No, he had not seen Haller. Not heard from him either, no bill had come, but he was not particularly worried about that. He had determined that all the work ordered was done and was satisfied with it. He had not noticed Haller’s bicycle.
The associate professor apologized for the trouble-certainly unnecessary-thanked him and hung up. But he was not relieved in any way; on the contrary, his worry increased. Something had happened to Haller, he was sure of it. Could he call the police again without seeming completely nuts? He stared at the direct number the woman had given him. He resorted to magic to decide. If the sum of the figures in the telephone number was an odd number he would call. He quickly added the six digits and the result was twenty-seven. He immediately picked up the phone before he had time to change his mind.
Forty
“Reported missing” was an ominous term, he had always thought that. It had to do with an experience in his childhood, he understood that very well. When he was thirteen years old his grandfather had disappeared. No one could explain how or why, neither then nor later. He was and remained missing, Fred Emanuel Nilsson. Suicide, it was said, but that was an explanation Sammy Nilsson never bought. The grownups put the lid on, never wanted to talk about what had happened, and were disturbed and at last angry at his constant speculations.
Was that perhaps why he became a policeman? Fred had been Sammy’s favorite relative. A person like that would never kill himself, was his teenage thought. He was still convinced, more than thirty years later, that Fred had not disappeared voluntarily.
Random harvest, he thought. He stared at the hastily jotted-down information and remembered the conversation he had had with the gardener. There can’t be that many Hallers. According to directory assistance there were two in Uppsala. One of them was Karsten. Sammy got no answer.
He called the person who made the report, Gregor Johansson, and got a little more meat on the bones.
He went to Lindell’s office. The door was open. She was studying the map hanging on the wall. Sammy studied her figure, noted that she had put on a few kilos.
“I have someone who’s been swallowed up by the earth,” he said.
Lindell turned around.
“You and your missing persons,” said Lindell.
She smiled at him. He knew that his fixation with missing persons was well-known in the building. Everyone in homicide knew that he regularly checked all reports that came in. It had become a habit. It had never had any significance for investigative work, but that did not matter. There were those who joked about it, but Lindell knew better than to tease him. She was also the only one who knew the background. He had talked with her about the Fred Nilsson mystery.
“Yes,” he said, “you know how it is. But this is a person we’ve met recently.”
He told about the associate professor’s report.
“Strange,” said Lindell. “But it’s probably a coincidence.”
Sammy looked at the notes again and nodded. They looked at each other. They both knew that he would check up on it. She grinned.
“Good luck,” she said.
Sammy Nilsson immediately went to Artillerigatan. The building had three entries and Karsten Heller lived in the middle one on the third floor. Lind and Svensson were the names of his nearest neighbors. Sammy pressed on the doorbell and waited. After half a minute he crouched down and opened the mail slot. On the floor in the hall not unexpectedly was a drift of newspapers and mail.
The air that streamed out through the mail slot was fresh, he could not detect any odor of the sort that bodies exude when they have been lying dead for several days in a warm apartment.
He straightened up and remained standing indecisively in front of the door. There were several alternatives. One was to contact the management of the co-op apartment association and perhaps get someone to open the door. That could entail complications. If there were ordinary reasons that Haller was not at home, he might have opinions later about the police going into his apartment.
Sammy decided to wait but in a final attempt to get clarity he rang the nearest neighbor’s door. A woman in her seventies opened almost immediately. Perhaps she had been watching him through the peephole in the door?
He introduced himself and explained his business. The woman reacted immediately and unexpectedly strongly.
“I knew that something had happened,” she said, and Sammy saw that she was on the verge of tears. “He would never go somewhere without telling me because I take care of his flowers when he’s away. I’m sure you saw how it looks?”
“How does what look?”
“In Karsten’s window. They’re drooping. Above all that fine flower from Africa. You should see the kind of plants he has.”
“Yes, he does work with gardening,” said Sammy.
“Exactly! He’s a good man. Never any problems. He helps me sometimes. I actually thought about going into his apartment today. Maybe he’s gone away for a few days and simply forgot to tell me.”
“You have a key?”
“Yes, how else would I go in and water?”
“Do you think that Karsten Haller would take it amiss if I borrowed the key and went into the apartment?”
“Perhaps he’s sick? Perhaps he’s lying in bed and can’t communicate?”
“That might be.”
The woman took down a ring with two keys that was hanging on a bulletin board right inside the door.
“Go on in,” she encouraged him.
He stepped over the mail and newspapers that formed a neat little pile inside the door, at the same time as he formed a picture of how the apartment was arranged: the kitchen to the left, living room straight ahead, bedroom to the right, and then the toilet.
In the living room a drooping plant was seen on the windowsill, just as the neighbor pointed out. He called out a “hello.” It could actually be the case that Haller was in bed, severely ill.
It only took a momentary glance to determine that the room was empty but to be on the safe side he crouched down and peeked under the bed. Dust and a shoe box.
He opened the two closets, where there were strikingly few clothes. Sammy counted half a dozen shirts and a couple of jackets in one. In the other were piles of garbage bags.
The living room gave a strange impression. Besides the many potted plants there was an armchair, an old teak table, and a TV on a bench. Against the one short wall stood a sparsely filled bookshelf but there were lots of notebooks of a kind that Sammy recognized well. They were of Chinese manufacture, with red spines and hard covers. He pulled out one of them and randomly opened to a page. Columns filled with figures: a workbook. Here was information about gravel, topsoil, and rented machinery. All neatly noted. He put the book back on the shelf.
A bachelor apartment, Sammy noted a little jealously. Sparse furnishing was something he had always wanted, but then he would be forced to get a divorce, and that was the most unimaginable scenario he could think of.
He went out into the kitchen. On the table was a passport and travel documents placed in a plastic sleeve. At the top a ticket issued to Karsten Haller. He was supposed to travel to Johannesburg a week earlier.
He remembered the man in the garden. He had stood out as frank and open, made an almost garrulous impression. What had they talked about? Sammy did not remember, everyday things surely, after Haller assured them that he had not seen anything peculiar in the neighborhood. After that the change had come, when he commented on Professor von Ohler. Haller’s facial expression darkened, the good-natured look disappeared.