“Why did you come here?” asked Halders.
“She can go where she wants, can’t she?” said Susanne.
“Shut up!” said Halders.
“I got-”
“We’ve tried to contact you, Anette.” Halders interrupted Susanne, but without taking his eyes from Anette. “Why have you been avoiding us?”
“I haven… haven’t been avoiding you.”
“According to several reports from your neighbors in Kortedala, you have been subjected to violence,” said Halders. “Violence and threats. We would like to talk to you about that. We don’t like violence and threats in general, and especially not against women.”
“What do you call your coming in here and harassing me?” said Susanne.
Her uncertainty seemed to be gone. Aneta tried to read something in her face. Had Anette come here? Just come here, just shown up? Or had Susanne asked her to come?
“Why did you come here, Anette?” Aneta asked gently.
Anette didn’t answer. Was she trying to catch the eye of the Seaman’s Wife? Or was she studying the shining church steeple all the way up to hea-
“I have nothing more to say,” she said. “You mu… must leave me alone.”
“And I must ask you both to
“We can give you a ride wherever you’d like to go,” said Aneta.
How did she get here? Did she get a ride here? A taxi?
“I’ll drive Anette when she wants to go,” said Susanne.
“Do you want to go home?” asked Aneta.
Anette shook her head.
“We can drive you down to your parents’ in Vallda,” said Aneta.
“They’re on their way he… on their way home,” said Anette.
“Have you spoken with them?”
She nodded.
Halders looked at Aneta.
“We can go somewhere and talk for a bit,” he said.
Anette shook her head.
I feel helpless, thought Aneta. Something is very wrong here, but there’s nothing we can do about it right now. We can’t take her with us. We can’t force her to tell us what’s happened to her, no more than we can ask her to write everything down and sign it while we stand here tapping our feet on this damn parquet floor.
“Where is your brother?” said Aneta, turning to Susanne.
“I don’t actually know,” she said.
Aneta tried to look at Anette’s face. It was averted.
“Isn’t he staying here anymore?”
“No.”
“We need to have a rather long conversation with him,” said Halders, looking at Anette, who was still sitting with her face averted.
“We can actually bring him in for questioning,” said Halders to the averted face. “We have that right whether Hans Forsblad likes it or not. Anette? Can you hear me? Just so you know.”
“He isn’t here,” said Susanne.
“And we’re going to do it,” continued Halders.
“Where did he move to this time?” asked Aneta.
“He didn’t actually say.”
The darkness of Indian summer was outside. Aneta could smell lingering scents from the summer gone by. It must be sixty degrees. She heard voices from a sidewalk cafe on the other side of the building. A laugh bounced across the river.
“Pure continental,” said Halders.
“Aren’t you furious?” she said.
“I was about to become really angry at Forsblad’s sister,” said Halders.
“That would have been perfect,” she said. “On top of everything you said.”
“Hmm.”
“She might report it.”
“Good. Then at least someone will.”
They got into Halders’s car. Aneta’s car was still outside the Lindstens’ house.
“They’re probably home by now,” she said. “The Lindstens.”
“She is fucking freaked out,” said Halders.
“Yes, but why isn’t she saying anything? To anyone else?”
“How do you know she hasn’t said anything to anyone else?”
“Yes, that’s true…”
“To the gal in there, for example.”
“Susanne? Do you mean that she’s protecting her?”
Halders turned to her with a crooked smile.
“Not a thought you really want to think, is it. She’s not worth it, is she.”
Aneta didn’t answer. They were on their way over the bridge again. The city’s lights were like a dome all the way from the flatlands in the north to the forests in the south. A sign for the ships out there to the right. For everyone who could see. Could see. Could…
“There’s something here that we haven’t seen,” she said.
“Isn’t it always-”
“Something obvious,” she interrupted. “Something totally, completely obvious that we haven’t seen. What it
“Do we know what’s going to happen, too?” asked Halders.
The Lindstens’ house was unlit and quiet. Halders looked at Aneta’s questioning face: Shouldn’t the Lindstens be here?
“It’s almost like I don’t care anymore,” said Halders.
Their colleagues from forensics had left shortly after Halders and Aneta had arrived. There had been two of them. We needed to come out anyway, as one of them had put it, and the other cracked up and they went on their way.
No one was laughing now. There was no car in the driveway. Aneta called, but Sigge Lindsten didn’t answer, nor did his wife.
“Are you up for another drive?” said Aneta.
“Aren’t we going home? You said you’d come home with me.”
Halders looked at his watch. He had called the babysitter. Hannes and Magda were watching a quiz show that he had okayed. After that, straight to bed. He had said good night to the children just in case. But he had thought he would make it back. He and Aneta.
Aneta looked at him without answering.
He understood.
“No, Aneta. Not that. Not tonight.”
“Why not?”
“It’s late. We’re tired. Anyway, we can’t set up a…”
“Good interrogation? Who says it’s Hans Forsblad we’ll find there?”
She left the car at home in Kommendantsangen. “Governor’s field.” It was an interesting name for a concrete jungle. A beautiful concrete jungle. They heard drunken roars from Gyllene Prag over on the corner. Everyone was enjoying the reprise of summer. Two cafes had moved their furniture out again. The people of the city were out on the streets. It smelled like grilled meat and rapidly warmed wind from the south. They heard ambulance sirens out on Ovre Husargatan.
“Someone else is in trouble,” said Halders. “In the dark I hear a siren… Someone else is in trouble. I am not the
