Before the Frost
- Автор: Манкелль Хеннинг
- Серия: Linda Wallander #1
- Год: 2004
- Язык: английский
- Год: The Harvill Press
- ISBN: 978-1-84343-113-8
- Переводчик: Ebba Segerberg
- Жанр: Полицейские детективы
Электронная книга - «Before the Frost». Краткое содержание книги:
“Have you ever had your leg caught in a bear trap?”
“It was a fox trap. But no, I haven’t.”
“Then you don’t know how it feels.”
He held the door open for her. She was still irritated by his unshaven cheek and didn’t say anything else. They came out into a parking lot at the back of the hospital. It was broad daylight. He pointed to a rusty Ford. As he was unlocking the door, an ambulance driver came over and demanded to know what he meant by blocking the emergency entrance.
“I came to pick up a wounded police officer,” Lindman said, nodding in Linda’s direction.
The ambulance driver accepted this and left. Linda maneuvered herself into the passenger side.
“Your dad said you live on Mariagatan. Where is that?”
Linda explained, and wondered silently about the strong smell in the car.
“It’s paint,” Lindman said. “I’m fixing up a house out in Knickarp.”
They turned onto Mariagatan and Linda pointed out her doorway. He got out and opened the car door for her.
“It was nice to meet you,” he said. “And the reason I know what it’s like to be in pain is that I’ve had cancer. Steel trap or a tumor — it’s all the same.”
Linda watched his car drive off. She had forgotten his last name.
She let herself into the apartment and felt fatigue set in. She was about to collapse onto the sofa when the phone rang.
It was her dad.
“I heard you made it home.”
“What was the name of the guy who drove me home?”
“Stefan.”
“No — the last name.”
“Lindman. He’s from Borås, I think. Or else it was Skövde. It’s time you got some rest.”
“I want to know what Henrietta said to you.”
“I don’t have time to go into that right now.”
“You have to. Just give me the highlights.”
“Wait a minute.”
His voice broke off. Linda sensed he was at the station, but on his way out. She heard doors closing, phones ringing, and then the sound of an engine starting up.
He came back on the line, his voice tense.
“Are you there?”
“I’m here.”
“OK, I’ll make this quick. Henrietta said she didn’t know where Anna was. She hadn’t heard from her recently. Nothing to suggest that Anna is depressed. She had apparently not said anything about seeing her father. On the other hand, Henrietta claims that this happened all the time when Anna was growing up. So it’s the mother’s word against yours. She couldn’t give us any leads, nor did she know anything about Medberg. So as you see it wasn’t very productive.”
“Did you notice that she was lying?”
“How would I have noticed that?”
“You always say all you have to do is breathe on someone to know if they’re telling the truth or not.”
“I didn’t get the impression she was lying.”
“She’s lying.”
“I have to go now. But Lindman — the one who gave you the ride — is working on the connection between Medberg and Anna. We’ve sent out missing persons reports on her, by the way. That’s all we can do for the moment.”
He hung up. Linda didn’t feel like being alone, so she called Zeba. She was in luck: Zeba’s son was at her cousin Titchka’s house and Zeba had nothing lined up. She agreed to come over.
“Buy some breakfast on the way,” Linda said. “I’m hungry. The Chinese restaurant by the main square, for example. I know it’s out of your way but I’ll make it up to you the next time you find yourself stuck in a steel trap.”
Linda told Zeba what had happened. Zeba had heard the news on the radio about the severed head that had been found, but she still had trouble believing that anything bad might have happened to Anna.
“If I were a crook I’d think twice before picking on Anna. Don’t you know she did martial arts? I can’t remember which kind, but I think it’s one where everything is allowed — short of actually killing someone, of course. No one messes with Anna and gets away with it.”
Linda regretted having brought it up in the first place. Zeba stayed for another hour before it was time for her to pick up her son.
Linda woke up when the doorbell rang. At first she was going to ignore it, but she changed her mind and limped out into the hallway. Stefan Lindman was standing outside the door.
“I’m sorry if I woke you up.”
“I wasn’t sleeping.”
Then she looked at herself in the hall mirror. Her hair was standing on end.
“Actually I was sleeping,” she said. “I don’t know why I said that. My leg hurts.”
“I need the keys to Anna Westin’s apartment,” he said. “I heard you tell your father you had a spare set of keys.”
“I’ll come along.”
He seemed surprised by this.
“I thought you were in pain.”
“I thought that too. What are you going to do over there?”
“Try to create a picture for myself.”
“If it’s a picture of Anna, then I’m the person you should be talking to.”
“I’d like to have a look by myself first. Then we can talk.”
Linda pointed to a set of keys on a table. The keyring had a profile of an Egyptian pharaoh.
Linda hesitated.
“What was that about you having cancer?”
“I had cancer of the tongue if you can believe it. Things looked bad for a while, but I survived and there’s been no recurrence.”
He looked her in the eye for the first time.
“I still have my tongue, of course; I wouldn’t be able to speak without it. But my hair has never recovered.”
He tapped his neck with a finger.
“Soon it’ll all be gone.”
He walked down the stairs and Linda returned to bed.
Cancer of the tongue. She shuddered at the thought. Her fear of death came and went, though right now her life force was strong. But she had never forgotten what had gone through her mind while she was balancing on the edge of the bridge. Life wasn’t just something that took care of itself. There were big black holes you could fall into with long sharp spikes at the bottom, monstrous traps.
She turned over on her side and tried to sleep. Right now she didn’t have the energy to think about black holes. Then she was startled out of her half-awake state. It was something to do with Lindman. She sat up. She had finally caught hold of the thought that had been bugging her. She dialed a number on her cell phone. Busy. On the third try her father finally picked up.
“It’s me.”
“How do you feel?”
“Better. There was something I wanted to ask about the man who was at Henrietta’s house last night. The one who was said to be commissioning a composition. Did she say what he looked like?”
“Why would I have asked her that? She only gave me his name. I made a note of the address. Why?”
“Do me a favor. Call her and ask about his hair.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because that’s what I saw.”
“I will, but I really don’t have the time for this. We’re drowning in rain over here.”
“Will you call back?”
“If I get ahold of her.”
He called her back nineteen minutes later.
“Peter Stigström — the man who wants Henrietta to set his verse to music — has shoulder-length dark hair with a few gray streaks. Will that do?”
“That will do just fine.”
“Are you going to explain yourself now or when I get home?”
“That depends on when you were planning to come home.”
“Pretty soon. I have to get out of these clothes.”
“Do you want something to eat?”
“No, we’ve been taken care of, in fact. There are some enterprising Kosovo immigrants out here who make a living out of putting up food stands around crime scenes and fires. I have no idea how they hear about our work, but there’s probably a leak at the station who gets a commission. I’ll be home in an hour.”