• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Lindell caught herself thinking about Charles Morgansson. Since his brief visit they had bumped into each other, said hello, and exchanged a few words but nothing had been said about another movie date.

She decided to give him a call. Maybe they should go out Friday?

“What are you smiling about?” Sammy Nilsson interrupted her thoughts.

Lindell glanced at Ola Haver, the one in the assembled group whom she thought best knew her thoughts, before she answered.

“Pantyhose.” She smiled sweetly at Sammy. For once he was rendered speechless.

Back in her office she discovered that trainee Asplund had been in again. There were two reports on her desk. One was a report on who had lived in Vilsne village the last two decades. Lindell had asked the trainee to assemble this information. It involved about fifty people altogether. Ann looked through the list without really knowing what she was after.

The second report was a compilation of all the people who had gone missing in the district over the past year. She was surprised at the number, ten people, but knew that most of them would turn up again of their own accord. Most of the ones who disappeared without a trace did it of their own free will and were really no case for the police if they didn’t involve underage individuals.

Two names on the list interested Ann more than the others and only because they were older men: Helmer Olsson, eighty-two years old, a former rubber worker from Rasbokil who disappeared in August. His wife thought he must have gotten lost but search parties that had been undertaken in the deep mushroom-filled forests north of his village had not yielded any results. Helmer Olsson’s mushroom basket had been recovered at the edge of a swampy area. Perhaps he had gone down in the bottomless quagmire that was locally referred to by the name of “Oxdeath.”

The other name was Ulrik Hindersten, a seventy-year-old professor, reported missing at the end of September. The person who reported him was the daughter, Laura Hindersten, with the same address as her father.

The results of the investigations added up to zero.

Ann checked who had taken down the information, looked at the time, and lifted the telephone receiver in the hopes that her colleague was still at work. Åsa Lantz-Andersson answered immediately and told her what she knew about Laura Hindersten, a woman she remembered very well.

After the conversation it was time to pick up Erik. Lindell went into Ottosson’s office and told him that she had to bring Erik in for a medical checkup the next day, and that after that she was going to go see a woman whose father had disappeared.

“You think there’s a connection?”

“I don’t know, but we have to dig into everything.”

Ann Lindell left the police station feeling unusually happy. Maybe it was because the sun was shining for the first time in several days. Admittedly the sun was only able to break through a small gap in the cloud cover but she took it as a good sign.

When she got home she was going to call Morgansson.

Twenty

The flames reached almost as high as the snowball bush. Laura had to retreat because of the heat. For a few moments she was worried but told herself the damp grass was not flammable.

To burn books, she thought and remembered how her father, during a trip to Florence, had lectured her about Savonarola who had incited people to burn books during Carneval.

Ulrik Hindersten was divided in his opinion of this Dominican, who was a “devil” in that Petrarch’s and Livius’s books were on the bonfire. He took this as a personal insult and expressed genuine sorrow at how many antique texts had thereby been lost.

But her father also admired Savonarola as a speaker and for his ability to engage his audience. There was something attractive about his popularity. Her father appreciated strong personalities who were able to motivate the masses.

Savonarola ended up much like the books he had banned. Her father had taken her to Piazza della Signoria in Florence, the square where the monk was