She put the photograph back into the bookcase, thought briefly about the police officer who had been killed, and went to bed. She was woken up in the morning by Kristina getting ready for work. Kristina was her brother’s opposite in almost every regard: tall, thin, with a pointed face and a shrill voice that Linda’s dad made fun of behind her back. But Linda loved her aunt. There was something refreshingly uncomplicated about her, and in this way too she was her brother’s opposite. From his perspective, life was nothing but a heap of dense problems, unsolvable in his private life, attacked with the force and fury of a ravenous bear in his work.
Linda took the bus to the airport shortly before nine in the hopes of catching a plane to Malmö. All of the morning headlines were about the murdered police officer. She got on a plane leaving at noon and called her dad when she got to Sturup.
“Did you have a good time?” he asked when he came to pick her up.
“What do you think?”
“How could I know? I wasn’t there.”
“But we talked on the phone last night — remember?”
“Of course I remember. You were rude and unpleasant.”
“I was tired and upset. A police officer was murdered. No one was in a good mood after that.”
He nodded but didn’t say anything. He let her off when they got to Mariagatan.
“Have you found out anything more about this sadist?” she asked.
At first he didn’t seem to understand what she was referring to.
“The bird hater? The burning swans?”
“Probably just a prank call. Quite a few people live around the lake and someone would have seen something if it wasn’t.”
Wallander drove back to the police station and Linda walked up to the apartment. Her father had left a note by the phone. It was a message from Anna, Important. Call back soon. Then her father had scribbled something she couldn’t read. She called him at work.
“Why didn’t you tell me Anna called?”
“I forgot.”
“What have you written here — I can’t read your handwriting.”
“She sounded worried about something.”
“How do you mean?”
“Just that. She sounded worried. You’d better call her.”
Linda called but Anna’s line was busy. When she tried again there was no answer. At seven o’clock in the evening, after she and her dad had eaten, she put on her coat and walked over to Anna’s place. As soon as Anna opened the door Linda could see what her father had meant. Anna’s expression was different. Her eyes darted around anxiously. She pulled Linda into the apartment and shut the door.
It was as if she were in a hurry to shut out the outside world.
5
Linda was reminded of Anna’s mother, Henrietta. She was a thin woman with an angular, nervous way of moving, and Linda had always been a little afraid of her.
Linda remembered the first time she had played at Anna’s house. She must have been around eight or nine. Anna was in another class at school and they had never been able to figure out exactly what had drawn them to each other. It’s as if there’s an invisible force that brings people together. At least that’s the way it was with us. We were inseparable — until we fell in love with the same guy, that is.
Anna’s father had never been present except in pale photographs. Henrietta had carefully wiped away all traces of him, as if she were telling her daughter that there was no possibility of his return. The few photos Anna owned were stashed away in a drawer, hidden under some socks and underwear. In the pictures he had long hair, glasses, and a reluctant stance, as if he hadn’t really wanted to pose for the camera. Anna had showed her the pictures in the deepest confidence. When they became friends her father had already been gone for two years. Anna quietly rebelled against her mother’s determination to keep the apartment free of all traces of him. One time Henrietta had gathered up what remained of his clothes and stuffed them in a garbage bag in the basement. Anna had snuck down there at night and rescued a shirt and some shoes that she hid under her bed. For Linda this mysterious father had been a figure of adventure. She had often wished that she and Anna could trade places, that she could exchange her quarreling parents for this man who had simply vanished one day like gray wisps of smoke against a blue sky.
They sat on the sofa and Anna leaned back so half of her face was in shadow.
“How was the ball?”
“We heard about the murdered police officer in the middle of it and that pretty much ended it right there. But my dress was a success. How is Henrietta?”
I know what she’s doing, Linda thought. Whenever Anna has anything important to talk about she can never come right out and say it. It always takes time.
“Fine.”
Anna shook her head at her own words.
“Fine — I don’t know why I always say that. She’s actually worse than ever. For the past two years she’s been composing a requiem for herself. She calls it ‘The Unnamed Mass’ and she’s thrown the whole thing in the fire at least twice. Both times she managed to salvage most of the papers, but her self-esteem is about as low as a person with only one tooth left.”
“What does her music sound like?”
“I hardly even know. She’s tried to hum it for me a couple of times — the very few times she’s been convinced that what she was working on had value. But it doesn’t sound like anything close to a melody to me. It’s the kind of music that sounds more like screams, that pokes and hits you. I have no idea why anyone would ever listen to something like that. But at the same time I can’t help admiring that she hasn’t given up. Several times I’ve tried to persuade her to do other things in life. She’s not even fifty yet. But every time she’s reacted like an angry cat. It makes me wonder if she’s crazy.”
Anna interrupted herself at this point as if she were afraid of having said too much. Linda waited for her to continue.
“Have you ever had the feeling you were going crazy?”
“Only every single day.”
Anna frowned.
“No, not like that. I’m not kidding.”
Linda was immediately ashamed of her lighthearted comment.
“It happened to me once. You know all about that.”
“You’re thinking of when you slit your wrists. And then tried to jump off the overpass. But that’s despair, Linda. It’s not the same thing. Everyone has to face their despair at least once in their life. It’s a rite of passage. If you never find yourself raging at the sea or the moon or your parents, you never really have the opportunity to grow up. The King and Queen of Contentment are damned in their own way. They’ve let their souls be numbed. Those of us who want to stay alive have to stay in touch with our sorrow and grief.”
Linda had always envied Anna’s fanciful way of expressing herself. I would have had to sit down and write it all down if I were going to come up with anything like that, she thought. The King and Queen of Contentment.