Larsson paused.
“Does this change the picture?”
“It changes everything in the picture. Or rather, we don’t have a picture any more. I don’t think we’re going to find out who did this for quite a long time. My experience tells me that it’s going to take a long time, because we’re going to have to dig deep. What does your experience tell you?”
“That you might be right.”
Larsson started sneezing again.
“I thought you’d want to know this,” Larsson said when he came back on the phone. “Incidentally, I shall be meeting Molin’s daughter tomorrow.”
“She’s staying here in the hotel.”
“I thought you might meet her. What’s she like?”
“Reserved. But she’s a very good-looking woman.”
“I have something to look forward to then. Have you spoken to her?”
“We had dinner together. She told me something I didn’t know, about those missing years in the mid-fifties. She says Molin owned a couple of music shops in the Stockholm area, but he went bankrupt.”
“I suppose there’s no reason why she should lie about that?”
“Hardly. But you’ll meet her tomorrow anyway.”
“I’ll certainly ask her about the bullet wounds. Have you decided how long you’re going to stay?”
“Perhaps tomorrow as well. Then I’m leaving. But I’ll stay in touch.”
“Make sure you do.”
Lindman put the phone down and slumped onto the bed. He felt tired. Without even taking off his shoes, he stretched out and fell asleep.
He woke up with a start and checked his watch. 4:45. He’d been dreaming. Somebody was chasing him. Then he was surrounded by a pack of dogs that were tearing at his clothes and biting him all over his body. His father was there somewhere, and Elena. He went to the bathroom and rinsed his face in cold water. It wasn’t difficult to interpret the dream. The illness I have, the cells multiplying out of control, they are like a pack of wild dogs careering around inside me. He undressed and burrowed into the sheets, but didn’t manage to get back to sleep.
It was always in the early morning, before dawn, that he felt most defenseless. He was thirty-seven, a police officer trying to lead a decent life. Nothing remarkable, a life that was never more than ordinary. Then again, what was ordinary? He was rapidly approaching middle age and didn’t have any children. Now he had to fight an illness that might overcome him. In which case the end of his life wouldn’t even be ordinary. It would mean that he would never be able to demonstrate his true worth.
He got up at 6 A.M. They wouldn’t start serving breakfast for another half-hour. He took some clean clothes from his suitcase. Thought that he should shave, but didn’t bother. By 6:30 he was in the lobby. The dining room door was ajar. When he peeped in he was surprised to see that the receptionist was sitting on a chair, drying her eyes with a napkin. Hastily, he withdrew. She’d obviously been crying. He went back up the stairs and waited. The doors were opened. The girl was smiling.
“You’re early,” she said.
As he ate his breakfast, he wondered why she’d been crying, but it was none of his business. We all have our private miseries, he thought. Our packs of dogs to battle.
By the time he’d finished, he’d made up his mind. He would go back to Molin’s house. Not because he thought he might find anything new, but to go through again in his mind what he now knew. Or didn’t know. Then he’d leave everything to figure itself out. He wouldn’t stay in Sveg waiting for a funeral that he didn’t want to go to anyway. Just now, this was the last thing he wanted to submit himself to. He would go back to Borås, repack his bag, and hope to find a cheap package trip to Mallorca. I need a plan, he thought. If I don’t have a plan, I won’t be able to cope with what’s in store for me.
He left the hotel at 7:15. There had been no sign of Molin’s daughter. The receptionist smiled as she always did when he handed in his room key. Something must have happened, but it wasn’t likely that she’d been told she had cancer.
He drove west through the autumn and the silence. Occasionally a few drops of rain spattered against the windscreen. He switched on the radio and half-listened to the news. The New York Stock Exchange had gone up, or was it down? He couldn’t hear. As he passed Linsell he saw some children with book bags waiting for the school bus. Most roofs there had satellite dishes. He thought back to his own childhood in Kinna. The past became almost tangible. He looked at the road and thought about all the boring journeys he’d made through central Sweden while he was assistant to the motocross rider who hardly ever won a race. He was so lost in thought that he missed the turn for Ratmyren. He went back, and parked in the same place as last time.