Before the Frost

  “Close to what, or whom?”

  “We don’t know.”

  “We’ll have to start with the mother,” Höglund said. “Should we call her right now or wait until morning?”

  “Wait until morning,” Wallander said after hesitating. “We have our hands full right now as it is.”

  Linda felt her face flush.

  “What if something happens to Anna in the meantime?”

  “What if her mother forgets to tell us something important because we got her out of bed in the middle of the night? We’ll scare her half to death.”

  He walked to the door.

  “That’s how it’s going to be. Go home and get some sleep. But you’ll be coming with us to see Anna’s mother tomorrow morning.”

  Höglund and Wallander put on their boots and rain gear and left. Linda watched them from the window. The wind was blowing harder, coming in strong gusts from the east and south. She washed the cups and thought about the fact that she needed to sleep. But how was she supposed to do that? Anna was gone, Henrietta had lied, Birgitta Medberg’s name was inscribed in the journal. Linda started to look through the apartment again. Why couldn’t she find Medberg’s letter?

  She searched more energetically this time, pulling bookshelves from the wall and backings from paintings to make sure nothing was hidden inside them. She continued with this until the doorbell rang. Linda stopped. It was after one o’clock in the morning. Who rang a doorbell in the middle of the night? She opened the door and found a man outside in thick glasses, a brown robe, and worn pink slippers on his feet. He said his name was August Brogren.

  “There’s a great deal of noise coming from this apartment,” he said angrily. “Would you be so kind as to keep it down, Miss Westin?”

  “I’m sorry,” Linda said. “I’ll be quiet from now on.”

  August Brogren took a step closer.

  “You don’t sound like Miss Westin,” he said. “You aren’t Miss Westin at all, in fact. Who are you?”

  “A friend.”

  “When one has bad eyesight one learns to differentiate people’s voices,” Brogren explained sternly. “Miss Westin has a gentle voice, but yours is hard and rasping. It is like the difference between soft white bread and hardtack.”

  Brogren fumbled his way back to the handrail of the staircase and started walking back down. Linda thought about Anna’s voice and understood Brogren’s description. She closed the door and got ready to leave. Suddenly she was close to tears. Anna is dead, she thought. But then she shook her head. She didn’t want to believe that, didn’t want to imagine a world without Anna. She put the car keys on the kitchen table, locked the door, and walked home through the deserted streets. When she got home she wrapped herself up in a blanket and curled up on her bed.

  Linda woke up with a start. The hands on the alarm clock glowed in the dark and showed a quarter to three. She had hardly been asleep for more than an hour. What had caused her to wake up? She had dreamed something, sensed a danger approaching from afar like an invisible bird diving soundlessly toward her head. A bird with a beak as sharp as a razor. The bird had woken her up.

  Even though she had slept so briefly, she felt clearheaded. She thought about the investigators still out at the crime scene, people moving back and forth in the strong spotlights, insects swarming in the light beams and burning themselves on the bulbs. It seemed to her that she had woken up because she didn’t have time to sleep. Was Anna calling out to her? She listened, but the voice was gone. Had it been there in her dreams? She looked at the time. It was now three minutes to three. Anna called out to me, she thought again. And she knew what she was going to do. She put on her shoes, took her coat, and ran down the stairs.

  The car keys were still lying on Anna’s kitchen table. When she drove out of town it was twenty minutes past three. She swung north and ended up parking on a small overgrown road that lay out of sight of Henrietta’s house. Stepping out of the car, she listened for any noise, then gently closed the car door. It was chilly. She pulled her coat tightly around her body and chastised herself for not having brought a flashlight.

  She started walking along the small road, taking care not to trip. She didn’t know exactly what she was planning to do, but Anna had called out to her and she felt compelled to respond. She followed the dirt road until she came to the path leading to the back of Henrietta’s house. Three windows were lit. The living room, she thought. Henrietta is still up—although she could have gone to bed and left the lights on.

  Linda walked toward the light, giving a wide berth to a rusty harrow and getting closer to the garden. She stopped and listened. Was Henrietta in the middle of composing? She made it to the fence and climbed over it. The dog, she thought. Henrietta’s dog. What am I going to do if it starts barking? And what am I doing out here in the first place? Dad, Höglund, and I are coming back here in a couple of hours. What is it I think I can find out on my own now? But it wasn’t really about that. It was about waking up from a nightmare that seemed like a cry for help from a friend.

  She approached the lighted windows, then stopped short. Voices. At first she couldn’t determine where they were coming from, but then she saw that one of the windows was pushed open. Anna’s neighbor had said that her voice was gentle. But this wasn’t Anna’s voice, it was Henrietta’s. Henrietta and a man. Linda listened, trying to will her ears to send out invisible antennae. She walked even closer and was now able to see through the glass. Henrietta sat in profile, the man was on the sofa with his back to the window. Linda couldn’t hear what the man was saying. Henrietta was talking about a composition, something about twelve violins and a lone cello, something about a last communion and apostolic music. Linda didn’t understand what she was talking about. She tried to be absolutely quiet. The dog was in there somewhere. She tried to figure out who Henrietta was talking to, and why they were talking in the middle of the night.

  Suddenly, very slowly, Henrietta turned her head and looked straight at the window. Linda jumped. It seemed like Henrietta was looking directly into her eyes. She can’t have seen me, Linda thought. It’s impossible. But there was something about the woman’s gaze that frightened her. She turned and ran, accidentally stepping on the edge of the water pump, causing a clang from within the pump structure. The dog started to bark.

  Linda ran back the way she had come. She tripped and fell, got up and stumbled on. She heard a door open somewhere behind her as she threw herself over the fence and ran down the path, trying to make her way back to the car. At some point she took a wrong turn. She didn’t know where she was. She stopped, gasping for air, and listened. Henrietta had not set the dog loose. It would have found her by now. She listened again. There was no one there, but she was still so scared she was shaking. After a while she cautiously started making her way back to the path, but she couldn’t see where she was going because it was so dark. The darkness frightened her, making shadows into trees and trees into shadows. She stumbled and fell.

  When she stood up she felt a searing pain in her left leg. She felt as if she had been stabbed with a knife. She screamed and tried to get away from the pain, but she couldn’t move. It was as if an animal had sunk its teeth into her, except that this animal didn’t breathe or make any noise. Linda groped down her leg until her hand hit something cold and metallic connected to a chain. Then she understood. She was caught in a hunter’s trap.

  Her hand was wet with blood. She continued to cry out, but no one heard her, no one came.

  19

  Linda tried to free herself from the trap. She didn’t like the idea of calling her father, but the trap was impossible to budge. She took out her cell phone and dialed his number. She explained where she was and that she needed help.

  “What’s happened?”

  “I’m caught in a trap.”

  “What on earth are you talking about?”

  “I have a steel trap around my leg.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  Lin
da waited, shivering. It felt like an eternity before she saw the headlights from a car in the distance. Linda called out. The front door opened and the dog barked. She called and called. They walked over in the dark, a flashlight lighting their way. It was her father, Henrietta, and the dog. There was a third person with them but he hung back.

  “You’re caught in an old fox trap. Who is responsible for putting this here?”

  “Not me,” said Henrietta. “It must be the man who owns the land around here.”

  “We’ll have a word with him.” Wallander forced the trap open.

  “We’d better get you to the hospital,” he said.

  Linda tried to put some weight on the foot. It hurt, but she was able to steady herself with it. The man in the shadows now came closer.

  “This is a colleague you haven’t met yet,” Wallander said. “Stefan Lindman. He started with us a couple of weeks ago.”

  Linda looked at him. His face was partly lit by the flashlight and she liked what she saw.

  “What are you doing here?” Henrietta asked.

  “I can explain,” Lindman said.

  He spoke with some kind of dialect. But which was it? She asked her father later when they were driving back to Ystad.

  “He’s from western Götaland,” Wallander said. “A strange language. They have trouble commanding respect, as do people from eastern Götaland and the island of Gotland. The ones who command the most respect are northerners, apparently. I don’t know why.”

  “How is he going to account for me being out there tonight?”

  “He’ll think of something. But maybe you can tell me what you thought you were doing.”

  “I had a dream about Anna.”

  “What sort of dream?”

  “She called out to me. I woke up and drove out here. I didn’t know what I was planning to do. I saw Henrietta inside talking to a man. Then she looked over in my direction and I ran and then I got caught in that trap.”

  “Now at least I know you’re not sneaking out for secret assignations.”

  “Don’t you understand that this is serious?” she screamed. “Anna is missing!”

  “Of course I take you seriously. I take her disappearance seriously. I take my whole life and yours seriously. The butterfly was the clincher.”

  “What are you doing about it?”

  “Everything that can and should be done. We’re turning every stone, chasing every lead. And now we’re not going to discuss this further until we’ve had your leg checked out at the hospital.”

  It was an hour before anyone could deal with her. Wallander dozed in an uncomfortable chair. And the process of cleaning the wound and bandaging it seemed to take forever. Just as they were finally leaving, Stefan Lindman walked in. Linda now saw he had closely cropped hair and blue eyes.

  “I said you had terrible night vision,” he said cheerfully. “It doesn’t make a lot of sense but it will have to suffice as an explanation for what you were doing wandering around out there.”

  “I saw a man in the house with her,” Linda said.

  “Henrietta Westin told me she had a visit from a man who wants her to set music to some dramatic verse. It didn’t sound suspicious.”

  Linda put her jacket on against the morning cold. She regretted having yelled at her father in the car. It was a sign of weakness. Never scream, always keep your cool. But she had done something stupid and had needed to turn the spotlight on someone else’s shortcomings. She also felt a huge wave of relief. Anna’s disappearance was no longer a figment of her imagination. A blue butterfly had made all the difference. The price was a painful ache in her leg.

  “Stefan will take you home. I have to get back to the station.”

  Linda went into the ladies’ room and combed her hair. Lindman was waiting for her in the corridor. He was wearing a black leather jacket and was sloppily shaven on one side of his face, which Linda didn’t like. She chose to walk on his good side.

  “How does it feel?”

  “What do you think?”

  “It must hurt. I know something about that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Pain.”

  “Have you ever had your leg caught in a bear trap?”

  “It was a fox trap. But no, I haven’t.”

  “Then you don’t know how it feels.”

  He held the door open for her. She was still irritated by his unshaven cheek and didn’t say anything else. They came out into a parking lot at the back of the hospital. It was broad daylight. He pointed to a rusty Ford. As he was unlocking the door, an ambulance driver came over and demanded to know what he meant by blocking the emergency entrance.

  “I came to pick up a wounded police officer,” Lindman said, nodding in Linda’s direction.

  The ambulance driver accepted this and left. Linda maneuvered herself into the passenger side.

  “Your dad said you live on Mariagatan. Where is that?”

  Linda explained, and wondered silently about the strong smell in the car.

  “It’s paint,” Lindman said. “I’m fixing up a house out in Knickarp.”

  They turned onto Mariagatan and Linda pointed out her doorway. He got out and opened the car door for her.

  “It was nice to meet you,” he said. “And the reason I know what it’s like to be in pain is that I’ve had cancer. Steel trap or a tumor—it’s all the same.”

  Linda watched his car drive off. She had forgotten his last name.

  She let herself into the apartment and felt fatigue set in. She was about to collapse onto the sofa when the phone rang.

  It was her dad.

  “I heard you made it home.”

  “What was the name of the guy who drove me home?”

  “Stefan.”

  “No—the last name.”

  “Lindman. He’s from Borås, I think. Or else it was Skövde. It’s time you got some rest.”

  “I want to know what Henrietta said to you.”

  “I don’t have time to go into that right now.”

  “You have to. Just give me the highlights.”

  “Wait a minute.”

  His voice broke off. Linda sensed he was at the station, but on his way out. She heard doors closing, phones ringing, and then the sound of an engine starting up.

  He came back on the line, his voice tense.

  “Are you there?”

  “I’m here.”

  “OK, I’ll make this quick. Henrietta said she didn’t know where Anna was. She hadn’t heard from her recently. Nothing to suggest that Anna is depressed. She had apparently not said anything about seeing her father. On the other hand, Henrietta claims that this happened all the time when Anna was growing up. So it’s the mother’s word against yours. She couldn’t give us any leads, nor did she know anything about Medberg. So as you see it wasn’t very productive.”

  “Did you notice that she was lying?”

  “How would I have noticed that?”

  “You always say all you have to do is breathe on someone to know if they’re telling the truth or not.”

  “I didn’t get the impression she was lying.”

  “She’s lying.”

  “I have to go now. But Lindman—the one who gave you the ride—is working on the connection between Medberg and Anna. We’ve sent out missing persons reports on her, by the way. That’s all we can do for the moment.”

  He hung up. Linda didn’t feel like being alone, so she called Zeba. She was in luck: Zeba’s son was at her cousin Titchka’s house and Zeba had nothing lined up. She agreed to come over.

  “Buy some breakfast on the way,” Linda said. “I’m hungry. The Chinese restaurant by the main square, for example. I know it’s out of your way but I’ll make it up to you the next time you find yourself stuck in a steel trap.”

  Linda told Zeba what had happened. Zeba had heard the news on the radio about the severed head that had been found, but she still had trouble believing that anything bad might have happened to
Anna.

  “If I were a crook I’d think twice before picking on Anna. Don’t you know she did martial arts? I can’t remember which kind, but I think it’s one where everything is allowed—short of actually killing someone, of course. No one messes with Anna and gets away with it.”

  Linda regretted having brought it up in the first place. Zeba stayed for another hour before it was time for her to pick up her son.

  Linda woke up when the doorbell rang. At first she was going to ignore it, but she changed her mind and limped out into the hallway. Stefan Lindman was standing outside the door.

  “I’m sorry if I woke you up.”

  “I wasn’t sleeping.”

  Then she looked at herself in the hall mirror. Her hair was standing on end.

  “Actually I was sleeping,” she said. “I don’t know why I said that. My leg hurts.”

  “I need the keys to Anna Westin’s apartment,” he said. “I heard you tell your father you had a spare set of keys.”

  “I’ll come along.”

  He seemed surprised by this.

  “I thought you were in pain.”

  “I thought that too. What are you going to do over there?”

  “Try to create a picture for myself.”

  “If it’s a picture of Anna, then I’m the person you should be talking to.”

  “I’d like to have a look by myself first. Then we can talk.”

  Linda pointed to a set of keys on a table. The keyring had a profile of an Egyptian pharaoh.

  Linda hesitated.

  “What was that about you having cancer?”

  “I had cancer of the tongue if you can believe it. Things looked bad for a while, but I survived and there’s been no recurrence.”

  He looked her in the eye for the first time.

  “I still have my tongue, of course; I wouldn’t be able to speak without it. But my hair has never recovered.”

  He tapped his neck with a finger.

  “Soon it’ll all be gone.”