She stretched out in bed as if to identify her limbs, and really feel that all the parts of her body belonged together. That it was she, Ann, who lay there, half awake., half lingering in sleep, still brushing the dream that was perhaps the source of her well-being.
The warmth under the covers did her good. She almost always slept nude, in contact with her body. Sometimes she kept her panties on, with a mixed feeling of intimacy and need for protection. She did not know how she should describe the feeling, but didn’t care. That was simply how it was, and that was enough.
She stroked her stomach and breasts in a weightless state of rest.
Erik would wake up soon, probably in a good mood, as he usually was in the mornings.
Ottosson laughed when he caught sight of Lindell, she on her way in, he on his way out of the elevator.
“Look at you,” he said.
“If you like,” she replied, and smiled.
He turned and before the elevator doors slid shut he explained that he would be back in five minutes.
It took ten minutes before Ottosson joined them. The others who were investigating the murder of “Jack” were already in place.
“I’m sorry,” Ottosson said, “but the elevator was on strike.”
What little in the way of reports was available was quickly processed.
The murder victim was still unidentified. His fingerprints were not registered. Investigators from the drug, surveillance, and economic crimes units had checked the photographs without recognizing him.
“Jack” had been dead when he hit the water, there had been no difficulty in determining this. Despite the cut left by the removal of the tattoo, there were no wounds on the body other than the slit throat.
“But that’s enough,” Haver added.
After the meeting, Lindell went into Ottosson’s office and told him about Viola. She could have run out without telling him, but after last year’s mistake of setting off on an individual investigation, an adventure that almost cost her life, she was eager to keep Ottosson informed, even if a visit to the hospital was not normally associated with any danger.
“Of course you have to go see her,” Ottosson said.
To find a parking space close to entrance 70 at the Akademiska Hospital turned out to be a challenge. Ann lost patience in the end, parked her car at the corner of a construction site, tossed her police identification on the dashboard, and walked away, ignoring the protests from a couple of carpenters.
Viola had a private room. Her face was turned to the window and she had apparently not heard Ann open the door. Ann was unable to determine if she was sleeping or not.
The old woman looked more frail than usual. Her slender arms rested on the blanket. Her hair, which Viola mostly kept under a cap when she was on the island, was chalk white and in need of combing. She was completely still, but then Ann saw her bony fingers moving, pulling threads on the blanket. The thin tendons on the back of her hand, which was covered in brown age spots, tensed and relaxed with a regularity that convinced Ann that Viola was awake.
What was the old woman thinking about? Ann turned on her heels and left the room, the door shut with a sigh and she hurried along the corridor toward the exit.
A nurse was standing outside the nurses’ station. Ann walked over to her and introduced herself.
“I know who you are,” the nurse said. “I worked in the intensive care unit last year.”
“Oh, I see,” Ann replied sheepishly, suddenly ashamed as she always was when she was reminded of that event. “I wanted to visit Viola but I think she’s sleeping and I don’t want to disturb her. Can you tell her I was here?”
The nurse looked at her before nodding.
“Of course I can, but I’m sure Viola would appreciate it if you-”
“I don’t want to wake her,” Ann repeated more forcefully. “I’m in a hurry,” she added in a gentler voice and felt even more embarrassed.
“Are you related?”
“No, not at all. How is she?”
“She is…” the nurse searched for the right word, “a real bitch. No, I was only joking! She is quite brusque, if you know what I mean, but a wonderful old lady. There’s no screw loose in her head. She was telling me how the first thing she will do when she goes home is slaughter the hens.”
“Viola has said that for as long as I’ve known her. But wish her all the best,” Ann said.
The nurse looked as if she was going to say something, but only nodded, gave a professional smile, and then walked into the office area.
Ann started walking toward the elevators, but turned almost immediately.
“One more thing, does she have any visitors?”
“Yes, her son has been here a few times, I think he is her son. And an older man.”
“I’ll come back another time,” Ann said.
“You do that. She rarely sleeps during the day, so you were unlucky.”
Lindell returned to the police station, poured herself a cup of coffee in the lunchroom, and leafed through an issue of Upsala Nya Tidning. The murder was a large item on the front page. There was a picture of the river that, if it weren’t for its connection to a murder, could have been lifted from a county tourist publication. The picture had been snapped in the evening. The sun had disappeared behind the Sunnersta ridge and the remaining light cast a dreamy glow onto the meadow, the lead-gray water and the light golden brown stalks of the reeds.
Lindell had experienced this so many times before, how the apparent idyll concealed a streak of unexpected eruptions of violence and grief. The landscape itself was innocent, it was only a stage for human failings, a backdrop against which people acted in all their foulness.
From her professional perspective, Lindell felt that it was worse to investigate a crime in the countryside where nature, in its inconceivable diversity, concealed man. She often thought about the last homicide case when two farmers had been murdered in their homes. It was as if nature was tripping up her thoughts. How could something so horrible happen here? There was not only a crime victim to contend with, it was as if the whole area had been raped. The crime, to deprive someone of his life, appeared even more monstrous against the backdrop of a peaceful forest.
A murder in an apartment, by contrast, appeared more natural. No one was surprised that someone killed someone else in a kitchen filled with the items that people accumulated. It was rather the opposite: how could it be that more people didn’t fall victim to violence? A pool of blood in the street surprised no one. A pool of blood on a mossy bed in the woods seemed to fly in the face of reason.
“The philosopher Lindell in action!”
She turned around. Ottosson was standing there with a coffee mug in his hand. She had not heard him enter. She smiled but did not like being interrupted in her thoughts. If it had been anyone other than Ottosson she would have registered her dissatisfaction.
As it was, she told him what she had been thinking. Ottosson refilled his mug and sat down.
“You are right,” he said when she had finished, “but you’re also wrong. A kitchen, a little refuge, even if it is dingy and small, stands for security. Or it should. To have a roof over your head, warmth, and food on the table are the preconditions for becoming someone else, if you know what I mean. We are always striving for…”
He trailed off, as if he couldn’t manage to finish his train of thought, or as if he did not himself fully understand, or was unable to formulate, what he meant.
“Man is a strange creature,” Ottosson resumed, and employed a worn cliché that only expressed their usual frustration.
“Hasn’t anyone called in?” Lindell asked.
Normally the phone at the station would ring off the hook after a murder had been committed. Spontaneous tips that in most cases did not lead to anything.