“Now I know everything about spruce needles,” said Sammy.
Lindell did not understand what he meant and had no desire to know either, but she nodded toward the man on the other side of the fence. He nodded back and gave her a long look, as if he recognized her but could not place the face.
“Shall we get going?”
“Nice to meet you,” said Sammy, and Lindell was getting mortally tired of all the heartiness.
“Perhaps we have to talk a little with the associate professor too,” she said irritated when they had walked a few meters.
“What’s with you? Was she surly, the domestic servant?”
“Not at all,” Lindell said.
“My old man was almost pure sunshine,” said Sammy.
“That’s nice. Did he have anything to offer? What do you mean, almost?”
“He said that he knew of the professor, but no more than that. But then he said something that made me wonder, that Ohler has always been an oppressor, vermin. Those are really strong words.”
“Agnes knows Viola and Edvard on Gräsö,” said Lindell.
“I’ll be damned! It’s a small world.”
“Gräsö is small,” said Lindell.
“I wonder what he meant by vermin?”
“Viola is really ill.”
“Go out and see her then,” said Sammy thoughtlessly.
Yes, maybe I should do that, she thought. She would probably be happy. I’m sure I would cry the whole time and Viola would be the one who would have to console.
“Shall we go see the associate professor?”
Sammy nodded and cast a glance backward, before they rounded the corner of the house. Yet another car was now parked on the street.
“We’ll have to bring Moberg here,” said Sammy.
Anthony Moberg was a particularly zealous traffic cop, with zero social skills and the one who used the most parking ticket forms in the whole department, perhaps in the whole country.
“Shall we see the associate professor?” Lindell repeated in such an expressionless voice that Sammy stopped and turned toward her.
“Forget about Gräsö now,” he said, without being able to conceal his irritation.
“Okay, I’ll cheer up,” said Lindell, giving him a crooked smile. “It’s just such a shock to be reminded.”
“Shock,” muttered Sammy Nilsson, but he seemed appeased and jogged over toward the journalists who now were thronging by the gate in full force, except for Bengtsson.
“We’ll do the phone trick,” he mumbled.
He opened the gate and smiled at the assembled press.
“Ann Lindell will tell you a little,” he said, slinking off.
She swept her eyes over the flock before she started to perform her spiel.
“Yes, as you know we have received reports that Professor von Ohler has been subjected to a number of villainies”-where did she get that word from?-“and because he has received so much attention, both in Sweden and abroad, in connection with the Nobel Prize, we obviously take seriously-”
“What does Professor von Ohler think about this?” asked Liselott Karnehagen, the woman from Aftonbladet, taking out her pocket recorder.
“What does he think?”
Karnehagen nodded eagerly.
“You’ll have to ask him that,” said Lindell.
At the same moment a shrill whistle was heard. They all turned around. Sammy was standing by the associate professor’s gate gesturing. With exaggerated movements he pointed at his cell phone.
“Excuse me,” said Lindell, pushing her way forward, “evidently there’s a call I have to take.”
She set off at a rapid pace and reached the associate professor’s gate before the throng of journalists realized what had happened. Göte Bengtsson started his van and rolled off, giving a thumb’s-up as he passed Lindell and Nilsson.
“Associate Professor Gregor Johansson,” Lindell noted on her pad, and it struck her that he was the first associate professor she had spoken with. The one she had encountered previously was in a state of decomposition.
Something also smelled in the living associate professor’s house, not rotten, but she got a faint sense of the untidy, the unaired.
“Why don’t we go up in the tower,” said Johansson.
Sammy and Lindell gave each other a look. Neither of them wanted a lecture on orchids or some other exciting species, but they could not say no, the man was obviously delighted at the thought of letting their conversation take place under glass. Perhaps he wanted to show them how well he had arranged it? He radiated loneliness and Lindell had nothing against keeping him company for a while.
“That would be exciting,” said Sammy.
They climbed up, the associate professor in the lead, eagerly talking about when and how he had his tower constructed, while Lindell thought about Viola. Was she on her deathbed? Agnes’s choice of words might suggest that. She was not a person who exaggerated, dramatized about death, Lindell was sure of that. Agnes seemed to possess a kind of stripped-down, unsentimental attitude to hers and other people’s lives, just like Viola. So when she said, “Edvard will be with her” it could mean that the end was near for the old woman.
Lindell sighed. Sammy gave her a worried look and reached out his hand to support her as she climbed up into the tower.
“Yes, I must say, the view is good,” he said.
The associate professor nodded.
“For the annual fireworks in the Botanical Gardens I usually sit here with a glass of wine.”
“What beautiful plants!” Lindell exclaimed. “And an olive tree! Do you see, Sammy? Olives! And lemons. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it.”
Pride made the associate professor’s skinny cheeks twitch. It was obvious that he didn’t know how to react to this enthusiastic and wholehearted praise.
“That was kind,” he was finally able to say.
Lindell was happy that they had taken the trouble to come up. The tower gave an overview of the block. This is where the drama is playing out, she thought, amused and slightly energized. The former colleague and now bitter enemy, the associate professor who apparently calmly observes everything from above: the neighbor Bunde, whom they had only glimpsed like a moray in its hole, prepared to strike again with its sharp teeth at any moment; the red-eyed gardener in the neighboring yard who with his tirade about “vermin” and “oppressors” was the strange bird in this academic wasp’s nest; the “Germans,” this frightening people who were only jealous that they did not have a Nobel Prize to either award or receive; Agnes, with a half century of experiences, with slow cooking and shiny copper pans, who certainly knew more about Bertram von Ohler than he did himself.
And as the cherry on the cake, someone who with more tangible methods amuses himself by throwing stones and placing a cranium-a real-life skull, as Ottosson had expressed it-mounted on a fence post next to the professor’s mailbox.
“This stone-throwing, what do you think about that?” Sammy Nilsson abruptly interrupted the associate professor’s lecture about succulents.
The associate professor was startled. He looked at Sammy Nilsson in a way that expressed a wounded fatigue, as if the police had abused his confidence.
“I don’t think anything,” he said.
“You haven’t seen or heard anything?”
Gregor Johansson shook his head.
“Have you talked with the gardener, Haller? You seem to have a good deal in common,” said Sammy, pointing down toward the man. “He called Ohler vermin, what could he mean by that?”
“No idea,” said the associate professor.
“Have you discussed the professor and the prize with him?”
“Just in passing,” the associate professor answered.