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:
“I don’t know, but that information should be easier to get. All we have to do is talk to her unpleasant daughter — although perhaps it’s not the kind of thing mothers tell their children? I don’t think Mona ever had an abortion. Do you know?”
“No.”
“Does that mean that you don’t know if she did or that she never had one?”
“Mom never had an abortion. I would know.”
“I don’t understand what you’re getting at. Why is this important?”
Linda tried to clear her head. She could be wrong but every instinct told her she was right.
“Can you find out about the abortions?”
“I’ll do it when you’ve told me why it’s important.”
Something inside of her burst. Tears started to run down her face and she banged her fists into the table. She hated crying in front of her dad. Not just in front of him, in front of everybody. The only person she had ever been able to cry in front of was her grandfather.
“I’ll ask them to do it,” Wallander said and stood up. “But I expect you to tell me what this is all about when I get back. People have been murdered, Linda. This isn’t an exercise at the police academy.”
Linda grabbed an ashtray from the table and threw it at him, hitting him right above the eyebrow. Blood ran down his face and dripped on Harriet Bolson’s file.
“I didn’t mean to do that.”
Wallander pressed a fistful of napkins against the gash.
“I just can’t stand it when you needle me,” she said.
He left the room. Linda picked up the ashtray from the floor, still trembling with agitation. She knew he was furious with her. Neither of them could stand to be humiliated. But she didn’t feel any regret.
He came back after fifteen minutes with a makeshift bandage over his wound and dried blood still smeared across his cheek. Linda expected him to yell at her, but he simply sat down in his chair.
“Does it hurt a lot?” she asked.
He ignored her question.
“Höglund called Vanya Jorner, Medberg’s daughter. She found the question deeply insulting and threatened to call the evening papers and complain, but Höglund did establish that she has no knowledge of any abortion.”
“That’s what I thought,” Linda said. “And what about the other one? The one from Tulsa?”
“Höglund is contacting the U.S.,” he said. “We’re not entirely in agreement about the time difference, but in order to speed things along she’s going to call them on the phone rather than send a fax.”
Wallander felt the bandage with his fingertips.
“Your turn,” he said.
Linda started speaking slowly to keep her voice from wobbling but also so she wouldn’t leave anything out.
“There are five women,” she said. “Three of them are dead, one of them has disappeared, and the last one disappeared and then returned. I’m starting to see a connection between them, apart from Medberg, who we’re assuming was killed because she found herself in the wrong place at the wrong time. But what about the rest? Sylvi Rasmussen was murdered; she had also had two or three abortions. Let’s assume that information from Tulsa confirms that Bolson had an abortion. It’s also true for the person who’s just gone missing: Zeba. She told me only a few days ago that she had one. I think this may be the connection between these women.”
Linda paused and drank some water. Wallander tapped his fingers and stared at the wall.
“I still don’t get it,” he said.
“I’m not finished yet. Zeba didn’t just tell me about her abortion, she told Anna too. And Anna had the strangest reaction. She was upset by it in a way I couldn’t relate to, nor could Zeba. To say that Anna strongly disapproved of women who had abortions would be an understatement. She walked out on us. And when Anna later found out that Zeba was missing, she clung to my arm and cried. But it was as if she wasn’t so much afraid for Zeba as for herself.”
Linda stopped. Her dad was still fingering his bandage.
“What do you mean, she was afraid for herself?”
“I’m not sure I know.”
“Try.”
“I’m telling you all I know.”
Wallander gazed absently at the wall. Linda knew that staring at a blank surface was a sign of intense concentration on his part.
“I want you to tell the others,” he said.
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I’ll get nervous. I might be wrong. Maybe that woman from Tulsa never had an abortion.”
“You have an hour to prepare,” Wallander said and stood up. “I’ll tell the others.”
He walked out and closed the door. Linda had the feeling that she was imprisoned, not physically with a lock and key, but by the imposed time limit. She decided to write down what she was going to say in a notebook, and pulled a pad of paper toward her. When she flipped it open, she was confronted with a bad sketch of a seductively posed naked woman. To her surprise, she saw that it was Martinsson’s notepad. But why should that surprise me? she thought. All the men I know spend an enormous amount of mental energy undressing women in their minds.
She reached for an unused notepad beside the overhead projector and jotted down the five women’s names.
After forty-five minutes, the door opened. Everyone marched in like a delegation led by her father. He waved a piece of paper in front of her.
“Harriet Bolson had two abortions.”
Wallander sat down, as did everyone else.
“The question of course is why this matters to our investigation. That’s what we’re here to discuss. Linda is going to present us with her ideas. Over to you, Linda.”
Linda drew a deep breath and managed to present her theory without stumbling over her words even once. Wallander took over when she finished.
“I think it’s clear that Linda is onto something that may be very important. The terrain is still far from mapped, but there is enough substance here to merit our attention, more substance than we have managed to uncover thus far, in fact, in other facets of the investigation.”
The door opened and Lisa Holgersson slipped in. Wallander put his papers down and lifted his hands as if he were about to conduct an orchestra.
“I think we can glimpse the outline of something that we do not yet understand but is there nonetheless.”
He stood up and pulled over a large notepad set on an easel, with the words HIGHER WAGES DAMMIT scrawled across it. Chuckles broke out across the room. Even Holgersson laughed. Wallander turned to a clean sheet.
“As usual I ask that you hold your thoughts until I’m done,” he said. “Save the rotten tomatoes and catcalls.”
“Looks like your daughter’s already been taking potshots,” Martinsson said. “Blood is seeping through the bandage. You look like the old Döbeln at Jutas, to use a literary analogy.”
“Who’s that?” Lindman asked.
“A man who stood guard over a bridge in Finland,” Martinsson said. “Didn’t they teach you anything when you were in school?”
“We had to read that when I was a girl, but you’re getting them confused. The man standing guard had a different name. It’s a book by some Russian author,” Höglund said.
“No, Finnish,” Linda heard herself say. “Sibelius, isn’t it?”
“For the love of God,” Wallander said.
“I’ll call my brother Albin,” Martinsson said, standing up. “We have to get to the bottom of this.”
He left the room.
“I don’t think it was Sibelius,” Holgersson said after a moment. “He was a composer. But something similar.”
Martinsson returned after a few minutes of silence.
“Topelius,” he said. “Or possibly Runeberg. And Döbeln did have a large bandage, I was right about that.”