Before the Frost Read online

  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.”

  “He didn’t guard the bridge, though, did he?” Höglund muttered.

  “I’m trying to create an overview here,” Wallander interrupted, and proceeded to touch on all the known facts of the case.

  After the rather lengthy overview, he sat down.

  “There’s one thing we’ve neglected to do: why haven’t we brought in the real-estate agent in Skurup, Ture Magnusson—the one who sold the house in Lestarp, to listen to the burning-swans tape? We need to take care of that as soon as possible.”

  Martinsson got up again and left the room. Lindman opened a window.

  “Have we talked to Norway about Torgeir Langaas?” Holgersson asked.

  Wallander looked at Höglund.

  “No word yet,” she said.

  Wallander looked down at his watch in a way that indicated the meeting was drawing to a close.

  “It’s too early to arrive at any definitive conclusions,” he said. “It’s too early, and yet we have to work with two assumptions. Either all this hangs together. Or, it doesn’t. And yet the first alternative is compelling. What do we have? Sacrifices, fires, and ritual murder, a Bible in which someone has changed the text. It’s easy for us to see this as the work of a madman, but maybe that isn’t the case. Maybe we’re dealing with a group of very deliberate, methodical people, with a twisted and ruthless agenda. We need to work quickly. There’s a gradual increase in tempo in these events, an acceleration. We have to find Zeba, and talk to Anna Westin again.”

  He turned to Linda.

  “I thought you could bring her in. We’re going to have a friendly but necessary conversation. We’re simply worried about Zeba, that’s all you have to say.”

  �
��Who’s taking care of her son?”

  Höglund asked Linda directly, without the superior air she normally adopted.

  “Zeba’s neighbor.”

  Wallander hit the table with the flat of his hand marking the end of the meeting.

  “Torgeir Langaas,” he said as everyone stood. “Lean on our Norwegian colleagues. The rest of us will look for Zeba.”

  Linda and her dad went to get a cup of coffee without exchanging a single word with each other. When they were done, they went to his office. Martinsson knocked on the door half an hour later, coming in before Wallander answered. He stopped when he saw Linda.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  “What is it?”

  “Ture Magnusson is here to listen to the tape.”

  Wallander jumped out of his chair, grabbing Linda by the arm and pulling her along. Ture Magnusson seemed nervous. Martinsson went to get the tape. Wallander received a call from Nyberg and immediately launched into an argument with him, so Linda was left to take care of Magnusson.

  “Have you found the Norwegian?” he asked.

  “Not yet.”

  “I’m not sure I can recognize his voice.”

  “We’ll just hope for the best.”

  Wallander hung up. At the same time, Martinsson came back with a worried look on his face.

  “The tape must still be here,” he said. “It’s not in the archive.”

  “Didn’t anyone put it back?” Wallander asked with irritation.

  “Not me,” Martinsson said.

  He looked through the shelf behind the tape recorder. Wallander stuck his head into the call center.

  “Can we get a little help here?” he shouted. “We’re missing a tape!”

  Höglund joined them, but no one could find the tape. Linda watched her father get increasingly red in the face. But in the end it was Martinsson who exploded.

  “How in the hell are we supposed to do our work when archived tape can go missing like this?”

  He picked up a booklet of instructions for the tape recorder and threw it against the wall. They kept looking for the tape. Linda finally had the feeling that the whole police district was looking for the tape, but it didn’t turn up. She looked at her dad. He seemed tired, despondent. But she knew it would pass.

  “We owe you an apology,” Wallander said to Magnusson, “for bringing you down here. The tape appears to be misplaced. There’s nothing for you to do.”

  “I have a suggestion,” Linda said.

  She had been debating with herself whether or not to suggest this.

  “I think I can imitate his voice,” she said. “He’s a man, I know, but I’d like a shot at it.”

  Höglund gave her a disapproving look.

  “What makes you think you could possibly imitate his voice?”

  Linda could have given her a long answer, about how she had discovered a talent for imitation at parties. How her friends had been impressed, and she had assumed it was a one-off success, but how she soon realized she simply had a knack for it. There were voices she couldn’t imitate at all, but most of the time she was right on.

  “Let me try,” she said. “It’s not as if we have anything to lose.”

  Lindman had come back into the room. He nodded encouragingly.

  “I guess since we’re all here anyway,” her father said hesitantly.

  He waved to Ture Magnusson.

  “Turn around. Don’t look, just listen. If you have even the slightest doubt, then tell us.”

  Linda quickly decided on a plan. She was not going to do the voice right away, but work up to it. It would be a test for everyone in the room, not just Magnusson.

  “Who remembers what his exact words were?” Lindman asked.

  Martinsson had the best memory. He repeated the text. Linda made her voice as deep as possible, and found the right accent.

  Magnusson shook his head.

  “I’m not sure. I almost think I recognize it, but it’s not quite right.”

  “I’d like to do it again,” Linda said. “It didn’t come out the way I wanted it to.”

  No one objected. Again Linda only approximated the right intonation and phrasing. Again, Magnusson shook his head.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I really couldn’t say for sure.”

  “One last time,” Linda said.

  This was the time that counted. She took a deep breath and repeated the text, this time getting as close as possible to the original.

  “Yes,” Magnusson said. “That’s what he sounded like. That’s his voice.”

  “But that was on the third try,” Höglund said. “What’s that worth?”

  Linda couldn’t quite hide her satisfaction. Her dad saw it at once.

  “Why did he only recognize it on the third attempt?” he asked.

  “Because the first two times I didn’t sound like him,” she said. “It was only the third time that I did the voice exactly.”

  “I didn’t hear a difference,” Höglund said suspiciously.

  “When you imitate someone’s voice all the ingredients have to be right,” Linda said.

  “That’s quite something,” Wallander said. “Are you serious about this?”

  “Yes.”

  Wallander looked straight at Ture Magnusson.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Then we thank you for taking the trouble of coming in.”

  Linda was the only one who shook Magnusson’s hand. She followed him out.

  “Great job,” she said. “Thank you for coming in.”

  “How could you do that so well?” he asked. “It was almost as if I could see him in front of me.”

  “Anna,” Wallander said. “We need to talk to her now.”

  Linda rang the doorbell to Anna’s apartment, but no one answered the door. Anna wasn’t home. Linda shivered as she stood outside in the stairwell. She was starting to understand why Anna had decided to disappear again.

  44

  It had been Langaas’s task to pick up Anna by the boarded-up pizzeria in Sandskogen. At first Westin had been planning to get her himself to make sure she was completely willing. But finally he decided that she was so dependent on him she wasn’t likely to put up any resistance. Since she had no idea what had happened to Harriet Bolson—he had given Langaas strict instructions not to say anything—she had no reason to try to get away. The only thing he feared was her intuition. He had tried to gauge it and had concluded that it was almost as strong as his own. Anna is my daughter, he thought. She is careful, attentive, constantly receptive to the messages of her subconscious.

  Langaas had been briefed on how to handle the situation, even though it was unlikely that Anna had been frightened by Zeba’s disappearance. There was a chance that she would talk to Linda, the girl Westin judged to be her closest confidante, even though he had warned and thereafter forbidden her to have intimate conversations with anyone except himself. It could lead her astray, he had told her, now that she had finally found the right path. He was the one who had been gone for so long, but it was she who was the prodigal son, or daughter. She was the one who was finally coming home, not him. What was happening now was necessary. Her father was the one who was going to hold people responsible for turning their backs on the Lord and for building cathedrals where they worshipped at the altar of their own egos rather than humbling themselves before their true Maker. He had seen the bewitched look in her eye and known that with enough time he would have been able to erase all doubt from her mind. The problem was that he didn’t have this time. It was a mistake, he acknowledged to himself. He should have contacted her long before he showed himself to her in Malmö. But he had had all the others to work on, the members of his army who were one day to open the gates and take their place in his plan. Harriet Bolson’s death had been their biggest challenge to date. He had told Langaas to watch their reactions over the next few days, in case anyone seemed about to break down or even so much as sway in
their conviction. But no one had showed any such signs. To the contrary, Langaas reported a growing sense of impatience among them to undergo the ultimate sacrifice that lay ahead.

  Before Langaas went to pick up Anna, Westin had made sure he understood that he was to use force if she did not want to come willingly. That was why he had chosen such a remote area for the meeting. He had watched Langaas’s reactions carefully when he mentioned the use of force. Langaas had shown a momentary hesitation; a glimpse of anxiety flickered in his eyes. Westin had made his voice as mild as possible while he leaned forward and placed his hand on Langaas’s shoulder. What was it that worried him? Had Westin ever played favorites among his disciples? Had he not plucked Torgeir from the gutters of Cleveland? Why shouldn’t his daughter be treated like everyone else? God created a world where everyone was equal, a world that people had turned their backs on and destroyed. Was that not the world they were trying to recover?

  If all went well and she showed herself worthy, Anna would one day be his successor. God’s New Kingdom on Earth could not be left without a ruler, as in the past. There had to be a leader, and God himself had told him that it was to be a position that would go from father to child.

  Sometimes he thought Anna was not the one. In that case, he would have to have more children and select his successor from among them.

  Westin wasn’t sure how Langaas found these houses that stood empty and unattended, but it was a matter of trust between them. Right now the house Langaas had selected was a villa in Sandhammaren that was conveniently isolated from its neighbors and belonged to a retired sea captain who was in the hospital with a broken leg. This house had the additional advantage of a small room in the basement. The sea captain’s house had thick concrete walls, and the room in the basement was well constructed, with a small window in the sturdy door. When Langaas first showed it to him, they agreed that it seemed as if the sea captain had a private jail cell in his home. Langaas had suggested it was perhaps meant as a bomb shelter in the event of a war. But why the thick glass window in the door?

  He stopped and listened. In the beginning, when the drugs had worn off, Zeba had screamed, hit the walls, and attacked the bucket that they had put in for her to use as a toilet. Then, when she was quiet, he had peeked in through the window. She had been curled up on the bed. They had put a sandwich and a cup of water on a table, but she hadn’t touched it. He hadn’t expected her to.