The Root of Evil

by Håkan Nesser

  ‘What’s his problem with bakers?’ asked Barbarotti.

  ‘No idea,’ said Backman. ‘But he can fall out with absolutely anybody, if he chooses to.’

  Barbarotti’s mobile rang. He looked at the display. ‘Sorrysen,’ he said. ‘Right, prepare yourself for news of a breakthrough.’

  Breakthrough was a bit of an exaggeration.

  One small step in the right direction was nearer the mark.

  ‘We’ve found the holiday home the Malmgrens were renting.’

  ‘Good,’ said Barbarotti. ‘And where is it?’

  ‘Finistère. Twenty kilometres or so from Quimper,’ said Sorrysen. ‘If you know where that is.’

  ‘I think so,’ said Barbarotti. ‘More or less.’

  ‘A hamlet called Mousterlin,’ said Sorrysen. ‘The nearest slightly larger place is Foosnong, or however it’s pronounced.’

  Barbarotti thought it sounded like a sneeze. ‘How’s that spelt?’ he asked.

  ‘F-o-u-e-s-n-a-n-t,’ said Sorrysen.

  ‘Got you,’ said Barbarotti. ‘How did you find out?’

  ‘Some bloke rang us,’ said Sorrysen. ‘He runs an agency in Gothenburg that rents out houses in France. Mainly Brittany, it seems. He’s been away on holiday himself this August, but when he got home and saw the papers he checked his computer. And found the Malmgrens. They rented that house in Mousterlin for three weeks in June and July 2002.’

  Barbarotti digested this. ‘What else did he have to say?’

  ‘Not much,’ said Sorrysen. ‘But we haven’t interviewed him formally yet. He only rang us two hours ago, so he’s coming in tomorrow.’

  ‘And it was only Henrik and Katarina Malmgren who stayed there? Not any of the others?’

  ‘We don’t know. And this agent doesn’t know either. He’s going to try to find out from the owner of the house down there. It’s a six-bed property, though, so it’s not impossible.’

  ‘Just imagine if they had,’ said Barbarotti after he had thanked Sorrysen and passed the news on to Backman. ‘If the whole gang was staying under the same roof.’

  Eva Backman thought about it.

  ‘Why on earth would they do that?’ she said. ‘I mean, they didn’t even know each other, I thought we’d established that?’

  ‘Maybe the Malmgrens went in for a bit of sub-letting?’ suggested Barbarotti. ‘On the Internet or something, people can do that, can’t they?’

  ‘Would you want to share a cottage with four strangers on your summer holiday?’ said Backman. ‘I’d rather stay at home.’

  ‘I wouldn’t do it,’ said Barbarotti. ‘And nor would you. But you never know. Maybe they needed a cheap holiday?’

  ‘He was a senior lecturer and she was an anaesthetic nurse.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ said Barbarotti. ‘You win. They didn’t all stay in the same house.’

  ‘No need to be down in the mouth about it,’ said Eva Backman. ‘All we’ve got to do is wait for some other agents to get back from holiday and read the papers. Don’t you think?’

  ‘Waiting is one thing we’re good at,’ said Barbarotti, gathering up the photos on his lap and putting them away. ‘What are you doing tomorrow?’

  ‘Spending it with my nearest and dearest,’ she said. ‘The whole circus is coming home today. And not before time – rumour has it the school term starts on Monday.’

  Barbarotti felt a sudden pang in his heart. Start of term? Why couldn’t Sara have been born a year later? Then he, too, would have had a start of term to anticipate.

  Must ring her tonight, he thought. I bet she’s been wondering why she never hears from me.

  Or maybe it would be better to wait until tomorrow? When all was said and done. Sunday morning; this was Saturday night, and he didn’t feel at all like listening to that smoky chink of bottles all over again. Not remotely.

  Perhaps he’d be better off devoting a bit of time to Our Lord this evening? Surely He was the one sitting on his throne of clouds and wondering why he never heard from that nice detective inspector from Kymlinge these days?

  Yes, that was definitely the way it was.

  31

  But in the end, neither of these happened.

  Neither the chat to Sara, nor the chat to Our Lord. By the time Eva Backman dropped him outside the entrance of the flats in Baldersgatan – having first seen Astor Nilsson onto the Gothenburg train – it was twenty past eight. He was as hungry as a wolf and realized there was precious little in the fridge for him to get his teeth into.

  A few scraps of cheese and ham, an egg or two and a dubious half litre of milk, if he remembered rightly. Not worth even going up to check.

  So he took a stroll to the Rocksta Grill, bought his usual two frankfurters with mash and pickled-gherkin mayonnaise and, since he had his briefcase to lug about with him, sat down on a nearby bench in the park round the fire station while he devoured his supper.

  And as he did so, the investigation naturally started running riot inside his head. Or carried on doing so, to be more accurate. It was as persistent as a cracked rib or a bad toothache.

  All those victims. All those letters.

  All the fruitless interviews and all the sprawling effort expended. France? What had Sorrysen said that place was called? Mosterline? He decided to look it up in an atlas as soon as he got home.

  And what was the significance of the killer having rung two of the victims but not the rest? If that really was the case. Or had he used other untraceable numbers for the Malmgrens and Erik Bergman? If he needed to contact them before he killed them.

  And yesterday evening’s grotesque scene out in the middle of the field wasn’t easy to put out of his mind, either. Had the perpetrator envisaged it all when he positioned his victim’s body? Had he had a mental image of it looking more or less like that? Did he actually want the body to be semi-massacred by a combine harvester? On a lovely warm August evening with the moon in the last quarter? Was there some meaning to it all? And if so – what sort of pervert were they dealing with here, for goodness’ sake?

  Inspector Barbarotti took a bite of frankfurter, focused his mind and pushed the questions away. Here I am on a park bench for my Saturday night dinner, he thought. Frankfurters and mash from a kiosk. That’s what I’ve achieved in my forty-seven-year-old life.

  Oh well, it was another beautiful evening and the food wasn’t bad. Then his thoughts turned to Marianne, thoughts that seemed to flow in automatically as soon as he cleared some space. They flew into his dazed brain like a dove of peace and love from an entirely foreign continent. A whole flock of doves, to be more accurate. They wheeled within him, filling every last cranny. Strange image, but that was the way with his mental capacities nowadays. He shook his head to get rid of the birds. Once we’re actually married, he thought instead, I won’t have to eat frankfurters on a park bench again for the rest of my life.

  Because that’s what will happen, surely? It’ll be her and me?

  Perhaps this is actually the last time? As the thought struck him, he swallowed down his doubts and his last bit of sausage simultaneously. The very last time?

  He scraped his cardboard tray clean of mash and mayonnaise, too, crumpled it up and jammed it in the litter bin. He realized the meal had left him thirsty, and decided on a beer at the Elk before heading home.

  Seeing as he was already out and about.

  The one beer turned into three.

  There were reasons for that. Two of his old schoolfriends, Sigurd Sollén and Victor Emanuelsson, had both found themselves single again and were having a night on the town. As the saying went. Spying Barbarotti, they insisted he join them to chew over the faults of their old teachers for a while. He would be able to remind them of any they had happened to forget.

  A good hour went by, and Sigurd Sollén started to get a bit carried away and wanted them to talk about the murder mystery of the decade instead. He had a few tips and ideas that he’d happily share. But a few questions, as well.

/>   Barbarotti downed his last mouthful of beer for the evening and assured Sollén and Emanuelsson that they would get every last detail served up to them in the second volume of his memoirs – Looking Back: A Copper’s Life – which was scheduled to appear in time for the Gothenburg Book Fair in 2023.

  Or thereabouts.

  ‘Hark at you, inshpector,’ slurred Sollén. ‘Gone and got all shuck up, eh?’

  ‘Shuck up?’ said Emanuelsson.

  ‘I shaid shtuck up,’ said Sollén.

  ‘Are you tight, you old bastard?’ said Emanuelsson in surprise, but by then, Gunnar Barbarotti had already left the table.

  When he came in through the door of his flat, the time had advanced to ten to eleven, though Inspector Barbarotti was in blissful ignorance of the fact because he still – for some reason – had the defective watch of eternity from Hallsberg strapped to his wrist.

  But he registered that he hadn’t been at home since Friday morning – which strictly speaking was only the previous day, when he hastily changed his clothes ready for the trip up to Närke with Backman and Astor Nilsson.

  He also registered that he was still wearing those very clothes and was pretty well suited to a park bench at the moment. It couldn’t be denied.

  But Friday’s post was there on the hall floor and he decided to take a look before going for a shower.

  Three bills, some kind of reward voucher from Statoil and a bulky brown A4 envelope, that was all. He left the brown envelope till last.

  His name and address were written in angular, slightly uneven capitals. Black ink. There was a collection of foreign stamps running almost all the way along the top edge. It took him a few minutes to make out where it had come from.

  Cairo.

  Cairo? thought Gunnar Barbarotti. What the hell was this? He remembered Egypt had cropped up at some point earlier in the day, but couldn’t remember the context. The date on the postmark was clearly legible. 14.08.07.

  Four days ago. He got out the bread knife, sat down at the kitchen table and sliced open the envelope.

  He pulled out a sheaf of closely written sheets of paper. Computer printout, single spaced. Sixty to seventy pages, he reckoned, but they weren’t numbered.

  His eyes went to the top of the first page.

  ‘Notes from Mousterlin’, it read.

  ‘What in Christ’s name? thought Inspector Barbarotti.

  The kitchen clock, which wasn’t defective, was showing ten past three by the time he finally stepped into the shower.

  SIX

  NOTES FROM MOUSTERLIN

  8–9 July 2002

  ‘You did what?’ yelled Erik.

  ‘I killed her,’ I told him again. ‘She’s over there by the tool shed if you want to see her.’

  Erik stares at me. His mouth opens and closes. Tiny twitches on his face and neck show me how agitated he is.

  ‘I thought it advisable,’ I say. ‘What else could I have done?’

  ‘You’re not . . .’

  He turns his back on me, takes two steps and thinks the better of it. Spins round and tries to see across to the tool shed, but it’s too dark. It’s impossible to make out if there’s really a body lying there.

  ‘Why?’ he said. ‘Why in God’s name?’

  I talk him through the chain of events all over again. As I do, he sinks onto a chair and slumps forward with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. ‘What the fuck shall we do?’ he groans when I’ve finished. ‘Can’t you see what you’ve done?’

  ‘What I’ve done?’ I say. ‘She knew, man. It was the only thing I could do. What other way out was there?’

  He stares at me again. Then he sees the spanner lying there on the white tiles of the terrace.

  ‘With that?’ he asks.

  I nod. ‘Bahco 08072,’ I say. ‘It was the only thing to hand.’

  We both look at it for a few seconds. There’s a bit of semi-dried blood round the spanner head, and a couple of dark patches on the terrace. I didn’t bother to clean up after myself, just moved the body. Erik gets out his mobile phone.

  ‘I’m calling the others,’ he says. ‘Fucking hell, I thought this was all sorted.’

  ‘So did I,’ I say. ‘But do get the others to come, I expect that’s best.’

  He looks at me as it’s ringing, and for the first time I think I detect fear in his eyes.

  Less than half an hour later, all four of them are there. It’s twenty to eleven at night, but still not properly dark. This area is renowned for its evening light, and we don’t need a torch as we stand round in a semicircle surveying the dead woman by the tool shed wall. We can see her very clearly. Now that she’s no longer alive, she looks even smaller, and I doubt she weighs much more than her granddaughter. The air isn’t at all cold but I notice both women in our party are shivering.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ says Gunnar. ‘What the hell have you done?’

  ‘Done?’ I say. ‘I thought we’d agreed to obliterate all traces of the girl’s death?’

  Anna whispers something to Katarina, I can’t hear what. Henrik’s puffing frantically on a cigarette and finding it hard to keep still. He’s shifting restlessly, muttering incoherently.

  ‘You killed her,’ says Gunnar.

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I killed her.’

  ‘Murdered,’ says Katarina.

  ‘Christ all fucking mighty,’ says Henrik.

  ‘Yesterday you were thanking me for taking on an unpleasant task,’ I remind them. ‘What do you think would have happened if this woman had gone to the police?’

  ‘What did she say?’ asks Gunnar. ‘Why did she come here in the first place?’

  ‘I thought I’d already explained that,’ says Erik.

  ‘We’d like to hear it from the murderer’s own mouth,’ says Gunnar.

  ‘Can’t we go and sit on the terrace?’ Anna suggests. ‘I don’t want to stand here any longer, it’s making me feel sick.’

  We go over and sit down round the table. Erik lights two patio lanterns and brings out a bottle of red wine. ‘I expect you’d all like a glass?’ he says.

  Nobody refuses, and he gets the glasses and pours the wine. I notice there are more bats this evening than usual, whirring through the diluted darkness. They appear and vanish, appear and vanish, quicker than thoughts.

  ‘Well?’ says Gunnar. ‘Please be so good as to give us a thorough explanation. Before we go to the police and report you.’

  ‘I don’t think you’ll be going to the police,’ I say.

  ‘Don’t be so sure,’ says Henrik, and takes a nervous sip of wine.

  ‘OK,’ I say. ‘But if I hadn’t killed her, we’d all have been at the police station by now. I thought we had an agreement?’

  ‘We had an agreement to keep quiet about what happened on Sunday,’ says Gunnar. ‘Not to kill an old woman.’

  ‘Murder,’ says Katarina.

  ‘Good God, so you killed her, just like that?’ asks Anna. There’s a touch of hysteria in her voice.

  ‘I’ve never done anything like this before,’ I say. ‘I’ve never buried a drowned girl and I don’t go around killing old ladies with spanners. I simply don’t get what it is you’re accusing me of?’

  It all goes quiet round the table. Henrik and Anna light fresh cigarettes. Erik’s put on sunglasses for some reason, even though it’s eleven at night. I can see that Gunnar and Henrik are thinking hard. I can tell that both of them, separately, are starting to see the point in what I’ve said. And done. Against their own wills, they’re realizing that they, too, are in a bind – they don’t want to admit that my actions are the consequence of what we previously agreed on. To stay silent about what happened on the boat trip to des Glénan. The fact that the girl Troaë drowned, and it was in deciding to hush it up that we committed ourselves to this course. The responsibility isn’t just mine, it is theirs too, and I can see the bitter truth of it slowly seeping into their mildly intoxicated brains even as they cast about for wo
rds to process and resist it with.

  ‘You’re out of your bloody mind,’ says Anna.

  ‘Be quiet, Anna,’ says Gunnar. ‘We’ve got to think out some way of dealing with this.’

  ‘Dealing with?’ says Anna. ‘What the hell do you mean, dealing with?’

  ‘The Root of All Evil,’ says Erik and gives a sudden bark of laughter. ‘I wouldn’t be fucking surprised if they knew just what they were doing when they christened her.’

  I can hear that Erik is getting drunk. Henrik stubs out his cigarette and turns to me. ‘I would maintain that you have misread the situation,’ he said, and blew the last of his cigarette smoke into my face, intentionally or unintentionally. ‘Pretty drastically, what’s more.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ I say. ‘And in what way have I misread it?’

  ‘The following,’ says Henrik, and I can see he’s getting a bit excited at the prospect of an argument, just as if this were some kind of academic dispute. ‘You claim we are all equally responsible, but that isn’t the case, of course. In actual fact . . . well, in actual fact the blame is entirely yours, and we have decided to keep quiet so as not to dump you in it. It was you who let the girl fall out of the boat and drown, it was you who buried her instead of going to the police and telling them what had happened, it was you who murdered her grandmother. Don’t you see that if we tell the whole story now, you alone will bear the full responsibility. We are the ones who are protecting you, and we are not indebted or obliged to you in any way.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Katarina.

  I think for a moment. I look round the table. ‘OK then,’ I say. ‘If that’s the way you see it, let’s go to the police right now.’

  Henrik had been looking pretty pleased with himself after his exposition, but now his mask dropped. ‘You’re crazy,’ he says. ‘I really do believe you’re fucking crazy.’

  ‘That’s what I’ve been saying,’ Anna points out.

  None of the others seem to have any objections to this analysis. Katarina shakes her head and looks out into the darkness. ‘What a lot of bats this evening,’ she says. ‘I wonder why?’