The Cruel Stars of the Night - Kjell Eriksson [42]
But for now she would have to put all thoughts of movies aside. Two murders. She would not be able to relax even for a second. She turned to Sammy Nilsson.
“You’ll be responsible for charting these two farmers—you said yourself you’re a country boy. I want the minutest detail. Not a single item can go unchecked. They’re around seventy and have a past. Somewhere their lives run together. Find that point.”
Sammy looked at her and smiled.
“Full steam ahead,” he said, turned, and left.
Just then Morgansson stepped out onto the stoop.
“I think we have something,” he said and went back into the house.
Of course, Lindell thought, you have something. She followed him in. When she was in the hall Morgansson pointed to the little table right inside the door.
“A letter,” he said. “I found it in the drawer under the telephone. You don’t have to pick it up.”
It was handwritten and lacked a signature, but Lindell immediately had the impression it was written by a man. She read it. Bea appeared behind her.
“What does it say?”
“It is basically a threat,” Lindell said. “Some unresolved affair that needs to be corrected, according to the writer.”
“No envelope?” she called out to Morgansson.
“Not yet,” he called back from the room next to the kitchen.
“We don’t know who wrote it, not even if Andersson was the recipient.”
“He may be the person who wrote it,” Bea said.
“That’s easy to check,” Lindell said. “What do you think?”
“ ‘Make sure you pay up otherwise you’ll be sorry,’” Bea read again.
Lindell sighed.
“You pay,” she mumbled.
“The writer of the letter has apparently been waiting a few years,” Bea said, “and now he wants to be paid for something.”
“No dates, nothing really,” Lindell said, disappointed. “It can have been in the drawer for the past ten years.”
“Then why save the letter?”
“You know how people are.”
Bea read the letter again.
“What about this,” she said and read out loud:“ ‘When I heard that you sold I thought you were finally going to pay me.’ What was it he sold?”
“The farm, maybe,” Lindell threw out, “or the land. It has to be some bigger thing, it can hardly be a tractor or such like.”
“Can Andersson have written this to Petrus Blomgren? Didn’t he sell his land? And then it wasn’t recorded?”
“Far-fetched,” Lindell said.
“But we’re looking for connections,” Bea said eagerly. “Think about it, an older farmer doesn’t have so many dealings, it’s normally about farms and land, leases and the like.”
“Our farming expert has just left,” Lindell said.
“Blomgren owes money to Andersson, who doesn’t get paid. Anders-son kills Blomgren and then . . .”
“And then . . . Blomgren hits back,” Lindell said. “The problem is that he’s dead.”
“That suicide letter, that could have had something to do with this. He wrote something about not doing things as he should have.”
“We’ll have to check the handwriting first,” Lindell decided, “and check with the relative that’s supposed to exist. The neighbor said something about there being a niece who sometimes visits. She may know what this is all about. Maybe it’s an old story that we’ll be able to rule out.”
It had gotten dark by the time they were ready to leave Jan-Elis Andersson’s farm. Everyone was taciturn and in the faint light from the outside lamp Lindell saw how exhausted everyone was.
She took a last swing around the house, like she usually did.
Fredriksson and Bea drove away. They had loaded up the car with boxes of old papers and letters, tax returns, insurance papers, and bookkeeping from the time that Andersson had been an active farmer.
Berglund, who had come out during the course of the afternoon, hung around. He had, together with a few others from the patrol squad, gone over the various sheds and outhouses with a fine-toothed comb. The old police officer stood thoughtfully by the freestanding garage. He pulled the door shut behind him, looked at Lindell, and walked over to her.
“I’m not crazy about the dark,” he said.
Lindell nodded. They stood side by side and summed up their observations