The Hand that Trembles

by Kjell Eriksson

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ he said.

  If Lindell were to describe his voice, she would use only one word: harsh.

  ‘Are you? From what I understand the two of you were not particularly close.’

  ‘That’s not surprising if you never meet. The last time was two years ago and that visit lasted all of five minutes.’

  He looked at her with watery eyes. The irises were of an undefinable colour and the whites were bloodshot. There was, however, an intensity in his old man’s eyes that she sensed had either attracted or frightened women, and perhaps also men, when Ante Persson had been in his prime.

  She found herself mostly curious. His apparently unbroken intellect, the books and other items on the table, and his still forceful voice did not speak of any debility. It was only his body that did not seem to have kept up.

  ‘What was it that time?’

  ‘She explained that her husband, my nephew, had been declared dead officially. She wanted me to know before it was published in the paper.’

  ‘And this time she came to tell you that he had risen from the dead?’ Ante Persson nodded and smiled a faint, possibly ironic, smile.

  ‘You can read both English and Spanish?’

  He nodded again. He had resumed the completely expressionless – not to say icy – face. She could tell he was on his guard. His right hand rested over his left.

  ‘And German and a little Russian,’ he said after a couple of seconds. ‘So I knew that you would come,’ he added after an additional pause.

  ‘But you knew he was alive?’

  The thought came to her as a sudden inspiration. If you were going to divulge a secret to anyone it would be Ante Persson, that she was convinced of.

  ‘Did you speak to Elsa?’

  ‘No, she is apparently unconscious.’

  ‘I see,’ he said. ‘You figured it out on your own.’

  ‘Right here and now,’ she replied.

  Ante Persson gave an unexpected roar, a belly laugh, hearty and contagious.

  ‘You are the nicest fucking cop I’ve ever met.’

  ‘You’ve dealt with the police before?’

  ‘More than sixty years ago, but back then it was pretty frequent. Well, and then they came by when Sven-Arne disappeared, but that doesn’t really count.’

  Lindell wanted to know more but knew the man on the other side of the table was not one to let himself be rushed. He talked about what he wanted to talk about. The rest you had to guess or wait for.

  ‘Tell me about Sven-Arne,’ she urged.

  ‘He was a plumber,’ he grinned, ‘who rose up like a hot-air balloon.’

  ‘And then the air went out?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  He leant across the table and the look in his eyes changed for a fraction of a second, as if he was preparing to add something. But he sank back instead.

  ‘The two of you were close?’

  Ante Persson did not answer. Lindell glanced at the books on the shelf. She noticed that they were arranged thematically. As far as she could tell they were all about politics; there was no fiction.

  ‘I’m working on my memoirs,’ he said abruptly. ‘You can read it all in there.’

  ‘Can I get a look?’ Lindell asked.

  ‘If Sven-Arne is alive or not doesn’t matter. He is a piece of fly shit in the universe, just like you and I, for that matter. He became a politician and that might have been all right but he didn’t believe in it, and that’s bad. I mean, here, on the inside,’ he said, and thumped above his heart. ‘In here. There has to be a red thread one follows in life.’

  ‘Like you have done?’

  Ante Persson sighed deeply.

  ‘I’ve tried,’ he said.

  He massaged the stumps that were all that remained of the little and ring finger on his left hand.

  ‘Even though it’s been hard, damned hard, many times.’

  Sad men, Lindell thought. Sad old men. How many haven’t I met? She thought of her father, Berglund, Torsten Andersson on Bultudden, and of Edvard, who in thirty years would probably sit much like Ante Persson, sighing and grumbling.

  She quickly felt very tired. Why am I sitting here listening to this whining? I’m a criminal investigator, not a case worker or psychologist. But she knew that a police officer was every bit as much a social worker. In this mess of human frailties there were lies, squashed hopes, betrayal – and sometimes violence. The question was if she would get any wiser – a better cop – by talking to Ante at the Ramund nursing home. Or did it just serve to make her depressed? She had no answers to Ante’s pained questions, she was convinced of that. He, who from a human perspective was now living on borrowed time, had most likely ransacked himself for decades and was clearly still as searching and lost. Am I doing the right thing? Am I? She found herself circling these same questions herself, both professionally and in private, excruciatingly aware that she would never arrive at a definitive answer.

  Lindell lifted the head that she had unconsciously lowered, as if in prayer. The old man was watching her. Before his gaze – serious and without a trace of the mockery she had observed earlier – she felt completely cold inside.

  ‘Why did he run off to India?’ she asked, mostly in order to get away.

  Ante Persson did not answer. She knew the audience was over.

  Ann Lindell ended up standing outside the nursing home for a while. It was only a couple of minutes’ walk to the Café Savoy but she decided to put it off for another time. She walked along Sysslomansgatan, following it south and crossing Ringgatan, when she suddenly recalled that an arsonist had lived in these parts. Three people, a mother, father, and small child, illegal refugees from Bangladesh, had died in Svartbäcken. Hate and intolerance had characterised that time.

  It was quite by chance that she had read in the newspaper recently that the arsonist, together with three others, had escaped from the Tidaholms prison. They were still at large. It made her think of Torsten Andersson’s words about getting rid of the murderers.

  Children were playing outside the Sverker school. She stopped at the fence and watched the quick bolts across the concrete, listened to the shouts and laughter. A group of boys were bouncing a ball back and forth. Next autumn it would be Erik’s turn.

  A bus pulled over, the door opened, and the driver gave her an inquiring look. She realised she was standing at a bus stop and got on, mainly so she wouldn’t infuriate the driver.

  ‘I was lost in thought,’ she said.

  The driver smiled but said nothing. She sat down. Take me far away from here, she thought, and closed her eyes. The ache in her back came in waves.

  When she opened her eyes and looked out of the window she saw a Christmas display at the Salvation Army. Through the dirty pane she could see a gigantic Santa Claus, smiling a confused smile, as if he were terrified. A heap of red packages lay at his feet.

  The bus continued on its way to the centre of town. There were stars and glittering decorations all over. Should she head back to Ödeshög for Christmas? Her mother had called and more or less pleaded for it. ‘It may be the last time,’ she had added when she perceived Ann’s hesitation.

  The last time? What did she mean? Was she thinking of Ann’s increasingly befuddled father or was it simply a tearful attempt to coax her daughter back to Ödeshög?

  Ann Lindell got off the bus at Dragarbrunnsgatan and walked quickly down to the Fyris River, crossed the Nybro Bridge and continued down Västra Ågatan. Her menstrual pain had died down. She slowed down. This was where Marcus Ålander had fought with Sebastian Holmberg, who had later been found dead in the children’s bookshop on Drottninggatan.

  This was her city. Her memories. Ödeshög was no longer ‘home.’ She decided to stay in town over the holidays. Take it easy and give all her time to Erik, maybe take him for a spin in a patrol car, which he had been begging her to do for a long time. She would talk to Torstensson. He was good, maybe a little interested in her. That didn
’t matter, as long as he didn’t get any ideas.

  How long since she had gone to bed with a man? She did not want to count the months, or rather, years. She was drying up. Her desire came and went, her dreams of intimacy likewise. Sometimes a great longing came over her but her mechanisms to keep loneliness at bay were so entrenched and refined that she rarely felt the bottomless despair that used to plague her.

  But deep inside, in the dark crannies, slumbered a bereft little creature, these days without fangs and claws, but with very mournful eyes. Sometimes he – for it was a he – still made his presence known. Like now, on Västra Ågatan, with her body in the midst of its periodic sparring, with Christmas on the doorstep, with people around her, neighbours, colleagues, and friends, all determinedly subjugating life.

  She picked up the pace again and tried to think about something else, preferring to let her work mechanism take over. Her thoughts returned to Bultudden. Torsten Andersson’s words, or perhaps above all his unexpected display of aggression, still bothered her.

  ‘Damned old man,’ she muttered, aware of the fact that her negative feelings resulted almost entirely from having been had. She had felt cozy in his kitchen, become lulled into comfortable repose, listened to the crackle in his stove, registered the everyday objects, seen how well he had arranged his home, liked his thoughtful words pronounced in a dialect that strangely enough sounded like home. He had offered her freshly caught fish, as if she had been an old friend.

  She should have known better, she should have learnt the lesson: People are two-sided. She had let herself be taken in.

  Maybe he was a killer? Maybe he was the one who had sawed off that foot? The talk of getting rid of the murderers was only a front, or perhaps an internal defence; for he was no murderer, it had been his right to ‘get rid of’ someone.

  She had seen this before, how perpetrators rationalised their actions and justified their crimes: an abused woman had ‘been asking for it,’ a murder victim had ‘deserved’ his fate, or a rape victim ‘had herself to blame.’

  A couple with a small child somewhat younger than Erik were standing at a low fence of the swan pond feeding the birds. The wild ducks were nattering and the gulls were shrieking. A swan slowly floated past.

  Lindell observed the three of them, how the man snuck a hand around the woman’s waist, and how she laughed at the young boy’s excitement. Her high peals of laughter rang out and could be heard above the sound of the traffic for an instant.

  Berglund was sitting at the window. He had shunned his hospital clothes and was dressed in jeans, a shirt with a pattern of large squares, and brown slippers edged in fur. Lindell thought he looked ten years younger than at her last visit.

  ‘Here you are enjoying yourself,’ she said.

  Berglund smiled and gestured to the table in front of him, where papers were stacked up.

  ‘Any strokes of genius?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘No, I’ve gone through this material countless times, always in the hopes I’ll find something, but nothing doing.’

  The gaze he shot her was his old one. He had not only changed his clothes.

  ‘You look rosy.’

  ‘I was out walking,’ Lindell said.

  ‘I see,’ Berglund said.

  Lindell did not know exactly what he was getting at, but sensed that he realised she was trying to alleviate her cramps while walking. She had done this before, it usually worked, and maybe Berglund had put two and two together.

  ‘I was coming from a conversation with Sven-Arne Persson’s uncle,’ she said, and sat down right across from him.

  He gathered his papers together on the table while she described her visit to Elsa Persson’s neighbour, how Elsa was now admitted to this same hospital, maybe even in this same building.

  ‘Yes, it’s a strange story, this Sven-Arne,’ Berglund said, but Lindell could tell his thoughts were still caught up in the old case.

  ‘What was he like as a politician?’ she said, trying anyway. ‘His uncle said something about how Sven-Arne never really believed in his cause. What’s up with that? Was he just a fake?’

  ‘No, I think people regarded him as honest. He was a champion orator. But it must have dried up. He probably got tired of the nonsense. Or else he just snapped.’

  ‘Was he really a plumber?’

  ‘Something in the construction field. Then he became an ombudsman.’ Berglund paused, then continued almost immediately.

  ‘I remember a meeting in town, shortly before some election. It was when New Democracy was in full swing. I was there overseeing Forum Square. There was some kind of threat, some letter that Persson had received. There was a hellish wind but people stayed and listened. I remember thinking he talked like my old man.’

  ‘And that felt good?’

  Berglund smiled. ‘Yes, actually. I actually voted for the Social Democrats that year.’

  ‘Because of Persson’s speech?’

  ‘Maybe not only because of that, but there was something there that …well, you know how it is …’

  ‘Nostalgia?’

  He chuckled.

  ‘Did he receive a lot of threats?’

  ‘Not that I know of. It must have been some dingdong who sent that letter.’

  ‘I was thinking maybe he ran off because he felt pursued or threatened for his life,’ Lindell said.

  ‘We looked into that, but I don’t think that was the case. We found nothing to suggest it, at least. All politicians get fan mail so I’m sure Persson could handle it.’

  ‘But maybe there was a threat you weren’t aware of?’

  Berglund looked at her.

  ‘Persson’s got under your skin,’ he said with a smile.

  ‘I don’t know, unexpected turns of events are always exciting and that uncle made me more curious. He is writing his memoirs. The whole room was full of books, like a research institute. He speaks several languages. And then Persson’s wife, who walks straight out onto Luthagsleden Expressway.’

  ‘Yes, Elsa.’

  ‘You mentioned something about her possibly seeing someone.’

  ‘It’s only a rumour,’ Berglund said.

  ‘Could it have been the reason that Persson went to India? That there was already a man in Elsa’s life?’

  ‘It’s doubtful. From what I remember we checked into their lives pretty thoroughly and found no signs of infidelity or marriage problems.’

  ‘What do you think will happen now? I mean, if it is him – and that’s how it seems – his uncle admitted he knew about Persson’s India stint. How are we going to handle it?’

  ‘It’s not a matter for the police. Persson is a free man and can go as he wishes. He is not suspected of any crime.’

  ‘Isn’t it a crime to …’

  ‘Disappearing is not a crime,’ Berglund said.

  ‘I know, but …’

  ‘Forget Persson,’ Berglund said. ‘Tell me how things are going with the foot.’

  ‘I’m going door-to-door like a salesman. It’s kind of exciting in a way, but hasn’t turned up much. I’m doing the last three houses tomorrow. I’ve talked to them and everyone will be home. Then I’ll wrap up.’

  ‘How are things with you otherwise?’

  ‘Fine,’ Lindell said, unwilling to return to the chain of thoughts she had on her way to the hospital.

  She got up, stretched out her hand, and laid it on her colleague’s shoulder. There was a new kind of closeness between them. She liked it, even if she was uncertain what effect it would have on their future working relationship.

  He put his hand on hers.

  ‘I’m glad you came up to talk for a while. I’ll be going home on Monday.’

  She spent the rest of the day writing up her notes from Bultudden. Marksson must surely be expecting some kind of report. She didn’t have much to show for herself, and took her time.

  Sammy Nilsson looked in but Lindell pretended to be extremely busy and only gave cl
ipped answers to his questions, and after a couple of minutes he slunk off.

  She was done at half past three. She turned off the computer, got herself a cup of coffee, and returned to her office. The activity at the unit appeared to have dropped off. Everything was calm. Friday. Fredriksson and Beatrice were taking the night shift. Ottosson had already gone home. She heard Riis clomp by. Then there was simply silence outside her door.

  She thought about Ante Persson and his memoirs. What would they be about? The red thread of his life?

  She recalled his gaze, how it changed in the flash of an instant. A dangerous man, it struck her, without being able to offer a satisfactory account as to what this dangerous quality might consist of. Was it his age that had made him in a way unreachable? She had always had respect for older people.

  Or was it simply the case that his evident integrity – perhaps an expression of a heightened self-sufficiency – made her feel uncomfortable? She had felt this same feeling of unease many times when she listened to older people. As if she were inferior in experience and knowledge.

  But most of the time the relationship was reversed: Most of them felt inferior and pressed in their contact with the police, and this was something every interrogator could take advantage of. She wasn’t the most skillful in this respect. Both Beatrice and Sammy Nilsson were considerably better. Lindell preferred the give and take of open conversation. She didn’t like unspoken threats or traps.

  Someone like Ante Persson was a challenge. He was not one to be tempted out onto thin ice. He only shared information that he had picked out and at the pace that he had set.

  Riis went stomping in the opposite direction down the corridor and Lindell was startled out of her thoughts. She looked at her watch and decided that the working day was done.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Lindell did not wave to Torsten Andersson as she passed his house. It was a ridiculous protest but she knew he would register it.

  As she drove by Margit and Kalle Paulsson she swore quietly under her breath. She had forgotten to talk to Marksson about Lisen Morell. That woman needed immediate intervention. Otherwise she would go under. For a moment she considered stopping by her house before she took on the three loners (as she had dubbed the bachelors on the point) but instead decided to end her tour with a visit to the fishing cottage.