“Unfortunately I don’t have a skirt on,” said Lindell.
“You don’t look like you’re in a skirt-wearing mood.”
“‘Skirt-wearing mood’?”
“Yes, I think about laughter when I see a beautiful woman in a beautiful skirt. But today a skirt would not suit you so well.”
Lindell looked down at her black jeans. They didn’t look too happy either.
“He’s coming back,” said the Greek.
“Who?”
“And when he does, you should put on a skirt with beautiful, happy colors.”
Lindell stared at him, both moved and agitated by his words. He raised one hand from his cane and placed it on her knee. It felt as if his hand weighed a ton.
“Now Grandpa’s going home,” he said.
He removed his hand, got up laboriously, and took a deep breath.
“Are you a shepherd?”
“No, land surveyor, but now I don’t have any land to survey. Trust me,” he continued after a short pause, without looking at her, and went his way. A few seconds later he had disappeared.
What did he mean? Lindell stared at the building where the man had gone around the corner. Had he seen her and Freddy on the bridge, how he left her and how she followed him a little indecisively but then sank down on the bench? That he improbably enough thought they were a couple? She could be Freddy’s mother!
Or was her quandary about the disappeared journalist so clearly legible on her face? Perhaps the old land surveyor was psychic?
And this talk about skirts! She could not see him however as a peeper who sat drooling over skirts blowing up and exposing women’s legs. His whole way of expressing himself was too singular and his eyes too wise for that.
She smiled to herself and decided to consider him a bearer of a favorable message that everything would work out. Brant would come back, everything would have a natural explanation, and she would wear a skirt in happy colors. Did she even have such a skirt?
Freddy Johansson approached on foot exactly one hour after they had gone their separate ways. Lindell gave him a smile from a distance that she hoped would express her appreciation that he was so punctual. They walked in silence to Lindell’s car and drove to the police station.
In contrast to Andreas Davidsson, Freddy Johansson looked her in the eyes when he spoke. He also adopted a considerably tougher attitude.
“You sent a text message to Klara Lovisa last New Year’s Eve,” Lindell stated, taking a chance.
“I don’t remember that,” he answered. “Maybe I did.”
“Where did you send the text from?”
“I was in town.”
“With friends?”
“The party broke up right before twelve o’clock. There was a little trouble. Then I went home.”
Lindell asked for the names of his friends and Freddy listed off a handful of names and some cell phone numbers, which she wrote down.
“You went home alone?”
“I already said that.”
Lindell squinted at her notepad, browsed back a few pages, pretended to read something, and then fixed her eyes on the young man before her. She understood why he irritated some people. His full lips were drawn up, making him look like he was sneering superciliously all the time.
“Okay, then,” she sighed. “What did you write?”
“I didn’t say I sent her a message. You know how it is, you text here and there.”
“You liked Klara Lovisa, I’ve understood.”
“She was cute,” said Freddy.
“Did you have a relationship?”
Freddy laughed. The superior sneer disappeared, and he suddenly looked more human, with a boyish, almost cute expression.
“She was jailbait, sort of, you know, a little flirty.”
“And you’re a grown man?”
He did not comment on that.
“She was fifteen. You know she turned sixteen the day she disappeared?”
“It was in the newspaper.”
“Did you text her and wish her happy birthday?”
“No,” said Freddy, shaking his head.
He drew his hand through his mop of hair.
“What do you really want? Am I suspected in some way?”
“We’re just checking up on a few things,” said Lindell curtly. “Do you have a driver’s license?”
“Yes, what about it?”
“A car too perhaps?”
“No.”
“Do you ever borrow a car? From your parents perhaps?”
She suddenly got the feeling that she was completely on the wrong track. Why should this twenty-two year old have anything to do with Klara Lovisa’s disappearance?
“It has happened. Damn, you’re really inquisitive!”
Lindell waved her hand to interrupt him.
“We would like a photo of you.”
He immediately took out his wallet and removed a minimal photo, no larger than a passport picture, and handed it over.
“That’s nice,” she said. “But we want a proper photo.”
“Why? Fan picture, or what?”
Now it was Lindell’s turn to shake her head.
“Come along with me now, and we’ll get this taken care of right away. Then you can go home.”
Seventeen
She hugged him hard and long, and when she released her hold she nudged the money belt, laughed, and said something jokingly about the rich gringo with the artificial stomach.
He freed himself from her embrace.
“Shall we go in?”
She stepped to one side and as he passed through the doorway she caught him again, pressed herself against him, put her head against his shoulder. Her hair smelled of lemon.
She was wearing a white dress, with several clasps depicting birds tucked into her hair.
“I’m so happy,” she whispered. “I’ve been longing for you.”
He nodded and looked into her amazing eyes.
“We have an hour before Mama comes home. She’s nervous, you should know.”
He nodded again.
“But she won’t be home for an hour.”
She caressed his cheek.
“You’re warm,” she said, pulling on his T-shirt and fanning a little air in toward his upper body.
“Take a shower,” she suggested, leading him into the house, toward the bathroom.
He sensed what that hour might involve. Vanessa was extremely physical, as she herself put it. She loved bodily contact, was often ready for touch, took the initiative. The modesty she had shown at first had completely disappeared and was replaced by an openness that was a match for his.
“I think I’ll shower later,” he said, and his voice sounded considerably rougher than he intended.
“Are you tired? Do you want to rest before Mama gets here?”
He noticed a moment of disappointment in her eyes. He shook his head.
“Just a little thirsty.”
“I’ll get a beer, then we’ll sit in the shade behind the house.”
She went toward the kitchen. He watched her. I want her, he thought, suddenly aroused.
They sat down on the patio. A bird, whose call Anders Brant recognized very well, called out its encouraging song: come-on-along, come-on-along, come-on-along.
She poured the beer, carefully as usual, and set a glass in front of him.
“Skål,” she said.
The first word in Swedish that she learned.
“Skål,” he said, and reciprocated her smile.
His dehydrated, exhausted body greedily soaked up the cold beer. He immediately felt the effect of the alcohol. Maybe it will make this easier, he thought, and emptied the glass.
She observed him, but her smile had faded somewhat. She poured more beer. Her eyes rested steadily on his face.
He leaned his head forward, wiping his sweaty forehead. The belt pressed against his stomach.
“What’s that bird called?”
“I don’t know,” she answered immediately, as if she didn’t care to listen, as if birds were the last thing that interested her right now.
“I hear it a lot,” he said.