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“Of course.”

“Why are you asking me about Alice? She died such a long time ago.”

Lindell hesitated but decided to tell her.

“We are investigating the murders that you have probably read about in the papers. Alice’s name has emerged in connection with them.”

Sivbritt Eriksson clapped her hands over her mouth and stared at Ann.

“This is also about Ulrik Hindersten. He has been reported missing, as you know.”

“Do you think he’s been murdered?”

“There is nothing right now to indicate that,” Lindell said.

Sivbritt turned her head and looked out the window and sat quietly for a long time. Lindell let her think in peace.

“Well, dear Lord,” the woman said finally and looked at Lindell.

“I’m telling you this in confidence, you understand. I don’t want you to mention this conversation to anyone.”

“Of course,” Sivbritt said. “Not a word.”

“Did Alice talk about love with you?”

Lindell thought the question sounded silly but Sivbritt reacted like Lindell had hoped, with a meaningful silence before she began to speak.

It was three quarters of an hour later when Ann Lindell left. The last fifteen minutes she had been sitting on pins and needles but when Sivbritt Eriksson insisted on making her a cup of coffee Lindell felt she had to accept given everything that she had just received.

When she got into her car she gave the steering wheel a slap and drove whistling onto the street.

Crazy Gudmund, partly concealed in the garbage room, watched her vengefully and was convinced that the Eriksson woman was suspected of a serious crime.

“Breakthrough!” Lindell cried as she drove by the metal sheds on Karlsrogatan. She tried to restrain her excitement but the information that Sivbritt Eriksson had provided was the most sensational in the case yet. In one blow Ulrik Hindersten appeared as the key to all three murders. Was he also murdered, or the murderer? This was the question that clearly had to be put first.

In her inner map she drew in Jumkil, Alsike, and Skuttunge, extending the lines to Uppsala and the house in Kåbo. A connection was now established between Jumkil and Kåbo. Now she had to map out the connections between Jan-Elis Andersson and Carl-Henrik Palmblad and the Hindersten family. Ann Lindell was convinced such a connection existed.

The murders were no vendetta against the countryside, as many had believed. Neither the rental agreements, tractors, nor LRF had anything to do with the case. The three old men had qualified themselves to be brutally clubbed down in the eyes of the killer and everything most likely pointed right back to the rundown house in Kåbo.

“Motive, motive,” Ann Lindell muttered as she drove past the Eriks-berg Church.

Laura Hindersten was priority number one. She must have the answers. Of course she had denied knowing any of the three but Lindell was now convinced she had been lying. Or was her father Ulrik the spider in the web? In that case, where was the murderous professor?

She decided to return to the Hindersten house. The street was deserted and the driveway was still empty.

Ann Lindell parked on a side street and returned on foot to the house.

Thirty-seven

The forensics department found no fingerprints on the chess piece that had been removed from Allan Fredriksson’s coat. Ottosson had not expected there to be any, but he still sighed heavily when he received the news. He put down the receiver, then immediately lifted it and rang Ola Haver.

“Has he woken up?”

He listened to Haver with growing concern. Admittedly Fredriksson’s neck and spine injuries were not as serious as they had initially feared but he was still basically unreachable.

“Have they operated on the arm?”

“They’re waiting,” Haver said. “He has to be stable first, they say. There’s no bleeding in the brain but he has a severe concussion and from what I can understand the brain swells up. They may operate tonight.”

“Has he said anything about the chess piece?”

“He’s talking a lot of nonsense,” Haver said in a quiet voice, “but from what I can tell he’s been at Andersson’s in Alsike. Wasn’t Sammy going to go