Aneta could see the pulse pounding in Fredrik’s neck. Take it easy, now. Easy.
“We’re not done talking to Anette,” said Halders.
“Me neither,” said Forsblad.
The pulse was visible in Fredrik’s neck.
“Starting now, we will know where you are,” said Halders. “Where you go.”
“Is that a threat?” said Forsblad, and smiled.
Halders’s pulse hammered. His hand jerked.
“Fredrik!” said Aneta, and Halders jerked his hand back and looked at it as though he had seen it for the first time. He seemed, for one second, not to be there.
“I suggest we take a break,” said Aneta.
“He’s trying to mess with me, that bastard,” said Halders. They were sitting in the break room. Halders was trying to drink a scalding-hot cup of coffee. Once it cooled, it was undrinkable.
“He’s afraid,” said Aneta.
“Afraid of me?”
“Afraid of everything.”
“You’ll have to explain that.”
Halders tried to drink again, and he grimaced.
“Afraid at his work, afraid of other people, afraid of… I don’t know,” said Aneta.
“Someone else who’s threatening him?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is he protecting someone else?”
“It’s as though there’s someone else here, too.”
“The dad? The Lindsten guy?”
“Maybe.”
“He’s definitely fucking shady.”
“I was thinking about that break-in, or whatever it was, the theft from the apartment out in Kortedala. Could Forsblad have known about it?”
“Yes, why not?”
“Or the dad. Sigge Lindsten.”
“Why not both?” said Halders.
“Would he steal from himself?” asked Aneta. “Lindsten?”
“He didn’t steal from himself,” said Halders. “He stole from his daughter.”
Aneta thought of Halders’s words. She watched him drink. Drink coffee and survive.
“What are we really trying to figure out, Fredrik?” she said after a little while.
“Well, not the theft, anyway. Not in my case.”
“You don’t think it has to do with this?”
“If by ‘this’ you mean the assault, then I don’t think so.”
“And what is ‘this’ for you?”
Halders pushed his paper cup away with yet another grimace.
He scratched his chin, which had nearly a day’s stubble.
He was blue under the eyes. The unforgiving light in the break room shone through his crew cut and revealed his scalp. He had called home once to make sure that the babysitter had everything she needed to stay overnight tonight. He scratched his chin again.
“I’ve almost gotten to be like you were about this, Aneta.” He looked at her with tired eyes. “But I’m not sure that Forsblad is really a wife beater. Or that we’re protecting his wife by clamping down on him.” Halders grew quiet. He looked as though he were listening intensively to the hissing air up by the intake behind them. It wasn’t a pleasant sound. He ran his hand over the back of his close-cropped head. “There’s something damn suspicious about all of this. About all of them. Everyone involved.”
Aneta nodded.
“Something more than we know,” said Halders. “Much more.”
“Forsblad?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Lindsten?”
“The dad? Yes, it’s possible.”
“Anette?”
Halders didn’t answer; he seemed to be listening to the rush of the ventilation system again, the tittle-tattle in the corner. He looked at Aneta again.
“We don’t know anything about Anette, do we?”
Forsblad looked like he’d been sleeping when their colleague from the jail brought him into the room again. He still had his jacket on, and his tie, the white shirt, the odd pants, which weren’t particularly wrinkly, the shoes, which were no longer shiny. Forsblad’s thick hair looked recently combed, but in a way that suggested he had just run his hand through his hair and it was done.
“Why were you sitting in your sister’s car outside the house in Kortedala?” asked Halders.
“That’s my right as a citizen,” said Forsblad.
“Why there in particular?”
“I recognized the place.”
Halders looked at the recorder to make sure it was turning. He looked like he wanted to reassure himself that it was working so he could listen to the answer later and analyze it.
“Why then, in particular?”
Forsblad shrugged.
“Was it because my colleague and I were in there?”
“How should I have known that you were there?”
“Where are you living now, Hans?”
“With my sister.”
“She says that you aren’t.”
“I see.”
“Do you have any permanent residence?”
“I’m working on it,” he said.
“Where?”
“It will work out.”
“You know that there’s a restraining order against you?” said Halders. It was a lie, but not for long. “Our short- term decision has been extended by the prosecutor.”
Forsblad looked like he wasn’t listening or didn’t care. As though all of that had happened a long time ago. He seemed to be listening for other voices inside his head, or to the air-conditioning that was hissing in there.
He looked up. He fixed his eyes on Aneta.
“Maybe I can live with you,” he said.
Aneta didn’t answer. She avoided his gaze. You should never make eye contact. In Africa there were crazy apes that had rabies, and they tried to make eye contact, and when they did it was dangerous; it was very, very dangerous.
“You’ve been clinging to me this whole time, after all,” said Forsblad. “I’m starting to wonder what it is you actually want.”
He was released after midnight. To go home, but in this case that was just an expression. Or else he had a home, or a bed, a sofa, an air mattress.
“In an hour we ought to break down the door in Kortedala and wake him from his beauty sleep,” said Halders.
They were on the way home to Aneta’s place. Halders was driving fast but avoiding the few boozers who stumbled out into the road, on their way home from that evening’s entertainment.
“If we hit someone we’ll pretend it’s a badger,” he said.
“If he’s sleeping in that apartment, then Anette’s dad is in on it,” said Aneta. “We can’t tromp in there
