The Hand that Trembles (32 page)

Ann Lindell could not help feeling a smidgeon of triumph as she thought of Beatrice’s haughty face and the rest of her colleagues’ resistance to her suggestion about advertising in Thailand.

‘Fucking brilliant!’ she exclaimed.  

Bosse Marksson, who had read Sune Stolt’s entire email, was more restrained.  

‘It’s a relief to have a name,’ he said. ‘But how is it pronounced?’  

‘Let’s just call her Patima,’ Lindell said. ‘The identification of the woman in the photograph is one hundred per cent? No doubt?’  

‘No, Sune is completely convinced that the picture is of the woman he met in Krabi. He even went to the restaurant where she worked. And the police there were going to get a photo of sister Patima and send back that—’

‘—we can test at the campsite,’ Lindell completed.  

Marksson grunted.  

‘The timing fits,’ he said. ‘She left Thailand at the beginning of August last year.’  

‘Okay, then we are a step closer.’  

But Lindell also realised that the investigation had ground to a halt. They had a name for the woman and a connection to Tobias Frisk, they had a DNA match between the hair they had found in Frisk’s house and the foot, they had the chainsaw, but there it ended. They could conclude that there was a great probability that Frisk had murdered and thereafter dismembered Patima. How, why, and when they would never know. Most likely they would also never recover a body to go with the foot they had found. She had probably been buried or dumped into the sea.

The case was solved but left a bitter taste. The usual sense of satisfaction wasn’t there, something Marksson also commented on.

‘I wish the bastard hadn’t been such a bastard and blown his head off.’

‘Should we keep going?’

‘Can we keep going?’ Marksson countered. ‘We have questioned everyone we can think of, neighbours, his former girlfriend, and co-workers.’

‘And what do their contributions have in common?’

‘That Tobias Frisk was an unusual fellow but no one who would have taken his own life or that of another person.’

‘What do you make of that?’

‘That life is full of surprises,’ Marksson said.

‘Okay,’ Lindell said. ‘We’ll drop the whole thing. I can check with the campsite. It would be good to get a positive ID on the woman, but then we’ll close the file.’

‘What should we do with the foot?’

‘Save it for now,’ Lindell said, after a moment’s reflection. ‘I don’t think we’ll send it to Thailand. That would feel rotten.’  

‘A foot may be better than nothing. What do we know, perhaps there may be some kind of religious point to it, I mean in Thailand.’

After having called Sorsele Campsite and agreeing with Gösta Ohlman that she would shortly be emailing a picture of the woman, Lindell left the police building. She needed to walk, to get a little air, even if the weather wasn’t the best. The whole city was wreathed in a damp fog.

She walked west along the Luthagsled. Her goal was the Café Savoy. During the quick walk she came to think of the old man, the county commissioner’s uncle, who lived only a couple of blocks away, and from there her thoughts wandered to Berglund. He would be discharged from the hospital soon and after that there would be some weeks of convalescing. She wondered how it would be. Her image of her colleague was altered in its very foundation and Lindell didn’t like it. She wanted her old, secure colleague back, not some shaky, troubled, and pessimistic old man.

The tables at Savoy were filled. That was more and more the case. Lindell looked over half a dozen mothers who occupied two tables with their offspring in high chairs and on their laps. They looked to have been there quite a while. All of the coffee cups were empty and the tables covered in rubbish. Lindell thought it was out of line to occupy a café for their mum gatherings. Three baby carriages were wedged between tables and chairs. A little one was crawling around on the floor with a bun in his hand, another was screeching in his high chair.

She stood there for a few minutes but none of the customers showed any signs of imminent departure – definitely not the mothers. Lindell sighed and left.

She slowly walked past the flower shop and the kiosk on the corner and then walked east on Ringgatan, with a vague feeling that things were not as they should be. It wasn’t just Berglund who was out of sorts, that much was clear. Beatrice was unusually cranky and Sammy Nilsson was unrecognisable. Even Ottosson was unusually listless. Perhaps it was the approaching Christmas holiday that was making people so down.

She came to a sudden stop outside Konsum. There had been something that hadn’t felt right to her during the whole investigation of the severed foot. She had perceived her uncertainty like an irritating static in the background and Marksson had expressed similar thoughts. The way the whole thing had unfolded appeared obvious, even if a frustrating number of threads hung loose. What was it that rubbed?

She turned around in order to try to understand what it was on Ringgatan that had triggered this sudden impulse of unease and incompleteness. But she saw nothing out of the ordinary. A couple of teenagers who laughingly teased each other. The back of an older woman with a grocery bag. She closed her eyes and tried to grab hold of the fleeting feeling again. She had experienced this before, that creeping feeling of apprehension mixed with excitement, which could sometimes feel nightmarish with panic lurking, when realisation about a missed opportunity that would never come again grew stronger. Perhaps it was something at Savoy that had set this off? She stared back in the direction of the café and replayed the scene: the mothers and children, a couple of older men in the corner whom she had seen countless times at that exact table, and a couple of school kids drinking sodas. The rest of the customers were shadows.

Was it the bun the child had been chewing? Frisk worked at a bakery. Was it a smell? Was it about drinking coffee? At her first visit to Bultudden she had had coffee with Torsten Andersson. Had he made some comment then that had not appeared strange at the time but that now unconsciously had awakened her anxiety? Or perhaps it was Marksson who had said something as they sat in Frisk’s kitchen?

Lindell drew a breath and resumed her walk, now at a considerably calmer tempo. In her thoughts she followed the road to Bultudden and finally arrived at Lisen Morell’s, but there was nothing along the Avenue that spoke to her.

She picked up her phone and called Bosse Marksson.

‘I think there’s something wrong,’ she said at once.

‘What do you mean wrong?’ Marksson sounded tired.

‘Something wrong in the investigation. With our thinking. We’ve missed something.’

Her colleague said nothing. And what should he say, Lindell thought.

‘I mean, you know that feeling you get sometimes.’

Marksson grunted. She recalled his concerns when they were out in Bultudden. He had also questioned the series of events without being able to point to something concrete that strengthened the sense that they were wrong, but eventually they had laid down their weapons before the indisputable facts: the traces of Patima in Frisk’s house, the traces of blood on the chainsaw, and finally the connection in Sorsele.

‘We have to meet,’ Lindell went on. ‘Can I come out tomorrow?’

‘First thing in the morning, in that case. I’m going to spend the afternoon in Öregrund.’

‘I’ll be there at half past eight.’

‘I want to confess to a murder.’

The policeman lifted his gaze from the paper where he had just written the day’s date and Sven-Arne Persson’s name, but said nothing.

‘It happened many years ago.’

‘Go on,’ Sammy Nilsson said after a long pause.

‘I killed a man in the autumn of 1993. He was called Nils Dufva. It happened in Kungsgärdet. Then I travelled to India and remained there. That’s all. How long have you worked in Uppsala?’

‘Almost twenty years,’ Sammy Nilsson said.

‘Then you must remember Dufva.’

Sammy nodded. He remembered it very well, the affair with the wheelchair-bound old man who had been clubbed to death, even though he was on street patrol at the time and did not have any direct involvement in the investigation. It was Berglund’s case, he knew that much. Berglund’s unsolved mystery. It struck him that he should immediately get in touch with him. He would certainly be pleased, if not overjoyed.

‘Can you tell me what happened? You understand of course that I am recording our discussion.’

Persson nodded.

‘Were you already acquainted with Dufva?’

‘No, I can’t say that I was.’

‘You just walked in and struck down an old man completely unknown to you in his own home?’

‘Not exactly unknown to me.’

‘Were you intoxicated?’

‘No, completely sober.’

Sammy Nilsson sat without saying anything. The tape deck rolled on.

‘Could I have a sandwich or something? I haven’t eaten in a long time.’

Sammy Nilsson immediately called Allan Fredriksson and asked him to order a thermos of coffee and a couple of sandwiches, and then join him for the session.

He glanced at Persson.

‘It’s regarding the Dufva murder,’ he added.

Persson suddenly stood up and walked over to the window. Nilsson hung up and observed him. He did not look like a killer.

‘Food is on its way,’ he said, ‘but we can start chatting a bit, if you’d like to have a seat.’

‘Of course,’ Persson said, and returned to his chair.

‘How did you get yourself to India?’

‘I flew.’

Sammy Nilsson smiled.

‘I had arranged to get a new passport. Bertil Grönlund, if you remember him, assisted me. I can say that now because I know he’s beyond any punishment now.’

Bertil Grönlund, often called ‘Gävle-Berra’, had been a regular with the Uppsala police for many years, mostly because of his predilection for forging cheques. No violent sort, just a notorious scoundrel, not particularly successful. He was put away for a year now and then, came out and was soon caught again, something he took even-handedly. Sammy Nilsson himself had arrested him once in the early nineties, and recalled a thin, middle-aged man, timid in his manner and never reluctant to admit to what he had been accused of.

‘I didn’t know he was dead,’ Nilsson said distractedly. ‘How did you know him?’

‘I was his parole mentor.’

Sammy Nilsson chuckled and shook his head. Persson sensed that he thought the story was sounding more and more fanciful.

‘Did you have any connection to India?’

‘No, none, but it was as good a place as any. I liked it.’

‘And why have you returned now?’

‘I wanted to get this over with.’

‘Nils Dufva?’

Persson nodded. At that moment the door opened. Allan Fredriksson put a tray down on the table, stretched out his hand, and introduced himself.

‘Wonderful,’ Persson said. ‘I mean, I’m glad I’m dealing with experienced officers and not a pair of newbies.’

‘Let’s dig in,’ Fredriksson said, and poured out the coffee from a stainless steel thermos. The initials
AF
were written in large letters on the cap.

‘Sven-Arne Persson here has just confessed to a murder,’ Sammy Nilsson explained to his colleague, and managed to make it sound very mundane. ‘Do you want to tell him, Sven-Arne?’

‘One thing,’ Allan Fredriksson said. ‘Before we start, I have to ask if you are Sven-Arne Persson the county commissioner?’

‘One and the same.’

‘I thought I recognised you. But you didn’t have a beard back then, did you?’

The former county commissioner helped himself to a ham sandwich, took a large bite out of it, and chewed thoroughly before answering.  

‘I was another person back then. Without a beard.’  

‘You are the county commissioner who disappeared?’  

Sammy Nilsson stared in amazement at Persson.  

‘Should we get this over with?’ Persson asked.  

Nilsson nodded. ‘You told me that you killed Nils Dufva.’  

‘I beat him over the head with some crutches.’  

‘Crutches? Were there some in the house?’ Sammy Nilsson asked.  

He couldn’t remember any details of the murder, other than that Nils Dufva was handicapped.  

‘No, they were in the car and I brought them in. They were my uncle’s. I wanted to have something to defend myself with, in case of trouble.’  

‘What kind of car were you driving?’  

‘A dark blue Saab.’  

‘Was your uncle with you?’ Fredriksson broke in.  

‘No.’  

Sammy Nilsson decided to bullshit a little.  

‘According to witnesses, there were two men who arrived in a car and parked outside Dufva’s house.’  

Persson took a new bite and glanced briefly at Fredriksson.  

‘He waited in the car,’ he said finally. ‘He had trouble walking.’  

‘Were you expecting trouble?’ Sammy Nilsson asked.

‘I can’t really remember. But why else would I have brought the crutches?’

He washed down the sandwich with a sip of coffee.

‘That’s better.’ Persson smiled.

‘Did you know Dufva well?’ Nilsson asked.

‘No, not really.’

‘Then why on earth did you kill him?’ Fredriksson exclaimed.

‘He was a war criminal,’ Persson said calmly.

‘You’ll have to explain that.’

‘Most of all I’d like to rest for a while,’ Sven-Arne Persson said. He had consumed a cheese sandwich and finished his coffee in quick succession. ‘Would that be all right? I don’t want to be impolite but I am actually completely wiped out. A bit dizzy and shaky, actually. We can talk more later. You must have some little room where I can stretch out for a bit. Then I’ll be ready, and we can go through the whole thing.’

‘That’s all right,’ Sammy Nilsson said after a brief moment of hesitation, and formally concluded the session. He turned off the tape recorder.

After Fredriksson had shown Sven-Arne Persson to the jail, he returned to Nilsson’s office.