The Cruel Stars of the Night - Kjell Eriksson [41]
Lindell called Sammy and watched him reach irritably for his cell phone.
“Check out any potential connection to Petrus,” she said and Sammy groaned.
“What do you think I’m doing?”
“I was thinking of farmer associations and such,” Ann said in a docile voice. “There are things like that, aren’t there? Blomgren and Andersson may have met at some point.”
“I’m a country boy, if you recall. I’ve got this covered.”
The people gathered in the yard gave Lindell the same déjà vu feeling she had had in the kitchen.
“The question of whether or not we believe there is a real connection between the murders is crucial,” Lindell said. “If we do then what we have to set our sights on right now is to turn up everything that potentially connects these two farmers.”
She stared out over the landscape. A police officer in uniform was climbing over a barbed wire fence a couple of hundred meters away. He looked clumsy and out of place in the terrain.
The fields that bordered the farm lay fallow. Or at least that was what Lindell thought. She compared them to the Östgöta area where she came from with its wide expanses of fields and sturdy farm buildings. Here things looked paltry by comparison, thin strips of cultivated land between swathes of dark forest. The cottages that were dotted about were small, as dictated by the landscape.
“The neighbor hasn’t seen anything.” Sammy Nilsson interrupted her thought process.
“Can he see this house from his?”
“No. He lives behind that clump of trees up there. You can see the roof,” Nilsson said and pointed.
“What was he doing here?”
“Nothing in particular. He would sometimes walk over and have a little coffee and a chat with Jan-Elis. The neighbor is on disability.”
“At least we have a clue as to when the murder took place,” Bea said. “Around breakfast time.”
Lindell walked off to the side. Was it the same perpetrator? In that case what was the connection?
Again she let her gaze sweep over the area, as if the answer was to be found out there. Not a puff of wind, not a sign of life or movement. A static place, maintained by a retired farmer and a man on disability. A region that had sunk down into its own wasted and worn sparseness. Who would want to or even have the energy to think of killing someone here? Everything already seemed dead.
Why kill two seventy-year-old farmers?
Just as in Blomgren’s home, nothing here was touched. Straight into the house, bash the old man’s head in, and then leave just as fast. That’s how the whole thing must have happened.
She caught sight of Morgansson through the kitchen window. His wide back looked monumental in the tiny window. The night before she had toyed with the idea of going home with him, only for a night, in order to feel the warmth of another human being. Now that thought seemed somehow absurd.
They had said good-bye and good night and then left, each in their own direction. As she was walking down East Ågatan she had the feeling of being in a foreign city, a foreign country, as if she were on holiday, on her way to the hotel.
Pleased with the evening, she had crawled into bed and decided she would like to see him again, if for no other reason than to see another movie and have another beer.
Today is another life, she thought, not without bitterness. It was as if two consecutive days of happiness were not possible. She watched Morgansson move around inside. Then something in her changed, she felt a welling up of pride. She was standing in the yard involved in a murder investigation, yet again. She didn’t need to denigrate herself. First, she was a competent police officer and second, a pretty good mother to Erik. Her contract with life had been signed and she was going to make the best of the situation. She didn’t need to apologize for the fact that she wanted to live, wanted to laugh or go to the movies with a handsome man, who also happened to