The Axe Woman, page 33
But Barbarotti did not raise his eyes; it was not that kind of clarity he was seeking, but the inner variety.
Once this delicate undertaking was complete and the sausage balloon had risen out of view above the treetops, he made three phone calls.
The first was to Inger Berglund in Midsommarkransen. She confessed to being surprised to hear from him again – and all the more so when she heard what he wanted. But after casting her mind back twenty-three years in time, she recollected that it was exactly as he suggested. It had in fact been that very spring and summer that the remarkable thing came into being, and she assumed there was no point asking what he was hoping to achieve.
Inger Berglund was quite right on that point. He thanked her, wished her a pleasant summer and ended the call. Then he moved on to Billy Helgesson.
It took a while to get hold of him. He was on a building site out near Saltsjöbaden and didn’t really have time to talk.
‘Five minutes?’ proposed Barbarotti.
‘OK, but no more,’ Billy Helgesson agreed.
Three would have covered it, registered Barbarotti when the call was over.
The last of the three calls went to a company called Pooly Co. Ltd, which by some quirk of fate had survived in Kymlinge for more than twenty-five years. A branch of it, at any rate; the head office was in Gothenburg. He spoke to someone called Wetterström, who couldn’t tell him anything straight off, but said he would have a ferret through some files and have a word with a couple of colleagues who had been around in those days. He could ring back the next day, if that would do?
Barbarotti said it would do nicely, thanked him and hung up.
Having ticked off his three calls, he sat there for a while longer and tried to draw some conclusions. He found himself thinking that what he had said to Backman about needing to have people in front of your eyes didn’t apply invariably. Not strictly speaking; if you had met them already, asking for a bit of supplementary information over the phone could work quite well. As long as you knew who you were talking to.
Satisfied with his morning’s fishing in those murky waters, he put his shoes back on, went down to sign out a car from the police pool and took a punt on a visit to the Autumn Sun Retirement Home.
And it was on his way back from his chat with Hasse Fridolin Hansson that Barbarotti almost bought his first evening paper for five years. Had he done so, it would have been from Tadpole’s kiosk on Vattugatan, where any passer-by could see that Aftonbladet and Expressen were for once in agreement on the hottest news story of the day:
HITLER LIVED IN SOUTH OF SWEDEN
UNTIL 1950S. SENSATIONAL REVELATIONS
IN NEW BESTSELLER
ran Expressen’s placard.
ADOLF HITLER’S SECRET GRANDCHILD WRITES
SENSATIONAL NEW SWEDISH NOVEL
announced Aftonbladet.
Barbarotti braked to a halt by the kiosk. He rubbed his eyes, shook his head and slowly took in the fact that Axel Wallman had not been on the run from some kind of institution when their paths crossed at the airport. Instead it seemed to be . . . well, not to put too fine a point on it, some kind of reality: the literary super-agent with his yellow suit, straw hat and cane. As loud and charming a schemer as the villain in some old Danish film. How could it be possible?
Bettina Braun? Hitler in Skåne? The third rebus?
Why am I surprised? sighed Gunnar Barbarotti, letting out the clutch and driving on. The world is a theatre and people want to be taken in – that’s the simple truth.
And who could blame the madcap Wallman? Stories are better than history.
There is no remembrance of former things; neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after.
Axel Wallman knew what he was doing, and the old Preacher of Ecclesiastes had seen it all before.
The German whist tournament at Villa Pickford that lovely summer’s evening lasted two hours and twenty minutes, all told – because everyone had to play everyone and the result had to be conclusive. They started straight after dinner, and by the time they had the final result it was past midnight. But since school was winding right down in anticipation of the end of term the following week, nobody had any objection. Johan wasn’t on the early shift at his espresso bar the next morning, and the inspector’s meeting with his boss wasn’t until eleven o’clock.
And they were good hours. There were moments when he could sense the spirit of Marianne hovering above them. Smiling down at them from her cloud. It was claiming a lot, maybe, but he could tell that the rest of them were aware of it, too. That’s amazing, he thought. Thank you.
But they were only moments. And the whole evening was a walk across thin ice, of course; there were surface tensions and gaping cracks, but they were still taking steps in the right direction.
The tournament itself didn’t turn out very favourably for the head of the family. Villa Pickford’s rules for German whist allocated points, as for chess; a game could end with either a 1–0 victory for one of the players or, in the case of an equal number of tricks to each, which was more common than you might have thought, in 0.5–0.5. With six people taking part, that meant a total of fifteen games, five each, and when Lars, barely concealing his delight, read out the final scores, he was the winner. He had scraped together four points. Sara and Johan were in joint second place with three, Martin came fourth with 2.5, Jenny fifth with 1.5 and Dad Gunnar was sixth and last, with a single measly point.
Conclusive, just like they wanted it.
The boys took themselves off to bed straight afterwards, but despite the lateness of the hour, he stayed downstairs with Jenny and Sara for a while, and he soon became aware there was a closeness between them that he had not seen before.
His daughter, Marianne’s daughter. There were six years between them, but it made no difference. It was very evident that there was a bond between them, an affinity. The realization that it was not only wishful thinking on his part almost brought tears to his eyes, and he decided to leave them in peace. As he climbed the stairs he took one last glance at the two girls in their wicker chairs in the bay window overlooking the lake, wrapped in blankets and the light summer darkness, nursing big cups of tea, and there was no doubt in his mind that they were under the protection of both Marianne and Our Lord.
These mood swings, he thought to himself. This sense of hope and trust that comes and goes as it will. As slippery as a bar of soap, he had thought many times before.
When he got to bed, he turned to Psalms and read numbers twenty-three and ninety-one.
Then he put out the light and turned on his side to sleep.
Five minutes later, with the time probably already after one, he switched it back on again. His body felt as if it had relaxed into sleep mode, but not his brain. He scrabbled for the case files lying on the floor beside the bed and started leafing through them.
At a quarter to two he finally found a name.
Börje Granat.
He got up, switched on his computer and went to one of the online directories.
And hey presto, there it was: the man appeared to be alive and still living in Kymlinge. His address was in Lilla Smedgränd and he had two phone numbers, a landline and a mobile.
Given the time, Gunnar Barbarotti accepted that further action would have to wait until the next day. He noted the particulars on a piece of paper and went back to bed.
Börje Granat is another person who won’t be running away, he thought.
50
‘Three forty-five point nine,’ said Asunander. ‘Does that mean anything to you?’
‘Sounds like a fifteen-hundred-metre race time,’ said Barbarotti.
‘Dead right,’ said Asunander. ‘I never got below three fifty-five, and that’s three seconds slower than Gunder Hägg. But then I gave it up before I was twenty-one.’
‘Oh, did you?’ said Barbarotti. He’s really lost the plot this time, he thought.
‘Never came in at under one fifty in the eight hundred, either, but I had promise, I want you to remember that. Exceptional promise.’
‘I’m sure you did,’ said Barbarotti. ‘But I was under the impression we were going to talk about these cases I’ve been working on, and why you put me on them in the first place—’
‘We’re coming to that,’ Asunander interrupted. ‘But if it hadn’t been for my brief career in athletics, you wouldn’t be sitting where you are today.’
For a few seconds Barbarotti cast around for some comment to make, but failed to find one.
‘Middle-distance,’ Asunander continued unruffled, with a slightly far-away look in his eyes. ‘The blue-riband events of the sport, as they’re known . . . or actually I think that’s just the fifteen hundred metres. Well, anyway, I was very involved in running, as a junior. I trained hard and competed for my home club in Halmstad. The reason I gave it up so early was that I started having problems with my periosteum. My periosteum and my knees. I would have carried on otherwise.’
‘Hmm,’ said Barbarotti.
‘There’s a time for everything,’ observed Asunander, leaning across his desk. ‘But this is where we find the reason for my asking you to look over the Morinder and Burma cases. Particularly the latter, but I wasn’t in a position to make that entirely plain from the start unfortunately.’
‘Not entirely plain from the start?’ queried Barbarotti. ‘I’m inclined to agree with you on that.’
Asunander appeared to be thinking. ‘How can I put it? You see, what we’re dealing with here is . . .’
‘Yes,’ said Barbarotti.
‘Hrrm,’ said Asunander. ‘We’re talking about a matter of a very private nature.’
‘I was starting to think it must be,’ said Barbarotti.
Asunander gave him a long look. ‘Oh, you were, were you?’ he said with a hint of doubt in his voice. ‘But never mind, anyway. It’s the year 1968 we’re concerned with, the year I gave up running . . . although that was later, after the summer. I was twenty, and we had this exchange with an East German club. Dresden, the most badly bombed of all German cities at the end of the war, but by the sixties they had at least got their sports going again.’
He broke off for a moment, to check that Barbarotti was listening. Barbarotti nodded.
‘We went there in the autumn of 1967, and in May 1968 they came up to Halmstad to pay a return visit. Training and a few competitions, and general promotion of good relations. I don’t know how your knowledge of history serves you, but May 1968 was quite a tumultuous month. Practically a revolution in Paris, student demonstrations everywhere . . . yes, the leftist movement of ’68 is a concept that ought to have filtered down to everybody, even if they weren’t there. And then we had those young athletes visiting us for two weeks.’
He paused again, looking at Barbarotti for renewed assurance.
‘I’m with you,’ said Barbarotti. ‘I was only eight, but I’m familiar with what was going on. In broad outline, at any rate.’
‘Good,’ said Asunander. ‘And that was when I went and fell in love.’
Barbarotti surreptitiously pinched his arm to check that he was awake.
‘Her name was Regina. Sprint and long jump, not a middle-distance runner like me. They were kept under close supervision, of course, but one evening we did it. It wasn’t allowed of course, we were taking a huge risk, especially her.’
‘You did it?’ queried Barbarotti. ‘You mean the good relations went, er, a bit further than intended?’
‘I’m not giving you any details,’ said Asunander tetchily. ‘Suffice it to say that things happened, and two days later she went back to Dresden. I haven’t seen her since. You’re familiar with something called the Iron Curtain perhaps?’
Barbarotti made no answer. Asunander broke off again and looked out of the window.
‘I’ve only got two weeks left in this job,’ he said. ‘I feel I can take a few liberties.’
He was clearly waiting for Barbarotti to comment. Or to say something, at least, and for the first time ever Barbarotti felt obliged to give his boss a helping hand. Felt he was . . . imploring him, somehow.
‘What happened?’ he asked. ‘I mean, you’ve got to tell me how all this ties up with what went on at Little Burma twenty years later . . . or however long it was. Twenty-one?’
Asunander nodded. Stood up, did a circuit of the room and sat down again.
‘And if I tell you that the girl’s name was Regina Peters, does that ring any bells?’
‘Peters?’ said Barbarotti. ‘Wait a minute . . .’
‘I’m waiting,’ said Asunander.
‘Juliana Peters. I met her in Stockholm last week. She’s married to Billy Helgesson, the boy from Little Burma.’
‘Quite right,’ said Asunander. ‘Can you see any resemblance?’
‘What?’ said Barbarotti.
‘Resemblance,’ repeated Asunander. ‘I asked if you could see any resemblance.’
‘Yes, I heard you,’ said Barbarotti. ‘Resemblance between what?’
‘Between her and me, of course,’ said Asunander. ‘She’s my daughter.’
There was silence for a full five seconds. Barbarotti had no idea what was going through the chief inspector’s head, but in his own it felt rather as if a fuse had blown. Or even two.
‘Your daughter,’ he finally managed to say. ‘I didn’t think you had any children.’
‘Nor did I,’ said Asunander. ‘Until a few months ago, that is. That was when I had a letter from Regina Peters . . . who I was with just that once, forty-four years ago. It wasn’t my sexual debut, but very nearly, incidentally. And she got pregnant, you see. Gave birth to a daughter in Dresden in February 1969, and now – well, now it’s coming home to her that she probably won’t live forever, she’s decided that it’s time to put me in the picture. She also told me they’d had quite a hard life, she and her daughter, but now she’s in a sound financial position. Regina, that is. That was exactly how she put it: “in a sound financial position”. In German of course, but I happen to speak the language.’
‘Did you get in touch with her?’ asked Barbarotti. I guessed javelin thrower, he thought. But she was a sprinter. I need to sharpen up my act.
Asunander shook his head. ‘She was adamant that she didn’t want any contact. She has another family and it would only cause problems, she claimed. But she wanted me to know of Juliana’s existence. Especially as the girl moved to Sweden some years ago.’
He leant back and crossed his arms.
‘And Juliana?’ asked Barbarotti. ‘Have you . . . have you contacted her?’
An expression he had never seen on his superior’s face before was slowly spreading across Asunander’s features. Summer skies, thought Barbarotti. Yes, exactly that – naked, all its defences down, those dense, virtually impenetrable defences that he had developed over almost forty years as a police detective. But now the mask was cracking wide open. Several peculiar seconds elapsed.
‘I don’t know if I dare,’ said Asunander eventually. ‘I know I’ve got to, but I thought I’d wait for my pension first.’
‘Probably just as well,’ said Barbarotti and swallowed.
‘I set about locating her, with nothing to go on beyond that name in the letter, but it wasn’t difficult of course. And then . . . well, I found out she was married to Billy Helgesson, of all people. They have a daughter, but you know that. Since I was feeling a bit paralysed by indecision, I started looking through the old investigation – and the Morinder one: totally deplorable, the pair of them, I hope you’ve realized that. And as I was going through, I could see that events may well not have unfolded the way people assumed. Once I’d read it all through a couple of times, I found I could just as easily visualize a completely different scenario.’
‘Namely?’ asked Barbarotti.
Asunander tugged at both his earlobes before he answered.
‘Namely, that it wasn’t our infamous axe woman who killed and dismembered her husband.’
Barbarotti waited, his face giving nothing away.
‘It was that damn boy who did it.’
Barbarotti cleared his throat. ‘I understand what you’re saying,’ he said. ‘And I can see the problem. Well, it was the axe woman who did the chopping up, I can promise you that, but as for the murder . . .’
Asunander leant across the desk and glowered. His expression this time was more than familiar. Less summer skies, more thunderstorm in the dark.
‘Well, what do you say?’ he said. ‘You must see that I . . .’
‘Yes?’
‘That I want to know whether my daughter’s married to a murderer or not?’
Barbarotti tried to muster his thoughts. He felt a sudden sense of frustration at not having been provided with this information from the start, but realized almost instantaneously that he could accept Asunander’s tactics. What was more, he thought, it basically wouldn’t have changed anything if I had known. Not helped matters, anyway; in fact it could have got in the way.
Asunander must somehow be reading his thoughts, because he let out a deep sigh and put up his hands. ‘I’m sorry if you feel I’ve pulled the wool over your eyes, but I thought things would work better this way. And that wretched Morinder business deserved another look, regardless. Damn it, I couldn’t simply go and start digging around in all this on my own.’
Why not? Barbarotti wondered, but suppressed that objection, too.
‘You have a grandchild, too,’ he pointed out, without really knowing why. ‘Julia. You haven’t just gained a daughter, you’ve become a grandfather as well.’
And suddenly a smile spread across Asunander’s face. Barbarotti had never seen anything like it before, and he couldn’t help feeling somehow . . . moved?
‘I know,’ said Asunander. ‘They’re . . .’
