One could be battered by all the hours of the day and all the seasons of the year here, she thought as she steered away, toward a different civilization to the south. It was like crossing a border.
Arabic-speaking children were playing on Citytorget. Women with covered heads came out of Ovrell’s grocery. On the corner was a video-game store that also sold vegetables. Across from it was a flower shop. The sun cast shadows that divided the square into a black part and a white part.
“Have you met Anette Lindsten?” she asked the police officer in the seat next to her.
The girl shook her head.
“Who’s seen her?”
“Do you mean out of our colleagues?” the officer asked.
Aneta nodded.
“Do you mean met her?”
Aneta nodded again.
“No one, as far as I know.”
“No one?”
“She hasn’t let anyone in.”
“But someone has called five times and reported that she’s been assaulted?”
“Yes.”
“Anyone who identified themselves?”
“Uh, a few times. A neighbor.” The girl turned toward her. “The woman we spoke to.”
“I know.”
Aneta drove past the factories in Gamlestaden. The inner city came nearer. The first houses in Bagaregarden became visible. They were built for a different civilization. Beautiful buildings, for just one family, or two, and you could walk around the building and enjoy the fact that you lived there and had the money necessary for it to be Saturday all week long. She wondered suddenly if there was a Saturday Street in the area they had left behind them. Maybe not, maybe the city planners stopped at Tuesday, or at Monday, Monday Street. That’s where that line was drawn. Monday all week.
“This can’t continue,” said Aneta.
“What are you thinking about?”
“What am I thinking about? I’m thinking that it could be time for a crime scene investigation.”
“Can we do that?”
“Don’t you know the Police Act?” Aneta asked, quickly turning her head toward her young colleague, who looked like she’d been caught out, like she’d flunked a test.
“It falls under public prosecution,” said Aneta in a milder voice. “If I suspect that someone has been assaulted I can go in and investigate the situation.”
“Are you going to do it, then?”
“Go into the Lindstens’ home? It might be time for that.”
“She says that she lives alone now.”
“But the man comes to visit?”
The officer shrugged her shoulders.
“She hasn’t said anything about it herself,” she said.
“But the neighbors?”
“One of them says that she’s seen him.”
“And no children?” asked Aneta. “They don’t have any children?”
“No.”
“We’ll have to look him up.” That bastard, she thought.
“That bastard…,” she mumbled.
“What did you say?”
“The man,” said Aneta, and she could feel that she was smiling when she turned toward the young officer again.
It was evening when Aneta opened the door to the house and smelled the familiar odor in the stairwell. Her house, or her apartment building, to be exact, or even more exactly: the building she lived in. But it felt like her own house. She enjoyed living in this old patrician house on Sveagatan. It was centrally located. She could walk to almost anything. She could choose not to walk. And change her mind again.
The elevator lugged itself up. She liked that too. She liked opening the door and picking up the mail from the wooden floor. She liked dropping her coat where she stood, kicking off her shoes, seeing the big old shell that she’d always kept on a bureau, seeing the African mask that hung over it, walking in her socks to the kitchen, heating the water in the kettle, making tea, or sometimes having a beer, sometimes a glass of wine. Liked it.
She liked the solitude.
Sometimes she was afraid because she felt this way.
You shouldn’t be alone. That’s what others thought. There’s something wrong when you’re alone. No one chooses solitude. Solitude is a punishment. A sentence.
No. She wasn’t serving any sentence. She liked sitting here and deciding to do whatever she wanted whenever she wanted.
She was sitting on a kitchen stool now, of her own free will; the kettle worked itself up to a climax. She was just about to get up to make tea when the telephone rang.
“Yes?”
“What are you doing?”
The question was asked by Fredrik Halders, a colleague, an intense colleague. Not as much anymore, but still really very intense compared to almost everyone else.
Two years ago he had lost his ex-wife when she was hit and killed by a drunk driver.
She’s not even still here as an ex, Halders had said for a while afterward, as though he were only half conscious.
They had been working together when it happened, she and Fredrik, and they started seeing each other. She had gotten to know his children. Hannes and Magda. They had begun to accept her presence in their home, truly accept it.
She liked Fredrik, his character. Their preliminary banter had developed into something else.
She was also afraid of all this. Where would it lead? Did she want to know? Did she dare not to try to find out?
She heard Fredrik’s voice on the phone:
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing. Just got in the door.”
“You don’t feel like a movie tonight, do you?” Before she could answer he continued: “Larrinder’s daughter wants to earn some extra money babysitting. She called me herself. He asked me today and I told him to have her call.” Bo Larrinder was a relatively new colleague in the criminal investigation department. “And she called right away!”
“A new world is opening for you, Fredrik.”
“It is, isn’t it? And it leads to Svea.”
The Svea cinema. A hundred yards away. She looked at her feet. They looked flattened, as though they had been pressed under an iron. She saw her teacup waiting on the kitchen counter. In her mind’s eye she saw her bed and a book. She saw herself falling asleep, probably soon.
“Fredrik. I’m not up to it tonight. I’m exhausted.”
“It’s the last chance,” he said.
“Tonight? Is tonight the last showing?”
“Yes.”
“You’re lying.”
“Yes.”
“Tomorrow night.
“Okay.”
