Ola Haver took yet another step forward but stopped himself. In his mind he saw the Greek shepherd he and Rebecka had once encountered, on a curvy mountain road in the north. The shepherd was moving his flock across the road. Like a wooly string of pearls they slowly streamed from one side to the other. Still, they brayed nervously, the lambs following the ewes and the flock keeping tightly together.
The shepherd had raised his staff like a weapon, or more likely a sign. He spoke deliberately, even though no one could hear him, with his gaze lifted to a point somewhere above the waiting cars. The stream of sheep seemed never to end, someone in the cue beeped, and the shepherd raised his staff a few centimeters higher. He spoke without ceasing. Haver stepped out of the car-he was at the front of the line-and he observed the timeless scene.
The same feeling now gripped him as he watched the old woman raise her cane at Fridh’s van. Wasn’t she also saying something? He thought he saw her lips forming words that no one could hear.
Fridh had stopped. Dorotea continued over to Blomgren’s large gate, hesitated a moment as if she was unsure of where she was going, then turned into the yard. Beatrice walked over to her.
Dorotea Svahn was out of breath. She covered her mouth with one hand, perhaps wiping some saliva from the corner of her mouth.
“I want to see Petrus,” she said in a strained voice.
Fridh had pulled up and Beatrice took the woman’s arm and guided her to the side so that the van could drive in.
“He’s badly beaten,” Beatrice said.
“I realize that,” Dorotea said.
“I’m sure you’ll be able to see him later, I mean when they’ve had a chance to clean him up.”
“I want to say good-bye. Here.”
There was a faint smell of mothballs around her.
“Of course you can say good-bye. I’ll come with you,” Beatrice said.
Fredriksson turned away. Haver kicked the leaves at his feet. Lindell and Sammy Nilsson looked at each other. Lindell shook her head, turned, and walked up to the house.
Beatrice accompanied the woman up to the door of the barn. Charles Morgansson had finished putting away his equipment and he made way for them. He nodded to Beatrice who took it as a green light for them to go in.
“I think the very first blow made him unconscious,” Beatrice said.
She felt Dorotea’s thin body tense up. She freed herself from Beatrice, took the cane as support, and sank down next to Petrus Blomgren, mumbled something, and put her hand on his shoulder. Bea was glad that Dorotea had not walked over alone in the dawn and found Petrus, but that she had just called the police and forced them to come out and take a look.
“He was my best friend,” Dorotea said.
Beatrice crouched down so she could hear better.
“My only friend. We pottered around here like ancient memorials, me and him. Petrus said many times that it wasn’t right, ‘They had no right,’ was how he put it.”
Beatrice didn’t really understand what she meant.
Dorotea’s hand caressed the wool sweater. She appeared oblivious of the blackened blood in the wound on the back of the head.
“Little Petrus, you went first. I could almost…”
Her voice was overcome with emotion. The bony hand went still, took hold of the sweater as if she wanted to pull the dead man to his feet.
“He came over with lingonberries this fall. More than usual. ‘Now you have more than enough,’ he said, as if he knew.”
She braced herself on the cane and slowly straightened to standing.
“When you are as old as I am you see things, how it is all connected. Petrus would always say it would be better to turn life around, be old first and then become younger, leave the frailty behind but keep the wisdom.”
“That would be good,” Beatrice said.
The old woman sighed heavily.
“They had ten cows in here, maybe twelve. He sold the land later on.”
“For a good price?”
“It was good enough. He didn’t lack for anything, Petrus.”
“It looks like he lived frugally,” Beatrice said, taking the old woman’s arm and helping her back out into the fresh air.
“That’s how we were raised,” Dorotea said.
“Do you know if Petrus had a special place for his valuable documents?”
Dorotea shook her head. “I don’t know anything about that,” she said.
The four police officers were still waiting in the yard. Beatrice had the feeling that she and Dorotea were leaving a church, as if after a funeral.
Fridh was sitting in the van and would remain there until after the old woman had left.
“Will you pray with me?” Dorotea asked. “Just a few words. Petrus was not a believer but I don’t think he’ll mind.”
Beatrice interlaced her fingers and Dorotea quietly said a few words, remained motionless for a few seconds before opening her eyes.
“He was a magnificent man,” she said. “With a good heart. May he rest in peace.”
Far off in the distance, a horse neighed.
Three
Had she ever liked him? She often asked herself this question. At times, perhaps. That time when he tripped outside the house and fell on his face she had at least felt sorry for him. That was what he had said, that he tripped, but Laura imagined that something else must have happened since he had scraped both his cheeks and forehead.
She dressed his wounds. She did this with divided feelings: part disdain for his whimpering when the disinfecting solution stung, part tenderness at his helplessness. The skinny legs dangling over the edge of the bed, the thinning hair growing still thinner, and the hands that gripped the soiled blanket.
At other times she could hate him almost beyond reason. If she was in the house and he was nearby she had to escape, out into the garden or even out into the town, in order not to strike him down with the nearest blunt instrument. This hate was indescribable, so dark and so consuming that she believed it deformed her physically.
Even after she managed to calm herself, it could take several days before she was able to address her father in a normal tone of voice.
“I see, you’re that way now,” he would usually comment on her state, unable to grasp what had upset her.
Once upon a time everything had been nicely ordered, then it fell into disarray. Books, manuscripts, and loose papers piled up and formed drifts on the floor. Laura sometimes had the feeling that she was out on the rocking waves of the sea. She had given up trying to keep things in order long ago. There was simply no aspiration for order. It was not part of her father’s worldview and Laura had grown up in an accelerating chaos.
The house smelled a little odd and it was only now, a month after her father’s disappearance, that she realized what it was. She had always thought it came from the discarded clothes that were heaped together on the floor.
She had detested him because of the mess. But while she was cleaning up after him she was forced to go into his bedroom, something she had avoided doing all these years. And there was the reading lamp, the one that had been there ever since she was a little girl. It had been bought in Germany at the end of the fifties, modern at the time and now again a desired object at flea markets and auctions.
When she stood close to the lamp the odor was more pronounced than ever. Against her will she sniffed closer and closer to the hateful thing. The plastic-the lampshade consisted of mottled plastic strips- emitted a stale smell when the sixty-watt lamp was on. He kept it turned on even at night. Laura suspected that some nights he fell asleep in the armchair next to the table, submerged in some problem that had to do with Petrarch or some chess game.