The graffiti investigation, for instance.

  The problem – the acute problem – was that he happened to have settled his plastered foot on top of the file he needed.

  That’s a pity, thought Inspector Barbarotti, closing his eyes and leaning back in his desk chair. A damn pity, but a little nap was always a passable alternative.

  While he waited for those mills to grind.

  Inspector Backman had just decided to clock off for the day when the call came in via the switchboard.

  ‘Is that the police? Am I still through to Kymlinge police station?’

  Eva Backman confirmed this was the case.

  ‘And you’re the one dealing with that murder over in Vreten?’

  She confirmed that, too. She introduced herself, and the woman at the other end of the phone gave her name as Sonja Svensson.

  ‘I apologize if I’m barking up the wrong tree here, but I think I might have some information that could be useful to you.’

  ‘Oh? What’s that?’

  ‘I’m the manager of the Elvafors residential centre, perhaps you know it?’

  ‘Elvafors?’ said Eva Backman. ‘Yes, I think I do, actually. Near Dalby, isn’t it?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Sonja Svensson. ‘We’ve been running it since 1998, my husband and I. We look after young girls who’ve taken a wrong turn, you might say. Young addicts. We give them a chance to get their lives back on track.’

  ‘Ah yes,’ said Eva Backman. ‘I think I’ve seen your centre, actually. I’ve driven past it once or twice.’

  ‘Sixty-five kilometres from Kymlinge,’ said Sonja Svensson. ‘Though that doesn’t take you round the same way as Vreten, of course.’

  ‘I see,’ said Backman. ‘So what did you want to tell me?’

  Sonja Svensson cleared her throat at some length. ‘The thing is,’ she said, ‘we get all sorts of girls coming to us. We cope pretty well with the majority of them. We keep them off the drugs, get to grips with their problems, give them a new belief in themselves and . . . well, we prepare them for a fresh start in life, essentially. We succeed with almost all of them; our policy is firm but fair. If you’re not prepared to set standards, you don’t get anywhere with that sort of young lady. They gradually come to appreciate it. No mollycoddling, that doesn’t help anybody.’

  ‘I think I see,’ said Eva Backman, feeling she was repeating herself. ‘If we could just . . .?’

  ‘I’m only saying this to fill you in on the background,’ Sonja Svensson went on. ‘A bit of insight into our philosophy, you might say. The twelve-step programme is an important component, of course, and as I say it works well for most of our girls. But one or two decide to go their own way, of course. They think they know best and that can sometimes have an unfortunate effect on the other girls. We don’t see it often, but occasionally it happens.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Eva Backman. ‘I do understand all this, but . . .’

  ‘Good,’ said Sonja Svensson. ‘No point making things unnecessarily complicated. Now we come to what I wanted to tell you. About a month ago, one of the girls ran away from the centre. One of those problematic girls, that is. We don’t go in for locked doors or anything like that. Everyone’s here of their own free will, and they all sign a contract to say they undertake to stay at the centre and observe our rules. If they don’t want to stay, in principal they’re free to cut short their treatment whenever they want. I said “ran away”, but that isn’t really the right expression in this context, of course. Anyway, I started thinking about this girl you’re looking for . . . and it occurred to me that it could be her, that’s all.’

  Eva Backman hesitated for a second. ‘What makes you think it could be her?’ she asked.

  ‘Not much,’ admitted Sonja Svensson. ‘The time matches, roughly speaking . . . and the geography. She could have set off along the Dalby road, and she hasn’t been seen since.’

  ‘Hasn’t been seen?’ queried Backman. ‘When did the centre report her missing, then?’

  ‘Only recently,’ said Sonja Svensson.

  ‘Recently?’ asked Backman. ‘What do you mean by that, exactly?’

  ‘A couple of days ago,’ said Sonja Svensson.

  ‘But she’d been missing for a month, right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why did you wait so long?’

  Sonja Svensson cleared her throat again. ‘We always like to give the girls a chance,’ she explained. ‘Sometimes they go, but come back after a few days. They have second thoughts. If we report it to social services right away, they’ve burnt their boats.’

  ‘Ah, all right then,’ said Eva Backman, thinking there was something in all this that she didn’t really get. But this clearly wasn’t the time or place to poke around in it any more. ‘What’s the girl’s name?’ she asked instead.

  ‘Anna Gambowska.’

  ‘Can you spell that?’

  Sonja Svensson did so and Backman wrote it down.

  ‘I imagine you’ve got all her particulars?’

  ‘Yes, every detail,’ said Sonja Svensson.

  ‘And you say she’s been keeping out of sight ever since she left?’

  ‘As far as I know,’ said Sonja Svensson. ‘The usual thing when they run away, of course, is for them to head for some large town or city. Stockholm, Gothenburg, that sort of place. That’s where the drugs are, and it’s fairly easy for them to keep their heads down for a while. So I can’t say anything for certain, of course . . . she just came to mind when I read about that murder.’

  ‘What about her parents?’ asked Backman.

  ‘Haven’t been able to get in touch with them,’ replied Sonja Svensson. ‘I don’t know anything about her dad, and her mum isn’t answering the phone.’

  ‘Who did you report it to, the fact that she’d run away?’

  ‘Social services in Örebro. They were the ones who sent her here.’

  Örebro? Eva Backman heard the name and gave a start. Things were starting to come together.

  ‘A photograph?’ she asked. ‘Have you got a decent photograph of this Anna Gambowska?’

  ‘I have an excellent photograph of Anna,’ Sonja Svensson assured her.

  ‘Can you email it over?’

  ‘I can try, but the scanner has been playing up for the past couple of days. If I can’t get it to work, can I make another suggestion?’

  ‘Go ahead,’ said Backman.

  ‘I need to come into Kymlinge tomorrow for something else. I could come in and see you, and bring all the particulars you need. And the picture.’

  Inspector Backman considered this for two seconds. ‘Great,’ she said. ‘Let’s do that. What time can you get here?’

  ‘About ten?’ suggested Sonja Svensson. ‘Would that suit you?’

  Eva Backman said it would, thanked her for calling in and rang off.

  She had no sooner done so than it struck her that Lundgren, the receptionist from Halmstad, had also promised to be there at ten.

  Well so much the better, she thought. He was certainly the right person to look at a photograph.

  Things are progressing, she thought, switching off her desk lamp. I really believe they are, all of a sudden.

  36

  On Tuesday 2 October, Ante Valdemar Roos woke up at half past five in the morning and had no idea where he was.

  At first he didn’t even know what kind of room he was in. It had a high ceiling, and a street lamp or some other source of light was casting yellowish rays through the gap between the thick curtains onto the mirror on the opposite wall, which in turn spread a cobwebby pattern, paler but still yellow, across the bed and the big wardrobe.

  Hotel. It came to him after a few seconds. We’re at a hotel.

  We? Yes, he and Anna, of course. For a few blank seconds, she too had been absent from his consciousness and that had never happened before. Not since they left Lograna; if there was one thing monopolizing his thoughts and cares, she was definitely it.

  Anna, his Anna.

  He turned his head and looked at her. She lay there only half a metre from him, in the same big bed; she had her back to him and was curled up in her usual way, barely visible under the puffy feather quilt.

  My baby bird, he thought, and gave a laugh. Because that was exactly as it should be. A baby bird tucked up in down. Safe and secure.

  And it was the puffy quilt that made him realize they were in Germany; he had stayed at German hotels a few times before in his life. But he couldn’t remember the name of this town, however he racked his brains. He remembered they had arrived and checked in late last night; they had spent the last few hours on smaller roads, avoiding the autobahn. It was their second night in Germany, he had forgotten to buy a map at the last petrol station again and . . . and if the truth be told, he hadn’t been very sure where they had ended up last night, either. He had never really known, and therefore he had forgotten.

  But what difference did it make, he thought, if they were in one German town or another? Here they were in a huge double bed, snuggled amongst downy bolsters and pillows that were equally huge and seemed to be full of whipped cream or shaving foam, so beautifully soft. Could they wish for anything more? Could life be better than this?

  But even so, he had woken up. There had been a succession of mornings like that now. Anna readily slept until nine or ten, even if she had gone to bed early – it was something to do with that blow to the head – but he was finding it harder and harder to hang on to his sleep. The fatigue in his body and soul cried out in vain for a few more hours, for an extra hour or even a half, but it did not help. He bobbed up to wakefulness like a cork and then it was impossible to find his way back.

  Twenty to six. Anna was sure to sleep for another three or four hours. He realized there was an armchair with a little standard lamp by the window; in fact, if he drew back the curtains a tiny bit more, he needn’t even bother with the lamp. He could make do with the dirty yellow illumination of the street lamp and the dawn light that couldn’t be far off now.

  He went over to the chair, where he found his half-finished crossword from the day before, the one in the Swedish women’s magazine he had got hold of the day before yesterday. The magazine in which there was also a report of a young man found murdered in the Vreten area between Kymlinge and the Norwegian border, with a picture of a man sought in connection with the case.

  He wondered if it was Alice who had supplied them with the photograph. He presumed it was and he presumed she had had to go to some effort to find it. He leafed through to the relevant page and looked at it again. It was one of the worst pictures of himself he had ever seen. He could not for the life of him work out where it had been taken, but he was unshaven and looked sweaty, had his mouth half open and an expression in his eyes that made him look as if he was about to have a stroke. Or was straining to go to the toilet. Bloody hell, thought Ante Valdemar Roos gloomily, as if it’s not enough to be wanted for murder, I have to look like some drunken slob as well.

  He sighed and turned his attention to the crossword. Seven down. Nabokov scandal. Six letters, the second o, the fourth i.

  Doping, thought Valdemar Roos. It was obvious, even though the Swedish word was actually dopning with an n, but crossword compilers didn’t always do their homework properly. Nabokov was a Russian skier, anyway; he had won an Olympic gold medal and then been found to have banned substances in his blood. It was some years ago now, but the name had stuck in his mind.

  He filled in the word, yawned and went on.

  He must have dropped off in the armchair after all, because he was roused by the sound of the church clock striking seven. This time he was instantly aware of where he was – that was to say, in an unspecified old hotel in an unspecified old German town – and as he assumed the restaurant on the ground floor would now be open, he got dressed and went down for some breakfast.

  He had quite enjoyed his early morning time upstairs, but when he got to the empty, drab-brown dining room – which proved to be down in the basement – and was met by a tired, middle-aged waitress with a sour expression who besieged him with questions about his room number and whether he wanted tea or coffee, his spirits sank. He would have liked to explain to her that he preferred not to have his coffee right away but only once he’d had some yogurt, cereal and a soft-boiled egg, if these were on the menu, but his imperfect linguistic knowledge raised insuperable barriers to such requests, so he merely said ‘Vier ein sechs. Kafee, bitte’, and sat down at the corner table to which he had been directed. He had picked up a paper on the way in, Welt am Sonntag, which was as thick as a novel and several days old, but he started flicking through it just to have somewhere to park his eyes.

  Durch, für, gegen, ohne, um, wider, thought Ante Valdemar Roos as the coffee thumped down in front of him. Prepositions taking some case or another, he couldn’t remember which and in any case he was rather hazy about what a case was. ‘Danke schön,’ he said, and the weary waitress shuffled off, leaving him to his fate with the newspaper and coffee.

  Well, what is my fate? he wondered. How have I ended up here?

  Good questions, without a doubt, and as the contents of the newspaper were refusing to penetrate his consciousness, he started looking for appropriate answers. Without demanding any great depth or precision, but even so.

  He had long since realized that the events of these days and weeks were the point of his whole life. His encounter with Anna Gambowska had been written into some kind of musical score of the hereafter, etched deep into his gravestone, and it had been as inevitable as destiny and Alice’s verrucas. I know, he thought, still with his eyes on the paper, that this is the moment my life is alight. It’s what I make of these circumstances that is going to count on Judgement Day. This and nothing else.

  And yet I feel so dispirited and tired and fragile this morning in this unfamiliar hotel dining room, he thought. I have Anna’s life and future in my hands, and it is her fate that she met me just as much as the reverse, of course, but sometimes . . . sometimes I feel she doesn’t understand that. She’s so young, and perhaps she just needs time. Time and recuperation, she really does sleep away most of our days, it isn’t fair, or perhaps it is . . . and I, I alone, am the one bearing the burden and taking responsibility in this hardest period in our relationship. It weighs me down so much, this albatross, this millstone round my neck . . . but what the hell? What the hell am I doing, drivelling on in my pathetic and enfeebled state? Albatrosses and millstones? No, by God, decided Ante Valdemar Roos, it’s up to me now to make sure . . . everything hangs together. Hangs together, hangs together, I should have brought the Romanian to breakfast instead of this indecipherable newspaper, of course I should . . . as long as we can find the right words for the circumstances in which we find ourselves, we can usually see the light at the end of the tunnel.

  He drank some of his rapidly cooling coffee and reprised that last thought.

  As long as we can find the right words for the circumstances in which we find ourselves, we can usually see the light at the end of the tunnel.

  Good, thought Ante Valdemar Roos. Damn good – that can be today’s aphorism. I shall remember to write it in my book as soon as I get back upstairs.

  And he did. Then he sat in the armchair for a while and read through everything he had written since he started three weeks before – and these words, all these abstract but well-formulated thoughts on the subject of life and its labyrinth, slowly improved his mood. To the point, at least, where he could undertake some practical planning. It was certainly needed, and if nothing else he felt as if Anna demanded it of him. Or as if her condition did, at any rate. Whatever the difference was.

  She was sleeping just as before, in the same position as she had been when he left the room. It was quarter past eight now, but she was unlikely to stir for another hour. I wish, thought Ante Valdemar Roos, I really wish she didn’t sleep so much. It feels as though she’s absent most of the time, and this is time that’s so important.

  But he had to be patient, he knew that. Healing takes time and care, and not that much more really. In a few days, a week or two, she was bound to be back to normal. By then they would be some way further south. Perhaps in France or Italy, he didn’t know exactly; perhaps some mountain air was what she needed to get better, or the sea.

  Then another thought struck him. He’d had to show his ID when they checked in last night. The weedy receptionist with the leather waistcoat and long, horsy face had accepted the excuse that their passports had been stolen, but he still needed some form of ID, he informed them. Even if they paid cash in advance these were different times, and it was not that kind of establishment.

  That kind of establishment? Oh well, he assessed the risk as quite small. Of course it would be documented for all time that they had checked into this little hotel in this particular little German town, whichever it was – but it seemed pretty unlikely that this would come to the attention of the Swedish police. And if it eventually did, and he was proved wrong, they would be far, far away by then. There was no great risk of them being tracked down, he thought, even if he had to show his driving licence now and again. It wouldn’t have worked in Sweden, it would have been madness, but down here on the continent it was a different matter, noted Valdemar Roos. Completely different. And when your homeland closes a door, the world opens a window.

  They would stay in this hotel in this town for another twenty-four hours. He had paid for two nights and he would make sure to use the day well. First of all he would buy a decent road map and find out the name of the town and its exact location.

  Then he would find a chemist’s; Anna’s stocks of painkillers were running low. After that, with these chores out of the way, perhaps they could spend a bit of time at some nice cafe. The weather on the other side of the heavy curtains did not look bad at all; the yellow street lamp had gone out and been replaced by a generous sun.

  They could sit there and talk about life, make a few plans together. Most of all he would like her to play the guitar and sing something for him. It was a few days since she had last done so, but he didn’t want to press her if she didn’t feel like it.