Kåbo, and Vårdsätra.
Lindell walked up the stairs and rang the bell. The signal echoed inside the house but no one opened.
A strange feeling of foreboding came over her. It reminded her of an event several years ago when she visited a house in order to search for a hidden refugee. That time it had been just as forbiddingly quiet but in the end the door had been opened.
Lindell walked down the stairs and out into the garden. The place where Laura had burned the books was now a black gash surrounded by flattened grass. A few pages from a book had been blown into a bush. Lindell picked up a singed page and read a few lines. It was a poem, that much she could tell, and she guessed that the language was Italian.
She let go of the paper and it flew away between the bushes, fluttering nervously, lifting and landing in the fork of a tree about a meter above the ground. Lindell followed its flight and thought she recognized the tree. She didn’t know much about plants but it was not your everyday tree, she could see that. The striped, arrow-straight trunk with the branches at sharp angles gave it an almost aristocratic appearance.
She walked closer and stroked the bark. Something told her she had seen a similar tree lately. Fredriksson should have been here, she thought, smiling.
She looked around, pulled on the ladder in the hopes that Laura would turn up. The garden really was run-down but it had a kind of charm that appealed to Lindell. Its wildness, the small rooms that were created in the midst of the overgrown vegetation, and the dark tunnels that led to dead ends reminded her of an unexplored jungle. At any moment you could disturb a strange animal who, as quickly as it had appeared, would disappear again into the wilderness. From the low-hanging tree branches, coldblooded venomous snakes could unexpectedly attack.
Lindell forced her way through a couple of bushes. A cat came rushing past as if shot from a cannon and made her scream with fright. She shivered. The charm was completely lost and she tried to find her way back to the house. A twig was stuck in her hair, her shoes were damp, and she was cold.
Heavy clouds made their way across the sky and suddenly a strong wind blew through the trees, leaving the garden mysterious and gloomy.
Ann Lindell walked back out onto the street. A red Nissan Micra stopped in front of the neighbor’s house and the woman she had spotted in the window stepped through the door, hurried down the stairs, and got into the car. She had a large sports bag in her hand.
Lindell memorized the license plate, walked back to her car, and called to find out who owned the Micra. It belonged to a bus driver with a Polish-sounding name.
Ann Lindell drove down Norbyvägen toward the castle and then took a right. Her thought was to drive to Alsike. She had taken the keys out of Fredriksson’s bloody coat. That he had found a chess piece there didn’t mean anything. Many people had chess sets in their homes. She seemed to recall they even had one in her childhood home in Ödeshög but she couldn’t remember anyone who played chess.
She suddenly took a right at