Frozen Moment (11 page)

    Perhaps
she ought to drive to the university library to take out some books in
preparation for her next assessment, but as soon as she got in the car she
realised it was going to be difficult to drive past that junction. Printouts of
her fuzzy pictures from the murder scene lay, tucked between the pages of her
pad of file paper. She had sat with them in front of her for most of the night,
thinking about events that had lain hidden for so many years and about possible
punishments for compromising a murder investigation. About possibly stealing a
march on Tell and getting more information about what had happened.
About other ways of finding things out.

    A
disturbing heat spread up through her body to her head as she once again
allowed the scene of the crime to pass before her mind's eye, excitement and
embarrassment alternating with one another. She almost managed to push away the
memory of the inspector's expression when he established that she had lied.

    She
had lied, had already embarked on a particular course. In order to see the
consequences of her choice she would have to travel to the end of the line.

    She
considered going back to the farm, however insane that might be.

    The
blood was coursing through her body, faster, hotter.
More
palpable than for a long time.

    
'Bloody
kids,' he muttered between gritted teeth as he slammed the door of the tack
room shut. Out in the corridor the noticeboard was plastered with angry
messages like a laundry room in a block of flats:
' When you sweep the
stable passageway, do NOT tip the muck into the well. It gets blocked!!!!
Whoever stole a bucket of silage from me the other day, put it back by Saturday
at the LATEST, or else I'll be talking to Reino about it!!!'

    Reino
sighed from the bottom of his lungs. When he decided to do up the stable block
on the farm and rent out stables to girls in the area who owned their own
horses, he thought it would be an easy way to get a bit of extra income. The
building was just standing there, after all. And since his daughter Sara had
been nagging him about getting a horse for years, he got the job done,
combining business with pleasure, so to speak.

    However,
he was finding it hard to remember exactly where the pleasure lay in this
particular enterprise. Especially since Sara had rapidly grown tired of her
horse and had turned her attention to mopeds and the opposite sex. And as far
as the extra income was concerned, it certainly wasn't easy money. He had never
had to work so hard for such a small amount of money.

    The
obvious duties of a
landlord
, for example fixing a
leaky roof or a broken fence, were nothing compared with the abundance of
additional needs he was expected to meet. And worst of all were the endless
conflicts. He had lost count of the number of times he had sat at the kitchen
table, squirming uncomfortably opposite yet another sobbing teenage girl.

    It
was a hell of an effort, a hell of a struggle, but he had spent 70,000 on doing
up the stable block, and shutting down the business would be like throwing the
money away. Besides which, they needed all the extra income they could get,
even if it was only a small amount. Financially, they were on their knees.
Gertrud had a bad back and could no longer cope with her job as a child minder,
which meant that more than a third of their monthly income had disappeared. And
these days farming didn't bring in much money.

    Sometimes
he thought the only way out would be to move. Then it was the rage that made
him carry on working. The
rage,
and the thought of the
little apartment and the unemployment that would be their fate.

    
And the thought of Sara.
He nourished the hope that one day
she would have the opportunity to make the same choice he had: to go in for
agriculture, even if it was financially impossible to live as a farmer in
today's society. If you don't want to live on subsidies, that is.

    
The rage.
That was what gave him the strength to keep going.
Not that he was all that old, and he was still as strong as an ox when he
needed to be. On those mornings when he could hardly summon the energy to swing
himself up on to the tractor, he was fighting against a different kind of
tiredness. A feebleness on a completely different level, which neither rest nor
a visit to the doctor could cure.

    The
slamming of the tack room door, obligatory whenever he visited the stable block
these days, usually fell on deaf ears, but he had learned that it was necessary
now and then to loosen the pressure valve on the brooding, clanking machinery
in his stomach, to let out a little burst of rage in the form of a slammed door
or screeching of tyres as he pulled away from the stables. The past few years
had certainly been bloody difficult.

    As
Reino slumped on to the seat he met his own eyes in the rear- view mirror - a
little bit red-rimmed. He ran his hand thoughtfully over his stubble before he
turned the key in the ignition and drove off. As he sped alongside the pasture
the noise made the horses shy away from the fence.

    Through
force of habit he gathered the strength to drive past Lise- Lott's house and
the workshop, because no horse-mad girl - or even EU regulations, for that
matter - had the ability to put him in such a bad mood as the sight of that
bitch. Not to mention her new husband, running around like some big girl
photographing old buildings or half-rotten trees and weeds.

    On
one occasion Reino had actually gone over to have a chat with Waltz because
every attempt he had made to talk to that stupid bitch had ended up in a row.
He had been well prepared, and had even taken a small bottle of whisky to show
that he came with the best of intentions. He was willing to resolve the
situation in the best possible way for all concerned. After all, his own
situation was not financially viable in the long term, and Waltz was in the
same position, if you thought about it. As far as Reino understood, Waltz
hadn't known much about cars when he got the workshop as part of the package
that came with Lise-Lott, so to speak, and didn't know anything at all about
farming. If Reino understood correctly, Waltz wasn't even intending to make use
of the land that belonged to Thomas's and Reino's parents' farm.

    
My parents' home, Thomas's parents' home.
He sucked
on every syllable, but Waltz had pretended not to understand, had just gone on
and on about his photography and how the landscape around the farm appealed to
him. How happy he was to be living in this particular spot, thanks to the fact
that he had met Lise-Lott. Reino had just wanted to punch him, and had laid it
on the line so the fool could understand.

    'Thomas
is gone, and in my capacity as his brother it's my duty to take over the family
farm, to carry on with the work - that's the way it should be. I mean, somebody
has to do it, and my own place is just too small. It doesn't bring anything in.
Lise-Lott knows nothing about farming, and watching her try to keep the car
workshop open has been a complete joke.
A woman!'

    It
took all his strength to restrain himself.

    'Listen.
I grew up here; my father ploughed these fields. As long as Thomas was alive
and he and Lise-Lott were running the farm, I had my own projects, but now
Thomas is dead I have a right to my father's land. It's obvious. In fact,
Lise-Lott had been planning to hand over the farm just before you came on the
scene.
For a symbolic amount, of course, perhaps in exchange
for our place.
I mean, what's she going to do with all that extra land -
it's nothing but a headache.'

    He
thought his argument was quite well put; he was even generous enough to offer
to let Waltz and the bitch carry on living in the house. Theoretically he
wouldn't need it anyway; he was quite comfortable in the larger house that was
Gertrud's childhood home.

    But
that skinny wimp Waltz had suddenly turned nasty and refused to listen. In his
opinion the person who had a right to the farm according to Swedish law was
Thomas Edell's widow, namely Lise- Lott, and therefore it was entirely up to
Lise-Lott to make any decisions regarding the house and the land. If Reino
wished to discuss her late husband's inheritance, then he would have to conduct
that discussion with Lise-Lott herself.

    'Besides,
I did a bit of work on cars during my military service. I wasn't completely
useless.'

    With
that salvo Waltz had turned on his heel and stalked up the stone steps that
Reino's father had made because his mother wanted to feel more like a
lady
of the manor and less like a farmer's wife. The stone
steps where Reino and his brother used to sit, dressed in their Sunday best,
while they waited for their parents to get ready for church.

    The
fury had hit him like an explosion inside his head. He had had to exercise
extreme self-control to avoid running after Waltz and knocking him to the
ground, which wouldn't have been a good idea, bearing in mind that he was busy
formulating a legal challenge to his brother's widow.

    As
usual he got hot under the collar even remembering that conversation with
Waltz. But now everything had been turned upside down. When he reached the bend
by Lise-Lott's place he slowed down as much as he dared without attracting
attention, and drove slowly past the police tape flapping in the faint breeze.
The machinery that had been grinding away in his stomach earlier had now fallen
silent.

    Karin
Beckman was looking at the chain distrustfully. Every time the muscular body of
the dog launched an attack, the chain appeared to be yanked to breaking point.
She didn't want to think about what would happen if it actually snapped.

    'You
look a bit pale, Beckman.' Gonzales laughed. 'You're not telling me you're
frightened of this little chap?'

    Beckman
snorted. 'I don't see you going over to give him a cuddle.'

    She
fell silent as the door of the glassed-in veranda flew open with a crash.

    'QUIET,
SIMBA! QUIET!'

    The
woman was wearing a dressing gown over, jeans and a T-shirt, and her hair was
in rollers under a thin scarf. She jerked a cigarette out of the corner of her
mouth. Gonzales nudged Beckman in the side.

    'I'm
more bloody frightened of
her
'.

    The
expression on the woman's face made them explain their business quickly. A
little while later they had made it past the Rottweiler. Once it was off the
chain, it turned out to be more interested in nuzzling them in the crotch.

    They
were sitting in a scruffy kitchen, each with a mug of instant coffee in front
of them, despite the fact that they had both said no when the offer was made.
The woman had taken off her dressing gown and turned down the volume of her
powerful voice. The wall behind her was covered in framed photographs of small
boys and girls in front of a sky-blue screen.

    'Grandchildren,'
she explained.

    Since
Beckman was fully occupied with rummaging in her bag, Gonzales nodded politely.

    'They're
very sweet. Now, if we can just get down to the matter in hand, fru Rappe.
The evening of the nineteenth, the night of the
nineteenth-twentieth and the morning of the twentieth of this month.
We
are interested in anything that might have seemed out of the ordinary during
that period. For example, did you or your husband see anyone you didn't
recognise?'

    Fru
Rappe stubbed out her cigarette in an ashtray decorated with sea anemones and
coughed asthmatically before she replied.

    'I
suppose this is about the Edells' place? I heard from the Molins that there
were lots of cars in the drive and… Well, this is a small community, after all,
and we do like to know what's going on. I noticed when I was driving past that
the place had been cordoned off. Dagny thought there had been a break-in, but
I'm not stupid enough to believe there would be such a fuss over a break-in. At
least there wasn't when somebody nicked my jewellery box and our telly last
autumn. No, Waltz has been murdered, hasn't he?'

    The
question hung in the air. She was making it crystal clear that she had
absolutely no intention of carrying on until she got an answer. Gonzales
squirmed uncomfortably. There was something about this woman that he found
extremely demanding. His gaze was caught by an enormous Santa Claus on the lawn
outside the kitchen window, complete with sleigh and reindeer covered in
hundreds of tiny bulbs in all the colours of the rainbow.