Eva had decided she would try not to talk too much. If she adopted a calm attitude and did not chatter on, the guests could get the impression that she was skilled and reliable. She couldn’t screw up this job. Whatever it took, she was going to become a knowledgeable and quick-witted waitress, someone Slobodan Andersson could rely on.
This was not only a job, it was her entry to another life. That was how she felt. She was going to enter new areas, meet people other than the same old in Sävja and in the ICA store in Vilan, and become more interesting herself. She did not know anyone who worked at a restaurant, there were not many among her few acquaintances who were in the habit of going out to eat. Now she would be able to talk about something beyond the usual.
Suddenly she was frightened. What if it didn’t work out?
“Hugo!” she cried out. “It’s time!”
There was no sense in calling Patrik, he had to be shaken awake in the mornings.
Ten
A piece of whale carcass that had washed ashore-that was how Haver had described the body, and Ann Lindell understood why as she studied the photographs that were arranged in a row on the table.
The feeling of revulsion was mixed with equal parts tingling anticipation.
“Do you believe me when I say that all investigators love a murder?” Ottosson had asked her many years ago. Back then she had dismissed his statement as absurd, now she was prepared to admit he was right.
Even the fact that she was given a reason to walk up to the wall map gave meaning to her life, and she studied it with the resolute concentration of a general, following the course of the Fyris river, memorizing new names and wondering if she had ever been to the Sunnersta hole, the old hillside gravel pit that had become a ski slope.
Her gaze traveled from the ridge to the river and located Lugnet. In the river, in the reeds, lay a human body that in Ola Haver’s eyes had been transformed to a lump of flesh.
The body had been discovered by two boys who had been throwing rocks at the wild ducks that lived in the reeds. One of the boys, eleven years of age, had stayed by the body while his friend had run across a paddock and up to the road in order to flag down a car.
When Haver later asked the eleven-year-old why he had remained behind, if he hadn’t found it creepy, the boy had replied that he didn’t want the birds pecking at the man.
Even though Lindell had lived in Uppsala for many years, she had never taken the road between Nåntuna and Flottsund. Fredriksson had said that it was a beautiful road, especially in spring. He liked to watch the birds that gathered along the Fyris river. In April, the northern lapwings held a great conference on the open fields by the Flottsund bridge.
“Then I know it’s spring,” Fredriksson said. He had two interests: birds and harness racing.
Ottosson even had a literary reference. He claimed that the Swedish writer Göran Tunström had written a novel that was partly set in this area, and that the book was worth reading. Ottosson offered to bring it in if anyone was interested, but no one responded.
Lindell let them talk without interrupting. Instead, she focused on her own tension, increasing her enjoyment.
“Could it be a boating accident?” Ottosson threw out, while he examined the police photographs. “Perhaps he fell overboard?”
He was leaning over the images.
“With his throat cut?”
“Yes, an outboard motor,” Ottosson said, and turned his head to give her a look that said: agree with me, let it be a tragic accident.
It took several seconds before Lindell understood what he meant.
“In his underwear and nothing else?” she said.
“No, of course not,” Ottosson muttered.
“Who is he?”
“He doesn’t really look Swedish,” Fredriksson said.
“What do you mean, Swedish?”
“Not born in Sweden, I mean,” Fredriksson said, his eyes twinkling at Lindell.
Lindell sighed, but it was more an expression of sympathy with Ottosson than exasperation. The spring had been catastrophic. Perhaps not from a weather perspective, which did not mean much to her, but professionally. Boring routine matters one after the other, with eruptions of youth violence in Gränby and Sävja, and a hooligan armed with a knife who had wreaked havoc in the downtown area for a few weeks, assaulting nighttime wanderers on their way home from the bars. He had been seized without drama, and by accident. It had turned out to be a mentally deranged individual who had been returned to the clinic from which he had come.
Summer had not been much better. She had spent her vacation at home, except for a weeklong visit to her parents in Ödeshög and a long weekend in a loaned summer cottage. That was the best of her four weeks off. Erik discovered insects, and together they immersed themselves in the lives of ants, beetles, and spiders. For him it was a new world while for her it was sheer antiphobia therapy.
She realized that he was starting to develop new needs, that he was becoming more active, curious, and engaged in the world around him, but also more demanding. It was no longer enough for him to have a piece of paper and some crayons or Legos. He wanted Ann to be engaged, overwhelming her with questions and thoughts. Sometimes she was not equal to these demands, grew tired, wanted most of all to stretch out on the sand by the small forest lake, read or simply ruminate with her gaze fixed on the pair of ospreys sailing over the water. She could not hand Erik over to someone else. It was only the two of them.
In the evenings after he fell asleep, she sat down with a bottle of wine in a rusty hammock with ripped cushions, slowly swaying back and forth, thinking about her life. Normally she resisted these thoughts, but it was as if this setting, the isolation in the cottage, and the complete contrast to her daily life forced her to reflect. Perhaps also Erik’s new needs meant that her future looked more uncertain than before. During those unusually sunny days in the cottage she saw her lone responsibility for his development in stark relief. He would start school within a few years and she could only imagine what that would involve. Thereafter he would shortly become a teenager and she would be approaching fifty.
She read the first page of the medical examiner’s report of the autopsy. The man had bled to death after suffering a knife wound of eleven centimeters across his throat. He was dead before he hit the water. His age was estimated at between forty and fifty, he was one hundred and eighty-six centimeters tall and weighed ninety-two kilograms, was in good physical condition and without any distinguishing physical characteristics, except for what Lindell took to be the remains of a tattoo on his upper right arm. A patch of skin about five centimeters in diameter had been removed from the arm. What remained was a small dark line of about half a centimeter, which was what made her think there had once been an entire tattoo. There were two possible explanations to the flaying: to make the identification of the victim more difficult, or else the tattoo could have a direct link to the murderer.
Lindell picked up the close-ups of the upper arm area.
“What should we think?” Fredriksson said. “Was he murdered here or did he float here on the current?”
“We have people on both sides of the river who are looking into it,” Lindell said, “but they haven’t found anything so far.”
“But how likely is it that a corpse can float down along the river without someone seeing it?”
“I don’t know, Allan,” Lindell said.
She stared at the photograph.
“Can’t you check with TattooJack or whatever their names are. There must be tattoo experts.”
“This isn’t much to show them,” Fredriksson said.
She pushed the photograph across the table without making eye contact.
“Check it anyway,” Lindell said.
“Sure, babe,” Fredriksson said.
Lindell gave him a long look. Sammy shot her an amused glance but kept his mouth closed.