Radio voices went on about the events that had taken place yesterday but he only sporadically registered what they had to say.
The suitcase was still in the hall. He walked over and checked the address label where it stood. “Associate professor Ulrik Hindersten- Uppsala University.”
He looked up the stairs, turned his head, and saw the telephone on the wall in the kitchen. He walked over and lifted the receiver but immediately hung up again.
The stairs creaked as usual even though he was trying to walk as soundlessly as possible.
If she had only come earlier, he thought and stared at the closed door to the room where she was sleeping.
In order not to wake her, he pushed the door open gently and peeked in. The bed was empty. It had not even been touched. The blanket at the foot was wrinkled so Laura had perhaps sat there for a while during the night.
She had turned up so unexpectedly that in a way he was not surprised to find that she had left.
He walked out of the room and went down, checked the parlor and the TV room before he walked out into the yard. The car was still there. He felt the handle. It was unlocked. A few clothes and a purse were in the backseat.
The wind was sharp and the clear weather during the night had made the temperature fall below freezing. The lawns were white.
He called out her name and checked the storage shed, woodshed, and garage but could only establish that Laura was not on the farm.
He wondered if he should walk over to the early riser Egg-Elsa and ask her if she had seen Laura. But he sensed where she had gone, so he went back in and lifted the receiver again.
As he was describing the way to the police officer in Uppsala he thought about Rose-Marie, that he had done the same thing before her first visit to Skyttorp.
After the call he fetched his fleece jacket and walked out into the yard again. Now Egg-Elsa had made a fire. Smoke was coming out of the kitchen.
From the thin fir forest to the east there came a call from a wood-dove that had apparently decided to stay for the winter.
Kjell Eriksson
Karl Stig Kjell Eriksson is a Swedish crime-writer, author of the novels The Princess of Burundi and The Cruel Stars of the Night, the former of which was awarded the Swedish Crime Writers' Academy Best Swedish Crime Novel Award in 2002. They have both recently been translated into English by Ebba Segerberg.
