Before the Frost Read online

  At eleven she walked to the harbor, strolled out onto the pier, and sat down on a bollard. She tried to think of a reasonable explanation for Anna using her name. A dead wild duck floated in the turbid water. When Linda finally stood up, she still had not thought of a reasonable explanation. It must exist, she thought. I just can’t think of it.

  She rang Anna’s doorbell at exactly twelve o’clock. The anxiety she had felt earlier was gone. Now she was simply on her guard.

  34

  Torgeir Langaas opened his eyes, surprised that he was still alive, as always. His life should have ended in that Cleveland gutter, his body disposed of by the state of Ohio.

  He lay still in what had once been the maid’s room off the kitchen—a room Vigsten had forgotten all about—and listened to noises issuing from the apartment. A piano tuner was working on the baby grand. He came every Wednesday. Torgeir Langaas had enough of an ear to know that the tuner only needed to make very minor adjustments to the pitch. He imagined old Vigsten sitting on a chair by the window, his eyes following the tuner as he worked. Langaas stretched out. Everything had gone according to plan yesterday evening. The pet store had burned to the ground; not a single mouse or hamster had escaped. Erik had stressed how important this last animal sacrifice was, how crucial it was that nothing go wrong. Erik came back to this point over and over: that God allowed no mistakes.

  Every morning Langaas recited the oath that Erik had taught him, first and foremost disciple: “It is my duty to God and my Earthly Master to follow the orders I receive without hesitation and undertake whatever actions necessary to teach the people what will happen to those that turn away from Him. Only by accepting the Lord through the words of his only true prophet will redemption be possible, and with it the mercy of being counted among those who will return after the great transformation.”

  He folded his hands in prayer and mumbled the verses from Jude that Erik had taught him: “And the Lord, when he had saved his people from Egypt’s land, afterward smote those who had not believed in Him.” You can turn every room into a cathedral, Erik had told him. The church you seek is here and everywhere.

  Langaas whispered his oath, closed his eyes, and pulled the blankets up to his chin. The piano tuner hit the same high-pitched note again and again. Erik’s words were what had sparked the memory of his grandfather who, despite his diminishing comprehension, had spent his last few years alone in his house by Femunden. One of Langaas’s sisters had spent a whole week with him without his registering the fact. Langaas had told Erik about his idea and received his cautious blessing. Frans Vigsten had appeared as if from nowhere. Langaas sometimes wondered if Erik had steered Vigsten in his direction. Langaas had been at a café in Nyhavn, testing himself to see if he could resist the multitude of temptations that came his way. The old man had been there drinking wine. Suddenly he had come over to Langaas and asked:

  “Could you please tell me where I am?”

  Langaas had realized he was senile rather than drunk.

  “At a café in Nyhavn.”

  The old man had lowered himself onto a chair across from him, and after a long silence asked:

  “Where is that exactly?”

  “Nyhavn? In Copenhagen.”

  “I can’t seem to remember where I live.”

  They found the address on a piece of paper in Vigsten’s wallet. Nedergade.

  “My memory comes and goes,” he said. “But this may be where I live, where my piano is, and where I receive my students.”

  Langaas had helped him into a cab, and then accompanied him to Nedergade. Vigsten’s name appeared on the list of residents in the entryway. Langaas followed him up into the apartment. Vigsten recognized the smell of stale air.

  “This is where I live,” he said. “This is what it smells like.”

  Then he had wandered off into the recesses of the large apartment and appeared to completely forget about the man who had helped him home. Langaas found and pocketed a spare set of keys before he left. A few days later he returned and made the maid’s room into another of his temporary residences. Vigsten had still not realized that he served as a host to a man who was waiting to be transported to a higher state. He could tell Vigsten had long since forgotten about their meeting in Nyhavn. Vigsten assumed he was a pupil. When Langaas said he had in fact come to service the radiators, Vigsten had simply turned his back and forgotten about him in that instant.

  Langaas looked down at his hands. They were large and strong, and they no longer shook. It had been many years since he had been lifted from the gutter, and he had not had a drop of alcohol or any drugs since then. Erik had always been there, supporting him. Torgeir knew he could never have done it without him. It was through Erik that he had his faith, the strength he needed to continue living.

  I am strong, he thought. I wait in my hiding places for my instructions. I follow them to the letter and return into hiding. Erik never knows exactly where I am, but I can always sense when he needs me.

  I have received this strength from Erik, he thought. And I have only one small weakness left that I have not been able to shake off. The fact that he kept a secret from Erik was a source of great shame. The prophet had always spoken openly to him, the man from the gutter. He had not concealed any part of himself, and he had demanded the same from the man who would be his disciple. When Erik had asked him if he was free of all secrets and weaknesses, he had answered yes. But it had been a lie. There was one link to his old existence. For the longest time he had resisted the task that awaited him. But when he woke up this morning, he knew he could no longer put it off. Setting fire to the pet store last night had been the final step before he was lifted to the next level. He could wait no longer. If Erik did not discover his weakness, then surely God would turn his anger on him. This fury would also strike Erik, and that was an unbearable thought.

  He got up and dressed. Through the window he saw that it was overcast and windy. He hesitated between the leather jacket and his long coat, then decided on the jacket. He fingered the pigeon and swan feathers that he picked up from the streets when he walked. Perhaps this collecting is also a form of weakness, he thought. But it is a weakness for which God forgives me. He got off the bus at City Hall, walked over to the train station, and bought the morning paper. News about the Ystad pet store that had burned down was on the front page. A police officer from Ystad had commented, “Only a sick person could do something like this; a sick person with sadistic tendencies.”

  Erik had taught him to keep his cool, whatever happened. But reading that his actions were regarded as a kind of twisted sadism outraged him. He crumpled up the newspaper and threw it into the trash. As penance for this weakness he gave fifty kronor to a drunk who was asking for spare change. The man stared after him, slack-jawed. One day I’ll come back and beat you to a pulp, Langaas thought savagely. I’ll crush your face with a single blow, in the name of the Lord, in the name of the Christian uprising. Your blood will be spilled and join the river that will one day lead us to the promised land.

  It was ten o’clock. He went to a café and ate breakfast. Erik had ordered him to lie low this day. His instructions were simply to seek out one of his hiding places and wait. Maybe Erik knows I still have a weakness, he thought. Maybe he’s known all along but wants to see if I have the strength to deliver myself of it on my own?

  God makes his plans well, he thought. God and Erik, his servant, are no dreamers. Erik has explained how God organizes everything down to the very last details of a person’s life. This is why this day has been granted to me, in order that I should rid myself of my one remaining weakness, and stand prepared at last.

  Sylvi Rasmussen had come to Denmark in the early 1990s, along with a boatload of other illegal immigrants in a ship that had landed off the west coast of Jutland. At that point she had already undertaken a long and at times terrifying journey from her home in Bulgaria. She had traveled in trucks and in trailers hitched up to tractors, and she had even spent two
terrible days sealed in an increasingly airless container. Her name back then wasn’t Sylvi Rasmussen, it was Nina Barovska. She borrowed the money for her trip, and when she arrived on that deserted beach in Jutland, two men were waiting for her. They took her to an apartment in Aarhus, where they raped and beat her again and again for a week and then—when they had broken her will—took her to an apartment in Copenhagen where they forced her to work as a prostitute. She had tried to escape after a month, but the two men cut off her little finger from each hand and threatened to do something worse if she ever tried to escape again. She didn’t. To make her existence more bearable, she started using drugs and hoped she would not have to live too long.

  One day a client whose name was Torgeir Langaas had come in to see her. He became a regular and she would try to talk to him, desperately trying to make the time they spent together more human, less cold. But he always shook his head and mumbled unintelligible responses. Although he was gentle, she would sometimes break into uncontrollable shivers after one of his visits. There was something vaguely threatening about him, something uncanny, even though he was her most loyal and generous client. His large hands always touched her gently, but he still frightened her.

  He rang her doorbell at eleven o’clock. He invariably came to see her in the mornings. Since he wanted to spare her the moment of realization that she was to die this day in the beginning of September, he grabbed her from behind as they were on their way into the bedroom. His large hands reached for her forehead and neck and snapped her spine. He put her body on the bed, pulled off her clothes, and tried to make it look like a sex crime. When he was done, he looked around and thought that Sylvi had deserved a better fate. If circumstances had been different, he would have wanted to bring her along to the promised land. But Erik set the rules, and he demanded that his disciples be free of all worldly weakness. And now he had achieved this state. Woman, desire, was finally gone from his life.

  He left the apartment. He was ready. Erik was waiting for him. God was waiting.

  35

  Her grandfather had often complained about difficult people, a category that included almost everyone, and he consequently did his best to minimize contact with other people. However, as he said, one could never avoid them completely. Linda had been particularly struck by the image he had used.

  “They’re like eels,” he said. “You try to keep hold of them, but they wiggle free of your grasp. The thing about eels is also that they swim at night. By that I don’t mean you only meet difficult people at night—if anything, they seem most likely to come with their idiotic suggestions in the morning. Their darkness is of a different order; it’s something they carry inside. It’s their total obliviousness to the difficulty they cause others by their constant meddling. I have never meddled in other people’s lives.”

  That was the biggest lie of his life. He had died without recognizing the extent to which he himself had often meddled in the decisions, dreams, and actions of those around him, trying in particular to bend his two children to his will.

  These thoughts about difficult people came unbidden to Linda just as she was about to ring Anna’s doorbell. She paused, her finger hovering a few centimeters from the buzzer. Anna is a difficult person, she thought. She doesn’t seem to understand the worry she caused, and how her actions affect me.

  When she finally rang the doorbell, Anna opened, smiling, dressed in a white blouse and dark pants. She was barefoot and had pulled her hair back into a loose knot.

  Linda had decided to bring it up right away to clear the air. She threw her jacket over a chair and said:

  “I have to tell you I read the last few pages of your journal. I only did it to see if there was any explanation for your disappearance.”

  Anna flinched.

  “Then that was what I sensed,” she said. “It was almost as if there was a different smell when I opened the pages.”

  “I’m sorry, but I was so worried. I only read the last couple of pages, nothing more.”

  We lie to make our half-truths seem more plausible, she thought. Anna may see through me. The journal will always be between us now. She’ll always be asking herself what I did and didn’t read.

  They walked into the living room. Anna stood by the window, her back to Linda.

  Linda realized she no longer knew Anna. She looked at her friend, who stood with her back turned, thinking she might as well be looking at an enemy.

  “There’s one question you still need to answer.”

  Linda waited for her to turn around but she didn’t.

  “I hate talking to people’s backs.”

  Still no reaction. You may be a difficult person, Linda thought. But sometimes difficult people go too far. Grandpa would have thrown an eel like this into the fire and let it writhe to death in the flames.

  “Why did you check into that hotel under my name?”

  Linda tried to interpret Anna’s back while she simultaneously wiped the sweat from her neck. This will be my curse, she had thought back in the first month of her police training. There are laughing policemen and crying policemen, but I’m going to be known as the perspiring policewoman.

  Anna burst into laughter and turned around. Linda tried to judge if her laughter was genuine.

  “How did you find out?”

  “I called the hotel.”

  “May I ask why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What did you ask them, exactly?”

  “It’s not so hard to figure out.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I asked if an Anna Westin was still there or if she had checked out. They didn’t have an Anna Westin, but they did have a Wallander, they said. It was that simple. But why did you do it?”

  “What would you say if I told you I didn’t know why I used your name? Maybe I was afraid my father would run away again if he found out I had checked into the hotel where we saw each other. If you want the truth, it’s that I don’t know.”

  The phone rang, but Anna made no move to pick it up. The answering machine switched on and then Zeba’s chirpy voice filled the room. She was calling for no reason, she informed them happily.

  “I love people who call for no reason with so much positive energy,” Anna said.

  Linda didn’t answer. She had no room to think about Zeba.

  “I read a name in your diary: Birgitta Medberg. Do you know what’s happened to her?”

  “No.”

  “Don’t you read the papers?”

  “I was looking for my father.”

  “She’s been found murdered.”

  Anna looked closely at her.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know why.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying she was murdered. The police don’t know who did it, but they’re going to want to talk to you about her.”

  Anna shook her head.

  “What happened? Who would want to kill her?”

  Linda decided not to reveal any details about the murder. She simply sketched out the news in broad brush-strokes. Anna’s dismay seemed completely genuine.

  “When did this happen?”

  “A few days ago.”

  Anna shook her head again, left the window, and sat down in a chair.

  “How did you know her?” Linda asked.

  Anna looked narrowly at her.

  “Is this a cross-examination?”

  “I’m curious.”

  “We rode horses together. I don’t remember the first time we met, but there was someone who had two Norwegian Fjord horses that needed exercising. Birgitta and I both volunteered to ride them. I didn’t know her at all. She never said very much. I know she mapped old pilgrimage trails. We also shared an interest in butterflies. But I don’t know anything more about her. She wrote to me fairly recently and suggested we buy a horse together. I never replied.”

  Linda tried to remain alert for any hints that Anna was lying. I’m not the person who sh
ould be doing this, she thought. I should be driving a patrol car and picking up drunks. Dad should be talking to Anna, not I. It’s just that damn butterfly. It should be hanging on the wall.

  Anna had already followed her gaze and read her mind.

  “I took the butterfly with me when I went to look for my dad. I was going to give it to him, but then when I realized it was all my imagination, I threw it into the canal.”

  It could be true, Linda thought. Or else she lies so well I can’t tell.

  The phone rang again. Ann-Britt Höglund’s voice came into the room. Anna looked at Linda, who nodded. Anna picked up the receiver. The conversation was brief and Anna didn’t say much. She hung up.

  “They want me to come in now,” she said.

  Linda got up.

  “Then you’d better go.”

  “I want you to come with me.”

  “Why?”

  “I’d feel more secure.”

  Linda hesitated.

  “I’m not sure it’s appropriate.”

  “But I’m not accused of anything. They just want to have a conversation with me, at least that’s what the woman said. And you’re both a police officer and my friend.”

  “I’m happy to go down there with you, but I’m not sure they’ll let me stay in the room when they talk to you.”

  Höglund came out into the reception area at the police station to meet Anna. She looked disapprovingly at Linda. She doesn’t like me, Linda thought. She’s the kind of woman who prefers young men with piercings and an attitude. Höglund had put on weight. Soon you’ll be dumpy, Linda thought with satisfaction. I still wonder what Dad saw in you when he courted you a few years ago.

  “I want Linda to be there,” Anna said.

  “I don’t know if that will be possible,” Höglund said. “Why do you want her to be there?”