The Cruel Stars of the Night - Kjell Eriksson [2]
One
“Manfred Olsson.”
“Good morning, my name is Ann Lindell, I’m with the Violent Crimes Division at the Uppsala Police. I’m sorry for disturbing you so early.”
She put the phone in her right hand and slipped the cold left hand in her pocket.
“I see, and what is this about?”
Manfred Olsson’s voice was guarded.
“Routine inquiries,” she started, in an unusually passive way.
“Is it about the car?”
“No, why, have you . . .”
“My car was stolen fourteen days ago. Have you found it?”
“It’s not about the car.”
Ann Lindell leaned against the wall. The rising sun warmed her frozen body. She had felt groggy when she woke up and it had not helped to be called out to a blustery front yard on a cold morning at the end of October.
The maple leaves glowed in shades of yellow-red, marred by tiny, black fungal spores, which, woven together, presented an impression both of the unending richness of the plant kingdom, but also of sadness and transience. Scoops of snow were evidence of winter having arrived early this year.
Ola Haver came out of the house, spotted her leaning against the wall, and nodded. He looked tired. He had mentioned something about both kids and his wife, Rebecka, having colds.
Or else it was because he had a hard time enduring the sight of a dead body. Lindell sensed it had to do with the fact that as a teenager Haver had seen his own father collapse at the dinner table—stung in the throat by a bee—and he had died within a few minutes.
“Do you know a Petrus Blomgren?” Lindell continued.
“No, I don’t think so,” Manfred Olsson said. “Should I?”
She heard voices in the background. It sounded as if a TV was on.
“What kind of work do you do?”
“Burglar alarms,” Olsson said curtly. “Why?”
“We found a note with your number on it at the residence of Petrus Blomgren. He must have gotten it somehow.”
Manfred Olsson did not reply.
“You have no explanation?”
“No, as I’ve already said.”
“Are you acquainted with the Jumkil area?”
“No, I wouldn’t say that. I know roughly where it is. What is this all about? I have to get going soon.”
“Where do you work?”
“I work for myself. I’m going to . . . I guess it doesn’t matter.”
No, Lindell thought and smiled in the midst of the misery, it doesn’t matter. Not now and maybe not later.
“Have you been to Jumkil recently?”
“I was there for a wedding once. That was maybe ten years ago.”
“You install alarms, isn’t that right? Have you had any requests for alarms in Jumkil in the last while?”
“No, not that I can remember.”
“Thank you,” Lindell said. “We may be in touch later and have you look at a photograph.”
“He’s dead, isn’t he? That Blomgren man.”
“Yes.”
The conversation came to an end. A sudden gust of wind made the leaves dance at her feet.
“Nothing,” Lindell said to Haver, who had come up to her. “He didn’t know a thing, not about Jumkil and not about Blomgren.”
“We’ve found a letter,” Haver said. “A farewell letter.”
“What? That Blomgren wrote?”
“It appears so.”
Lindell sighed heavily.
“Do you mean he was planning to kill himself and someone beat him to it?”
Haver suddenly started to laugh. Lindell looked at him. One of their colleagues from Patrol looked up. Haver stopped just as quickly.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “but sometimes it’s just too much. You’ve got red on your back. You shouldn’t lean up against walls.”
He started to brush off her light-colored jacket.
“It’s new, isn’t it?”
Lindell nodded. She felt his forceful strokes across her shoulders and back. It was not unpleasant. It warmed her. She had an impulse to punch him playfully but restrained herself.
“There we go,” he said, “that’s a little better.”
Lindell looked out at the surroundings. Here they were out in the field again. Yards, stairwells, basements, apartments, houses. Police tape, spotlights, screens, measuring tape, camera flashes, chalk marks on wooden floors, parquet floors, concrete floors, and asphalt. Voices from colleagues and