The Hand that Trembles (20 page)

The hand fascinated her. It was powerful. The part of the arm that could be seen was covered in hair. Grey, curly hairs. The muscles in the hand and arm tensed and Ante Persson got out of bed. She caught sight of one shoulder and his back.

She knocked against the doorjamb again, trying to raise her voice above the radio that was on. The voice on the radio was speaking about Iraq.

‘I could have sworn,’ she heard him mutter.

She took a couple of steps into the flat through the narrow hallway and stopped in the doorway. It was as if he sensed more than heard her, because he turned his upper body abruptly. His face contorted, perhaps from pain. He did not look shocked or frightened, just angry.

‘What is this?’

‘Hello, Ante Persson,’ she said loudly.

‘I’m not deaf!’

Lindell nodded.

‘Could we turn the radio down a notch?’

‘It’s the news.’

She took another step, not sure if she should hold her hand out. His left hand hung alongside his body and now it looked surprisingly powerless, while the right hand rested on the handle of a sort of walking aid. If he lets go he will lose his balance, she thought.

‘You’re not a staff member,’ he observed.

Lindell shook her head.

‘I’m from the police,’ she answered, and couldn’t help but smile as a crack momentarily appeared in his dismissive expression, a flicker of insecurity in his eyes.

‘What are you grinning about?’ he growled.

What an old codger, she thought, and her smile widened.

‘My, you’re a grumpy bastard,’ she said, and unexpectedly his snort turned into a smile. He shuffled over to the radio and turned off the reporter’s voice in the middle of a sentence that Lindell thought had started promisingly: ‘It will be a mild winter according—’

‘All they do is lie anyway,’ he said. ‘It’s going to be a hellishly cold winter. Sit down.’

She sat down at the kitchen table that was pushed up against the bookshelf. A somewhat peculiar arrangement, but she realised immediately that the table was not used for its intended purpose. It was actually a desk with a contemporary desk lamp, a pile of books, a notepad, a portable tape recorder, a magnifying glass, and a jar of pens. A stack of photocopies and a highlighter were laid out on the desk.

She sat down on the side she thought he did not usually sit at. She examined the room during the time it took for him to take his seat. The furnishings were spartan, if not downright bare. The bed was made. There was an embroidered pillow at one end. On the wall, between the two windows, there was something that she took to be a diploma, behind glass and in a silver-coloured frame. It was embellished with stamps and a flourish in gold and red that resembled a weapon. Ante Persson’s name was written in an ornate script.

The stack of books on the table was dominated by English-language works with titles such as
Another Hill
and
Beyond Exile and Death
. There was a large book toward the bottom that she thought was in Spanish.

‘You read a lot,’ she said, and her gaze wandered along the bookshelves.

‘What do you want?’

She decided to get right to the point. Ante Persson was not the kind to be warmed up with a gentle introduction.

‘Elsa Persson is in the hospital,’ she said, and made an effort to catch his eye.

‘What’s happened?’ he asked, with no discernible reaction.

‘She was run over.’

He nodded. No question as to how it had happened or how serious it was. How is this man put together, she wondered to herself.

‘She walked out in front of a lorry after paying you a visit last week.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ he said.

If Lindell were to describe his voice, she would use only one word: harsh.

‘Are you? From what I understand the two of you were not particularly close.’

‘That’s not surprising if you never meet. The last time was two years ago and that visit lasted all of five minutes.’

He looked at her with watery eyes. The irises were of an undefinable colour and the whites were bloodshot. There was, however, an intensity in his old man’s eyes that she sensed had either attracted or frightened women, and perhaps also men, when Ante Persson had been in his prime.

She found herself mostly curious. His apparently unbroken intellect, the books and other items on the table, and his still forceful voice did not speak of any debility. It was only his body that did not seem to have kept up.

‘What was it that time?’

‘She explained that her husband, my nephew, had been declared dead officially. She wanted me to know before it was published in the paper.’  

‘And this time she came to tell you that he had risen from the dead?’ Ante Persson nodded and smiled a faint, possibly ironic, smile.  

‘You can read both English and Spanish?’  

He nodded again. He had resumed the completely expressionless – not to say icy – face. She could tell he was on his guard. His right hand rested over his left.  

‘And German and a little Russian,’ he said after a couple of seconds. ‘So I knew that you would come,’ he added after an additional pause.  

‘But you knew he was alive?’  

The thought came to her as a sudden inspiration. If you were going to divulge a secret to anyone it would be Ante Persson, that she was convinced of.

‘Did you speak to Elsa?’

‘No, she is apparently unconscious.’

‘I see,’ he said. ‘You figured it out on your own.’

‘Right here and now,’ she replied.

Ante Persson gave an unexpected roar, a belly laugh, hearty and contagious.

‘You are the nicest fucking cop I’ve ever met.’

‘You’ve dealt with the police before?’

‘More than sixty years ago, but back then it was pretty frequent. Well, and then they came by when Sven-Arne disappeared, but that doesn’t really count.’

Lindell wanted to know more but knew the man on the other side of the table was not one to let himself be rushed. He talked about what he wanted to talk about. The rest you had to guess or wait for.

‘Tell me about Sven-Arne,’ she urged.

‘He was a plumber,’ he grinned, ‘who rose up like a hot-air balloon.’

‘And then the air went out?’

‘Exactly.’

He leant across the table and the look in his eyes changed for a fraction of a second, as if he was preparing to add something. But he sank back instead.

‘The two of you were close?’

Ante Persson did not answer. Lindell glanced at the books on the shelf. She noticed that they were arranged thematically. As far as she could tell they were all about politics; there was no fiction.

‘I’m working on my memoirs,’ he said abruptly. ‘You can read it all in there.’

‘Can I get a look?’ Lindell asked.

‘If Sven-Arne is alive or not doesn’t matter. He is a piece of fly shit in the universe, just like you and I, for that matter. He became a politician and that might have been all right but he didn’t believe in it, and that’s bad. I mean, here, on the inside,’ he said, and thumped above his heart. ‘In here. There has to be a red thread one follows in life.’

‘Like you have done?’

Ante Persson sighed deeply.

‘I’ve tried,’ he said.

He massaged the stumps that were all that remained of the little and ring finger on his left hand.

‘Even though it’s been hard, damned hard, many times.’

Sad men, Lindell thought. Sad old men. How many haven’t I met? She thought of her father, Berglund, Torsten Andersson on Bultudden, and of Edvard, who in thirty years would probably sit much like Ante Persson, sighing and grumbling.

She quickly felt very tired. Why am I sitting here listening to this whining? I’m a criminal investigator, not a case worker or psychologist. But she knew that a police officer was every bit as much a social worker. In this mess of human frailties there were lies, squashed hopes, betrayal – and sometimes violence. The question was if she would get any wiser – a better cop – by talking to Ante at the Ramund nursing home. Or did it just serve to make her depressed? She had no answers to Ante’s pained questions, she was convinced of that. He, who from a human perspective was now living on borrowed time, had most likely ransacked himself for decades and was clearly still as searching and lost. Am I doing the right thing? Am I? She found herself circling these same questions herself, both professionally and in private, excruciatingly aware that she would never arrive at a definitive answer.

Lindell lifted the head that she had unconsciously lowered, as if in prayer. The old man was watching her. Before his gaze – serious and without a trace of the mockery she had observed earlier – she felt completely cold inside.

‘Why did he run off to India?’ she asked, mostly in order to get away.

Ante Persson did not answer. She knew the audience was over.

Ann Lindell ended up standing outside the nursing home for a while. It was only a couple of minutes’ walk to the Café Savoy but she decided to put it off for another time. She walked along Sysslomansgatan, following it south and crossing Ringgatan, when she suddenly recalled that an arsonist had lived in these parts. Three people, a mother, father, and small child, illegal refugees from Bangladesh, had died in Svartbäcken. Hate and intolerance had characterised that time.

It was quite by chance that she had read in the newspaper recently that the arsonist, together with three others, had escaped from the Tidaholms prison. They were still at large. It made her think of Torsten Andersson’s words about getting rid of the murderers.

Children were playing outside the Sverker school. She stopped at the fence and watched the quick bolts across the concrete, listened to the shouts and laughter. A group of boys were bouncing a ball back and forth. Next autumn it would be Erik’s turn.

A bus pulled over, the door opened, and the driver gave her an inquiring look. She realised she was standing at a bus stop and got on, mainly so she wouldn’t infuriate the driver.

‘I was lost in thought,’ she said.

The driver smiled but said nothing. She sat down. Take me far away from here, she thought, and closed her eyes. The ache in her back came in waves.

When she opened her eyes and looked out of the window she saw a Christmas display at the Salvation Army. Through the dirty pane she could see a gigantic Santa Claus, smiling a confused smile, as if he were terrified. A heap of red packages lay at his feet.

The bus continued on its way to the centre of town. There were stars and glittering decorations all over. Should she head back to Ödeshög for Christmas? Her mother had called and more or less pleaded for it. ‘It may be the last time,’ she had added when she perceived Ann’s hesitation.

The last time? What did she mean? Was she thinking of Ann’s increasingly befuddled father or was it simply a tearful attempt to coax her daughter back to Ödeshög?

Ann Lindell got off the bus at Dragarbrunnsgatan and walked quickly down to the Fyris River, crossed the Nybro Bridge and continued down Västra Ågatan. Her menstrual pain had died down. She slowed down. This was where Marcus Ålander had fought with Sebastian Holmberg, who had later been found dead in the children’s bookshop on Drottninggatan.

This was her city. Her memories. Ödeshög was no longer ‘home.’ She decided to stay in town over the holidays. Take it easy and give all her time to Erik, maybe take him for a spin in a patrol car, which he had been begging her to do for a long time. She would talk to Torstensson. He was good, maybe a little interested in her. That didn’t matter, as long as he didn’t get any ideas.

How long since she had gone to bed with a man? She did not want to count the months, or rather, years. She was drying up. Her desire came and went, her dreams of intimacy likewise. Sometimes a great longing came over her but her mechanisms to keep loneliness at bay were so entrenched and refined that she rarely felt the bottomless despair that used to plague her.

But deep inside, in the dark crannies, slumbered a bereft little creature, these days without fangs and claws, but with very mournful eyes. Sometimes he – for it was a he – still made his presence known. Like now, on Västra Ågatan, with her body in the midst of its periodic sparring, with Christmas on the doorstep, with people around her, neighbours, colleagues, and friends, all determinedly subjugating life.

She picked up the pace again and tried to think about something else, preferring to let her work mechanism take over. Her thoughts returned to Bultudden. Torsten Andersson’s words, or perhaps above all his unexpected display of aggression, still bothered her.

‘Damned old man,’ she muttered, aware of the fact that her negative feelings resulted almost entirely from having been had. She had felt cozy in his kitchen, become lulled into comfortable repose, listened to the crackle in his stove, registered the everyday objects, seen how well he had arranged his home, liked his thoughtful words pronounced in a dialect that strangely enough sounded like home. He had offered her freshly caught fish, as if she had been an old friend.

She should have known better, she should have learnt the lesson: People are two-sided. She had let herself be taken in.

Maybe he was a killer? Maybe he was the one who had sawed off that foot? The talk of getting rid of the murderers was only a front, or perhaps an internal defence; for he was no murderer, it had been his right to ‘get rid of’ someone.

She had seen this before, how perpetrators rationalised their actions and justified their crimes: an abused woman had ‘been asking for it,’ a murder victim had ‘deserved’ his fate, or a rape victim ‘had herself to blame.’

A couple with a small child somewhat younger than Erik were standing at a low fence of the swan pond feeding the birds. The wild ducks were nattering and the gulls were shrieking. A swan slowly floated past.

Lindell observed the three of them, how the man snuck a hand around the woman’s waist, and how she laughed at the young boy’s excitement. Her high peals of laughter rang out and could be heard above the sound of the traffic for an instant.