The Man From Beijing (24 page)

‘That’s Natasha,’ said Hermansson. ‘Her real name’s something different, but I think all Russian women should be called Natasha.’

He looked at Roslin, and his face clouded over.

‘I hope you’re not a police officer,’ he said.

‘Certainly not.’

‘I don’t think she has all the right papers. But as I understand it, that applies to most of our immigrant workers.’

‘I don’t think that’s true,’ said Birgitta Roslin. ‘But I’m not a police officer.’

He started sorting through the video cassettes, all of which were dated.

‘Let’s hope my nephew remembered to press the button,’ he said. ‘I haven’t checked the films from the beginning of January. We had hardly any guests then.’

After a lot of fumbling around that made Birgitta Roslin want to snatch the cassettes out of his hands, he found the right one and switched on the television. Natasha flitted through the room like a silent shadow, and disappeared.

Hermansson pressed the play button. Roslin leaned forward. The picture was surprisingly clear. A man with a large fur hat was standing at the counter.

‘Lundgren from Järvsö,’ said Hermansson. ‘He comes to stay here once a month in order to be left in peace so that he can drink himself silly in his room. When he’s drunk, he sings hymns. Then he goes back home. A nice man. Scrap dealer. He’s been coming to stay with me for nearly thirty years. I give him a discount.’

The television screen started flickering. When the picture became clear again, two middle-aged women were standing in front of the counter.

‘Natasha’s friends,’ said Hermansson solemnly. ‘They come now and then. I’d rather not think about what they do for a living. But they’re not allowed to entertain guests in this hotel. Mind you, I suspect they do so when I’m asleep.’

‘Do they also get a discount?’

‘Everybody gets a discount. I don’t have any set prices. The hotel’s been operating at a loss since the end of the 1960s. I actually live off a little portfolio of stocks and shares. I rely on forestry and heavy industry. There’s only one piece of advice I give to my trusted friends.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Swedish industrial stocks. They’re unbeatable.’

A new picture appeared on the screen. Birgitta Roslin sat up and took notice. The man’s picture was very clear. A Chinese man, wearing a dark overcoat. He glanced up at the camera. It seemed almost as if he were looking her in the eye. Young, she thought. No more than thirty, unless the camera’s telling a lie. He collected his key and disappeared from the screen, which went black.

‘My eyes are not too good,’ said Hermansson. ‘Is that the man you’re looking for?’

‘Was it the twelfth of January?’

‘I think so. But I can check with the ledger and see if he checked in after our Russian friends.’

He stood up and went to the reception counter. While he was away Birgitta Roslin managed to play through the pictures of the Chinese man several times. She froze the picture at the moment when he looked straight at the camera. He’s noticed it, she thought. Then he looks down and turns his face away. He even changes the way he is standing, so that his face can’t be seen. It all went very quickly. She rewound the tape and watched the sequence again. Now she could see that he was on his guard all the time, looking for the camera. She froze the picture again. A man with close-cropped hair, intense eyes, tightly closed lips. Quick movements, alert. Perhaps older than she’d first thought.

Hermansson came back.

‘It looks like we’re right,’ he said. ‘Two Russian ladies checked in, using false names as usual. And then came this man, Mr Wang Min Hao from Beijing.’

‘Would it be possible to make a copy of this film?’

Hermansson shrugged.

‘You can have it. What use is it to me? I installed this camera and video set-up for my own amusement. I wipe the cassettes every six months. Take it.’

He put the cassette in its case and handed it to her. They went back into the lobby. Natasha was cleaning the globes over the lights that illuminated the hotel entrance.

Sture Hermansson gave Birgitta Roslin’s arm a friendly squeeze.

‘Are you going to tell me now why you’re so interested in this Chinese man? Does he owe you money?’

‘Why on earth should he?’

‘Everybody owes everybody else something. If somebody starts asking about people, there’s usually money involved somewhere.’

‘I think this man can provide the answers to certain questions,’ said Roslin. ‘But I’m afraid I can’t tell you what they are.’

‘And you’re not a police officer?’

‘No.’

‘But you don’t come from these parts, do you?’

‘No, I don’t. My name is Birgitta Roslin, and I come from Helsingborg. I’d be grateful if you’d get in touch if he turns up again.’

She wrote her address and telephone number on a piece of paper and gave it to Sture Hermansson.

When she emerged into the street she noticed that she was sweating. The Chinese man’s eyes were still following her. She put the cassette into her bag and looked around, unsure of what to do next. She really should be on her way back to Helsingborg – it was already late afternoon. She went into a nearby church and sat down in a pew at the front. It was chilly. A man was kneeling by one of the thick walls, repairing a plaster joint. She tried to think straight. A red ribbon had been found in Hesjövallen. It had been lying in the snow. By coincidence she had succeeded in tracing it to a Chinese restaurant. A Chinese man had eaten there the evening of 12 January. Later that night or early the next morning, a large number of people had died in Hesjövallen.

She thought about the picture on Sture Hermansson’s videotape. Was it really feasible for one lone man to carry out all those murders? Were there others involved whom she didn’t know about yet? Or had the red ribbon ended up in the snow at Hesjövallen for an entirely different reason?

She found no answer. Instead she took out the brochure that had been left in the wastebasket. That also made her doubt whether there was any connection between Wang Min Hao and what had happened at Hesjövallen. Would a murderer really leave such obvious clues behind?

The light inside the church was dim. She put on her glasses and leafed through the brochure. One of the spreads was a picture of a skyscraper in Beijing and Chinese characters. On other pages were columns of figures and photographs of smiling Chinese men.

What interested her most was the Chinese writing on the back of the brochure. It brought Wang Min Hao very close to her. He was probably the one who had written it. As a reminder of something? Or for some other reason?

Who could read this stuff? The moment she asked the question, she knew the answer. Her distant and Red revolutionary youth suddenly came to mind. She left the church and stood in the churchyard with her mobile phone in her hand. Karin Wiman, a friend from her student days in Lund, was a Sinologist and worked at the university in Copenhagen. No one answered, but she left a message asking Karin to call her back. Then she returned to her car and found a large hotel in the centre of Hudiksvall with vacant rooms. Hers was spacious and on the top floor. She switched on the television and saw on teletext that snow was forecast for that night.

She lay on her bed and waited. She heard a man laughing in one of the neighbouring rooms.

The ringing phone woke her. It was Karin Wiman, who sounded somewhat baffled. When Birgitta Roslin explained what she wanted, her friend urged her to find a fax machine and send her the page with the Chinese characters.

She was able to use the fax at the front desk, then went back to her room to wait. It was dark outside now. She would soon call home and explain that, because the weather had taken a turn for the worse, she would be staying another night.

Karin Wiman called at half past seven.

‘The characters are carelessly drawn, but I think I can work out what they mean.’

Birgitta Roslin held her breath.

‘It’s the name of a hospital. I’ve tracked it down. It’s in Beijing. Called Longfu. It’s in the centre of town, on a street called Mei Shuguan Hutong. It’s not far from China’s biggest art gallery. I can send you a map if you like.’

‘Please do.’

‘OK, now you can tell me why you want to know all this. I’m very curious. Has your old interest in China been resurrected?’

‘Perhaps. I’ll tell you more later. Can you send the map to the fax machine I used?’

‘You’ll have it in a few minutes. But you’re being too secretive.’

‘Just be patient for a while. I’ll tell you everything.’

‘We should get together.’

‘I know. We see far too little of each other.’

Birgitta Roslin went down to the front desk and waited. The map of central Beijing arrived momentarily. Karin had marked it with an arrow.

Roslin noticed that she was hungry. Her hotel didn’t have a restaurant, so she grabbed her jacket and went out. She would study the map when she came back.

It was dark in town, few cars, hardly any pedestrians. The man at the front desk had recommended an Italian restaurant in the vicinity. She went there and ate in the sparsely occupied dining room.

By the time she left, it had started snowing. She headed back to her hotel.

She suddenly stopped. For some reason she had the feeling she was being watched. But when she looked round, she couldn’t see anybody.

She hurried back and locked her room door, securing it with the chain. Then she stood behind the curtains and looked down onto the street.

The same as before. Nobody to be seen. Just the snow falling, more and more densely.

18

Birgitta Roslin slept badly that night. She woke up several times and went to the window. It was still snowing. The wind was creating high drifts along house walls. The streets were deserted. At about seven she was woken up once and for all by snowploughs clattering past.

Before going to bed she had called home with the details of the hotel she had checked into. Staffan had listened but not said much.

That he didn’t express any surprise on hearing she wasn’t on her way back made her both angry and disappointed. There was a time when we learned not to dig too deeply into each other’s emotional lives, she thought. Everyone needs some private space. But that shouldn’t develop into indifference. Is that where we’re headed? Are we there already?

There was an electric kettle in her room. She made a cup of tea and sat down with the map Karin Wiman had sent her. The room was in semi-darkness, the only light coming from a reading lamp and from the muted television. The map was difficult to read, but she found the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square. It brought back memories.

Roslin put the map down and thought about her daughters and their generation. The conversation with Karin had reminded her of the person she had once been herself. So near and yet so far, she thought.

Those days were crucial. In the midst of all my naive chaos, I was convinced that the way to a better world was via solidarity and liberation. I’ve never forgotten that feeling of being at the very centre of the world, at a time when it was possible to change everything.

But I’ve never lived up to the insights I had at that time. In my worst moments I’ve felt like a traitor. Not least to my mother, who encouraged me to rebel. But I suppose, if I’m honest with myself, my political will was really no more than a sort of varnish I spread over my existence. The only thing that really penetrated was my determination to be an honest judge. That’s something nobody can take away from me, she concluded.

She drank her tea and made plans for the day. She would visit the police again and tell them what she’d discovered. This time they would have to listen. They hadn’t exactly achieved a breakthrough in the investigation so far. When she checked into her hotel she had heard some Germans in the lobby discussing what had happened in Hesjövallen. This was news abroad as well as at home. A blot on the copybook of innocent Sweden, she thought. Mass murder has no place in this country. Such things only happen in the United States, or occasionally in Russia, but not here, in a little remote and peaceful village in the depths of the Swedish forests.

It was still snowing when Birgitta Roslin went to the police station again. The temperature had fallen. The thermometer outside the hotel said minus seven degrees Celsius. The pavements had not yet been cleared. She walked carefully to avoid slipping.

It was quiet in the station’s reception area. A lone officer was reading messages on a noticeboard. The woman at the telephone switchboard was motionless, staring into space.

Roslin had the impression that the Hesjövallen massacre hadn’t occurred, that the whole thing was a fantasy someone had made up.

‘I’m looking for Vivi Sundberg.’

‘She’s in a meeting.’

‘Erik Huddén?’

‘He’s there as well.’

‘Is everybody in the meeting?’

‘Everybody. Apart from me.’

‘How long is it going to last?’

‘Impossible to say. Maybe all day.’

The woman in reception opened the door to let in the officer who had been reading the noticeboard.

‘I think there’s been a breakthrough,’ she said in a low voice, and left.

Birgitta Roslin sat down and leafed through a newspaper. Police officers occasionally came and went through the glass door. Journalists and a television team arrived. She half expected to see Lars Emanuelsson.

A quarter past nine. She closed her eyes and leaned back against the wall. Then she gave a start on hearing a voice she recognised. Vivi Sundberg was standing in front of her. She looked very tired, with black shadows around her eyes.

‘You wanted to speak to me.’

‘If I’m not disturbing you.’

‘Of course you’re disturbing me. But I assume it’s important. You know the drill by now.’