The Cruel Stars of the Night - Kjell Eriksson [14]
Words, words, words, into infinity. She did not want them, the artfully arranged, duplicitous assurances that people surrounded themselves with. She silenced the words and eradicated their falseness.
Laura felt that she now commanded two worlds. Now she could step out into reality without anxiety or anticipation. She carried a shield, an armor against which the words bounced off.
“You seem happier,” a colleague said in the lunchroom a few weeks after her father’s disappearance.
“It’s the only way,” Laura answered cryptically.
The colleague was pleased, thought she could see a new Laura, convinced it was because her suffocating life with her father was over, that a new Laura was being born in the midst of longing and grief. Horrible, but true.
“Maybe we could go out sometime,” the colleague had suggested.
Laura shook her head.
Kerstin was one of the better ones, but did Laura want a confidant? No, Kerstin would not understand the feeling of liberation. Laura was and would remain alone.
“My father may have been murdered and you think I should go out and enjoy myself?” she said and left the room.
Four
The task of going door-to-door in the area around Petrus Blom-gren’s house did not take long. Sammy Nilsson and Bea Andersson, who were in charge of this, could afterward report that there were altogether some twenty properties. Fourteen of these were permanent residences and the rest were summer cottages.
No one had seen or heard anything. There was not even any gossip, no hints or speculation, simply disbelief that something so horrible could happen in Vilsne and that it was Petrus Blomgren who was the victim. No one had a bad word to say about the victim. Sammy and Bea listened to the testimony without being able to discern any criticism between the lines. Blomgren was well-liked, highly thought of even, in the area. Neighbors had only praise for his still life, his industriousness, and concern for his nearest neighbor, Dorotea. An older man talked about Blomgren’s love of nature, another about how admirable it was that even though Blomgren was a bachelor he managed to keep everything as clean and tidy as he did, and a third, the Kindblom couple, told them that their children when they were young would go up to “Uncle Petus” and there be treated with candy and sometimes, on Thursdays, with freshly made pancakes and homemade jam.
“Jumkil’s Mother Theresa,” Sammy Nilsson summarized and glanced at Bea to see if she had anything to add, but she only nodded.
“I see,” Ottosson said and turned to Lindell.
She and Fredriksson had spent the day trying to bring order to the state of Petrus Blomgren’s paperwork.
“At the Föreningsspar Bank they were unusually helpful,” she said after a moment’s hesitation.
She and Fredriksson had decided that he was the one who would present their findings but he had not turned up.
“Actually Allan is the one who was supposed to . . .” Lindell began.
“Take us through what you know,” Ottosson said, unusually brusque.
“All right, as you like. Blomgren had seventy-six thousand kronor in his savings account. There are very few transactions. He received his pension, took out a couple of thousand every month. The last withdrawal was six days ago. Two thousand. In the house we have recovered around nine hundred kronor in cash.”
“No cards?”
“No, he only had one account and no bank cards.”
“Could there be accounts at other banks?” Sammy Nilsson asked.
“No, the guy at the bank didn’t think so. Blomgren had been with the Föreningsspar Bank his whole life, though it was called something else before.”
“The Förenings Bank,” Fredriksson said, who had just come through the door. “It became the Föreningsspar