The Cruel Stars of the Night - Kjell Eriksson [121]
“What does Ann say? She was so grumpy about this whole chess thing.”
“She’s been swallowed up by the earth.”
“The Savoy,” Fredriksson said.
“I said that too, but she’s not there. Otto actually called them to check.”
“Have you checked with Blomgren and Palmblad?”
“Of course,” Haver said, “there are no chess pieces there. But why did you go out to Alsike?”
Fredriksson told him about the lost cell phone and how on the way back to Uppsala he had caught sight of the buzzard and lost control of the car.
“I think Ann is up to something,” he went on.
“What do you mean?”
“You know what she’s like. I talked to her this morning and she was being all cryptic. It was like she was having trouble talking to me, as if she was hiding something.”
“Like what?” Haver asked and sat down on a chair next to the bed. He trusted his colleague’s tracking instinct and could imagine how he had picked up on Lindell’s behavior. Haver also knew Lindell so well that he took her intuition seriously. It had brought success to many previous investigations.
“I don’t know what it was, but it was something,” Fredriksson said.
“Nothing concrete?”
“No, not at all, just hints.”
Ola Haver dropped the topic.
“I’m going to call Otto,” he said. “You’ll manage now, won’t you? They’re probably going to slice you open tonight.”
Fredriksson smiled faintly.
“Has Majsan been here?”
“She’s been here the whole time,” Haver said. “She’s having a cup of coffee in the cafeteria right now.”
Fredriksson shut his eyes as soon as Ola Haver had left the room.
Forty
“Now you die,” echoed in Ann Lindell’s head. The words resounded again and again as she slowly floated up to the surface of consciousness. It was a long return, edged with a searing pain and confused words that circled like black birds above her head.
She took stock of the situation, how she had plunged down the stairs and landed among bottles and boxes. She had registered glass shattering against the floor and how everything at that point went dark.
Blood was trickling down one cheek. The birds shrieked. Her right shoulder was throbbing. “Now you die.” She stretched out the uninjured arm and fumbled for the flashlight. The concrete floor was littered with slivers of glass. She cut herself and cried out.
The basement was dark. It smelled stale, raw, and moldy. There are probably a lot of vermin in this place, she thought groggily, and imagined long-legged spiders crawling over her body, and she dragged herself into a half-sitting position.
I’m not dead, she thought and the image of Erik appeared in her mind.
My phone, she thought, but she realized it was still pocketed in the jacket she had left behind in the kitchen. The first shock and surprise transformed into anger that she could have acted so clumsily. To be so damn right and act so damn wrong. But also because she had been pushed. The cowardly attack from behind, coated in small talk and that giggle just before the push, made her attempt to stand. She had to steady herself against the wall so as not to fall over.
“Pitch black,” she muttered and felt her way along the floor with her foot in order to locate the flashlight.
The chance that it was still working was slim but it was her only source of light.
Thank goodness she had never been afraid of the dark, not even as a child. She remembered that time out in Gräsö Island when she had woken up in the middle of the night and not been able to fall back asleep. Edvard sleeping by her side. She decided to walk down to the sea. It was fall. It had been raining during the day, and there had been blustery winds but when she came outside the stars were out and the temperature had sunk.
That time she had thought her future was on the line. Would she be able to live with Edvard? Would she move out to Gräsö Island? The questions had woken her up. She walked to the sea. She knew the path well. The darkness was like a wall. The smell from the bay swept in with the northeasterly wind. Everything was quiet. Even the white birds were resting.
Her thoughts