Everything was as usual, thought Lindman.
Nevertheless, the placid scene is interrupted by the arrival of somebody, possibly paddling over the lake, who puts up his tent and then sometime later attacks the retired police officer. He kills the dog and uses tear gas. He drags the dead or dying man around the floor and makes carefully mapped-out footprints. Steps describing the basic pattern of a tango. Then he paddles back over the lake again, and silence descends again upon the forest.
It seemed to Lindman that he could legitimately draw two conclusions. The first was that his original reaction had been correct: Molin had been afraid, and his fear had driven him to his hideaway in the forest.
The second conclusion was logical. Somebody had traced him to his refuge. But why?
Something must have happened in the early 1950s, he thought. August Mattson-Herzén abandons his military career and hides behind a new name. He marries and has two children, but there is a gap: how does he earn his living until he turns up in the local council offices in Alingsas in 1957?
Could the events of nearly fifty years ago have caught up with him?
That was as far as he got. He ran out of ideas. He stopped in Ytterhogdal and refueled before driving on to Sveg and parking outside the hotel. There was a man he’d never seen before at the reception desk, who gave him a friendly nod and handed over the key. Lindman went up to his room, took off his shoes, and stretched out on the bed. He could hear a vacuum cleaner in the room next door. He sat up. Why not leave right away, today? He wouldn’t get all the way to Boras, but he could stop somewhere en route. Then he lay down again. He didn’t have the energy to organize a trip to Mallorca. The idea of going back to his apartment in Allégatan depressed him. He would only sit there, on edge, worrying about what was in store.
He couldn’t make up his mind. The vacuum cleaner went quiet. At 1 P.M. he thought he’d better have some lunch, even though he didn’t feel hungry. There must be a library somewhere in Sveg. He would be able to sit there and study everything he could lay his hands on about radiation therapy. The doctor in Borås had explained it to him, but he seemed to have forgotten everything. Or maybe he hadn’t been listening? Or couldn’t bring himself to think about what it involved?
He put on his shoes again, and looked for a clean shirt. He opened the top of his suitcase, perched on the rickety table next to the bathroom. He wasn’t sure why, but something was different. He told himself he was imagining things, but he knew that wasn’t true. He’d learned from his mother how to pack a suitcase. He could fold up shirts so that they wouldn’t crease, and he’d become fussy about planning his packing in minute detail.
He told himself again that he was imagining things. But no! Somebody had disturbed the contents of his suitcase. Not much, but enough for him to notice it.
He went through all that was in it. Nothing was missing. Nevertheless, he was certain: somebody had been through his case while he’d been in Ostersund. It could have been a maid with itchy fingers, of course. But he didn’t believe that. Somebody had been in his room and searched his suitcase.
Chapter Eight
Lindman stormed down to the lobby. When the usual girl, now back on duty, smiled at him, his anger fizzled away. It must have been the maid. She had probably bumped into the suitcase and it had fallen. The rest was his imagination. After all, nothing was missing. He just smiled, put his key on the desk, and went out. He paused on the steps, and wondered what he should do. It seemed that he was incapable of making the simplest of decisions. He ran his tongue over his teeth. The lump was still there. I’m carrying death in my mouth, he thought. If I survive this, I swear that I shall always keep a close watch on my tongue. He shook his head at such an idiotic idea, and decided to find out where Elsa Berggren lived. True, he’d promised Larsson that he wouldn’t talk to her, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t find out where she lived. He went back into the lobby. The receptionist was on the phone, and he scrutinized the wall map of the town. He found the street on the other side of the river, in an area called Ulvkalla. There was another bridge, an old railroad bridge: that was the one to use for crossing the river.
As he left the hotel, there was a thick layer of cloud over Sveg. He crossed the street and stopped at the window of the local newspaper. He read the pages they had displayed about the murder. A few hundred meters along Fjallvagen, he came to the old railroad bridge. It was an arched bridge, and he stopped in the middle and looked down into the brown water. When he got to the other side, he turned left for Elsa Berggren’s house. It was a white-painted wooden house in a well-tended garden. There was a freestanding garage on the grounds. The doors were wide open, but there was no car inside. As he walked past, he thought he saw a twitch in one of the curtains on the ground floor of the two-story house. He kept on walking. A man was standing in the middle of the road, staring at the sky.