to wait till her landlord calls in and says she’s late with the rent.”
“That could take a long time.”
“Four months,” he said and sat down again.
“Have you had a chance to speak to a colleague about your despondency?” his sister asked.
“Of course not.”
“Isn’t that a problem for you? I mean, not just now, but always?”
“How do you mean?”
“There was a reason why you came here tonight, beyond just coming to see your dear sister. You wanted to express that doubt to somebody else, get it out of your system so you can keep on working.”
“Like a confession, you mean?”
“To you it probably is a confession. Whenever you feel doubt it’s as if you’ve committed a sin.”
“Bah!”
“That’s how it’s always been with you.”
“I don’t know how I should respond to that.”
“You should respond by saying that you want to have a normal life too, and that, in turn, will lead to you having someone to talk to about your abnormal life.”
“Abnormal?”
“You can’t just live one kind of life, twenty-four hours a day.”
“I don’t. And when I do, it’s because I have to.” He got up and reeled for a moment. He looked at his watch. He had been on his feet for eighteen hours straight. The crucial first hours. He started to walk.
“Where are you going, Erik?”
“I’m going down to the playhouse. Is the air mattress still in there?”
The owner of the dog kennel over on Old Borasvagen was dead certain that a Ford Escort CLX hatchback had backed up and turned off in the intersection. It was a ’92 or a ’93-maybe a ’94-probably pearl white. Was he certain? Oh yeah, it had looked white in the glow of the lamp all right, you couldn’t know for sure, but one thing was certain, they produced at least a million of that model in pearl white, the man said. “The question is whether it even came in any other color.”
“But it couldn’t have been an older model anyway?” Fredrik Halders asked.
“Maybe a ’91 but no earlier than that. They redesigned the Escort in ’91, but maybe you already know that. They made them rounder and more bulbous. And higher. It was one of those.”
“But it was a CLX?”
“What?”
“You said it was a CLX. Why not an RS?”
The man looked at Halders as if he’d finally said something intelligent. “So you know something about cars?”
Halders nodded.
“Then you also know that the RS has a spoiler on the trunk. This car didn’t have no spoiler on the trunk.”
“Could you make out the plate number at all?”
“I didn’t have a notepad with me, but it began with the letters
“
“It was hard to see, and letters reflect the light better than numbers.”
“Really?” A complete nutcase, but good eyes and good at cars, Halders thought to himself. He nodded again and noted it down on his pad. “Anything else?”
“You mean, did I see anything else?”
“Yeah. See or hear anything.”
“Which do you want me to say first?”
“Did you see anything other than just the car?”
“No driver anyway. The light was angled so that it was all blacked out on the driver’s side.”
“No passengers?”
“Not that I could see.”
“Where did the car come from?”
“I don’t know. But it hightailed it off toward town after it had been in there and turned around.”
Halders scribbled in his pad again.
“So it must have come from the other direction,” the man said. “From the direction of the lake or Helenevik, right?” Halders looked up from his notepad.
“Well, it’s possible the driver just drove the wrong way, or changed his mind, or just decided to go for a drive out to that intersection and then turn around and drive home again,” he said.
Fucking moron, Halders thought.
“Aha,” the man said. “Now I understand how you police work.” He gestured at his forehead with his index finger. “I would never have thought of that myself, know what I mean?”
“Did you hear anything?”
“Other than the sound of the car?”
“Yes. Before, during, or after.”
“Which do you want me to say first?”
Halders sighed audibly. “It’s getting late, and we’re both tired,” he said.
“I’m not tired.”
“So you saw nothing else unusual yesterday evening or last night?”
“That would’ve been difficult anyway, know what I mean?”
“I don’t understand.”
They were on the front steps of the man’s house and Halders could see the wire fence of the dog pen glinting beyond the corner of the cabin, illuminated by a lantern that hung on the wall. The kennel owner himself was short and sort of lumpy, and he’d immediately assumed a defensive posture toward the tall Halders, as if preparing to repel an attack.
“I didn’t understand that last bit,” Halders repeated.
“It would’ve been difficult to notice anything seeing as there was so much coming and going from your guys’ cabin the whole night, know what I mean?”
The man’s habit of ending all his statements in that way was starting to piss the hell out of Halders.
“You mean the function that took place yesterday at the police department’s recreation lodge.”
“Or the
“Were you disturbed by it in some way?”
“Can’t say I was. But there was a lot of traffic.”
“Cars, you mean?”
“Well, that’s traffic, know what I mean?”
“No pedestrian traffic?”
“Not that I saw. But there have been festivities up at your beer lodge during which the guests have ended up scattered all over my land in the small hours of the morning. Once there was this plainclothes officer and a woman with barely a stitch on who decided to bed down for the night in the moss behind the foxhounds over yonder.” He jerked his head toward the corner of the cabin.
That might well have been my fortieth birthday bash, Halders thought to himself. “But nobody was running around in the night last night?”
“Not that I heard. But you ought to speak to your buddies.”
“We’re in the process of doing that.”
“That’s a good idea, know what I mean?”
“But you’re sure about the car?” Halders was amazed at his own patience.
“I already told you, know what I mean? We’ve gone into all sorts of detail here, know what I mean?”
“Well, thanks for all the information. If anything else comes to mind, anything at all, then do get in touch, know what I mean? Even if it’s something that happened earlier, someone who passed by more than once. Anything. You know what I mean?”
