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:
“Well, tell me what happened.”
Linda gave her a brief outline of the events and said she had traced Anna to the house behind the church. She was careful not to let on how worried she was.
“We were supposed to meet,” she said. “But something happened.”
The old lady looked doubtful.
“And how do you believe that I can be of assistance?”
“I’m trying to find out who owns that house.”
“In the olden days, one always knew who was who and who owned what. But in this day and age, there’s no way of telling. One day I’ll find out I’ve been living next to an escaped criminal.”
“I thought perhaps in such a small town people still knew these things.”
“There has been a great number of comings and goings in that house during the past while, but nothing that caused any disturbance. If I have understood it correctly, the people there are involved in some kind of health organization. Since I take good care of myself and am not planning to give my departed brother the satisfaction of dying at a younger age, I watch what I eat and drink, and I am curious about this new so-called alternative medicine. I went up to the house one time and spoke to a very friendly English-speaking lady. She gave me a pamphlet. I don’t remember what the organization was called, but they espoused meditation and certain natural juices for promoting health.”
“Did you ever go back?”
“The whole thing was far too vague for my tastes.”
“Do you still have the pamphlet?”
Edén nodded toward the compost.
“I doubt there’s anything left of it by now.”
Linda tried to think of something else to ask, but she didn’t see the point of pursuing it further. She got up.
“No more questions?”
“No.”
They walked back to the front of the house.
“I dread the fall,” Sara Edén said. “I’m afraid of the creeping fog and the rain and the noisy crows in their treetops. The only thing that keeps my spirits up is the thought of the spring flowers I’m planting right now.”
Linda walked out to the gate.
“There may be something else,” the old lady said.
They were now standing on either side of the gate.
“There was a Norwegian,” she said. “I sometimes go in to Rune’s shop and complain if they’re making too much of a racket on a Sunday. I think Rune is a little afraid of me. He’s the kind of person who never grows out of the respect he had for his teachers. The noise usually stops. But one day he told me about a Norwegian who had just been by to fill up his car and who paid with a thousand-kronor note. Rune isn’t used to bills that big. He said something about the Norwegian owning the house up there.”
“So I should ask Rune?”
“Only if you have time on your hands. He’s on vacation in Thailand right now. I don’t even want to think about what he might be getting up to.”
Linda thought for a moment.
“A Norwegian. Did he say what he looked like?”
“No. If I were in your place I would ask the people who most likely handled the sale of the house. That would be the Sparbank real estate division. They have an office in town. They may know.”
Linda left. She thought that Sara Edén was a person she would like to know more about. She crossed the street, passed a hair salon, and stepped into the tiny Sparbank office. There was only one person inside; he looked up when she came in. Linda asked him her question and the answer came without his having to consult any binders or notes.
“That’s right,” he said. “We handled the sale of that house. The seller was a Malmö dentist by the name of Sved. He had used the house as a summer retreat for a while but grown tired of it. We advertised the property online and in the Ystad Allehanda. A Norwegian came in and demanded to see the place. I asked one of the Skurup realtors to take care of him. That’s fairly normal, since I run the branch by myself and can’t always take on the extra responsibility for real-estate sales. Two days later the sale was finalized. As far as I recall, the Norwegian paid cash. They’ve got money coming out their ears these days.”
The last comment revealed his grumbling displeasure at the vibrant Norwegian economy. But Linda was more interested in the Norwegian’s name.
“I don’t have the papers here, but I can call the Skurup office.”
A client walked into the branch, an old man who walked with the help of two canes.
“Please excuse me while I attend to Mr. Alfredsson first,” the man behind the counter said.
Linda waited impatiently. It took what seemed like an endless amount of time before the old man was finished. Linda held the door open for him. The man behind the counter placed his call, and after about a minute he received an answer that he wrote down on a piece of paper. He finished the conversation and pushed the note over to Linda. She read: Torgeir Langas.
“It’s possible he spells the last name with a double ‘a,’ that would be Langaas.”
“What’s his address?”
“You only asked me for his name.”
Linda nodded.
“If you need more information, you can turn to the Skurup office directly. Do you mind my asking why you so urgently need to contact the owner of the house?”
“I may want to buy it,” Linda said and left.
She hurried up to the car. Now she had a name. As soon as she opened the car door, she noticed that something was amiss. A receipt that had been on the dashboard was on the floor, a matchbox had been moved. She had left the car unlocked; someone had been in it while she was gone.
Hardly a thief, she thought. The car radio is still here. But who’s been in the car? Why?
26
The first thought that ran through Linda’s head was completely irrationaclass="underline" Mom did this. She’s been rifling through my stuff again like she used to. Linda climbed hesitantly into the car. Another thought ran through her like electric current: a bomb. Something was going to explode and tear her to pieces. But of course there was no bomb. A bird had left a big dropping on the windshield, that was all. Now she noticed that the seat had been pushed back. The person who had been here was taller than she was. So tall he or she had to adjust the seat in order to slip behind the wheel. She sniffed for new scents but couldn’t pick anything out, no aftershave or perfume. She looked everywhere. Something was different about the black plastic cup of loose change that Anna had taped behind the gearshift, but she couldn’t put her finger on it.
Linda’s thoughts returned to her mother. The game of cat-and-mouse had gone on for most of her childhood. She couldn’t remember the exact moment when she realized that her mother was constantly looking through her things in search of who knows what kind of secrets. Maybe it had started when Linda was eight or nine and noticed when she came home from school that something had changed about her room. At first she had simply thought she must have been wrong. The red cardigan had been lying over the green sweater like that, not the other way around. She had even asked Mona, who had snapped at her. That was when the suspicion had been born and the game of cat-and-mouse started in earnest. She had left traps for Mona among her clothes, toys, and books. But it was as if Mona immediately sensed what was going on. Linda laid increasingly elaborate traps and even noted the exact arrangement of her things in a notebook so that she could catch her mother.
Linda kept looking around the car. A mom has been here, a mom who may have been either a man or a woman. Snooping in their kids’ stuff is more common than you’d think. Most of my friends had at least one parent who did it. She thought about her dad. He had never looked through her things. Sometimes she had seen him peer in through her half-open door to make sure she was really there. But he never made surreptitious expeditions into her life. That had always been Mona.