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:
A fire truck that was backing up toward the rescue operation knocked a hose loose, which started whipping around, spraying water. Wallander jumped to the side, and caught sight of Linda at the same time.
“What happened here?” she asked.
“One or more firebombs in the store. Torched animals, same as the swans and the calf.”
“Any clues?”
“One witness, but no one seems to know where the person went.”
Wallander was so furious he was shaking. This is how he’ll die, Linda thought suddenly. Exhausted, outraged by an oversight in a pressing criminal investigation.
“We have to get these bastards,” he said, interrupting her train of thought.
“I think this is different.”
“What is it?”
He looked at her as if she knew the answer.
“I don’t know. It’s as if it were really about something else.”
Höglund called out to Wallander.
Linda watched him walk away, a large man with his head pulled down into his shoulders, stepping carefully over the hoses and the smoking remains of what had once been a pet store. Linda’s gaze fell on a teary-eyed young woman watching the blaze. The owner, she mused. Or simply someone who loves animals. There were a number of spectators, all silent. Burning buildings always inspire dread, she thought. A house on fire is a reminder that our own home could one day burn to the ground.
“Why aren’t they asking me questions? I don’t get it.”
Linda turned around and saw a woman in her twenties pressed up against a nearby wall. She was talking to a friend. A waft of smoke made them both pull back even farther.
“Why don’t you just go over and tell them what you saw?” her friend said.
“I’m not going to go out of my way for the police.”
The witness, Linda thought and took a step closer.
“What did you see?” she asked.
The woman eyed her suspiciously and Linda saw that she was slightly walleyed.
“Who are you?”
“My name is Linda Wallander. I’m a police officer.”
Well, it’s almost true, she thought.
“How could someone kill all those animals? And I heard there was a horse in there too. Is that true?”
“No,” Linda said. “What did you see?”
“A man.”
“What was he doing?”
“He started the fire that burned all those animals. I was walking from the direction of the theater. I was going to mail some letters, which I do several times a week. When I was about halfway to the post office, about a block from the pet store, I noticed someone walking behind me. I was startled because he had been walking almost soundlessly. I let him pass me. Then I started following him, trying to walk as quietly as he did, I don’t know why. But after a few feet I realized I had left a letter in the car so I turned around and went back for it.”
Linda lifted her hand.
“How long did it take you to go back and get the letter?”
“Three or four minutes. The car was parked by the delivery entrance to the theater.”
“What happened when you started back for the post office? Did you see the man again?”
“No.”
“And when you walked past the pet store, what did you do?”
“I glanced at the window — but I’m not so interested in hamsters and turtles.”
“What did you see?”
“A blue light inside the store. It’s always on. It’s some kind of heat lamp, I think.”
“Then what happened?”
“I mailed my letters and started walking back to the car. It took another three minutes or so.”
“And then?”
“Then the store exploded, or it felt that way. I had just walked past it. There was a sharp light all around me. I threw myself down onto the street. Then I saw that the store was in flames. An animal must have gotten loose, and it ran past me with its fur on fire. It was horrible.”
“What did you do then?”
“It all happened so fast. But I saw a man standing on the other side of the street. The light was so strong that I was positive; it was the man who had overtaken me on the street. He was carrying a bag in his hand.”
“Had he been carrying it before?”
“Yes. I forgot to mention it. A black bag, like an old-fashioned doctor’s bag.”
Linda knew what they looked like.
“What did you do?”
“I called out to him to help me.”
“Were you hurt?”
“I thought so. It was such a loud bang and then that terrible light.”
“Did he help you?”
“No, he just looked at me and walked away.”
“In what direction?”
“Up toward the main square.”
“Had you ever seen him before?”
“Never.”
“How would you describe him?”
“He was tall and strong-looking. Maybe bald, or with very short hair. He had a dark blue coat, dark pants. His shoes I had looked at when he walked past and I wondered how he could walk so quietly. They were brown and had thick rubber soles, but they weren’t running shoes.”
“Do you remember anything else?”
“He shouted something.”
“Who was he talking to?”
“I don’t know.”
“Was there anyone else there?”
“Not that I could see.”
“What did he say?”
“It sounded like ‘The Lord’s will be done.‘”
“‘The Lord’s will be done’?”
“I’m sure of the word ‘Lord,’ but the word ‘will’ sounded like it was pronounced in a foreign language. Danish, maybe. Or Norwegian, more like it. Yes, that’s it. The guy sounded like he was speaking Norwegian.”
Linda’s heart beat a little faster. It has to be the same guy, she thought. Unless there’s a Norwegian conspiracy at work. But that seems a little far-fetched.
“Did he say anything else?”
“No.”
“What’s your name?”
“Amy Lindberg.”
Linda fished a pen out of her pocket and wrote down Amy’s phone number on her wrist.
They shook hands.
“Thanks for listening to me,” Amy Lindberg said, and she turned to rejoin her friend.
The mysterious Torgeir Langaas, Linda mused. He keeps cropping up in my life when I least expect it.
She could see that the firefighting operation had reached a new stage. Workers were moving more slowly, a sign that the blaze would soon be contained. She saw her dad talking to the fire chief. When his head turned in her direction she pulled herself back even farther, although it was impossible for him to see her in the shadows. Stefan Lindman walked by with the young woman she had seen earlier, who had cried as she watched the fire. It suits him to comfort crying women, she thought. I, on the other hand, almost never cry. I stopped all that when I was still little. She watched Lindman lead the woman over to a patrol car. They said a few words to each other, then he opened the door for her and she climbed in.
The conversation with Amy Lindberg kept coming back to her. The Lord’s will be done. But what exactly did this god want? That a pet store burn to the ground, that some helpless animals die in unimaginable terror and pain? First it was swans, she thought. Then the calf: singled out, charred, dead. And now a whole store full of pets. It was clearly the work of the same man, one who had calmly regarded his work and said: The Lord’s will be done.