The Hand that Trembles (18 page)

* * *

 Margit who had baked the cinnamon buns turned out to be his cousin.

‘One of twenty-six,’ he said with a crooked smile.

She was born in Bultudden and had been married to Kalle for over forty years. They were retired now. They had three children, all grown.

‘Kalle doesn’t saw anything other than wood, but he’s good at that. We thin the woods together.’

Torsten Andersson stood up again and added more fuel to the fire.

‘It’s pine,’ he said. ‘So that should be to your liking.’

Lindell nodded. The heat rose in the kitchen and she removed her jumper and straightened her T-shirt. Torsten Andersson glanced at her breasts but when their gazes met he immediately looked embarrassed.

‘I never married,’ he said. ‘Want some more coffee? But I have been lucky to have Margit,’ he added, after Lindell declined a third cup. ‘She’s very considerate.’

He looked out the window. A couple of raindrops spattered against the glass.

‘She sewed the curtains,’ he said, and waved his hand.

Unexpectedly, Lindell felt a wave of tenderness toward the man on the other side of the table.

‘When I arrived, you became quite angry. Why is that?’

‘I thought you were a real estate bitch. They’re always running around out here, wanting to buy.’

‘You own a lot of land?’

‘Margit and I own most of the point, but we are equally stubborn,’ he said with a smile.

When he smiled, his whole face pulled together in an intricate pattern of wrinkles.

‘We inherited it, and so that’s how it should be. Margit and Kalle’s boys will take over. I’m leaving it to them as well, and the boys are made of the same stuff as us.’

A new smile.

‘The chickens. What was that all about?’

The smile disappeared.

‘I had some before, but then there were new rules. They’ve been after me. I wrung all their necks in the spring.’

Lindell thought about Viola on Gräsö Island. Had the authorities been after her too?

‘Did you have many?’

‘About three hundred. An infernal cackling.’

Lindell was certain Torsten had taken good care of his hens.

‘Tell me more about Bultudden,’ she asked, well aware that she should not allow herself to be seduced by his quiet talking.

She had a task at hand. Marksson wanted a report, and not one on wood and chickens. She took out her notebook, writing a one and then ‘Torsten Andersson.’

‘Two,’ he said, and Lindell wrote a two and then ‘Margit and Kalle.’

He watched her, straightened his back, and pushed his coffee cup away.

‘Five hundred metres past Margit and Kalle there’s Thomas B. Sunesson. The
B
is important. He was a repair technician at Vattenfall – an electrician, in other words – and he has lived here for at least fifteen years. Unmarried, but not exactly a hermit. He often goes out dancing, mostly at Norrskedika.’

A list of names followed, residents from north to south on Bultudden. Number four and five were married couples, six and seven unmarried males.

‘And then there is Lisen, but maybe she doesn’t count. She lives all the way down toward the bay. A strange woman, seems to have problems. Sometimes she drops by. She doesn’t live here permanently, she rents an old fishing cottage from me. Comes and goes, a restless spirit. She’s here this week. Otherwise she is in Uppsala.’

After concluding this review of residents – which included brief elaborations and biographical details – Lindell thanked him for his help. She had a final question for him when they stood in the hall.

‘I saw a large bird on my way over. Could it have been a sea eagle?’

‘Sure. We have a couple that hang around here.’

Torsten Andersson looked almost proud.

‘Any that nest on the point?’

‘Absolutely. Two sets of mating couples, actually.’

She was hungry but decided to skip lunch in order to get in a few more houses. Cousin Margit was probably home, and maybe some of the married couples.

She realised that the single men would be difficult to question during the day as all three worked: Sunesson at Vattenfall, Lasse Malm at Forsmark, and the third bachelor, Tobias Frisk, at a bakery in Östhammar.

It was most likely among the latter that she would find something of interest. She had trouble imagining that the three couples would be intent on butchering bodies. But could she rule out Torsten Andersson?

Why did Bultudden strike her as the most interesting area to work through? One reason was of course that Marksson and his colleagues had diligently visited all of the homes on the other side of the bay and carefully scrutinised its inhabitants. But she was actually enticed by the eagle theory, sending Fredriksson a thought of gratitude. It would be sensational if it turned out to be true. She wished it was – an eagle rising, a murderer who saw part of the body he had butchered disappear into the sky, the eagle that soared above the pine trees, beating its wings with powerful if not elegant strokes, and disappeared.

The likelihood that an eagle could be involved also appeared more plausible after the conversation with Örjan Bäck. He had in fact observed an eagle flying away only a couple of seconds before he caught sight of the foot. It had been flapping low to the water in the direction of Bultudden.

Or am I wasting my time, Lindell asked herself as she slowly, almost reluctantly walked back to the car, Andersson’s gaze on her back and the smoke of sap-rich pine in her nostrils.

Dreamy before this landscape, barren and yet so rich, that had been the backdrop against which she had loved and been loved, lost in a dialect that had seemed at first laughably childlike, but that she after her time with Edvard on Gräsö Island soaked up as greedily as a thirsty person reaches for a sponge filled with water, seduced by the sea.

She understood very well that by exposing herself to Roslagen she was tempting herself, toying with herself. A pathetic show dressed up as an investigation with only one actor and only herself as the audience. For with whom could she share this ridiculous passion, this grief, and this truncated love?

But – there was always a but in this play – she could transform her attachment to the landscape and people to a painstaking and exhaustive investigation. She came from the outside, with respect and a keen ear, not bound by old ties. She would transform her weakness to strength.  

Back in the car, bouncing down the road, she stumbled upon yet another reason she liked this assignment so much. She could be alone. No co-worker to take into consideration and measure herself against. Normally it should have been two, but Ottosson was wise enough to pick up on her unspoken preference, and luckily it coincided with their current staffing situation. No co-worker was available, and for his part Marksson was too harried to tag along.  

Her need to be alone was growing stronger. She did not know if it improved the quality of her work but that didn’t matter. It was a compulsion.  

‘Misanthrope,’ Sammy Nilsson had called her one time. Unsure what it meant she had not commented on it, and looked it up later, finding the synonyms ‘hater of the world’ and ‘hater of mankind.’  

She smiled to herself. She was what she was. Sammy Nilsson and the others had contributed. She was a woman without imagination, her emotional landscape a morass, like most a good-enough mother, but she was a good – sometimes very good – cop. She liked the word ‘cop,’ it sounded ballsy, and testified to courage and effectiveness.  

The road took a strong turn along a stone wall. A house could be seen about fifty metres away.  

‘Bultudden,’ she murmured, and slowed down.  

This she liked: the sight of a house, a gate to open, and new faces to acquaint herself with.

What should he leave behind? The question bordered on the ridiculous. He surveyed the small flat. He had not accumulated much. If he were to fill two smallish suitcases, all his clothes and personal belongings would fit. And this after twelve years.

Sven-Arne Persson listlessly picked through the worn things, some trousers, a handful of shirts, and some underwear. He could wear nothing of this in Sweden. Possibly the underpants. He set those aside.

The three pairs of sandals he rotated between – at work, in his neighbourhood, and at St Mary’s – were lined up right inside the door. They looked ashamed, or else they were simply fearful at the prospect of being moved to such a remote land.

The light blue shirt had a hole by the collar. He held it up to his face and drew in the scent of detergent. He put it in the pile that he was going to give to his downstairs neighbour.

Two white shirts he kept, hesitated on a third, but let it stay behind.

He walked around aimlessly in the flat for an hour, picking, sorting. The vase from Lester he packed in the handkerchiefs that Jyoti gave him before returning to Chennai for good. A beautiful stone that he found during an outing to Nandi Hills he slipped into a bag of toiletries. The English pruning shears – Wilkinsons that he had bought for a small fortune – he wrapped in a cotton cloth.

He had given notice on the flat. The landlord had shaken both his hands with a look of concern and assured him that he had been his best tenant ever, and urged him to return as soon as possible. But what did one know about the future? Was it a woman? An inheritance in England that needed to be guarded? The landlord, who had actually searched
Sven-Arne’
s flat several times in secret in order to establish who he was, looked genuinely downcast. You will come again, will you not?

Did he want to return? Was his time in Bangalore, in India, at an end for good? Was he returning home to die? In a way it felt as though he were going toward death, that Svensk had been a messenger who had come with a dire message: It is time to total things up and turn in the final reckoning.

He felt no terror, no anguish before the black hole about to suck him in. Sweden was death for him. There was only one thing he wanted: to speak with Ante. One matter to get to the bottom of. Then he was finished with both India and Sweden.

Elsa he did not want to see, even if she lay on her deathbed, even if she … He did not complete the thought.

He couldn’t give a damn about politics.

One more thing: He wanted to see his grandmother’s cottage and Rosberg’s farm, if they were still there.

That’s enough of want and not want, he thought. Travel as unnoticed as you arrived. Walk off the plane – it will be December, he thought with something akin to terror, as he surveyed his clothes piles – and walk as through a tunnel toward your goals. Do not state or lay claim to anything. Finish. Write in a final period.

He sat down at the table. Some books lay before him: a flower lexicon, a few thin publications on herbal medicine and traditional folk healing methods, and a biography of Gandhi. He came to think of all the trees he had planted in Lal Bagh. It brought a smile to his face. Lester would remember. He also believed the trees would remember their youth, when the tall but very thin gardener took hold of the trunk and gently placed the plant in the ground, sprinkled the roots with damp earth, shook and lightly tapped the ground, added more earth in a circle around the trunk, added water, let it sink in, and repeated the procedure until the area was well hydrated.

Trees remember. They sighed contentedly once in place, Sven-Arne Persson was convinced of that. It was the memory that allowed them to grow.

He had always been careful, thorough. There were few things that infuriated him as much as when someone was careless with earth and plants. This he had shared with Lester, indeed had it been the very basis of their friendship?

Would he miss Lal Bagh? Maybe, maybe not. The trees would remember, that was a comforting thought as he now collected the considerably fewer items than initially planned. He filled a suitcase and a small shoulder bag, looked around one last time, let the door remain open, and left the building. He stepped out into the cool morning air and waved to Ismael, whom he had bade goodbye the night before. He walked slowly down the street. A rickshaw pulled up alongside but he gestured it away. He wanted to proceed on foot for a while.

After about one hundred metres his pace slackened, as if he had remembered something, before he came to a complete stop, put his suitcase down, and turned around. Ismael was still outside his shop, staring after him. It appeared to Sven-Arne that he smiled. But he did most of the time.

The day before he had painstakingly shaved Sven-Arne and cut his hair and talked about the events of the street from the past several days: an older woman who had died – ‘she was almost too old’ – the couple above the barber shop had had another fight – ‘he is not a good man’ – and the police had been looking for a gang of boys that often loitered in the copy shop – ‘Tamils!’ Before they had parted, Ismael had – clearly self-conscious but also childishly excited – fumblingly brought out a small box. ‘From all of us,’ he had said, and made an indeterminate gesture with his hands as if he were including the entire street. Sven-Arne had accepted the gift but had not yet opened it. The last thing he wanted was to break down in tears with Ismael.

He had let his gaze wander over the worn interior, the cursorily cleaned combs in a glass jar, the bottles of aftershave and tinctures, the mirror with its blemishes, the little table where there was always a vase of plastic flowers, the curtain that concealed the area where Ismael could wash up for Friday prayers. Ismael followed his gaze. Sven-Arne wanted to say something pleasant, something for Ismael to remember, but could not think of anything.

In the street outside there was the usual group of boys. He recognised all of them. Some of them had attended his lessons.

What did the barber say about Sven-Arne? What would he say in five or ten years? How long would he live on in the collective memory of the neighbourhood? What would the boys say?