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By Root 893 0

had openly expressed her disapproval over the fact that Ann was a police officer. She said it was not a suitable occupation for a woman. Now Ann interpreted her last comment as a sign of approval. Perhaps it was her way of saying that she liked Ann despite everything, despite what she had done, in betraying and hurting Viola’s adored Edvard. Ann had always had a feeling, which admittedly had grown weaker with time, of inferiority to the old woman. It was not only her awe-inspiring age, her stubborn strength, and independence that inspired this feeling, but also the fact that she had lived and continued to live a life outside society.

In some obscure way this both appealed to and frightened Ann. It was probably her guilty conscience playing tricks. She had left Ödeshög and her parents, sick of the duck pond that her home town was in her eyes, and bored by her parents, whose only goal in life appeared to be keeping the spirea hedge in top form.

She was about twenty years old when she left Östergötland for the Police Academy. Contact with her parents had been sporadic since then. At the end of June, when she had gone down there for a week, she had started to miss Uppsala after only one night.

Ann Lindell was upset but did not know how to sort out her thoughts, much less draw any conclusions and formulate goals. There was too much at stake, her own life, Erik’s, work, Edvard, her parents—everything had been brought to the surface by her visit to the hospital.

She decided to push these thoughts aside. She had techniques for this. Right now the solution had the name of Berglund.

Berglund had gone home! Lindell listened astonished to Ottosson’s account of Berglund coming down with a migraine.

“That’s never happened before, has it?”

“No,” Ottosson replied. “I can’t remember the last time Berglund was sick. Some time in the eighties, I think.”

“What did he say?”

“Nothing. I was the one who sent him home and he didn’t protest. He was as pale as a corpse. Allan gave him a ride.”

“Oh,” Lindell said, in a defeated voice.

“Was there anything in particular?”

“I was going to check on something, a name that turned up.”

Lindell told him how Berglund had mentioned in passing a crook who had recently come into money and how the same name had now turned up in connection with the case in Sävja.

“Rosenberg,” Ottosson said. “Yes, he’s a jewel of a guy. I knew his father. He was part of the gang at the Weather Vane, an old beer hall on Salagatan. They tore it down about six months after I started patrolling. There was another joint on Salagatan, Cafe 31, there was an old lady by the name of Anna who … she lived, if I remember correctly, almost at the top of Ymergatan, you know, on the same street as Little John, you know, grew up. There was a Konsum grocery store there that had damned good fresh buns, fifteen öre a piece or if—It’s almost a pity that places like the Weather Vane fold, because—The stores were packed so tightly back then. There was a Konsum store on Väderkvarnsgatan as well, and then a Haages Livs grocery on Torkelsgatan, up by Törnlundsplan there was also something, what was their name? … Brodd or something like that, and then Ekdahls at the corner of Ymergatan and St. Göransgatan, and then the milk-and-bread store in Tripolis. You see! All within five minutes’ walk from one another.”

Ottosson lost himself in revery. Lindell had to laugh.

“I should have known,” she said.

“But I don’t associate Rosenberg with violence and definitely not with big business,” Ottosson resumed.

“Maybe it’s worth checking into anyway,” Lindell said and told him about Liljendahl’s observation that a knife was involved in both cases.

“Well,” Ottosson said, “I think that’s pushing it. We have a lot of conflicts where knives are involved.”

“I’m still going to have someone check up on Rosenberg. In any case, it would be amusing to find out what has made him so conspicuously rich. Have you heard anything about Haver’s excursion to the camping spot by the river?”

“He called and wanted you to call him back.”

“I had my phone turned off at