“I have a list,” Liljendahl said, pulling a folder out of her bag, locating a piece of paper and handing it to Lindell.
She’s good, Lindell thought, and ran here eyes down the list of names of Sidström’s old acquaintances. Lindell recognized many of the names, but there was one name in particular that caught her attention.
“Can you make a copy and toss it up to me later?”
“No problem,” Liljendahl said, with a tweak of satisfaction around her mouth.
Ann’s resolve to go see Viola had deteriorated after the discussion with Barbro Liljendahl. Again she stood at the elevator but this time she was considerably more irresolute. What will I do if Edvard is there, she thought, and the very idea made her back up a few steps and allow a group of hospital staff to pass. The elevator left without her.
She despised herself. This was about Viola and nothing else. She could ask at the desk if Viola had any visitors. She pressed the elevator call button for the third time and this time the doors opened at once.
Viola was sitting in a wheelchair by the window. Ann coughed but the old woman did not move. The silver white hair stood on end. Her right hand was tapping lightly on the armrest. This was the same old Viola, restless, eager to get away, Ann thought.
“Hi Viola,” she said and the old woman turned her head and stared at Lindell without displaying in gesture or expression that she recognized her visitor. Lindell took several steps into the room.
“It’s me, Ann.”
“Do you think I’m blind?” Viola said. “No, you think I’m completely senile.”
For a second or two Ann was incapable of replying, her hand went up to her face as if to ward off Viola’s searching gaze. She masked her gesture by pulling back a few strands of hair.
“Dear me, you poor thing,” Viola said softly, and they were the most tender words that Ann had ever heard her say.
“I heard that you had taken a fall,” Ann said, fighting to keep the tears back. If only she were my mother, was a thought that came flying, and it made her feel guilty.
“Things are as they are,” Viola said. “The damned chicken coop tripped me up.”
“Are you in pain?”
Viola shook her head.
“When will you get to go home?”
“They say next week, but there’s so much talk here you don’t know what to make of it all.”
Ann pulled out a chair and sat down beside her.
“How is everything with Victor?”
“As usual, a bit frail in the winter but he perks up when the sun comes.”
Ann didn’t know what else to ask about. As in the beginning of their relationship, Ann felt self-conscious and awkward.
“And you?” Viola said.
“I’m doing well, thanks. Working and busy. Right now we have an unpleasant murder case.”
“You have always been involved in unpleasantries. And the boy?”
“Erik is fine. He’s at day care.”
Ann swallowed. Go on, she thought, looking at Viola’s face, ask me.
“Edvard was up here yesterday,” Viola said. “He had an errand to run.”
Lindell nodded.
“He is working with Gottfrid as usual. They are working so hard, you wouldn’t believe it.”
The note of pride in her voice was unmistakable. She studied Ann with amusement. The old woman hasn’t changed a bit, she thought. She is a miracle.
“That’s wonderful,” Ann said.
“Yes, but of course it’s far too much,” Viola said grumpily, and in this way annulled her earlier contentment.
This was typical of her. Nothing was allowed to remain really good. On the other hand things were certainly allowed to be thoroughly awful. She had no difficulties with that.
“I’ve never spent this long in Uppsala. I usually make do with the town,” Viola said, and Ann gathered she was referring to Öregrund. “During my entire life I’ve been to Uppsala perhaps twenty or so times, but never for this long.”
She fell silent and looked out the window.
“They are building so much,” she said, and took on a look of satisfaction. Ann sensed that she was thinking of Edvard.
What joy she had received from Edvard. She must have thanked her lucky stars countless times for that evening when Edvard had come knocking and asked if he could rent a room.
“It’s time for me to leave,” Ann said. “Are you sleeping well?”
Viola chuckled.
“That was a question,” she said. “Go on, get out here and catch some thieves.”
Ann put her chair back and walked to the door, turning when she was halfway. The old woman was looking at her. Ann quickly went back, leaned down, and gave her a clumsy hug. Then she left without saying anything else and without turning back.
She felt that it was the last time she would see Viola. “Go on, get out here and catch some thieves.” At the start of their friendship Viola had openly expressed her disapproval over the fact that Ann was a police officer. She said it was not a suitable occupation for a woman. Now Ann interpreted her last comment as a sign of approval. Perhaps it was her way of saying that she liked Ann despite everything, despite what she had done, in betraying and hurting Viola’s adored Edvard. Ann had always had a feeling, which admittedly had grown weaker with time, of inferiority to the old woman. It was not only her awe-inspiring age, her stubborn strength, and independence that inspired this feeling, but also the fact that she had lived and continued to live a life outside society.
In some obscure way this both appealed to and frightened Ann. It was probably her guilty conscience playing tricks. She had left Ödeshög and her parents, sick of the duck pond that her home town was in her eyes, and bored by her parents, whose only goal in life appeared to be keeping the spirea hedge in top form.
She was about twenty years old when she left Östergötland for the Police Academy. Contact with her parents had been sporadic since then. At the end of June, when she had gone down there for a week, she had started to miss Uppsala after only one night.
Ann Lindell was upset but did not know how to sort out her thoughts, much less draw any conclusions and formulate goals. There was too much at stake, her own life, Erik’s, work, Edvard, her parents-everything had been brought to the surface by her visit to the hospital.
She decided to push these thoughts aside. She had techniques for this. Right now the solution had the name of Berglund.
Berglund had gone home! Lindell listened astonished to Ottosson’s account of Berglund coming down with a migraine.
“That’s never happened before, has it?”
“No,” Ottosson replied. “I can’t remember the last time Berglund was sick. Some time in the eighties, I think.”
“What did he say?”
“Nothing. I was the one who sent him home and he didn’t protest. He was as pale as a corpse. Allan gave him a ride.”
“Oh,” Lindell said, in a defeated voice.
“Was there anything in particular?”
“I was going to check on something, a name that turned up.”
Lindell told him how Berglund had mentioned in passing a crook who had recently come into money and how the same name had now turned up in connection with the case in Sävja.
“Rosenberg,” Ottosson said. “Yes, he’s a jewel of a guy. I knew his father. He was part of the gang at the Weather Vane, an old beer hall on Salagatan. They tore it down about six months after I started patrolling. There was another joint on Salagatan, Cafe 31, there was an old lady by the name of Anna who… she lived, if I remember correctly, almost at the top of Ymergatan, you know, on the same street as Little John, you know, grew up. There was a Konsum grocery store there that had damned good fresh buns, fifteen öre a piece or if-It’s almost a pity that places like the Weather Vane fold, because-The stores were packed so tightly back then. There was a Konsum store on Väderkvarnsgatan as well, and then a Haages Livs grocery on Torkelsgatan, up by Törnlundsplan there was also something, what was their name?… Brodd or something like that, and then Ekdahls at the corner of Ymergatan and St. Göransgatan, and then the milk-and-bread store in Tripolis. You see! All within five minutes’ walk from one another.”