“The sleeping pills were prescribed in June 1981,” Lindell said.
She paused for several seconds, letting the information sink in, before she continued.
“Can’t you tell me? It’s important to understand what happened to Petrus.”
Dorotea suddenly stood up and left the room with surprising agility. She returned with a postcard in her hand that she placed on the table in front of Lindell.
The card showed a beach in front of a hotel. There was everything one would associate with a charter trip: a bar in the background shaped like a giant shell, sun umbrellas, and lounge chairs in the foreground.
Lindell flipped the postcard over. It was addressed to “Dorotea Svahn, Vilsne village, Jumkil, Sweden.” The text was brief: “Hi Dorotea! I am so happy and having a good time.” Signed, “Petrus.”
Dorotea stood with her hand held out and as soon as Lindell looked up she took the postcard from Lindell’s hand.
“I want to keep it,” she said.
“Of course,” Lindell said.
Dorotea left again and returned, sitting down and looking at Lindell.
“I think he met a woman.”
“It seems like it,” Lindell said. “He used the word ‘happy.’ He didn’t say anything when he came home?”
“No, and I didn’t want to pry.”
“Were you upset?”
Dorotea shook her head.
“Then he got a prescription for sleeping pills,” Lindell continued. “You didn’t notice anything, like him being down or anything?”
“Nothing. Petrus was not the kind to talk about himself.”
Ann Lindell trusted Dorotea’s judgment. Even if Petrus had not said anything about a woman Lindell was convinced that Dorotea had reasons for her suspicions.
“Do you have any idea who the woman might have been?”
“I don’t know anything else,” Dorotea said firmly and Lindell understood there was nothing more to say on the subject.
Lindell stayed for another half an hour before taking her leave. On her way to her car, which she had parked on Petrus Blomgren’s property, she wondered if he had met the woman in Mallorca or if she had been his travel companion from the start.
The possibilities of checking passenger lists from May 1981 were slim, but she would look into it.
Next stop was Arne Wiikman. With the help of Dorotea’s directions she found the small freestanding house close to the highway between Uppsala and Gysinge almost immediately.
Arne Wiikman was standing in his garden with a rake in his hand.
When Lindell parked the car he stopped working, leaning the rake up against a tree.
“What a pleasure,” he said as Lindell came walking up. “I hate leaves.” He looked as if he meant it. He glared at his garden. “It’s these damn poplars. Soon I’ll take down the damn lot of them.” Lindell smiled and started to explain the reason for her visit.
“Yes, yes,” Wiikman interrupted her, “I know why you’re here. Let’s go in. Why stay around this shit.”
He kicked at a pile of leaves and walked over to the front steps.
“You’ve talked to Dorotea, I understand,” he said and opened the door, letting Lindell enter first.
“No, don’t take your shoes off. Just walk right in.”
He more or less shoved Ann Lindell into the living room, a small room that was dominated by a sectional pine sofa, upholstered in brown cloth. The largest elk head she had ever seen was hanging on one wall.
“Not so cheeky anymore,” Arne Wiikman said with pride in his voice, when he saw her gaze. “Sit down. You want to talk about Blomgren, I assume. Do you want coffee?”
Lindell shook her head.
“Good! Well, have you gotten the murderer? No, of course not or you wouldn’t be here. That’s a pity, and a shame. It’s probably some foreigner or drug addict who…”
He stopped and looked at her.
“What did it feel like to shoot that addict? Yes, I recognize you from the paper.”
“It feels like hell,” Lindell said emphatically.
Arne Wiikman grinned.
“Would think so,” he said.
Lindell flipped open her notepad.
“Who would want to kill Petrus Blomgren?”
Wiikman’s expression shifted quickly. The grin was replaced for a moment by something that Lindell read as surprise.
“I don’t know,” he said and coughed.
“About twenty years ago Petrus traveled to Mallorca and had a love affair there. Do you know who the woman was?”
Wiikman looked up.
“Is that the kind of thing you dig up?”
“We dig into everything.”
The man leaned over the low coffee table.
“See that elk head? Blomgren was with me when I shot the bastard. We were positioned next to each other. I spotted the creature approaching but he was too far away for me. Petrus had the perfect shot. He had a clear field of vision, maybe fifty meters. He just had to raise his rifle. Hell, he could have shot from the hip, but he let it pass. Do you know why? He let it go to me. He wanted me to take it. That’s what a good friend does. He had bagged a giant a few years before and now he wanted to give me the same pleasure. See?”
Wiikman glanced at the trophy above his head. Lindell saw the emotion and anger in the man’s face.
“Who would want to club a man like that to death?”
“Do you know who the woman was?”
Wiikman shook his head.
“Petrus didn’t tell you anything about his trip to Spain?”
“He might have mentioned it, that he had been to Mallorca, but I didn’t live here back then. He didn’t tell me anything in particular. I don’t think he thought it was much to boast about.”
Lindell decided not to say anything about Blomgren’s farewell letter but asked if Petrus had appeared depressed over the last while. Arne Wiikman hesitated a few seconds before answering.
“He was a bit thoughtful,” he said finally.
But he could not supply any reasons why. They hadn’t seen each other for a few weeks. The contact between the two men had been limited to a phone call some weeks earlier. They had talked about an acquaintance they both had in common who had been run over by a bus in town and who was now in the hospital. During the conversation Petrus Blomgren had not brought up anything out of the ordinary or appeared despondent.
Before Ann Lindell got ready to leave she asked if Blomgren had ever talked about women.
Arne Wiikman smiled for the first time.
“He wasn’t bad looking in his day, so I’m sure he had a lady friend at some point, I’m sure he did. Who hasn’t, after all, but that’s not something you run off at the mouth about, especially if things seem to have dried up.”
“I thought that was when the talk really got started,” Lindell said.
Wiikman chuckled.
“You want to hear some?”
“Let’s do it another time.”
Wiikman quickly became serious again.
“I wish he had found some peace.”
“Is there anyone else who would be able to give me information about Petrus?”
“No,” Wiikman said immediately.
“One last question: Petrus regularly sent money to Doctors Without Borders. Do you know why?”
“No idea,” Wiikman said. “I don’t even know what that is.”
Back in the car Lindell took the Gysinge Road toward Uppsala, made a few phone calls, among others to Freddie Asplund, a new recruit, and asked him to check if it was possible to find twenty-two-year-old records of passengers on charter flights to Mallorca.
When she reached the roundabout at Ringgatan she made a turn in the direction of the Savoy, a bakery cafe. She needed to think.
Sixteen
The murmur from the radio turned into music. Laura reached over and turned the volume up. It was a piece she knew so well but could not place. She turned the volume up even higher.
Should I prove to be weaker than those who have looked down on me all these years? she thought and hit the doorpost as she rushed out of the kitchen, away from the music. She stopped short, whirled around, and glared at the radio, at the shiny volume knob whose rounded slightly glossy, chubby surface seemed puffed up with self-satisfied smugness.