“I’d rather not.’
“Okay, we’ll put that aside. If you want to say anything, okay. If you don’t, that’s also okay.”
Lindman saw how he could turn the conversation in the direction he wanted.
“If somebody wanted to buy a house around here like the one we were looking at, for example, how much would it cost?”
“Elsa’s house, you mean? Houses are cheap around here. I keep my eye on the ads. Not in the papers, on the Internet. I figured I had better find out how to do that. It took time, but I think I got there in the end. I’ve got plenty of time, after all. I have a daughter who works for the council in Gavle. She came here and brought her computer with her, and showed me what to do. Now I chat with a fellow in Canada called Jim—he’s ninety-six and also worked in the forests. There’s no limit to what those computer things can do. We’re busy trying to set up a site where old loggers and lumberjacks can talk to each other when they feel like it. What are your favorite websites?”
“I’m afraid I don’t know much about that; I don’t even have a computer.”
The man on the other side of the table looked worried.
“You must get yourself one. Especially if you’re sick. There are tons of people all over the world with cancer. I’ve seen that with my own eyes. I once looked up spinal cancer, which is the worst thing I can possibly imagine. I got 250,000 matches.” He paused. “Needless to say, I have no intention of talking about cancer,” he said. “As you said yourself.”
“It’s not a problem. Besides, I don’t have cancer of the spine. At least, not as far as I know.”
“I wasn’t thinking.”
Lindman returned to the question of house prices. “A house like Elsa’s—what would it cost?”
“Two or three hundred thousand, no more. But I don’t think Elsa has any intention of selling.”
“Does she live alone?”
“I don’t think she’s ever been married. She can be a bit standoffish at times. After my wife died, I thought I might make a move for her, but she wasn’t interested.”
“How old?”
“Seventy-three, I think.”
So. More or less the same as Molin, Lindman thought.
“Has she always lived here?”
“She was here when we built our house. That was in the late fifties. She must have lived in that house for forty years.”
“What did she do, anyway?”
“She said she’d been a dance teacher before she came here. No comment.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Who retires at the age of forty or younger? Something fishy there, don’t you think?”
“She must have had some means of support?”
“She inherited her parents’ estate. That’s when she moved here. Or so she says.”
Lindman tried to keep up. “So she wasn’t born here? She must have been an outsider?”
“Skåne, I think she came from. Eslöv? Can that be somewhere down where Sweden drifts to a halt?”
“That’s right. And so she came here. Why here? Did she have any family in Norrland?”
Wigren looked hard at him. “You’re talking like a police officer. Some people might even suppose that you were interrogating me.”
“I’m curious, like everybody else. You have to ask why somebody would move here from southern Sweden unless they were going to get married or had found their dream job,” Lindman said, sensing that he might be making a serious mistake by not telling the truth.
“I wondered about that as well. My wife too. But you don’t ask questions if you don’t have to. Elsa is nice, and helpful. She babysat for us when we needed it. And I still have no idea why she moved here. She didn’t have any relatives in these parts.” Wigren fell silent. Lindman waited. He had the impression that there was more to come.
“You might well think it’s a bit odd,” said Wigren, when he eventually got around to saying something. “I’ve been living next door to Elsa for a whole generation. Even so, I have no idea why she bought this house in Ulvkalla. But there’s another thing that’s even odder.”
“What?”
“All these years I never set foot in her house. Nor did my wife while she was alive. Nor the children while they were growing up. I don’t know anybody who’s ever been inside her house. Let’s face it, that’s a little strange.”
Lindman agreed. There was something about Berggren’s life that was reminiscent of Molin’s. Both came from elsewhere, and both led isolated lives. The question is whether what I think is true of Molin, that he was running away from something, also applied to Berggren. She was the one who bought the house on his behalf. But why? How had they gotten to know each other? Did they have anything else in common?