She remembered how strong this voice had been and reminded herself that it was necessary because of how many difficulties she had had to overcome. Shattered, she sat at the kitchen table asking herself how she was going to carry on while the radio reported the results of the referendum on the European Monetary Union. Then, somewhere beyond the fear that twisted her innards, there came the sound of victorious music and a voice that rattled off confident proclamations: No room for doubt! Strike back!
Sometimes this voice was interrupted by a collage of Italian voices but it always returned even stronger, filtering out the static in her head. She laughed with relief, pushed away the knife, whose edge she had tested on some fruit, and walked out into the library, finally clear on how the whole thing was going to be done.
Laura walked closer to the house, bent some branches down, and stared at her rival. She had an impulse to step into the square of light thrown onto the dark lawn by the light through the window, which would illuminate her like a spotlight on an otherwise dark stage.
She stared at the hateful woman who seemed so self-sufficient in her blond beauty and her purposeful, measured movements in front of the computer.
Only one thing held Laura back. It was not yet time to strike back. It was something Ulrik had taught her, strangely enough: patience.
Nineteen
There was a gentle knock at the door. Mr. Sund, Ann thought immediately, but remembered that he was at a lecture at the Gottsunda Library. He had mentioned that the day before.
She walked over to the door and listened. Who knocked at half past eight in the evening? Perhaps the lecture was over and Sund wanted to tell her something exciting.
“Who is it?”
“The police,” said a voice on the other side.
Ann put on the security chain and gingerly cracked the door.
“Hi, hope I’m not disturbing you. I didn’t want to ring the doorbell in case your boy was sleeping.”
Charles Morgansson took up the entire landing, or so it seemed to Ann. How big he is, she thought, and unhooked the chain.
“Come in. No, you’re not disturbing anything. Erik has been asleep a long time. I’m just looking over some papers. You shouldn’t take your work home but sometimes I think better at home. It was nice of you to knock. I thought it was my neighbor, he usually knocks. Do you want anything?”
Morgansson smiled.
“That was a lot of info at once,” he said. “And one question. No, thank you.”
Ann felt herself blushing.
“Please feel free to hang up your coat,” she said, staring into her apartment.
A pair of pants and a blouse were thrown over a chair and Erik had put together his wooden train tracks in the middle of the hall floor.
“I’ll pick up a little. Erik makes these messes. He has a little cold.”
She walked rapidly around the living room, picked up the wineglass and looked around uncertainly then put it down behind a curtain. The bottle, she thought, but at the same time she remembered she had tossed it into the trash.
“You have a nice place,” Morgansson said.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Ann said and straightened the cushions on the couch. “When you live by yourself… well, you know. Do you feel like having anything?”
“No, thanks. I’ve just come from my cousin who lives nearby, just two buildings down actually. Svante Henriksson is his name.”
“No, no one I know,” Ann said.
“He was actually the one who lured me down here, to Uppsala I mean. He talked so warmly about the city so when… We played basketball together earlier.”
Ann nodded. Why did he come here, she wondered, while she kicked some toys under an armchair.
“How are things at work?”
“You know that as well as I do,” he said and laughed.
“Yes, I guess,” she said sheepishly.
They sat down across from each other.
“Maybe you’d like a glass of wine? Or a beer?”
He shook his head. Make this easier for me, she thought, and got a little exasperated with her smiling colleague.
“There’s something I’ve been thinking about,” he said as if he had read her mind. “Why do you kill yourself? Blomgren wanted to, though he didn’t have the opportunity Do you think he would have gone through with it?”
“I do. He was the type of person who followed through on his plans.”
“But why? Sick of life? I don’t think so. There was something that weighed on him. Had he hurt somebody?”
“Who would that be?” Ann asked.
Morgansson laughed suddenly.
“It’s silly to sit here and talk about work. You must think I’m totally crazy.”
He stopped and looked at her.
“Should we do it again? The movies, I mean.”
Ann nodded. Morgansson got up abruptly.
“It’s time for me to go,” he said and Ann barely had time to react before he was at the door, putting on his coat.
Then he left as quickly as he had arrived. Ann Lindell had the feeling that he was out on an inspection round to check out her place.
When she fetched her wineglass from behind the curtain she looked out the window and saw him walk swiftly across the courtyard. The unpredictable manner, the rapid changes, the short lines, and the flash of his smile that changed as quickly into serious reflection, confused her.
Morgansson reminded her of a thief, Malte Sebastian Kroon, whom Ann had come into contact with many years ago. “The Jewel” as he was called, was quick both in his thinking and with his hands. He stole with a restless energy, driven by a fire greater than that of most in his field. At a house search in Kroon’s home on Svartbäcksgatan they recovered over seven hundred items that could be classified as stolen, among these over eighty pairs of shoes. In the interrogation sessions he denied everything, but with such humor and quick wit that his replies were still repeated among the officers at the station.
Charles Morgansson did not appear as humorous, but the quickness and the disarming smile were things he had in common with Kroon.
Ann remained standing in the window long after he was out of sight and looked out at a rain-hazy Uppsala. She held her breath and tried to perceive the faint whistling sounds from Erik’s room and her own inner voice.
“I’m fine,” she muttered.
The following days nothing happened to help further the murder investigations. Of course, Ottosson claimed that they drew closer to solving the cases with each detail that they added to the case files, even if none of them could see it themselves. It was a worn cliché that afforded them little comfort.
Sammy Nilsson’s mapping of Jan-Elis Andersson’s life constructed the picture of a stingy, if not greedy, man. His own pedantic documentation bore witness to this. The oldest item was a receipt for a toaster bought in 1957.
A disagreeable man, Nilsson said in conclusion, who himself put all his important documents in a box, pushed into the bookcase with all the photos he was someday going to put into an album that he had not yet managed to buy.
It took him two working days to go through the folders but he had not found anything eye-catching, nothing that awakened interest or gave any clue to why the man had been clubbed to death in his own kitchen.
When Andersson’s financial assets were added up the final sum was around one million kronor. On top of this was the value of his property and all the inventory. Strangely enough there was no will and his niece was most likely the one who would inherit it all.
Lindell decided that Sammy Nilsson should go to Umeå and question the beneficiary, Lovisa Sundberg, and her husband, the architect who was confined to a wheelchair.
Nilsson took the morning flight to northern Sweden, returned the same day, and then reported back on his excursion in a meeting late that afternoon.