She raised an eyebrow. “Not at all what?”
“I don’t at all want to be on my own.”
She sat down, consulted the menu, but put it down again immediately.
“Could I have a salad?” she said. “And an omelette? Nothing else.”
“No problem,” the girl said.
Lindman wondered if she also did the cooking.
Veronica Molin ordered a mineral water. Lindman was still trying to remember who she reminded him of.
“I misunderstood the situation,” she said. “I thought it was here in Sveg that I was going to meet the police, but it is in Ostersund. I’ll be going there tomorrow.”
“Where have you come from?”
“Cologne. That’s where I was when the news of my father’s death reached me.”
“So do you live in Germany?”
She shook her head. “In Barcelona. Or Boston. It depends. But I was in Cologne. It was very strange and frightening. I’d just returned to my room. The Dom Hotel, it’s called, next to the enormous cathedral. The church bells started ringing at the same time as the phone rang, and a man from somewhere a long way away told me that my father had been murdered. He asked if I’d like to talk to a clergyman. I flew to Stockholm this morning, the soonest I could organize my affairs, and then continued here. But, apparently, I should have gone to Ostersund.”
Her mineral water arrived and she fell silent. Somebody in the bar burst out laughing, loud and shrill. Lindman thought it sounded like a man trying to imitate a dog. Then it came to him who she reminded him of. An actress in one of those soap operas that go on and on. He tried to remember her name, but he couldn’t.
Veronica Molin was serious and tense. Lindman wondered how he would have reacted if he’d been in a hotel somewhere and been told over the telephone that his father had been murdered.
“I’m really very sorry about what happened,” he said. “A completely pointless murder.”
“Aren’t all murders pointless?”
“Of course. But some have a motive that one can understand, despite everything.”
“Nobody could have had any reason to kill my father,” she said. “He had no enemies. He wasn’t rich.”
But he was scared, Lindman thought, and perhaps that fear was at the root of what happened. Her food arrived on the table. Lindman had a vague sense that the woman sitting opposite him had the upper hand. She had an assurance that he lacked.
“I gather you and he used to work together.”
“Yes, in Boras. I started my police career there. Your father helped to put me on the right track. He left a big gap when he retired.”
That makes it sound as if we were close friends, he thought. It isn’t true. We were never friends. We were colleagues.
“Needless to say, I wondered why he’d moved up here to Harjedalen,” he said after a while.
She saw through him immediately. “I didn’t think he had told anyone where he was going to move to.”
“Perhaps I remember wrongly. But I’m curious, naturally. Why did he move here?”
“He wanted to be left in peace. My father was a recluse. So am I.”
There’s no answer to that, thought Lindman. She hadn’t only given him a reply, she’d nipped the conversation in the bud. Why is she sitting at my table if she doesn’t want to talk to me? He could feel himself getting irritated.
“I have nothing to do with the murder investigation,” he said. “I came here because I’m off work.”
She put down her fork and looked at him. “To do what?”
“Maybe to attend the funeral. Assuming it will take place here. Once the medical people release the body.”
She didn’t believe him, he could see that, and that increased his irritation.
“Were you often in contact with him?”
“Very seldom. I’m a consultant for a computer firm that operates all over the world. I’m nearly always traveling. I used to send him a postcard once or twice every year, maybe called him at Christmas. But that was about it.”
“It doesn’t sound as if you had a very good relationship.”
He looked hard at her. He still thought she was beautiful, but she radiated coldness and remoteness.
“What kind of relationship I had with my father is hardly anybody else’s business. He wanted to be left in peace. I respected that. And he respected the fact that we were two of a kind.”
“You have a brother as well, I believe?”
Her response was firm and outspoken.
“We avoid speaking to each other unless it’s absolutely necessary. The best way of describing that relationship is that it is close to open enmity. Why that should be is no business of anybody else either. I’ve been in touch with a firm of funeral directors who will take care of everything. My father will be buried here in Sveg.”