“The church is,” Sammy said.
“Not in Jumkil,” Ottosson objected.
The last maple leaves are falling right now, Fredriksson thought. No one will be raking Blomgren’s yard today. As he often did, he fell into a few moments of thought. His colleagues were used to these short pauses and waited patiently for the continuation.
“I think we can rule out a planned financial motive,” Fredriksson continued, “but of course it’s always possible that a passerby had the idea to attack this old man in the hopes that there was money to be gained.”
“But nothing in the house was touched,” Haver said.
“The killer was scared off,” Fredriksson determined laconically.
It seemed he felt there was no more to say on the topic.
For another hour the group discussed possible motives and how they should proceed with the investigation. They did this in an unusually calm manner, as if Petrus Blomgren’s quiet and retiring lifestyle had influenced the assembled homicide detectives.
Everything went according to procedure. The drama that Ann Lindell had once thought she would experience when she started as a police officer fell away as the years went by. The difference was noticeable. The first investigations in the Violent Crimes Division in Uppsala had thrown her into a state of intensity, had claimed her thoughts day and night. Many times it had rendered her unable to live a normal civilian life. It was, she now realized, one of the reasons that she and Edvard had never really become close. In spite of their mutual love and their longing for that intimacy. Now he was lost to her and she steeled herself not to let the bitterness and regret poison the rest of her life.
They had not been in touch since last spring. She had called him right before Pentecost, enraptured and almost completely convinced that a reconciliation was possible. But Edvard was no longer interested. She could hear it in his voice. All summer she had cursed herself, consumed with self-pity and distaste for her life. Only her son, Erik, could make her really happy.
The fall had started with a rape and a case of assault. No excitement, only routine, and a nauseating feeling of indifference.
Now it was October. Her blues month. A new murder. No suspense, only sorrow. She pictured Dorotea on the gravel road, struggling up the hill to Blomgren’s house, on her way to say good-bye.
“Hello, Earth to Ann.” Ottosson interrupted her chain of thought.
“Sorry,” Lindell said quickly, suddenly intensely embarrassed at her distraction.
“I wonder if you could draft a media statement?”
“Of course,” she said, “I’ll talk to Lise-Lotte.”
The meeting broke up.
“We’ll fix this,” Allan Fredriksson said to Lindell as they left the room.
“Think so?”
“Sure thing, Allan. After all, crime doesn’t pay.”
Sammy Nilsson was snickering behind them. Lindell turned around.
“What do you think?”
“Allan’s the gambler, but I say two weeks. Are you in? I’ll wager a hundred.”
“Okay,” Fredriksson said, who during the last year had won large sums on horses.
Ann Lindell left the group with a feeling of isolation. All too often she felt they simply talked past each other, that the indispensable feeling of teamwork was lost. She didn’t know if this simply had to do with her or if the others felt the same way.
For Lindell this feeling had a physical manifestation. She would get warm, sometimes glowing red, her sight altered so that she saw the room as a sealed space where the objects and words were bent inward toward an imaginary center that was Ann Lindell, single mother and investigative detective. The walls in the room were at the same time protection and limitation.
At first she thought she was sick. Now she had accepted that her psyche played these tricks on her. She sometimes lived as if inside a container. When she spoke she heard an echo and was surprised when the people in her surroundings reacted to her words. And despite all this she went on.
She stopped, slightly nauseated, feeling sad and sweaty. At that moment Sundelin, a colleague from the policing division, came hurrying down the corridor. He halted and asked her how the investigation was going. Lindell replied that it was probably going to be difficult.
“You’ll crack it,” the colleague said confidently “You usually do.”
He smiled and Lindell smiled back.
Sundelin hurried off. She watched him and wished they could have talked for a while. Sundelin had been one of Munke’s acolytes. Munke, whom Lindell had always thought of as somewhat of a buffoon, competent, of course, but not someone she particularly enjoyed working with.
They had worked during the spring on a murder investigation and that was when their mutual respect for each other’s professional expertise had developed into the beginnings of a friendship. Munke had died of a heart attack at the tail end of the investigation and Lindell felt as if someone from her inner circle had passed on.
She had taken everyone by surprise when she gave a speech at his funeral in Vaksala Church, touching on the small connections that contained the large. Only very few members of the audience had probably understood what she was trying to get at. Berglund, the old dog, perhaps, and Ottosson definitely, who had afterward taken her aside and told her he was going to step down as head of the Violent Crimes Division.
“There are other things,” he had said, and Ann sensed that behind his talk of his summer cottage and the grandchildren there was a fear for the direction society was taking and also, at a very personal level, of death.
“Ann, you are a sensitive soul,” he had said, “but don’t break down,” and Lindell just wanted to fall into his arms. “In that case it would be better for you to quit the force,” he had added.
“The force.” How many people called it “the force” these days? It sounded like a brotherhood held together with a unified spirit. For better or for worse it had bound policemen together, for that was what they were: men. Men like Munke. Boorish, sometimes real pigs, many times recruited from the military, most of them politically conservative. From these some real police officers appeared. Like Munke. Lindell and he were rarely in agreement when talking about current events, but there was a genuine honesty in her deceased colleague that she had appreciated a great deal.
The unifying spirit was no longer there, she knew. Not so much because of the individual colleagues but more because of the pressure from above. Lindell thought it was mostly for the good-the homogenous group of men functioned fairly well in the old days but no longer. She was needed, Beatrice also. Ditto Ola Haver and Sammy Nilsson. They had seen themselves as young officers with a new way of looking at things and new insights. Now they had all entered middle age and soon they would make up the ranks of the veterans.
She continued on down the corridor, still very warm and aware of her own body.
“Am I sick?” she muttered to herself, heading to the cafeteria, aware that if she could only hear other voices she would return to a state of relative normalcy. The loneliness made her feel even worse.
The cafeteria was mostly empty. Four patrol officers of unusually strong build were sitting close together at the far end of the room. They resembled a group of black animals, pressing up against each other in a tight circle, united, encircling a fallen prey, on their guard at their surroundings but also against others in their flock.
Lindell watched the one who was currently holding forth. He was gesticulating, emphasizing his story with large movements and conscious of his own importance. The others watched until they all burst into a roar of laughter that filled the whole room.
Lindell did not need these thundering hulks, not now. She sat down behind a big green plant, curled up with a cup of coffee and a pastry shielding her from the world, took a bite of the chocolate-dipped marzipan treat, looked down at her watch, and sighed heavily.