The Man From Beijing (6 page)

Julia’s house wasn’t locked. She went in and read the document that Huddén had found on the kitchen table. The answer she found to her question made her heart start beating faster. She sat down and tried to marshal her thoughts.

The conclusion she reached was improbable, but it might be correct anyway. She dialled Huddén’s number. He answered immediately.

‘I’m sitting in Julia’s kitchen. The woman standing on the road in her nightdress. Come here right away.’

‘Will do.’

Huddén sat opposite her at the table. Then stood up again and looked down at the chair seat. Sniffed at it, then changed to another chair. She stared at him in bafflement.

‘Urine,’ he said. ‘The old lady must have peed herself. What did you want to say?’

‘I want to try out a thought on you. It seems implausible, but is somehow rational nevertheless. I have the feeling that there’s a sort of underlying logic to what happened here last night. I want you to listen, and then tell me if I’ve got the wrong end of the stick.

‘It’s to do with names,’ she began. ‘We still don’t know the boy’s name, but if I’m right he’s related to the Andersson family who lived and died in the house where we found them. A key to everything that happened here last night is the names. Families. People in this village seem to have been called Andersson, Andrén or Magnusson. Julia’s surname is Holmgren. Julia Holmgren. She’s still alive. And then we have Tom and Ninni Hansson. They’re also still alive, and have a different surname. It should be possible to draw a conclusion from that.’

‘That whoever did this, for some reason or other, was out to get people with those names,’ said Huddén.

‘Think another step ahead! This is a tiny little hamlet. People probably haven’t moved. Most likely there has been intermarriage between the families. I’m not talking about incest, just that there is good reason to believe that we’re not looking at three families, but perhaps two. Or maybe even only one. That may explain why Julia Holmgren and the Hanssons are still alive.’

Sundberg paused for Huddén’s reaction. She didn’t consider him particularly intelligent, but she respected his ability to use his intuition.

‘If that is true, it must mean that whoever did this knew these people very well. Who would do that?’

‘Possibly a relative?’

‘A
mad
relative? Why would he want to do anything like this?’

‘We don’t know.’

‘How do you explain the severed leg?’

‘I can’t. But I think we have a start. That and a red silk ribbon are all we have.

‘I want you to go back to Hudiksvall,’ she said. ‘Tobias is supposed to be delegating officers to search for next of kin. Make sure that happens. And look for links between these three families. But keep it between you and me for the time being.’

Shortly before half past five, some of the senior police officers gathered in Tobias Ludwig’s office to discuss the press conference. It was decided not to issue a list of names of the dead, but they would say how many people had been killed and admit that, so far, the police had no clues. Any information the general public could supply would be appreciated.

Ludwig would give preliminary details, and then Sundberg would take over.

Before entering the room crammed with reporters, she shut herself away in a toilet. She examined her face in a mirror. If only I could wake up, she thought. And find that this whole business had gone away.

She went out, slammed her fist hard into the corridor wall several times, then went into the room chock-full of people and far too hot. She walked up to the little podium and sat down next to Tobias Ludwig.

He looked at her. She nodded. He could begin.

The Judge

5

A moth detached itself from the darkness and fluttered restlessly around the desk lamp. Birgitta Roslin put down her pen, leaned back in her chair and watched the moth’s vain attempt to force its way through the porcelain shade. The noise of its fluttering wings reminded her of something from her childhood, but she couldn’t pin it down.

Her memory was always especially creative when she was tired, as she was now. Just as when she was asleep, inaccessible memories from long ago might crop up out of nowhere.

Like the moth.

She closed her eyes and massaged her temples with her fingertips. It was a few minutes past midnight. She had heard the night security officers passing through the echoing halls of the court building as they made their rounds twice. She liked working late at night, when the place was empty. Years ago, when she had been an articled clerk in Värnamo, she had often gone into the empty courtroom late in the evening, switched on a few lights, sat down and listened to the silence. She would imagine she was in an empty theatre. There were echoes in the walls, whispering voices still living on after all the drama of past trials. Murderers had been sentenced there, violent criminals, thieves. And men had sworn their innocence in a never-ending stream of depressing paternity cases. Others had been declared innocent and reinstated as honourable men.

When Birgitta Roslin had completed her probationary period and been offered a post as an articled clerk in Värnamo, her intention had been to become a prosecuting counsel. But during her clerkship she changed course and began to specialise in what was to become her eventual career. To a large extent this was due to Anker, the old district judge, who made an indelible impression on her. He displayed exactly the same patience as he listened to young men who told obvious lie after lie in an attempt to avoid responsibility in paternity cases as he did when faced with hard-boiled men of violence who showed no remorse for their brutal misdeeds. It was as if the old judge had instilled in her a new degree of respect for the judicial system she had previously taken for granted. Now she actually experienced it, not just in word, but in deed. Justice meant action. By the time she left Värnamo, she had made up her mind to become a judge.

She stood up and walked over to the window. Down below in the street a man was peeing against the wall. It had been snowing in Helsingborg during the day, a thin layer of powdery snow that was now whirling along the street. As she watched the man nonchalantly, her mind was working overtime on the judgement she was busy preparing. She had allowed herself until the following day, but it had to be ready by then.

The man down below moved on. Roslin returned to her desk and picked up her pencil. She always worked with pencil until she’d finalised her work.

She leaned over the messy pages with all their alterations and additions. It was a simple case and the evidence against the accused was overwhelming; nevertheless, she was having problems making her judgment.

She wanted to impose sanctions, but was unable to.

A man and a woman had met in one of Helsingborg’s dance restaurants. The woman was young, barely twenty, and had drunk too much. The man was in his forties and had volunteered to see her home, then was invited into the flat for a glass of water. The woman had fallen asleep on the sofa. The man had raped her, without waking her up, then left. The next morning the woman had only a vague memory of what had happened on the sofa. She contacted the hospital, was examined, and it was established that she had had intercourse. The man was charged. The case came to court a full year after the incident had taken place. Birgitta Roslin had presided over the trial and observed the young woman. She had read in the preliminary case notes that the woman earned her living by working as a temporary cashier in various supermarkets. It was clear from a personal statement that the woman was in the habit of drinking too much. She had also been found guilty of petty theft and was once sacked for neglecting her duties.

In many respects the accused was her opposite. He worked as an estate agent, specialising in business premises. Everyone gave him good references. He was unmarried and earned a high salary. He did not appear in police records, but Birgitta Roslin felt that she could see through him as he sat before her in his expensive and well-pressed suit. She had no doubt that he had raped the woman as she lay asleep on the sofa. DNA tests had established beyond doubt that intercourse had taken place, but he denied rape. She had been a willing partner, he maintained, as did his counsel, a lawyer from Malmö whom Roslin had come across before. It was one person’s word against another’s, an irreproachable property broker versus a drunken checkout girl who had invited him into her flat in the middle of the night.

Roslin was upset about not being able to convict him. She couldn’t shake the feeling that on this occasion a guilty man would go free. There was nothing to be done.

What would that wise old bird Anker have done? What advice would he have given her? He would certainly have shared my concern, Roslin thought. A guilty man is going to be set free. Old Anker would have been just as upset as I am. And he would have had as little to say as I do. There’s the rub as far as judges are concerned: we have to obey the law in the knowledge that we are releasing a criminal without punishment. The woman may not have been an angel, but she would have to live with that outrageous injustice for the rest of her life.

She left her desk chair and went to lie down on the sofa. She had paid for it herself and put it in her office instead of the uncomfortable armchair provided by the National Courts Administration. She had learned from Anker to hold a bunch of keys in her hand and close her eyes. When she dropped the keys, it was time to get up. But she needed a short rest. Then she would finish writing her judgement, go home to bed and produce a clean copy the next day. She had worked through everything there was to work through and confirmed that there was no question of a guilty verdict.

She dozed off and dreamed about her father, of whom she had no personal memories. He had been a ship’s engineeer. During a severe storm in the middle of January 1949 the steamship
Runskär
had sunk in the Gävlebukten, with all hands on board. His body had never been found. Birgitta Roslin had been four months old at the time. The image she had of her father came from the photographs in her home. The picture she remembered best was of him standing by the rail of a ship, smiling, his hair ruffled and his shirtsleeves rolled up. Her mother had told her it was a ship’s mate holding the camera, but Birgitta Roslin had always imagined that he was actually smiling at her, despite the fact that the photograph was taken before she was born. He kept reappearing in her dreams. Now he was smiling at her, just as he did in the photograph, but then he vanished as if swallowed up by fog.

She woke with a start. She realised immediately that she had slept for far too long. The keyring trick hadn’t worked. She had dropped it without noticing. She sat up and checked the clock: it was already six. She had slept for more than five hours. I’m shattered, she thought. Like most other people, I don’t get enough sleep. There’s too much going on in my life that worries me.

She called her husband, who had begun to wonder where she was. It was not unusual for her to spend the night on the sofa in her office after they’d quarreled, but this was not the case now.

Staffan Roslin had been a year ahead of her at Lund, where they both studied law. Their first meeting was at a party given by mutual friends. Immediately Birgitta knew he was the man for her, swept off her feet by his eyes, his height, his large hands and his inability to stop blushing.

But, after completing his studies, Staffan did not take to the law. He decided to retrain as a railway conductor, and one morning he appeared in the living room dressed in a blue-and-red uniform and announced that at 12.19, he would be responsible for departure 212 from Malmö to Alvesta, and then on to Växjö and Kalmar.

He became a much happier person. By the time he chose to abandon his legal career, they already had four children: first a son, then a daughter and finally twins, both girls. The children had arrived in rapid succession, and she was amazed when she thought back to those days. How had they managed it? Four children within six years. They had left Malmö and moved to Helsingborg, where she was appointed a district judge.

The children were grown up now. The twins had flown the nest the previous year, to Lund where they shared a flat. But she was pleased that they were not studying the same subject and that neither of them had ambitions to become a lawyer. Siv, who was nineteen minutes older than her sister Louise, had eventually decided, after much hesitation, to become a vet. Louise, who had a more impetuous temperament than her twin sister, had tried her hand at several things, sold clothes in a men’s shop, and in the end decided to study political science and religious studies at university. Birgitta had often tried to coax out of her what she wanted to do with her life, but she was the most withdrawn of the four children and rarely said anything about her innermost thoughts. Birgitta suspected that Louise was the daughter most like herself. Her son, David, who worked for a big pharmaceutical company, was like his father in almost every way. The eldest daughter, Anna, had astonished her parents by embarking on long journeys in Asia, about which they knew very little.

My family, Birgitta thought. Big worries but a lot of pleasure. Without it, most of my life would have been wasted.

There was a large mirror in the corridor outside her office. She examined her face and her body. Her close-cropped dark hair had started to grow grey at the temples. Her habit of pursing her lips tended to give her face a negative expression. But what really worried her was the fact that she had put on weight over the last few years. Three, four kilos, no more. But enough to be noticeable.

She didn’t like what she saw. She knew she was basically an attractive woman. But she was beginning to lose her charm. And she was not making any attempt to resist.

She left a note on her secretary’s desk, saying that she would be in later in the day. It had become a little warmer, and the snow had already started to melt. She started walking to her car, which was parked on a side street.