“There aren’t any cops here anymore.” The boy twisted the accelerator on the handle of the scooter. “They shut the cop shop two years ago. There are no cops anywhere in the north of Oland.”
Tilda was tired of trying to shout over the puttering engine. She leaned quickly forward and pulled the cable out of the ignition. The scooter immediately fell silent.
“There are now,” she said, quietly and calmly. “I’m a cop and I’m here.”
“You?”
“I start today.”
The boy stared at her. Tilda took her wallet out of her jacket pocket, opened it up, and showed him her ID. He looked at it for a long time, then he looked back at her with a respectful expression.
People always looked differently at someone when they knew they were a police officer. When Tilda was in uniform, she even looked at herself differently.
“Name?”
“Stefan.”
“Stefan what?”
“Stefan Ekstrom.”
Tilda got out her notebook and wrote down his name.
“This is just a warning, but next time it’ll be a fine,” she said. “Your scooter has been modified. Have you bored out the cylinder?”
Stefan nodded.
“Then you’d better get off and walk home with it,” said Tilda. “Then you can sort out the engine so that it’s legal.”
Stefan climbed off.
They walked in silence side by side toward the square in Marnas.
“Tell your pals the cops are back in Marnas,” said Tilda. “The next modified scooter I see will be impounded, and there’ll be a fine.”
Stefan nodded again. Now he’d been caught he seemed to regard it as something of a coup.
“You got a gun?” he asked as they arrived in town.
“Yes,” said Tilda. “Under lock and key.”
“What kind?”
“A Sig Sauer.”
“Have you shot anybody with it?”
“No,” said Tilda. “And I’m not intending to use it here.”
“Okay.”
Stefan looked disappointed.
She had agreed with Martin that she would call him around six, before he went home from work. Before that she had time to take a look at her future workplace.
The new police station in Marnas was on a side street a couple of blocks from the square, the police shield above the door still wrapped in white plastic.
Tilda took the station keys out of her pocket. She had collected them the previous day down at the police station in Borgholm, but when she got to the front door it was already unlocked. She could hear men’s voices inside.
The station consisted of just one room, with no reception area. Tilda vaguely remembered that there used to be a candy store here when she visited Marnas as a child. The walls were bare, there were no curtains, and no rugs on the wooden floor.
Two burly middle-aged men were standing inside, wearing jackets and outdoor shoes. One of them was in the dark blue police uniform, the other in civilian clothes with a green padded jacket. They fell silent and quickly turned toward Tilda, as if she had interrupted them in the middle of an inappropriate joke.
Tilda had met one of them before, the one in civilian clothes-Inspector Gote Holmblad, who was in charge of the local police. He had short gray hair and a permanent smile playing around the corners of his mouth, and he seemed to recognize her.
“Hi there,” he said. “Welcome to the new district.”
“Thank you.” She shook hands with her boss and turned to the other man, who had thinner black hair, bushy eyebrows, and was in his fifties. “Tilda Davidsson.”
“Hans Majner.” His handshake was firm, dry, and brief. “I guess the two of us will be working together up here.”
He didn’t sound completely convinced that this would work out well, thought Tilda. She opened her mouth to say something in agreement, but Majner carried straight on:
“Of course I won’t be around too much to start with. I’ll look in now and again, but I’ll be working mostly from Borgholm. I’m keeping my desk there.”
He smiled at the local police chief.
“Right,” said Tilda, suddenly realizing that she was going to be more alone as a police officer on northern Oland than she had thought. “Are you working on a particular project?”
“You could say that,” said Majner, looking out of the window at the street, as if he could see something suspicious out there. “Drugs, of course. That kind of crap comes onto the island, just like everywhere else.”
“This is your desk, Tilda,” said Holmblad from over by the window. “We’ll be getting computers installed, of course, fax machines… and a police radio unit over here. For the time being, you’ll just have to manage with the telephone.”
“Okay.”
“In any case, you’re not going to be sitting around in the office much; quite the opposite, in fact,” said Holmblad. “That’s the idea of the local policing reforms: you need to be out there, a visible presence on the streets. The focus is traffic offenses, criminal damage, petty theft, and break-ins. The less complex investigations. And youth crime, of course.”
“Suits me,” said Tilda. “I stopped a modified scooter on the way here.”
“Good, good.” Her boss nodded. “So you’ve shown that there’s a police presence here again. And next week is the official opening ceremony. The press have been invited. Newspapers, local radio… You’ll be available then?”
“Of course.”
“Good, good. And I expect your work here will be… well, I know you’ve just come from Vaxjo, and here on the island you’re bound to be working more independently. For
better or worse. More freedom to organize your working day as you wish, but also more responsibility… I mean, it takes half an hour to get here from Borgholm, and the station there isn’t manned all the time. So if anything happens, it could take a while before you get any help.”
Tilda nodded. “At the police training academy we often practiced situations where backup was delayed. My tutors were very keen on-”
Majner snorted over by his desk. “The tutors at the training academy haven’t got a clue about the reality of the situation,” he said. “It’s a long time since they were out on the job.”
“They were very competent in Vaxjo,” said Tilda quickly.
This was like sitting right at the back in the police van as a new recruit-you were expected to keep your mouth shut and let the older ones do the talking. Tilda had hated it.
Holmblad looked at her and said, “All I’m saying is that it’s important for you to bear in mind the long distances here on the island before you go into a problematic situation alone.”
She nodded. “I hope I’ll be able to deal with any problems that arise.”
The police chief opened his mouth again, possibly to continue his lecture-but at that moment the telephone on the wall rang.
“I’ll get that,” he said, striding over to the desk. “It might be from Kalmar.”
He picked up the phone.
“Marnas police station, Holmblad.”
Then he listened.
“Where?” he said.
