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:
The house Anna shared was a two-story wooden building with a small garden in front. The gate was rusty and about to fall off its hinges. Linda rang the doorbell, but no one answered. She rang again and strained her ears. She didn’t hear a ringing on the inside, so she started to knock loudly. Finally a shadow appeared on the other side of the glass inlay. The man who opened the door was in his twenties, his face covered in acne. He was wearing jeans, an undershirt, and a large brown robe with big holes. He reeked of sweat.
“I’m looking for Anna Westin,” Linda said.
“She’s not in.”
“But she lives here?”
The man stepped aside so Linda could enter. She felt his eyes on the back of her head when she walked past him.
“She has the room behind the kitchen,” he said.
They walked into the kitchen, which was a mess of dirty dishes and leftover food. How can she live in this shit? Linda thought.
She reluctantly stretched out her hand to shake his, shuddering at his limp and clammy handshake.
“Zacharias,” he said. “I don’t think her door’s locked, but she doesn’t like anyone to go in there.”
“I’m one of her closest friends. If she hadn’t wanted me to go in, she would have locked the door.”
“How am I supposed to know you’re her friend?”
Linda felt like pushing him out of the kitchen, but pulled herself together.
“When did you see her last?”
He stepped back.
“What is this — a cross-examination?”
“Not at all. I’ve been trying to get in touch with her and she hasn’t gotten back to me.”
Zacharias kept staring at her.
“Let’s go into the living room,” he said.
She followed him into a room full of shabby, mismatched furniture. A torn poster of Che Guevara’s face hung on one wall, a tapestry embroidered with some words about the joys of home on the other. Zacharias sat down at a table with a chess set. Linda sat across from him, which was as far away as she could get.
“What do you study?” she asked.
“I don’t. I play chess.”
“And you make a living from that?”
“I don’t know. I just know I can’t live any other way.”
“I don’t even know how all the pieces move.”
“I can show you, if you like.”
Not a chance, Linda thought. I’m getting out of here as soon as I can.
“How many of you live here?”
“It depends. Right now there’s four of us: Margareta Olsson, who studies economics, me, Peter Engbom, who is supposed to be majoring in physics but is currently mired in the history of religion, and then Anna.”
“Who is studying medicine,” Linda filled in.
The facial movement was almost imperceptible, but she caught it. His face had registered surprise. At the same time she caught hold of the thought she had had the night before.
“When did you see her last?”
“I don’t have a good memory for these things. It may have been yesterday or a week ago. I’m in the middle of a study of Capablanca’s most accomplished endgames. Sometimes I think it should be possible to transcribe chess moves like music. In which case Capablanca’s games would be fugues or enormous masses.”
Another nut interested in unplayable music, she thought.
“That sounds interesting,” she said and got up. “Is anyone else home right now?”
“No, just me.”
Linda walked back to the kitchen, with Zacharias at her heels.
“I’m going in now, whatever you say.”
“Anna won’t like it.”
“You can always try to stop me.”
He watched her as she opened the door and walked in. Anna’s room must at one time have been a kitchen maid’s room. It was small and narrow. Linda sat down on the bed and looked around. Zacharias appeared in the doorway. Linda suddenly had the feeling he was going to throw himself on top of her. She got up and he took a step back but kept watching her. It was no use. She wanted to pull out the desk drawers but as long as he was watching she couldn’t bring herself to do it.
“When do the others get home?”
“I don’t know.”
Linda walked out into the kitchen again. He smiled at her, revealing a row of yellow teeth. She was starting to feel sick and decided to leave.
“I can show you all the chess moves,” he said.
She opened the front door and paused on the steps.
“If I were you I’d spend some much-needed time in the shower,” she said and turned on her heel.
She heard the door slam shut behind her. What a waste of time, she thought angrily. The only thing she had managed to do was to demonstrate her weaknesses. She kicked open the gate. It hit the mailbox sitting on a fence post. She stopped and turned around. The front door was closed, and she couldn’t see anyone looking out of a window. She opened the mailbox. There were two letters. She picked them up. One was addressed to Margareta Olsson from a travel agency in Gothenburg. The other was addressed by hand, to Anna. Linda hesitated for a moment, then took it with her to the car. First I read her journal, then I open her mail, she thought. But I’m doing it because I’m worried about her. Inside the envelope was a folded piece of paper. She flinched when she opened it; a dried, pressed spider fell out onto her lap.
The message was short, apparently incomplete, and without a signature.
We’re in the new house, in Lestarp, behind the church, first road on the left, a red mark on an old oak tree, back there. Let us never underestimate the power of Satan. And yet we await a mighty angel descending from the heavens in a cloud of glory. .
Linda laid the letter on the passenger seat. She thought back to the insight she had had back in the house. It was the one thing she could thank that smelly chess-player for. He had mentioned what everyone who lived in the house studied, as well as their names. But Anna was just Anna. She was studying medicine ostensibly to become a physician. But what had Anna said when she told Linda about seeing her father in Malmö? She had seen a woman who had collapsed in the street, someone who needed help. And she had said that she couldn’t stand the sight of blood. Linda was now struck by the incongruity of this statement coming from someone who professed to want to be a doctor.
She looked at the letter beside her. What did it mean? We await a mighty angel descending from the heavens in a cloud of glory.
The sun was strong. It was the beginning of September, but it was one of the warmest days of the summer. She took a map of Skåne out of the glove compartment. Lestarp was between Lund and Sjöbo. Linda pushed down the sun visor. It’s so childish, she thought. This business with the dried spider, the kind that falls out of lamp shades. But Anna is missing. This childishness exists alongside the reality, the reality of a little gingerbread house in the forest. Hands at prayer and a severed head.
It was as if she only now fully understood what she had seen in the hut that day. And Anna was no longer the person she thought she knew. Maybe she isn’t even studying medicine. Maybe this is the day I realize I know nothing about Anna Westin. She’s dissolving in an unfathomable fog.
Linda was not aware of formulating a conscious plan as such; she just started driving toward Lestarp. It was almost thirty degrees Celsius in the shade.
23
Linda parked outside the church in Lestarp. She could see that it had been recently renovated. The newly painted doors gleamed. A small black-and-gold plaque above them was inscribed 1851. Linda remembered her grandfather saying something about his own grandfather drowning in a storm at sea that very year. She thought about him as she looked for a bathroom in the vestibule. It was located in the crypt. The cool air felt good to her after the heat outside. I only remember important years, her grandfather had said. A year when someone drowns in a terrible accident, or when someone, like you, is born.