“Anyone reported missing?”
“Nada,” Sammy Nilsson said. “I’ve checked the records six months back. But I’ve put a notice on the Web. We’ll see what that brings.”
If only the dead could speak, Lindell thought and smiled.
“I don’t think he was a regular working stiff,” Sammy said.
“You’re thinking of his hands?”
Sammy nodded.
“One of his thumbnails was black and blue,” Lindell said.
“Which can happen to the manager of a golf course,” Ottosson said.
“What about his teeth?” Lindell asked.
“Good overall, according to the medical examiner, but some poorly executed dental work in his youth. Perhaps done overseas.”
Lindell nodded.
“We’ll have to hope for evidence recovered along the riverbank,” she said after a moment’s silence, and then got up from the table.
“Is anyone hungry?” she asked, but did not wait for an answer. Instead, she whisked out of the room, after first snatching her pad of paper.
“Why almost naked?” she said under her breath, while she took the elevator to the foyer of the new police station building. Though it had been inaugerated last fall, Lindell had not really grown accustomed to it yet. In spite of everything, she missed their old quarters. Of course, everything here was much airier and more functional, but something was missing. No one else had expressed any longing for Salagatan, so Lindell had kept her nostalgic musings to herself.
She continued to ply herself with questions during the rapid walk downtown. She followed Svartbäcksgatan along the river. Like in the area of Lugnet, where the corpse had been discovered, the wild ducks were chattering at the water’s edge and terns were screeching up above.
The removed tattoo was important, that much was clear. If the victim had lived in Uppsala and was reported missing within the next day or two, and the identity could be determined, relatives and friends questioned, then it should not prove difficult to find out what the tattoo had looked like and perhaps where and by whom it had been done.
Then the act of taking the trouble of removing it would be undermined. In addition, the maneuver would turn out to be a way of putting the tattoo in focus, giving it a gravity that it would otherwise not have possessed. In other words, in Lindell’s view, it was an irrational act.
She glanced at her watch. None of the restaurants that she passed had appealed to her and now she was suddenly pressed for time. In the pedestrian zone she instead bought a “Kurt,” which was what one of her colleagues for some reason called a thick hot dog on a bun. She washed it down with a Festis fruit drink.
As she stood in the street with people walking by, entertained by what she at first took to be a performance troupe but that turned out to be a group of devotees of the evangelical church Livets Ord, her thoughts about the removed tattoo returned and she became increasingly convinced that its removal was largely a symbolic act.
She listened for a while to the heavenly choir and thereafter to a short testimonial by a member of the congregation. He was talking about Jesus, who else? He looked happy, almost ecstatic, as he triumphantly related how he had become a whole person through his Lord, Jesus Christ.
“I lived in poverty…!” he shouted.
“What do you make now?” someone in the audience shouted back.
The speaker was momentarily thrown off-kilter, but then resumed his preaching.
Lindell headed back to the station. Walking had become her way of trying to improve her condition. At her last checkup, the doctor had pronounced her fitness level terrible.
This had the result that she often ate lunch on her own. None of her colleagues had any desire to rush around town at her speed.
Back at her office, sweaty and barely full, she again rifled through the reports pertaining to the murder. What shall I call him for the moment? she wondered and picked a new notepad off the shelf.
“Jack” she wrote spontaneously on the first page. It was a pad of graph paper but this did not distract her. She immediately started to write out her thoughts on the significance of the tattoo. So far it was the only thing she could write about. All other facts were stated in the autopsy report. In time they would also receive the forensic findings.
Lindell produced half a page of notes in her, for her colleagues, illegible handwriting. Despite this meager start she felt pleased, optimistic even. Perhaps it was the warmth of late summer, perhaps it was simply the joy of feeling so strong, that the relationship with Charles Morgansson, the newcomer in the unit, that had ended in the spring was now definitely behind her, without pain. No doubts, no hard feelings, nothing unresolved between them, at least not from her side.
They had met last fall and very carefully embarked on a relationship. Charles was a very sweet person, she said to those who asked, but too meek for Lindell’s taste. It took several months before they made love, and then it was not particularly passionate or even pleasurable. It was as if he apologized every time he initiated anything, and that wasn’t often. Ann realized very early that he had problems. For a while she even suspected that he wasn’t attracted to women, but she eventually concluded that it was his previous relationship in Umeå that still troubled him. Something had gone wrong. Perhaps that was the main reason he had moved to Uppsala, even though he claimed that his involvement in a traffic accident was the cause. Lindell didn’t really want to know. She did not want to play therapist.
Their brief and underwhelming liaison was a closed chapter, an experience that strangely enough had strengthened her confidence. Görel, her friend and Erik’s loyal babysitter, had tried to console her but Ann had dismissed her attempts.
“If anyone needs consoling, it’s Charlie,” Ann said and Görel had told her she was merciless, but laughed.
She had followed their whole story and was pleased deep down that it was over.
“You don’t need a loser,” she said.
“Agreed,” Ann said, “I need…”
She could not bring herself to complete the sentence, because immediately an image of Edvard appeared. Edvard, her old love, gone from her life forever.
Görel realized that she was upset and guessed at the cause. She put an arm around Ann but was sensible enough not to make one of her sassy comments.
Lindell called Erik’s day care and told Gunilla that she would be picking him up half an hour, or even a whole hour, later. The preschool teacher said that it was all right, but Lindell picked up a note of criticism in her gruff voice. The problem of parents not respecting the agree-upon dropoff and pickup times was something that came up at every parent-teacher meeting.
Lindell ended the call with the same feeling she always had: that she did not take good enough care of her son. He received everything he needed, and in fact enjoyed day care, but the feeling of inadequacy plagued her. To be both a police officer and a single mother was not an easy combination, but she sensed this was probably true for any single working parent. There was simply no good solution to the problem. All she could do was make the best of it. Lindell never worked on the weekends and very rarely worked evenings.
Ottosson, her immediate supervisor, was understanding and did everything in his power to make things easier for her. Without his support it would have been much harder, perhaps impossible, to continue in her current position.
On several occasions, Ottosson had talked to her about the superintendent training course, but she had always rejected his suggestions. On top of which, the course was located in Stockholm. And why should she set her sights on courses anyway? She was happy where she was and had no desire to ascend the career ladder.
After making a few more calls, she went to the lunchroom. Berglund was sitting with one elbow on his knee and his forehead cradled in his hand, as if he were nursing a headache. He was listening to Haver, who was telling him about his plans for his winter vacation. Lindell had time to hear that Haver was planning to travel to northern Italy with his wife, Rebecka, and their two daughters.