Before the Frost Page 7

  She adjusted her backpack, strapped on her helmet, and kick-started the old machine. It instantly roared into life. Half an hour later she arrived at the small parking lot by Led Lake. She walked the Vespa in behind some bushes beside a large oak tree. A car drove past on the main road, then silence returned.

  As she prepared to walk into the forest and become invisible to the outside world, she wondered if this wasn’t the most satisfying way of expressing one’s independence: by daring to abandon the well-trodden path. To step into the underbrush and vanish from the eyes of the world.

  Her brother Håkan had taught her that there were two kinds of people in the world: the ones who always chose the shortest distance between two points, and the ones who looked for the scenic route where the curves, slopes, and vistas were to be found. They had played in the forests around Älmhult when they were growing up. After her father was severely injured by a fall from a telephone pole while repairing a phone line, they moved to Skåne. Her mother got a job at the Ystad Hospital. That was where she spent her adolescence and forgot all about exploring, until the day she stood outside the gates to Lund University and realized she had no idea what to do with her life. She turned to her childhood memories for inspiration.

  It was a day during that first difficult fall semester when she had enrolled as a law student for lack of a more interesting alternative. She had cycled out toward Staffanstorp and found a small unpaved road by chance. She left her bike there and continued on foot until she reached the ruins of an old mill. That was when the idea had come to her—or rather—tore through her mind like a bolt of lightning. What was a path? Why does a path go to this side of a tree and not the other? Who was the first person to walk here?

  She knew in that instant it would become her life’s mission to chart old trails. She would become the protector and historian of old Swedish paths and walkways. She ran back to her bike, quit her law studies the same day, and started studying history and cultural geography. She had the good fortune to meet a sympathetic professor who appreciated the originality of her interests and supported her cause.

  She started walking along the path that curved gracefully around Led Lake. The tall trees shaded her from the sun. She had mapped this particular path quite a while ago. It was a standard walking path that could be traced back to the 1930s, when Rannesholm Manor was owned by the Haverman family. One of the counts, Gustav Haverman, had been an enthusiastic runner and had cleared bushes and undergrowth away from the edge of the lake to establish this trail. But a little further on, she thought, up ahead in this old forest where no one else sees anything but moss and stone, I am going to turn off from this trail and follow the path I found just a few days ago. I have no idea where it leads, but nothing is as tempting, as magical, as following an unknown path. I still hope that one day I’ll find a path that is a work of art. A path that has been created without a destination in mind, just for its own sake.

  She paused at the top of a hill to catch her breath, looking down at the glassy surface of the lake between the trees. She was sixty-three years old now and, according to her own calculations, she needed five more years to complete her life’s work: The History of Swedish Walkways. In this book she would reveal that paths were among the most important clues to ancient settlements and their way of life. Paths were not laid out only for the simplest way of getting from A to B. On the contrary, she had ample evidence for the numerous religious and cultural factors that determined where and how paths made their way across the landscape. Over the years she had published regional studies and maps, but the conclusions of her many years of research had yet to be set down in final form.

  She slowed down when she found the spot. Where the untrained eye saw nothing but grass and moss growing at the edge of the path she spotted the clear outline of a trail that had been out of use for many years. She started climbing up the side of the hill, looking carefully before she stepped. Last year she had broken a leg when she fell exploring a trail to the south of Brösarp. The accident had forced her to take a long rest, which stood out in her mind as a particularly difficult time. Even though it had given her more time to write, she had simply become restless and irritated, especially without her husband to care for her. He had died shortly before the accident occurred and had always been the one to take care of things in the home. She had sold the house in Rydsgård after that and moved to the little apartment in Skurup.

  She pushed some branches aside and moved in under the trees. Once she had read about a meadow in the forest that could only be found by someone who had lost their way. To her mind this captured some of the mystical dimension of human existence. If only one dared to get lost, one could find the unexpected. There was a whole other world beyond the highways and byways—if you just dared to take the turnoff. And I’m the caretaker of these old forgotten paths, she thought. Sleeping beauties waiting for someone to wake them from their slumber. If paths remain unused for too long, they die.

  She was deep into the forest now, a long way from the main trail. She stopped and listened. A branch broke some distance away, then all was quiet. A bird flapped noisily and flew away. She walked on, hunched over the ground, moving very slowly. The path was nearly invisible. She had to search for its contours under the moss, the grass, and the fallen branches.

  Soon she started feeling disappointed; this wasn’t an old path. When she first saw it she had been hoping it was part of the ancient pilgrim’s trail that was rumored to pass close to Led Lake. On the north side of the Rommele hills it was still visible. It disappeared around Led Lake only to pop up again northwest of Sturup. Sometimes she was tempted to think the pilgrims had used a tunnel, but she knew that was not their custom. They walked on trails and one day she hoped to find it. Unfortunately it wasn’t going to be today. After a mere hundred meters she was convinced the path was newly established, no more than ten or twenty years old. She hoped to be able to say why it had been abandoned when she figured out where it led. She was about three hundred meters into the forest by now and the trees and the undergrowth stood so thick and close together it was almost impossible to make her way through them.

  Suddenly she stopped and squatted. She saw something that confused her. She picked at the moss with her finger. She had seen something white lying there: a feather. A dove? she thought. But are there white forest doves? They were usually brown or blue. She stood up and continued studying the feather. Finally she realized it came from a swan. But how could it have turned up so deep in the forest? Swans came ashore from time to time but never this far inland, not in thick forest.

  After only a few more steps she stopped again, this time because the ground in front of her was curiously flattened. Someone must have walked here only a few days ago. But where exactly did the prints start? She examined the area for ten minutes and decided someone had come out of the forest and only joined the path at this point. She continued on slowly. She was no longer as curious about the path as she had been when she thought it might be the old pilgrim trail. This path was probably simply an extension of the paths Count Haverman had put in to satisfy his outdoor tastes, but that had fallen out of use since his time. The prints she was following probably belonged to a hunter.

  After another hundred meters she arrived at a shallow ravine, a crack in the earth covered by bushes and undergrowth. The path ran straight down into it. She removed her backpack, tucked a flashlight into her pocket, and carefully scooted down into the ravine. She started lifting up branches in order to get past them and saw to her surprise that several of them had been cut and placed here in order to conceal the entrance to the hollow. Boys, she thought. Håkan and I often made forts in the forest. She pressed on past the undergrowth and sure enough, there was a small hut. It was unusually large to be the work of children. She was reminded of a news item Håkan had shown her from a magazine, pictures of a shack in a forest that served as the hideout for a wanted criminal by the wonderful name of Beautiful Bengtsson. He had lived in his hideout for a
long time and had only been found out by a person who stumbled upon it by accident.

  She walked up for a closer look. The hut had been constructed out of planks of wood, with a sturdy aluminum roof. To the back it bordered a steep part of the ravine. She felt the handle of the door—it wasn’t locked. She knocked and felt like an idiot. If someone was there they would have heard her by now. She started feeling more and more confused. Could someone be hiding out in the Rommele forest?

  Warning bells started going off inside her head. At first she dismissed these. She was never one to get scared easily. She had run across unpleasant men in remote areas before and although it had sometimes frightened her, she had always managed to control her fears and put up a tough front. Nothing had ever happened, and nothing was going to happen today. But she couldn’t help feeling she was ignoring common sense by investigating this hut on her own. Only someone who needed to hide from prying eyes would have chosen a place like this. On the other hand, she did not want to turn back without finding out what was in here. Her path had indeed had a destination. No one without her trained eyes would have spotted it. But the person who used the hut had not even followed the old path. That was strange. Was the old path she had found simply a backup, the way foxholes had more than one exit? Her curiosity got the better of her.

  She opened the door to the hut and looked in. There were two small windows on either side, but they only let in a little light. She turned on the flashlight. There was a bed on one side and on the other side a small table with a chair, two gas lamps, and a camp stove. Who lived here? How long had it been empty? She leaned over and felt the blanket on the bed. It wasn’t damp. Someone has been here recently, she thought. In the last couple of days. Again she thought she had better leave. The person who had stayed here was not the kind to welcome visitors.

  She was about to turn and leave when the beam of her flashlight fell on a book lying on the ground next to the bed. She bent down. It was a copy of the Bible. She opened it and saw a name that had been scratched out. The book was well-thumbed and torn in places. Various verses had been underlined and annotated. She carefully put the book down where she had found it. She turned off the flashlight and immediately realized that something had changed. There was more light now than before. Someone must have opened the door. She turned, but it was too late. The blow to her face came with the force of a charging predator. She was plunged into a deep and bottomless darkness.

  11

  After her visit to Henrietta, Linda sat up in the apartment waiting for her father to come home. But by the time he softly pushed the front door open at two o’clock in the morning, she had already fallen asleep on the sofa with a blanket pulled up to her ears. When she woke a few hours later it was from a nightmare. She couldn’t remember what she had dreamed, just that she felt as if she were being suffocated. Low snores rolled through the apartment, like breakers on the shore. Her father’s bedside light was still on. He lay flat on his back, wrapped in his sheet, not unlike a large walrus comfortably stretched out on a rock. She leaned over and checked his breath between snores. Definitely alcohol.

  She wondered who he could have been drinking with. The pants that lay on the ground were dirty as if he had walked through patches of mud. He’s been out in the country, she thought. That means a night of drinking with Sten Widén. They’ve sat out in the stables and shared a bottle of vodka.

  Widén was one of her dad’s oldest friends, and now he was seriously ill. Her dad had a habit of talking about himself in the third person when it came to expressing something emotional and he had taken to saying: When Sten dies Kurt Wallander will be a lonely man. Widén had lung cancer. Linda was familiar with the story of how he had raised fine racing horses on the ranch by the ruins of Stjärnsund Castle. A few years ago he had sold the ranch, but just as the buyer was about to close on the deal, Widén had changed his mind and used the clause in the contract that allowed this. He had bought a few more horses and received his diagnosis shortly afterward. It had already been a year since then, a grace period given the severity of his condition. Now he was again selling his horses and his ranch. He had arranged a bed for himself at a hospice in Malmö. This time there was no backing out of the deal.

  Linda went to her room, put on her pajamas, and climbed into bed. She lay in bed staring at the ceiling and reproached herself for being so hard on her dad. Why shouldn’t he be allowed to enjoy a night of drinking with his best friend, especially since the friend happened to be dying? I’ve always thought of Dad as a good friend to the few he has. It’s only right that he stay up late drinking in the stables. She felt like waking him up so she could apologize for her disapproval. But he wouldn’t appreciate being woken up. It’s his day off tomorrow. Maybe we’ll do something fun.

  Before she fell asleep she thought briefly about Henrietta and the fact that she hadn’t been telling the truth. What was she hiding? Did she know where Anna was, or was there another reason? Linda curled up on her side and thought sleepily that soon she was going to miss having a boyfriend to cuddle up with. But where am I going to find one in this town? She pushed her thoughts aside and fell asleep.

  Wallander shook her awake at nine o’clock. Linda jumped out of bed. Her dad didn’t seem hung over. He was dressed and had even combed his hair.

  “Breakfast,” he said. “Time is ticking, life is fleeting.”

  Linda showered and dressed. Her dad was playing patience at the kitchen table when she came in and sat down.

  “I suspect you were hanging out with Sten last night.”

  “Right.”

  “I also suspect you drank too much.”

  “Wrong. We drank way too much.”

  “How did you get home?”

  “Taxi.”

  “How was he doing?”

  “I wish I could be sure I’ll face the end with the same equanimity. He simply says: you only have so many races in your life. You just have to try to win as many of them as you can.”

  “Do you think he’s in pain?”

  “I’m sure he is, but he doesn’t say anything. He’s like Rydberg.”

  “I don’t really remember him.”

  “He was an old colleague of mine with a mole on his cheek. Anyway, he was the one who made a policeman out of me when I was young and didn’t understand anything. He died much too early, but without a single word of complaint. He had also run his races and accepted the fact that his time was up.”

  “Who’s going to be that kind of mentor to me?”

  “I thought you had been assigned to Martinsson.”

  “Is he any good?”

  “He’s an excellent policeman.”

  “You know, I have memories of Martinsson from when I was a kid. I don’t know how many times you came home angry about something he had done or said.”

  Wallander reached an impasse and gathered up his cards.

  “I was the one who trained Martinsson, just as Rydberg trained me. Of course I probably came home and complained about him. He can be damned thick-headed. But once he gets something down, he never forgets it.”

  “So that makes you my mentor indirectly.”

  Wallander got up.

  “I don’t even know what that word means. Come on, we’re leaving.”

  She looked at him with surprise.

  “Is this something we talked about? Did I forget something?”

  “We said we would go out—not where. It’s going to be a beautiful day, and before you know it the fog will be here to stay. I hate the fog in Skåne. It creeps right into one’s head. I can’t think straight when it’s gray and misty everywhere. But you’re right that we have a goal today.”

  He sat down again and filled his cup with the last of the coffee before continuing.

  “Hansson. Do you remember him?”

  Linda shook her head.

  “I didn’t think you would. He’s another one of my colleagues. Now he’s about to sell his parents’ house outside Tomelilla. His mother has been dea
d a long time, but his father turned a hundred and one before he went. According to Hansson he was clear-headed and mean-spirited to the end. But the house is up for sale and I want to take a look at it. If Hansson hasn’t been exaggerating, it may just be what I’m looking for.”

  There was a breeze but it was warm. When they drove past a long caravan of well-polished vintage cars, Linda surprised her father by recognizing most of the models.

  “Since when do you know about cars?’

  “Since my last boyfriend, Magnus.”

  “I thought his name was Ludwig.”

  “You have to keep up, Dad. Anyway, isn’t Tomelilla all wrong for you? I thought you wanted to sit on a bench with your faithful dog, looking out over the sea.”

  “I don’t have that kind of money. I’ll have to settle for the next-best thing.”

  “You could get a loan from Mom. Her golf-playing banker is pretty loaded.”

  “Never in a million years.”

  “I could borrow it for you.”

  “Never.”

  “No view of the sea for you, then.”

  Linda glanced at her father. Was he angry? She couldn’t decide. But she realized this was also something they had in common, flare-ups of irritation, a tendency to be hurt by almost nothing. Sometimes we are so close and other times it’s like a crevasse has opened up between us. And then we have to build rickety bridges that usually manage to connect us again.

  He took a piece of folded paper from his pocket.

  “Map,” he said. “Give me the directions. We’re going to get to the roundabout at the top of the page soon. I know we go in the direction of Kristianstad but you’ll have to guide me from there.”

  “I’m going to trick you into Småland,” she said and unfolded the paper. “Tingsryd? Does that sound good? We’ll never find our way back from there.”