So they would definitely be able to tell that a girl had been living there, too. Lograna had not just been Ante Valdemar Roos’s place in the world.

  Assuming they got as far as finding Lograna. There was still nothing to indicate that they had, but it was bound to happen sooner or later. Sooner or later, he was under no illusion about that.

  For the first couple of days he had anxiously listened to every radio news bulletin and skimmed through every newspaper he came across, but her calmness gradually rubbed off on him. And when they decided the wound on her head was starting to look better after all, and they wouldn’t have to go to a hospital, that was another turning point. It meant they had no need to stay in the country. They drove across the Øresund Bridge just over a week after they had left Lograna, the sunshine of an autumn morning accompanying them, and it gave them a deafening sense of freedom to leave Sweden behind. Valdemar thought so, anyway; a confined little world closed behind them, a vast space opened up ahead of them.

  He said it to her, too, in exactly those words. She laughed and put her hand on his arm.

  ‘When someone closes a door, God opens a window,’ she said.

  ‘What do you mean by that?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s what my mother used to say,’ she replied. ‘To my father, when I was younger. I liked it a lot. I used to lie in bed in the evening after they’d had a row and think about it.’

  ‘I like it too,’ he admitted. ‘When someone closes a door, God opens a window. Do you miss your mum?’

  ‘A bit.’

  ‘How’s your head feeling?’

  Those first few days he had asked too often.

  ‘Does it hurt? Do you want to lie down on the back seat for a while? Shall I help you change the bandage?’

  Far too often, but it was hardly surprising he was worried. She had been lying unconscious on the grass when he found her and it had taken him several minutes to bring her round. The whole left side of her head was covered in sticky blood, and he cleaned her up with wet towels to reveal a gash almost ten centimetres long. Above her left ear, a swelling and a crude crescent shape that extended right across to her temple, just below the hairline; the rusty iron bar with which she had been attacked lay a few metres to one side, just under the apple tree.

  The swelling persisted for several days, but she had soon got the hang of doing her hair slightly differently so nothing really showed. They were lucky: at the first hotel, that second night, they had managed to pass themselves off as Mr Eriksson and daughter. She’d had a blinding headache when they were at the reception desk signing in, but the injury and the bandage were hidden by her thick, dark-brown hair.

  They stayed in Halmstad for three days. She stayed in bed most of the time, and he looked after her as if he really were a good father with a poorly daughter. He made sure she drank plenty and ate the occasional little something. He bought painkillers at the chemist’s, along with plasters, compresses and vitamins. He sat at her bedside and watched over her.

  Asked her if she needed anything. Asked if she was in pain.

  Way too often. On the morning of the fourth day, she got up, had a shower, told him to stop fussing and asked if it was about time they moved on.

  For a moment he felt he barely recognized her. It was as if he didn’t really know who it was, standing there at the narrow door of the en suite bathroom, wrapped in the hotel’s white bath towels – one round her body and one round her head – and addressing him almost as if she were Signe or Wilma. The way they sounded when he had once again and for obscure reasons failed to live up to their expectations.

  But then she saw that she had upset him, took three steps across the room and gave him a big hug.

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to snap at you. But don’t you agree it’s time we got out of here?’

  It had scared him, that moment, and it wasn’t easy to put behind him. It lingered in one corner of his mind like an evil omen or sense of foreboding.

  He drove on to Karlskrona, though he wasn’t sure why. Perhaps because it would take a bit longer. In the car, on the road, was where they belonged, at least for these few days. As if motion itself was the only conceivable board on which the game could play out. But they only spent a single night in Blekinge province, where she slept for thirteen hours solid, and then they went on to Hotel Baltzar in Malmö.

  Her headache came and went. She was sick a few times. He bought a variety of painkillers. Treo, Ipren, Alvedon. She said she found Treo worked best and when they drove across the Sound they had twelve tubes of it in stock.

  But the swelling gradually went down and the gash began to look better. By the time they got to Malmö on the Saturday, they decided not to bother with any more plasters or compresses; they took a long walk in the Pildamm Park and it wore her out, of course, but afterwards she promised to follow him to the end of the world, as long as he had enough money for petrol and a few provisions for the journey.

  He had withdrawn 500,000 in Halmstad; at the bank they asked what on earth he needed so much cash for, and he told them he was buying a boat. Eccentric seller, but he just had to go with the flow.

  He knew he’d got that out of some book, the boat-buying story, and it made him grateful that he was an avid reader. He wouldn’t have come up with it by himself.

  But they definitely had the money for petrol and provisions. In Malmö he exchanged some of the Swedish notes for thirty thousand euros and twenty thousand Danish kronor, and that didn’t seem to present any problems.

  There was no need to bring up a boat or anything else.

  He stopped and looked at his watch.

  Half past six. The sun had come up properly now, but the beach was still deserted. He hadn’t met another soul, so perhaps the Danes were a people who preferred a bit more time in bed in the morning.

  They did have a certain reputation, after all, thought Ante Valdemar Roos, yawning and turning his steps back towards the main part of town. Or perhaps they had more important things to do, he corrected himself a few moments later. Work and so on. No time for wandering along beautiful beaches at sunrise, even if they were right outside your door?

  They hadn’t stolen his shoes and socks, at any event.

  ‘I had such a strange dream.’

  He nodded. She had described her dreams to him a few times before. Usually while they were having breakfast; it had almost become a habit of theirs.

  ‘It seemed totally real, it was hard to believe it was just a dream when I woke up.’

  He thought that if life consisted of just one day, he would be very happy for it to start like this. First an hour’s walk along an empty sandy beach. Then breakfast in a seaside boarding house garden and a dream from this singular young woman’s lips.

  ‘What was it about?’ he asked.

  She drank some tea and started spreading jam on another slice of bread. Good, he thought, she’s getting her appetite back.

  ‘I think it was actually about death. And how we needn’t be scared of it.’

  ‘Oh?’ he said. ‘No, of course we needn’t.’

  ‘You were in it. My little brother and my mum were, too, but I had the main part. I was death.’

  ‘You were death?’ he exclaimed, involuntarily dismayed. ‘Now I truly don’t think—’

  ‘Oh yes,’ she assured him. ‘I was death, and the one everyone had to come back to sooner or later. I knew that, and it meant there was no hurry about anything. You and Mum and Marek were in a boat, out on a river—’

  ‘Marek, your little brother?’

  ‘Yes. You were all in that boat and it was being carried towards a waterfall and you’d all, like, lost control of everything. But none of you realized, because the current wasn’t especially strong to start with, you just thought it was an exciting adventure. And I was waiting for you further on, where the current got stronger, where I knew it would dawn on you that this was serious and you really were in danger.’

  ‘Did we know each other?’ he asked. ‘Me and your mum and your brother?’

  ‘Oh yes, and I was looking forward to being reunited with you all, because I’d been dead for a long time and the last time I’d seen you was at my funeral and you’d all been so sad and forsaken, somehow.’

  ‘Forsaken?’

  ‘Yes, that’s how it feels when the dead leave the living behind.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘It came home to me in the dream and it’s something you just kind of know, anyway.’ She nodded as if to confirm this to herself before she went on. ‘The whole dream basically revolved round me just sitting and waiting for you all to come to me in the rapids. I knew you’d all be terrified at first, but then when it was over and you were with me at last, everything would be fine again.’

  ‘Me and your mum and your little brother?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What happened then? Did we go down the waterfall?’

  ‘No, the strange thing was that you didn’t. I don’t know what happened, in fact. I mean, you didn’t have oars or anything, but somehow the boat was able to find its own current and come ashore instead. I sat there waiting and felt a bit disappointed, really, but it wasn’t too bad. I knew you’d all be coming another day. And then he came instead.’

  ‘He? Who do you mean?’

  ‘Him.’

  ‘Steffo?’

  ‘Yes. And I absolutely didn’t want to see him. He came speeding through the water on his scooter and just before he reached me, you were suddenly there after all, Valdemar. Maybe Marek and Mum were too, I don’t know, but you blew on him and then he was gone.’

  ‘I blew on him?’

  ‘Yes, kind of breathed on him. And that was all it took. You leant down from Heaven, I think – I could see your upside-down head, at any rate – and then you breathed on Steffo and suddenly he didn’t exist any more. I kissed you and then I woke up.’

  ‘My God, Anna. You’re making me . . .’

  ‘Making you what?’

  ‘Embarrassed.’

  ‘You feel embarrassed because I kissed you in a dream?’

  ‘Well yes, I do.’

  ‘All right then, I’ll try to control myself better next time.’

  She laughed. He laughed. It felt to him like the happiest morning of his life.

  Never better than this.

  That afternoon they sat in deckchairs on the beach. The sun was coming from the right direction now.

  ‘You still can’t remember?’ he asked.

  She shook her head. ‘No.’

  ‘Are you getting any closer?’

  ‘No. I rushed out, grabbed up the knife from the draining board as I went. I heard him coming after me. I caught my foot on that root in the grass and tripped over. Then . . . well, then it’s a blank.’

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘It’s probably just as well you don’t remember any more.’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe, but I would like to remember.’ She paused and racked her brains. ‘But I must have killed him, however you look at it. Just as he hit me with that iron bar. That must be what happened, mustn’t it?’

  ‘There’s no way of being sure. Anna?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Whatever happened, you don’t need to feel guilty about it.’

  ‘I know that’s what you think. I think the same, but we can’t control our consciences.’

  He looked at her in silence for a while. Two joggers, a man and a woman in red and black tracksuits, ran past them further down the beach.

  ‘Is it hurting? Shall we go back so you can have a proper rest?’

  She pulled a sudden face, hard for him to interpret. ‘How long are we going to stay here, Valdemar?’

  ‘When do you want us to move on?’

  ‘I don’t know. Tomorrow perhaps. Or the day after.’

  ‘Well let’s say we’ll make our minds up tomorrow.’

  She nodded and put her hand on his for a moment.

  ‘There’s something up with my arm, Valdemar.’

  ‘What? Your arm?’

  ‘Yes, my right arm. It feels heavy and weird.’

  ‘Have you . . . I mean, how long has it felt like that?’

  ‘I noticed it yesterday evening when I was playing the guitar. My fingers felt so thick and clumsy.’

  ‘Do you think it’s anything serious? Do you think it could have anything to do with . . .?’

  ‘No, I’m sure it’ll pass if I just rest up. Look, what’s that over there? Swans?’

  He peered towards the sun.

  ‘Herons, I think they’re herons.’

  ‘They look like some kind of mirage.’

  ‘Yes, almost.’

  33

  ‘Has he done something?’ asked Espen Lund. ‘I mean, do you suspect him of some crime?’

  Eva Backman shook her head and fastened her seatbelt with a resolute click.

  ‘He’s been missing for two weeks,’ Inspector Barbarotti informed him from the back seat. ‘You don’t happen to have any idea where he might have got to?’

  He tucked a small cushion under his leg and thought that once he finally got rid of the plaster and could walk like a normal human being, he would never spare that sodding foot another thought. It had already monopolized far more of his attention than it deserved.

  ‘Me?’ said Espen Lund. ‘Why on earth would I know where Valdemar Roos has gone?’

  ‘You sold him that house,’ Eva Backman reminded him. ‘Nobody else seems to have known about it.’

  ‘Discretion guaranteed,’ said Barbarotti.

  ‘For heaven’s sake,’ groaned Espen Lund. ‘I sell thirty houses and flats a month. I didn’t know I was also responsible for how my buyers choose to spend their time.’

  ‘Steady on,’ said Barbarotti. ‘We’re just trying to get to the bottom of this. You were old friends, you and Valdemar Roos. He must have told you what he wanted the old place for. And why he didn’t want his wife knowing about it?’

  Espen Lund hesitated for a moment.

  ‘He was a bit secretive about it.’

  ‘Secretive?’ said Backman.

  ‘Yes. He wanted it all handled discreetly . . . just like you . . . what’s your name again?’

  ‘Barbarotti,’ said Barbarotti.

  ‘Oh, so that’s you? What have you done to your foot?’

  ‘Fight with a gangster,’ said Barbarotti.

  Espen Lund gave a strained laugh. ‘And the other guy’s in hospital, I suppose?’

  ‘The cemetery,’ said Eva Backman. ‘Why was he so secretive about it, then? You must have been a bit curious, surely?’

  Espen Lund sighed. ‘Valdemar’s as dull as ditchwater,’ he said. ‘I don’t really know him all that well, but there was a period in our lives when we saw a fair amount of each other. After his divorce and so on. We were playmates as children, I can’t help that. These past fifteen years I haven’t seen him more than four or five times.’

  ‘So you were surprised when he rang and said he wanted to buy a house from you?’

  ‘Well not surprised, exactly,’ said Espen Lund, inserting a portion of snus under his top lip. ‘Nothing much surprises you after a few years in this business. Valdemar Roos wanted to buy a cottage for some peace and quiet. What’s so remarkable about that?’

  Eva Backman shrugged and pulled out onto the Rocksta roundabout. Barbarotti thought that, for his part, he would never buy anything from this jaded estate agent. But on the other hand, if you were already the owner of 350 square metres of property in need of renovation, you probably didn’t require any more houses.

  ‘Did you have any contact with him afterwards?’ he asked. ‘Once the sale had gone through, I mean?’

  Espen Lund shook his head. ‘Nope. We signed the contracts, the previous owner was there, too, and since then I’ve seen neither hide nor hair of him.’

  ‘And when was that exactly?’ asked Backman.

  ‘We signed on the twenty-seventh of August,’ said Espen Lund. ‘He picked up the keys on the first of September. I saw him then, of course, but only for ten seconds. I checked the date after you rang yesterday.’

  ‘All right then,’ said Barbarotti. ‘You don’t know his wife, do you?’

  ‘Never met her,’ said Espen Lund.

  ‘His first wife?’

  ‘Nor her,’ said Espen Lund.

  ‘Hmm. OK,’ said Eva Backman. ‘It’s starting to rain now, as well.’

  Gunnar Barbarotti looked out of the window and saw that she was right. Then he checked his watch.

  It was twenty past nine. It was Monday 29 September and they still knew nothing about the further adventures of Ante Valdemar Roos.

  But in half an hour they would be at his cottage in the woods. At least that was something, thought Barbarotti.

  At least that was something.

  They hadn’t brought a search warrant with them, but it turned out not to matter. It only took them a minute or two to come across the body, and at that moment the smallholding in the forest became a crime scene and all their assumptions were radically altered.

  Despite the plaster cast on his leg, Barbarotti succeeded in forcing the door open at the first attempt; perhaps the more correct procedure would have been to sit in the car in the rain and wait for backup, but what the hell, he thought, and he was sure Eva Backman agreed with him, he could tell from the look of her; she certainly offered no protest. Some rules were made to be broken.

  ‘Nice to get under cover, at any rate,’ he declared, looking round the simply furnished kitchen.

  Eva Backman located a switch and put on the overhead light. It was only mid-morning but the rain had brought with it a crepuscular gloom. She took out her phone and requested reinforcements. She gave a terse outline of the situation and ended the call.

  Barbarotti looked at her and realized neither of them much fancied going out to stand guard over the body.

  ‘Why does it always have to be raining when we find a dead body?’ he grumbled. ‘It’s always the same.’

  ‘It’s Heaven, shedding tears,’ said Eva Backman. ‘Let’s stay in here for now, eh?’