“Doesn’t it taste good?” came a voice from behind.
Lindell turned around.
“Mind if I sit here?”
It was Charles Morgansson from Forensics. Lindell nodded. Her colleague sat down. He also had a cup of coffee and an identical little pastry on his tray.
“Great minds think alike,” he said when he noticed her gaze.
He made a very light impression. It wasn’t simply his hair color and pale skin, he was also wearing a dazzling white T-shirt, with a Hugo Boss logo. A thin silver chain wound around his neck.
“How’s it looking?” he asked.
“A bit complicated. Blomgren hasn’t yielded many avenues of investigation and no one seems to have seen anything of interest.”
“And we couldn’t contribute much either,” Morgansson said and halved his treat with one bite.
“I know,” Lindell said.
Morgansson shot her a look, devoured the last of his pastry, and washed it down with coffee. Don’t go, she thought.
He put down his cup and looked at her. “Want to go to the movies?”
“What?”
“The movies, you’ve heard of them.”
He smiled. It was as if the police station did not exist, no investigations and no red-marked files, no bringing in for questioning, no preliminary investigations, everything that was Lindell’s life. She couldn’t answer.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes, of course, I was just a bit taken aback.”
Ann felt that she was blushing and was suddenly furious. At herself, at him, at the whole situation, in fact.
“I was planning to go tonight, take it easy, but it’s not as much fun to go alone. It’d be more fun if it was you and I.”
“You and me. Not you and I,” Ann said.
He smiled again. I don’t like that smile, she thought.
“You and me,” Morgansson repeated. “How about it?”
Is he hitting on me, she thought in amazement. It was as if a relay had kicked into place, admittedly in a system that was somewhat rusty but that nonetheless-after an initial resistance-started to function; energy pulsed into the cable network inside her and a fear-filled pleasure suffused her chest.
“Maybe,” she said, “but I have a son who I would have to find a sitter for.”
He nodded.
“But that shouldn’t be a problem,” she added.
Morgansson crumpled up the plastic wrap that had surrounded the pastry. He wore a metal band on the ring finger of his right hand.
“I don’t ask my friends for babysitting favors very often, so it should be fine.”
He nodded again.
“His name is Erik.”
“I know,” he said, “that you have a boy, I mean.”
“What were you planning to go see?”
Ann wished he would start talking so she didn’t have to say anything.
“I’ll take a look in the paper,” he said, “and give you a call. Catch you later.”
He got up, picked up his tray, and left. She looked at his powerful body. When he had left the cafeteria, the fury inside her grew. Who did he think he was? He had gone to the trouble of asking her, of course, but he also took her for granted. “Look in the paper.” “Give you a ring.” His casual speech and attitude diminished her. As if it were a given that she would go with him, accept his choice of film, just give her a time, and voila! There she would be, picked up by the most self-confident northerner there ever was.
And anyway, she had a murder investigation to solve. It was typical. The forensic technicians could do their job and go home. In the Violent Crimes Division there were no such opportunities to rest. Should she go to the movies when Petrus Blomgren’s body had just been deposited in the deep freeze a few hours ago?
Then it hit her: how many people had she made an impression on in the past little while? The past year?
She looked down at the table and arranged the crumbs in a long line.
Charles was the first man in a long while to take the initiative. The last one was “the abominable man from Svartbäcken” as she called Erik’s father. He had asked her to dance when she was out once with some female colleagues. He was a good dancer but that was the only bright spot. The night they spent together was not particularly memorable. He had probably forgotten everything, an episode, perhaps one of many. For Ann’s part the whole thing resulted in an unexpected pregnancy.
Since that night they had had no contact. The man probably did not even know he was Erik’s father, and Ann had no particular wish to inform him of this. She knew he lived in Svartbäcken, that he was married and the father of two teenage children and that he was an engineer.
Charles Morgansson. She tried out the name. It was not particularly attractive, a little heavy and a mouthful. People would talk if they saw them together at the movies. Everyone would be surprised. Lindell wasn’t someone you flirted with.
Five
The parrot’s name was Splendens. It lived in a cage in the living room. It was messy. And noisy, filling the room-no, the whole house- with its racket. It drove her mother crazy, and as often as she could she covered it with the dark cloth. It was called Splendens for Mussolini. Because it screeched in Italian.
“It’s an endangered species in Brazil,” her father would often use as an argument when the subject of getting rid of it came up.
“Then we’ll send it there,” her mother answered every time.
When it died, the house became quiet as the grave. They never found out why it happened. One day it no longer moved, made no noise, simply sat completely still on its favorite perch, comfortably propped up against a branch. It looked like it was sleeping. Maybe it was dreaming of the Amazon.
Laura was nine and did not really grieve. Splendens had never been tempting to cuddle or spend time with. Even giving it food was boring. It always looked displeased, even when Laura brought the tastiest morsels. It jabbed at her fingers.
It seemed as if her father could not accept its death. He was under the impression that it had entered into a state of suspended animation and that it would start its screeching again at any moment. Several days went by before he pulled the parrot from its perch and buried it in the garden.
Her mother was jubilant but her father stopped her from throwing out the cage. It remained on its pedestal like a threat that her father could at any moment drag home a replacement for Splendens.
He sometimes stood and stared somewhat foolishly at the empty cage, the floor of which still contained some dust-covered sticks.
When Laura entered the living room it was as if she were transported back twenty-five years. The cage stood in its place, and she thought she could hear Splendens run through its repertoire of curses and dirty words in Tuscan dialect, phrases that Laura sometimes used in the office. These were always a big hit. Laura as fresh-mouthed Italian hussy became a staple at the annual office Christmas party, even if she afterward felt dirty inside.
She walked over to the cage. It still smelled of droppings, she thought, but realized it had to be her imagination. The cage looked smaller and she tried to remember how big Splendens had been. In her childhood she had thought it enormous, frightening, its claws quickly scrabbling up and down the wires of the cage, life-threatening, its broad beak ever ready to hack, pinch so hard that Laura’s skin was striped with blood. Only her father could stretch in his hand. Then the parrot put its head to one side and let out an almost loving sound.
Now the cage was on its way out. She put it in the driveway where mounds of junk had gathered the past few days.
The professor came walking by and condescended to say a few words. He asked her if she had heard anything about her father. Laura shook her head.
“Spring cleaning?”
Laura nodded. You hypocritical bastard, she thought but smiled.
“That always feels good,” her neighbor went on. “Eva-Britt and I are thinking about ordering a container. One always ends up accumulating so much stuff.”