‘Should we pack up and come home?’
‘No. It’s nothing. If you want to help, just believe me when I say it’s nothing. Tell me about your sailing adventure.’
They spoke for a long time. She insisted on his telling her in detail about their trip, about their plans for that evening and for the next day. When they finished talking, she had calmed herself down.
The following day she declared herself fit again and went back to work. She also made a telephone call to Ho.
‘Soon I’ll have lots to tell you,’ said Ho.
‘I promise to listen. How’s San?’
‘He’s agitated, scared, and he misses his mother. But he’s strong.’
After hanging up Birgitta remained seated at the kitchen table.
She closed her eyes.
The image of the man lying in a heap over the table in the hotel dining room was slowly fading away, and soon hardly any of it remained.
36
A few days before midsummer, Birgitta Roslin conducted her last trial before the holidays. She and Staffan had rented a cottage on the island of Bornholm. They would stay there for three weeks, and the children would come to visit, one after the other. The trial, which she estimated would take two days, concerned three women and a man who had been robbing people in car parks and roadside camping sites. Two of the women came from Romania; the man and the third woman were Swedish. What struck Roslin most was the brutality displayed, especially by the youngest of the women on two occasions, when they had attacked people in caravans at overnight camping sites. She had hit one of the victims, an elderly man from Germany, so hard on the head with a hammer that it split his skull. The man had survived, but if the hammer had landed an inch either way he could well have died. On the other occasion she had stabbed a woman with a screwdriver that missed her heart by a fraction of an inch.
The prosecutor, Palm, had described the gang as ‘entrepreneurs active in various branches of criminal activity’. Besides spending nights touring car parks between Helsingborg and Varberg, they had also spent days stealing from shops, especially fashion boutiques and salesrooms specialising in electronic equipment. Using specially prepared suitcases whose linings had been ripped out and replaced by metal foil, so that the alarm didn’t go off when they left the shops, they had stolen goods worth almost a million kronor before they were caught. But they made the mistake of returning to the same fashion boutique near Halmstad and were recognised by the staff. They all confessed, and the stolen goods were recovered. To the surprise of the police, which Birgitta shared, they did not argue and blame one another when it came to sorting out who did what.
It was rainy and chilly the morning she walked to the courthouse. It was also mainly in the mornings that she was still troubled by the events that culminated at the London hotel.
She had spoken to Ho twice on the telephone. Both times she was disappointed because she thought Ho had been evasive, not telling her what happened after the shooting drama. But Ho had insisted that Birgitta must be patient.
‘The truth is never simple,’Ho said. ‘It’s only in the Western world that you think knowledge is something you can acquire quickly and easily. It takes time. The truth never hurries.’
But she had been told one piece of information by Ho, something that frightened her almost more than anything else. The police had discovered in the dead Ya Ru’s hand a small silk bag containing the remains of extremely fine powder made from broken glass. The British detectives had been unable to work out what it was, but Ho told Birgitta it was an old, sophisticated Chinese method of killing people.
She had been as close to death as that. Sometimes, but always when she was alone, she was stricken by violent sobbing attacks. She hadn’t even mentioned this to Staffan. She had kept it to herself ever since getting back home from London. Staffan had no idea of how she really felt.
A week after Ya Ru’s death, she received a call from somebody she would have preferred not to talk to: Lars Emanuelsson.
‘Time passes,’ he said. ‘Any news?’
For a brief moment she was afraid that Lars Emanuelsson had somehow found out that Birgitta Roslin was the intended victim in the London hotel.
‘Nothing at all,’ she said. ‘I don’t suppose the police in Hudiksvall have changed their minds, have they?’
‘About the dead man being the murderer? An insignificant, unimportant, presumably mentally defective man who commits the most brutal mass murder in Swedish criminal history? It might just be true, of course. But I know that many people wonder. Such as me. And you.’
‘I don’t think about it. I’ve put it behind me.’
‘I don’t think that’s quite true.’
‘You can think whatever you like. What do you want? I’m busy.’
‘How are things with your contacts in Hudiksvall? Are you still talking to Vivi Sundberg?’
‘No. Will you please go away now?’
‘Obviously I want you to get in touch with me when you do have something to report. My experience tells me that there are still an awful lot of surprises concealed behind those terrible goings-on in that little village up north.’
‘I’m hanging up now.’
She wondered how much longer Lars Emanuelsson would continue pestering her. But perhaps she would miss his persistence when it finally stopped.
That morning shortly before midsummer she came to her office, gathered together all the documents relating to the case, spoke to one of the court secretaries about a date in the autumn for sentencing, then headed for the courtroom. The moment she entered it she noticed Ho sitting in the back row of the public gallery, in the same seat as the last time she’d been in Helsingborg.
She raised a hand in greeting and could see that Ho smiled back at her. She scribbled a couple of lines on a scrap of paper, explaining to Ho that there would be an adjournment for lunch at noon. She beckoned to one of the ushers and pointed out Ho. He took her the note; Ho read it and nodded to Birgitta.
Then Birgitta turned her attention to the sorry-looking rabble in the dock. When it was time to pause for lunch, they had reached a stage in the proceedings that indicated there would be no problem in concluding matters the following day.
She met Ho in the street, where she was waiting under a tree in full blossom.
‘I take it something’s happened and that’s why you’re here?’ she said.
‘No.’
‘I can meet you this evening. Where are you staying?’
‘In Copenhagen. With friends.’
‘Am I wrong in thinking you’ve got something important to tell me?’
‘Everything is clearer now. That’s why I’m here. And I’ve brought something for you.’
‘What?’
Ho shook her head. ‘We can talk about that this evening. What have they done? The gang on trial?’
‘Robbery. Violent assault. But not murder.’
‘I’ve been observing them. They’re all frightened of you.’
‘I don’t think so. But they know that I’m the one who’s going to decide their sentences. Given all the trouble they’ve caused, that probably feels pretty scary.’
Birgitta suggested they should have lunch, but Ho declined, saying she had other things to do. Afterwards Birgitta wondered what Ho could have to do in a town like Helsingborg that was totally unknown to her.
The trial continued slowly but relentlessly, and when Birgitta closed proceedings for the day they had progressed as far as she had hoped.
Ho was waiting outside the courthouse. As Staffan was on a train to Gothenburg, Birgitta suggested that Ho should come home with her. She could see that Ho was hesitant.