Open Grave: A Mystery (Ann Lindell Mysteries)

by Kjell Eriksson

  “That’s nice,” said Lindell with a smile. “Then you don’t need me.”

  “A little later perhaps?” said Bengtsson.

  Lindell nodded and smiled again.

  Bengtsson smiled back, turned his head, and saw how Sammy Nilsson was backing away from the journalists with a dismissive gesture.

  “Karnehagen from Aftonbladet,” said Bengtsson, “and a new star from Expressen.”

  “Do you have any coffee with you?”

  Bengtsson nodded toward his van.

  Lindell, Bengtsson, and Nilsson then had their coffee in peace and quiet, talking about this and that, and Bengtsson’s impending retirement.

  On the sidewalk outside was the tabloid press.

  * * *

  “There are no excuses for the laxity you have shown. Two uniformed policemen came here and then nothing happens.”

  “What should we have done, do you think?” asked Sammy Nilsson. “Cordoned off the block, called in the marines?”

  They had talked for ten minutes with Bertram von Ohler and both police officers felt they had no business being there.

  The professor stared at Nilsson.

  “Perhaps we can speak with your … employee,” said Lindell.

  “Why is that?”

  “Perhaps she has seen or heard something of interest?”

  “And what would that be?”

  Lindell smiled. Nobel Prize winner, she thought.

  “I don’t want you to worry Agnes, she is extremely sensitive.”

  * * *

  Agnes Andersson did not look at all worried. She was sitting straight-backed on the other side of the gigantic kitchen table, her hands folded in front of her. She mostly resembled an aged confirmand who was waiting for a question from Bible history. A question that she knew in advance and would manage splendidly.

  “What an amazing kitchen,” said Lindell, “so well organized.”

  “Thank you,” said Agnes.

  Lindell let her eyes sweep again over the walls and cabinets.

  “How long have you worked here?”

  “Fifty-five years. I came here in 1953.”

  There was something familiar about Agnes Andersson, thought Lindell. Had they met previously?

  “As a young girl,” Lindell noted, inspecting the woman before her a little more carefully.

  How old could she be? Over seventy, at a guess. The protruding eyes looked fixedly at Lindell.

  “Before, there was more to do,” said Agnes, “and then there were more of us too. Now it’s just the professor and me.”

  “But you can’t very well clean the whole house yourself?”

  “Oh yes, but three times a year my sister comes and helps out. At Christmas, in May when the apple trees are blooming, and now in the fall.”

  Lindell tried to imagine what it would be like to vacuum, dust, and mop fourteen rooms and kitchen, but couldn’t. Just polishing all the copper forms that were hanging on the walls must take at least a week.

  “My sister likes apple blossoms very much,” the woman added.

  Lindell tried to imagine what it might be like to have a sister who liked apple blossoms, but couldn’t do that either.

  “You must be a strong woman,” said Lindell unexpectedly.

  Agnes Andersson moved her head almost imperceptibly.

  “I’ll take a look in the garden,” said Sammy, slipping out the kitchen door without waiting for any comment from Lindell.

  “I mean, to run a household of this size basically alone.”

  “I’m used to it,” said Agnes.

  Lindell smiled, and to her surprise the woman answered with a smile.

  “The professor must have quite a few guests too.”

  “Not anymore. He wants to take it a little easier.”

  “What do you think about what happened? I mean the stone-throwing and then the threat in the mailbox this morning.”

  “What should one think?” Agnes replied after a few seconds of reflection. “If you ask me I think it’s just some rowdy kids, schoolboy pranks.”

  “Have there been threatening phone calls too?”

  “Not that I know,” said Agnes, and for the first time during the conversation she looked a trifle uncertain.

  “You haven’t noticed anything unusual recently?”

  Agnes shook her head. Just then it occurred to her what made Agnes Andersson so familiar. It was the dialect she didn’t really manage to conceal. Fifty-five years in Uppsala had rubbed off most of it but like a shadow from the past the Gräsö dialect was there.

  “You weren’t born in Uppsala, were you?”

  “Gräsö,” said Agnes.

  Lindell wanted to ask if she knew Viola, but refrained. Obviously she knew Viola, probably everyone did on Gräsö, just like everyone knew, or knew of, Munkargrundarn and other features on the island.

  Viola, whom she had gotten to know through Edvard Risberg, the man she met during a murder investigation ten years ago. He had gotten a divorce, moved to Gräsö, rented the top floor of Viola’s old archipelago homestead, and he and Ann had started a relationship. Later, when she got pregnant with another man, the relationship fell apart. The biggest mistake of her life, she might think, always with a bad conscience, as her son Erik was her great joy. But Erik would have been Edvard’s too, that was a thought Ann could not let go of and suffered from. One night’s lack of judgment and she was punished by losing the man she loved so deeply.

  She knew that she would never experience that passion again. Edvard was there like a thorn in her heart. She had talked with Anders Brant about him, but always in that relaxed way you are expected to do where old relationships are concerned. Perhaps he understood anyway that he could never fully replace Edvard?

  Reminded about Viola by Agnes’s dialect, however faint, was to travel along a painful path. It was like looking out through a train window and reliving a beautiful, familiar landscape but not being given the opportunity to stop and get out and experience it close up once again. She would never be able to sleep with Edvard again. Never feel him cuddle up next to her. Never hear Viola rummaging in the kitchen on the ground floor, making morning coffee and sandwiches for her and Edvard.

  Agnes was observing her. Ann felt caught and made an effort to come back to the present.

  “Can you imagine anyone who wishes the professor harm?”

  “That would be Bunde then, the neighbor,” said Agnes, tossing her head. “He’s the one who has an article in Upsala Nya today. The associate professor, he lives one house over, is probably not too pleased with the professor, but he wouldn’t hurt a fly. He’s a man of peace. He’s the one who has the high tower you see. He grows olives and a lot of other things.”

  Ann turned her head and through the window she glimpsed a glass cupola. She knew that the associate professor had been a colleague of Bertram von Ohler. The professor had pointed out the associate professor as the instigator of the article in the newspaper, and that although Torben Bunde wrote it, that did not affect the matter. The associate professor was surely behind the skull in the mailbox too, Ohler thought.

  Lindell had not read the article that Agnes was talking about, not even noticed it when she quickly leafed through the newspaper that morning. It was Göte Bengtsson who mentioned it and said that it actually did not add anything new, and was more an account of what was being said in Germany and other places. Bunde was well informed according to Bengtsson and unusually temperate, but could not keep from slipping in a few spiteful remarks in the last paragraph about what a duck pond Sweden was, and in an ingenious way Bunde made Professor von Ohler a victim of provincial narrow-mindedness. Being known at a regional hospital in Sweden does not necessarily mean that you should be rewarded with the Nobel Prize, he had concluded.

  Bengtsson had pointed out where the author of the article lived and Ann Lindell had on several occasions seen a face visible in the windows.

  “A real wasp’s nest,” she let out.

  Agn
es smiled carefully.

  “And then we have the Germans,” she continued, and Lindell saw how the old woman was becoming increasingly exhilarated, her eyes glistened, her hands came up from the table and she underscored each word with cautious gestures.

  “The Germans have never liked the professor. And vice versa.”

  She told about the article that had been published in some German magazine and how the professor had become hopping mad, first carrying on “like a brigand,” then collapsing on the library couch, stunned and silent, barely responsive.

  “I was worried for a while, thought about calling his daughter. He is an old man after all and his heart can give out at any time.”

  Lindell nodded as if she completely understood Agnes’s analysis.

  “But perhaps Birgitta would make everything worse,” said Agnes in a gruff voice.

  There was something of Viola in the woman. Perhaps some kind of female Gräsö gene? The thought amused Lindell and she smiled carefully.

  “There are two sons too, I’ve understood.”

  Agnes smacked her lips.

  “Abraham and Carl,” she said. “I watched them grow up. I shined their shoes.”

  Lindell let the words sink in before she continued.

  “Perhaps you’ll think I’m impertinent, but what is he like as an employer?”

  “I take care of myself,” said Agnes.

  “But the professor too, right?”

  “That may be,” Agnes replied, and Lindell did not know what she should believe, whether the gruffness was directed at her or at the professor.

  She heard voices from the yard and thought she could identify Sammy’s, but was not sure.

  “I should thank you,” she said.

  “It was nothing,” said Agnes, getting up.

  Lindell did the same. They remained standing a moment on each side of the table.

  “I’ll use the kitchen exit, like my associate. Maybe I can take a few apples?”

  Agnes rounded the table, opened a drawer, and took out a plastic bag which she gave to Lindell.

  “You probably know that Viola is not well,” Agnes said suddenly, when Lindell was standing with her hand on the doorknob.

  She stared at Agnes.

  “How did you know—”

  “My sister Greta keeps track of everything,” Agnes explained.

  “You knew that I—”

  “You’re the police officer from Uppsala who associated with Edvard, yes. I recognized your name. I’ve known Viola my whole life. I’ve met Edvard too. A good person.”

  Lindell bowed her head and got an impulse to hide her face with the plastic bag.

  “She’s very weak,” said Agnes. “Greta went to see her yesterday. Viola doesn’t want to go to the hospital. Edvard will be with her. He’s like a son.”

  Lindell nodded, incapable of saying anything.

  “I’ll call Greta and tell her that you send greetings to Viola,” Agnes decided.

  “Thanks,” whispered Lindell. “I didn’t know.”

  She opened the door and stepped out into the garden. The wind took hold of the plastic bag and it fluttered away before it got stuck on a branch.

  Lindell saw Sammy Nilsson standing by the boundary of the lot talking with a man in the neighboring yard. Laughter was heard. It was Sammy’s specialty, easy talk while at the same time taking in a little information.

  Ann pulled down the bag, hesitated before the various apples. There were yellow-green oblong ones, another variety was bright red, while a third was blotchy and vaguely conical. She was enticed by the red ones, reached out and picked a few.

  She filled the whole bag with a mixture of each variety, before she stopped. She was actually at work and was surely being observed by the neighbors. She set down the bag, leaning it against a trunk, and went over to Sammy.

  The man he was conversing with was red-cheeked and actually somewhat red-eyed too. Lindell suspected that it was because the wind on this side of the house was blowing firmly.

  “Now I know everything about spruce needles,” said Sammy.

  Lindell did not understand what he meant and had no desire to know either, but she nodded toward the man on the other side of the fence. He nodded back and gave her a long look, as if he recognized her but could not place the face.

  “Shall we get going?”

  “Nice to meet you,” said Sammy, and Lindell was getting mortally tired of all the heartiness.

  “Perhaps we have to talk a little with the associate professor too,” she said irritated when they had walked a few meters.

  “What’s with you? Was she surly, the domestic servant?”

  “Not at all,” Lindell said.

  “My old man was almost pure sunshine,” said Sammy.

  “That’s nice. Did he have anything to offer? What do you mean, almost?”

  “He said that he knew of the professor, but no more than that. But then he said something that made me wonder, that Ohler has always been an oppressor, vermin. Those are really strong words.”

  “Agnes knows Viola and Edvard on Gräsö,” said Lindell.

  “I’ll be damned! It’s a small world.”

  “Gräsö is small,” said Lindell.

  “I wonder what he meant by vermin?”

  “Viola is really ill.”

  “Go out and see her then,” said Sammy thoughtlessly.

  Yes, maybe I should do that, she thought. She would probably be happy. I’m sure I would cry the whole time and Viola would be the one who would have to console.

  “Shall we go see the associate professor?”

  Sammy nodded and cast a glance backward, before they rounded the corner of the house. Yet another car was now parked on the street.

  “We’ll have to bring Moberg here,” said Sammy.

  Anthony Moberg was a particularly zealous traffic cop, with zero social skills and the one who used the most parking ticket forms in the whole department, perhaps in the whole country.

  “Shall we see the associate professor?” Lindell repeated in such an expressionless voice that Sammy stopped and turned toward her.

  “Forget about Gräsö now,” he said, without being able to conceal his irritation.

  “Okay, I’ll cheer up,” said Lindell, giving him a crooked smile. “It’s just such a shock to be reminded.”

  “Shock,” muttered Sammy Nilsson, but he seemed appeased and jogged over toward the journalists who now were thronging by the gate in full force, except for Bengtsson.

  “We’ll do the phone trick,” he mumbled.

  He opened the gate and smiled at the assembled press.

  “Ann Lindell will tell you a little,” he said, slinking off.

  She swept her eyes over the flock before she started to perform her spiel.

  “Yes, as you know we have received reports that Professor von Ohler has been subjected to a number of villainies”—where did she get that word from?—“and because he has received so much attention, both in Sweden and abroad, in connection with the Nobel Prize, we obviously take seriously—”

  “What does Professor von Ohler think about this?” asked Liselott Karnehagen, the woman from Aftonbladet, taking out her pocket recorder.

  “What does he think?”

  Karnehagen nodded eagerly.

  “You’ll have to ask him that,” said Lindell.

  At the same moment a shrill whistle was heard. They all turned around. Sammy was standing by the associate professor’s gate gesturing. With exaggerated movements he pointed at his cell phone.

  “Excuse me,” said Lindell, pushing her way forward, “evidently there’s a call I have to take.”

  She set off at a rapid pace and reached the associate professor’s gate before the throng of journalists realized what had happened. Göte Bengtsson started his van and rolled off, giving a thumb’s-up as he passed Lindell and Nilsson.

  * * *

  “Associate Professor Gregor Johansson,” Lindell noted on her pad, and it struc
k her that he was the first associate professor she had spoken with. The one she had encountered previously was in a state of decomposition.

  Something also smelled in the living associate professor’s house, not rotten, but she got a faint sense of the untidy, the unaired.

  “Why don’t we go up in the tower,” said Johansson.

  Sammy and Lindell gave each other a look. Neither of them wanted a lecture on orchids or some other exciting species, but they could not say no, the man was obviously delighted at the thought of letting their conversation take place under glass. Perhaps he wanted to show them how well he had arranged it? He radiated loneliness and Lindell had nothing against keeping him company for a while.

  “That would be exciting,” said Sammy.

  They climbed up, the associate professor in the lead, eagerly talking about when and how he had his tower constructed, while Lindell thought about Viola. Was she on her deathbed? Agnes’s choice of words might suggest that. She was not a person who exaggerated, dramatized about death, Lindell was sure of that. Agnes seemed to possess a kind of stripped-down, unsentimental attitude to hers and other people’s lives, just like Viola. So when she said, “Edvard will be with her” it could mean that the end was near for the old woman.

  Lindell sighed. Sammy gave her a worried look and reached out his hand to support her as she climbed up into the tower.

  “Yes, I must say, the view is good,” he said.

  The associate professor nodded.

  “For the annual fireworks in the Botanical Gardens I usually sit here with a glass of wine.”

  “What beautiful plants!” Lindell exclaimed. “And an olive tree! Do you see, Sammy? Olives! And lemons. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it.”

  Pride made the associate professor’s skinny cheeks twitch. It was obvious that he didn’t know how to react to this enthusiastic and wholehearted praise.

  “That was kind,” he was finally able to say.

  Lindell was happy that they had taken the trouble to come up. The tower gave an overview of the block. This is where the drama is playing out, she thought, amused and slightly energized. The former colleague and now bitter enemy, the associate professor who apparently calmly observes everything from above: the neighbor Bunde, whom they had only glimpsed like a moray in its hole, prepared to strike again with its sharp teeth at any moment; the red-eyed gardener in the neighboring yard who with his tirade about “vermin” and “oppressors” was the strange bird in this academic wasp’s nest; the “Germans,” this frightening people who were only jealous that they did not have a Nobel Prize to either award or receive; Agnes, with a half century of experiences, with slow cooking and shiny copper pans, who certainly knew more about Bertram von Ohler than he did himself.