“They live in an area called Pig Hill,” he told them and sounded as if he thought it fit them perfectly.
“Were they pig-like?” Lindell asked.
“Stuck-up, if you like. If I had just been made a millionaire so painlessly I wouldn’t be so damn sour.”
“Painlessly,” Lindell objected. “We’re talking about a murder.”
“They weren’t grieving a whole lot, that much was clear. I got the impression that they only kept in touch with the old man because of the inheritance that was coming their way.”
“Were they sure of it then?”
“Hard to say They asked if there was a will.”
“Did they know Petrus Blomgren?” Ottosson asked.
Sammy Nilsson shook his head. He told them that Lovisa Sundberg had lived in Uppsala for a short time in order to study. She was a teacher and had studied French at the university in order to expand her competency. During that time she had lived in a small cottage on her uncle’s farm.
For a while she had thought about staying on in Uppsala but then she had met the architect, who was not disabled at that time, and he had a well-paying job in Umeå. So when she was done with her studies she moved up there.
Jan-Elis Andersson was both angry and disappointed. He would have liked to have seen his niece stay on, probably with the thought that he would get help with the horses he was taking care of on the farm.
“Cheap labor,” Ola Haver said.
“She was allowed to live there for free in exchange for helping out in the stables,” Sammy Nilsson said. “From what I can understand that was a lot of work.”
However they twisted and turned the case of the niece and her husband they couldn’t find anything that made it likely that the Umeå couple had any connection to the crime. Both of them had excellent alibis and it was at the very least improbable that they would have hired a killer.
Ann Lindell was finding it hard to concentrate. She was completely convinced of a connection between the two murders and the niece appeared less interesting. She let her thoughts run away and internally summed up the advances of the past few days, or rather, the lack of advances.
Checking the passenger lists to Mallorca had turned out to be impossible to do. The records simply didn’t exist any longer. Lindell considered whether or not it was worth the effort to try to gather information on the hotels in Mallorca. Perhaps they could find Blomgren’s name in some register, but it was likely that even these had been destroyed or were unavailable after twenty years.
Contact with a dozen or so members of the Federation of Farmers who could possibly give information about both of the men’s activities within the farmers’ co-op turned out to be a waste of time. There was nothing that spoke for the fact that Andersson and Blomgren had ever met in the context of the organization.
No witnesses had stepped forward to say anything about a suspicious car or any unknown persons who had moved in the murder victims’ circles, either in Alsike or Jumkil.
The cases were slowly going cold. Lindell didn’t like it. Or rather, she hated it. Two unexplained murders were simply too much. She could also see it in Ottosson. He was becoming increasingly tense as the days went by. His former cheeriness had been replaced by an irritable impatience.
Even the newspapers had stopped writing about the murders. The first few days’ fat headlines bore witness to the journalists’ excitement. The “Country Butcher” became an accepted concept. Now everything was quiet. Lise-Lotte Rask, who was responsible for press information, said that a few isolated reporters diligently called to see if there had been any breakthroughs. She thought she could almost discern a sneer to their pointed questions.
Lindell caught herself thinking about Charles Morgansson. Since his brief visit they had bumped into each other, said hello, and exchanged a few words but nothing had been said about another movie date.
She decided to give him a call. Maybe they should go out Friday?
“What are you smiling about?” Sammy Nilsson interrupted her thoughts.
Lindell glanced at Ola Haver, the one in the assembled group whom she thought best knew her thoughts, before she answered.
“Pantyhose.” She smiled sweetly at Sammy. For once he was rendered speechless.
Back in her office she discovered that trainee Asplund had been in again. There were two reports on her desk. One was a report on who had lived in Vilsne village the last two decades. Lindell had asked the trainee to assemble this information. It involved about fifty people altogether. Ann looked through the list without really knowing what she was after.
The second report was a compilation of all the people who had gone missing in the district over the past year. She was surprised at the number, ten people, but knew that most of them would turn up again of their own accord. Most of the ones who disappeared without a trace did it of their own free will and were really no case for the police if they didn’t involve underage individuals.
Two names on the list interested Ann more than the others and only because they were older men: Helmer Olsson, eighty-two years old, a former rubber worker from Rasbokil who disappeared in August. His wife thought he must have gotten lost but search parties that had been undertaken in the deep mushroom-filled forests north of his village had not yielded any results. Helmer Olsson’s mushroom basket had been recovered at the edge of a swampy area. Perhaps he had gone down in the bottomless quagmire that was locally referred to by the name of “Oxdeath.”
The other name was Ulrik Hindersten, a seventy-year-old professor, reported missing at the end of September. The person who reported him was the daughter, Laura Hindersten, with the same address as her father.
The results of the investigations added up to zero.
Ann checked who had taken down the information, looked at the time, and lifted the telephone receiver in the hopes that her colleague was still at work. Åsa Lantz-Andersson answered immediately and told her what she knew about Laura Hindersten, a woman she remembered very well.
After the conversation it was time to pick up Erik. Lindell went into Ottosson’s office and told him that she had to bring Erik in for a medical checkup the next day, and that after that she was going to go see a woman whose father had disappeared.
“You think there’s a connection?”
“I don’t know, but we have to dig into everything.”
Ann Lindell left the police station feeling unusually happy. Maybe it was because the sun was shining for the first time in several days. Admittedly the sun was only able to break through a small gap in the cloud cover but she took it as a good sign.
When she got home she was going to call Morgansson.
Twenty
The flames reached almost as high as the snowball bush. Laura had to retreat because of the heat. For a few moments she was worried but told herself the damp grass was not flammable.
To burn books, she thought and remembered how her father, during a trip to Florence, had lectured her about Savonarola who had incited people to burn books during Carneval.
Ulrik Hindersten was divided in his opinion of this Dominican, who was a “devil” in that Petrarch’s and Livius’s books were on the bonfire. He took this as a personal insult and expressed genuine sorrow at how many antique texts had thereby been lost.
But her father also admired Savonarola as a speaker and for his ability to engage his audience. There was something attractive about his popularity. Her father appreciated strong personalities who were able to motivate the masses.
Savonarola ended up much like the books he had banned. Her father had taken her to Piazza della Signoria in Florence, the square where the monk was humiliated and burned as a heretic. With his Italian friends he discussed whether or not it was right to declare Savonarola a saint.