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:
There was a similar state of confusion at the police station during the first few minutes when the two calls came in. When Wallander got up from the dinner table, he was under the impression that he was going to Hurup, where a woman had been reported dead. Since he had drunk some wine with dinner, he asked for a patrol car to pick him up.
It was only as they were leaving Ystad that he learned of the misunderstanding: the church in Hurup was on fire, but the dead woman had been found in Frennestad Church. Martinsson, who was driving, started shouting at the switchboard operator to try to determine once and for all how many damned churches were on fire.
Wallander sat quietly for the duration of the ride, not only because Martinsson was driving with his usual recklessness, but because he sensed that his worst fears were being confirmed. The animals that had been killed were only the beginning. Lunatics, he thought, satanists, fanatics. As they drove through the darkness he thought he was beginning to discern a logic to the events, if only dimly.
By the time they pulled up outside the burning church in Frennestad, they at least had a clearer idea of the current situation. The two churches had caught fire at almost exactly the same time. In addition there was a dead woman in Frennestad. They sought out the fire chief, Mats Olsson, to whom, it turned out, Martinsson was distantly related. In the midst of the intense heat and chaos, Wallander heard them give greetings to their respective wives. Then they went into the church. Martinsson let Wallander take the lead, as he usually did at a crime scene, and as he was more than willing to do even in the devastating heat. The aisle provided them with a route, and a fireman preceded them with a hose. The dead woman lay in front of the altar with a rope around her neck. Wallander tried to imprint the scene on his memory. It had to be staged. He turned to Mats Olsson.
“How long can we stay?”
“The roof is going to cave. We’re not going to be able to put it out in time.”
“When?”
“Soon.”
“How long?”
“Ten minutes. I can’t let you stay any longer.”
No technicians would be able to make it to the scene in time. Wallander put on a helmet that someone handed him.
“Go out and see if anyone in the crowd has a camera, or better yet a video camera,” he said. “Confiscate it. We’re going to need to document this.”
Martinsson left. Wallander started to examine the dead woman. The rope was thick, like a ship’s hawser. It lay around her neck with the ends outstretched. Two people pulling in different directions, he thought. Like the olden days when criminals were ripped apart by tying them to two horses that were sent off in different directions.
He glanced at the ceiling. The flames were starting to come through. There were people running all around him carrying objects from the church. An older man in his pajamas was straining to rescue a beautiful old altar cabinet. There was something touching about their struggle. These people have realized they’re losing something precious, he thought.
Martinsson returned with a video camera.
“Can you figure out how to use it?”
“I think so,” Martinsson answered.
“Then you be our photographer. Take full shots, details, from all angles.”
“Five minutes,” Olsson said. “That’s all you have.”
Wallander crouched down beside the dead woman’s body. She was blond and bore an uncanny resemblance to his sister Kristina. An execution, he thought. First animals, now people. What was it Amy Lindberg thought she heard? “The Lord’s will be done?”
He quickly searched the woman’s pockets. Nothing. He looked around. There was no handbag. He was about to give up when he saw a breast pocket on her blouse. Inside was a piece of paper with a name and address: HARRIET BOLSON, 1250 5TH AVENUE, TULSA.
“Time’s up,” Mats Olsson said. “Let’s go.”
He rounded up the people left in the church and hurried them out. The body was carried away and Wallander took the hawser.
Martinsson called in to the station.
“We need information on a woman from Tulsa,” he said. “All registers, local, European, international. Highest priority.”
Linda turned off the TV impatiently. She knew that the spare keys to her dad’s car were on the bookshelf in the living room. She picked them up, then headed out the door and jogged down to the police station.
Wallander’s car was parked in the corner. Linda recognized the car next to it as Höglund’s. Linda fingered the Swiss army knife in her pocket, but this was not a night for slashing tires. She had heard him mention Hurup and Frennestad. She unlocked the car door and drove as far as the water tower. There she pulled over and got out a map. She knew where Frennestad was, but not Hurup. She found it, turned off the light, and headed out of Ystad. Halfway to Hörby she turned left, and after a few kilometers she could see the smoke from Hurup Church. She drove as close as she could, then parked and walked up to the church. Her dad wasn’t there. The only police officers were young cadets, and it struck her that if the fire had started only a few days later she could have been one of them. She told them who she was and asked where her father was.
“There’s another church on fire,” she was told. “Frennestad Church. They have a casualty.”
“What’s going on?”
“It looks like arson — two churches don’t just catch fire at the same time. But we don’t know what happened in Frennestad Church, only that there’s a body.”
Linda nodded and walked away. A sudden noise made her turn around. Parts of the church roof collapsed and a shower of sparks shot up toward the sky. Who would burn a church? she wondered. But she couldn’t answer that question any more easily than she could imagine what kind of person set fire to swans, cattle, or animals in a pet store.
She got back into the car and drove to Frennestad. There too she saw the burning church from a distance. Burning churches are something I associate with war, she thought. But here there are churches burning in peacetime. Can a country be engaged in an invisible war against an unseen enemy? She was unable to pursue this thought any further. The road leading up to the church was blocked by cars. When she caught sight of her father in the light of the fire, she stopped. He was talking with a firefighter. She tried to see what he was holding. A hose? She walked closer, pushing past people who were crowded together outside the restricted area. He was holding a rope, she realized finally. A hawser.
Nyberg walked up to Wallander and Martinsson, who were standing outside the church. He looked irritated, as usual.
“I thought you should take a look at this,” he said, holding out his hand.
It was a small necklace. Wallander took out his glasses. One side of the frame broke when he put them on. He swore and had to hold the glasses with one hand.
“It looks like a shoe,” he said.
“She was wearing it,” Nyberg said. “Or had been. The chain broke when the rope was pulled tight. The necklace fell inside her blouse. The doctor found it.”
Martinsson took it and turned toward the fire to get more light.
“An unusual motif for a pendant,” he said. “Is it really a shoe?”
“It could be a footprint,” Nyberg said. “Or the sole of a foot. Once I saw a pendant in the shape of a carrot. A diamond was placed where the greens would have been. That carrot cost four hundred thousand kronor.”