The Hand that Trembles

by Kjell Eriksson

  Lindell tossed a couple of sentences onto the page, paused for a few seconds, staring unseeing at the wall before her where she had a map of Uppland, smiled to herself, and then wrote intensively, turning the page and continuing.

  The telephone rang. She glanced at the display and ignored the signals.

  After filling two entire sides with what many would regard as hieroglyphics, Lindell put her pen down and read through what she had written. Her conclusion was that if Tobias Frisk had not travelled abroad and met the woman there, the situation must have been reversed: She was already in Sweden when they met.

  Two scenarios struck her as most plausible. Either she had come to this country in the company of another Swedish man or else she had worked in Sweden and thus encountered her future slayer.

  For a murderer was what he was, she was convinced of it. No one parted willingly with a foot. She chose to disregard the fact that he would perhaps never have been found guilty in a court of law, that his defence could always have claimed she had left the house as well as Frisk and that someone had thereafter murdered and butchered her.

  ‘WORK’ was written in her notebook in all caps. The first thing she thought of was restaurants. She was familiar with a handful of Asian establishments in Uppsala alone – Japanese, Thai and Chinese. There were probably others. She fixed on Thai, reached for the telephone book and looked in the Yellow Pages under the heading ‘Restaurants’. Her eye immediately fell on the name ‘Sukothai’. She had eaten there once, with a journalist from TV4. A quick lunch, a couple of months ago.

  At that moment it occurred to her that she had two chainsaws in her trunk. Instead of calling the restaurant, she called Marksson.

  He picked up right away and Lindell told him about the power tools and that she would try to make time to drive out to Bultudden the following day.

  Bosse Marksson was out on the point and he promised to leave a note for Sunesson and Malm to this effect in their respective mailboxes.

  ‘How is it going?’

  ‘No one has seen or heard a thing,’ Marksson answered. ‘And I don’t get it. How can a person live in a place like this without anyone finding out?’

  ‘She may have been locked away,’ Lindell said. ‘It’s happened before.’

  ‘But where?’

  ‘Maybe she was scared and stayed inside of her own accord.’

  ‘But when anyone visited Frisk?’

  ‘There is the upstairs,’ Lindell said.

  Marksson pondered this.

  ‘Perhaps, but what a life.’

  ‘What a life,’ Lindell agreed.

  She took out the snapshot of the woman one more time. It had been taken outside, in daylight. She was smiling at the photographer. Her dark hair was combed back and the bow peeped out like a white butterfly. She was wearing a short-sleeved yellow T-shirt and something was printed on the left side of it, at the bottom of the picture. They had discussed what this might be, perhaps a logo. The forensic photographer had made an enlargement of the area, but it told them nothing.

  She took the photo, slid it into a plastic folder, and decided to drive around to the eateries she knew about.

  First she headed to an Indian restaurant in Bäverns Gränd. It was lunchtime and the dining room was full. None of the staff members recognised the woman. Next stop was at Amazing Thai on Bredgränd. Same depressing result. Every staff member shook their heads. She was greeted with smiles at the two Chinese places on Kungsgatan, but no one who worked there could identify the face in the photo.

  At Sukothai the lunch rush was over. A woman was gathering up plates and glasses in the dining area. She came over to Lindell with her tray piled high with dishes, smiling as if in recognition, but Lindell interpreted this more as an old habit and not because she truly recognised her.

  ‘Hungry?’ she asked.

  Lindell explained that she was from the police.

  ‘Anything wrong?’

  ‘No, not at all,’ Lindell assured her, ‘I just need you to look at this picture.’

  She held it up. The woman put down her tray, walked over to a table, and held the photo under the lamp.

  ‘From Thailand,’ she said at once.

  ‘So you’ve seen her before?’

  ‘No, but her blouse. It is yellow. This was taken on a Monday,’ the woman said, nodding firmly. ‘A Monday.’

  ‘How can you tell?’

  ‘The colour of the king, yellow. Everyone has a yellow top then. Because they like the king. Always on Monday. All Mondays. The king is good. Yellow is the colour of the king.’

  The woman’s face broke into a huge smile and Lindell found herself smiling almost as widely. They studied the photograph together in silence. The woman grew serious.

  ‘Not a good thing,’ she said.

  At first Lindell did not understand what she meant. ‘No, not a good thing,’ she said, and took the picture back. ‘What is this?’ She pointed to the logo on the shirt.

  ‘The mark of the king,’ the woman said quickly.

  ‘Do you have any idea where this picture was taken?’

  The woman shook her head.

  ‘She maybe works at a restaurant. You see,’ she said, and pointed to something in the background, a detail partly concealed behind some trees, that Lindell had looked at closely but not understood what it was. It looked like the roof of an old-fashioned well.

  ‘For fish,’ the woman said. ‘The guests are looking at fish.’

  Lindell took another look and understood. Restaurant, she thought. That sounded reasonable. A Swedish man comes in, eats, sees this woman and they start to talk, maybe see each other. He is there for a couple of weeks. Once he has left, she follows. Maybe he sends her money for the trip. He buys himself a girl, maybe with promises about work and riches, maybe love and family. Then the whole thing ends out on a windy point.

  ‘Thank you, you’ve been a pearl,’ she said, and spontaneously placed her hand on the woman’s arm.

  She fired off another smile, showing gleaming white teeth.

  ‘Coffee?’

  There was something in the woman’s face that made it impossible for Lindell to decline, even though she had already had her daily ration.

  She sat down at a table with the photo in front of her. This was no gigantic breakthrough in trying to establish the butchered woman’s identity, but at least it was a step in the right direction. Now it seemed even more important to find out who she was.

  Edvard had been in Thailand, it occurred to her. Had he bought himself love there? She did not think so, but the very thought of it was enough to make her dejected. All these charter-flying men who took liberties, they were nothing but slave traders. Ola Haver had visited Thailand and said how revolted he was by the fat, middle-aged tourists going around with trim Thai women young enough to be their daughters or granddaughters.

  The proprietor came over to her table again, sat down, pulled the picture over and studied it thoroughly, as if imitating Lindell.

  She looked up.

  ‘Advertise in the papers,’ she said. ‘On the coast, that is enough. Everyone can see the picture and they will say if they know her.’

  She rattled off a number of place names. Lindell recognised at least two of the names: Phuket and Hua Hin. These she had heard of; she thought Haver had been in Phuket. She asked the woman to write down the names of the main tourist towns. It amounted to a good handful.

  She left Sukothai with mixed feelings. The dimly lit interior had served as an escape for a few minutes, where she could reflect on the ongoing investigation in peace. In the stairs out to the alley, where her car was parked, it struck her that her role was not set in stone. She ought to drop Bultudden. With Fredriksson’s lucky guess of the eagle, she had played her part. Marksson and the other colleagues in Östhammar could take it from here. But something in the young woman’s gaze drove her on. Or else was it as simple as the fact that now, when Lindell could place her in a country, the need to know everything a
ppeared even more necessary? No one wants to be anonymous, she thought, and no one wants to die anonymous.

  She drove back to the police station. If she had not had coffee at the restaurant she would have gone past Savoy Café, in an attempt to stretch her time of solitary reflection.

  At headquarters a whole group was drinking coffee together. It was almost like a morning meeting. Riis was holding forth. Ottosson held up a cup but Lindell shook her head.

  ‘Thailand,’ Haver said, as Riis finished.

  Lindell wondered how in the world he knew, but tried not to show her surprise.

  ‘And you tell us this now?’

  ‘I didn’t think of it at first, but then I thought of it with that T-shirt.’

  ‘Because it’s yellow.’

  Haver nodded.

  ‘Everybody was wearing one on a particular day, I don’t know why, but it looked like a chicken farm.’

  ‘Mondays,’ Lindell said. ‘Yellow is the colour of their king.’

  Even Riis looked impressed.

  ‘Inner and outer investigating,’ said Sammy Nilsson, ‘and for once with the same result.’

  Lindell started to tell them about her visit to Sukothai. Ottosson’s smile widened.

  ‘Good work,’ he said, and Lindell sensed that he enjoyed Haver’s somewhat sulky look. The two of them had not been getting along lately. Lindell did not know why, and did not really care.

  ‘I think we should put an ad in the Thai newspapers,’ she said. ‘We can get in touch with our colleagues there and they can place the photograph. It should be enough with five locations, places where many Swedes go.’

  ‘What the hell?’ Riis exclaimed.

  Lindell turned to him.

  ‘Isn’t that a bit much?’ he went on. ‘She is dead.’

  ‘But who was she?’

  ‘What does that matter?’ Riis said. ‘Her killer is also dead. Nothing can be made undone. We have the motive and how it happened, we have the forensic evidence.’

  ‘What is the motive?’

  ‘Well, that she might have wanted to go home—’

  ‘Maybe,’ Lindell interrupted. ‘Maybe she wanted to return to Thailand, maybe she … No, Riis, that’s not good enough. And besides, her relatives must want to know what happened to her.’

  ‘For them she is most likely dead already,’ Riis said. ‘And as for the ad. She is probably from the north of Thailand. That’s where most of the whores—’

  ‘You’ve been there and checked it out?’

  Ottosson coughed, his usual signal when he felt a discussion was going awry. Lindell shot him a quick glance but continued.

  ‘If it had been a Swedish girl we would have left no stone unturned in order to secure an identity, would we?’

  She let her gaze wander over the assembled group in order to get their assent. No one said anything.

  ‘And think of the tsunami. We sure as hell made sure every scrap of bone could be connected to the right person. We sent people over there from Federal Homicide and many others besides. You remember that, don’t you? That time it was Swedes. I don’t think we told their relatives back in Sweden that we already knew they were dead and so it didn’t really matter. No, we DNA-tested every single scrap of tissue. So shape up, Riis!’

  ‘That was quite a salvo,’ Sammy Nilsson said.

  ‘You want us to send a foot to Thailand?’ Riis said sardonically.

  ‘And you remember the Thais? How they helped the tourists?’

  When she finished the whole group was completely quiet. Without thinking about it she poured herself a cup of coffee, but remained standing. Her hand was trembling.

  ‘Maybe you’re right,’ Ottosson said, and broke the silence, ‘but the question is, will it help to place the ad?’

  ‘Oh, you too!’ Lindell exclaimed, but regretted it immediately.

  ‘And we don’t actually know if she’s the woman in the picture. It could be anyone.’

  Beatrice’s comment made Lindell slam her cup onto the table.

  ‘And?’ she said, and her growing animosity toward Beatrice almost made her kick her in the shins, but she controlled herself enough to just stare at her.

  ‘What do you mean, “and”?’ Beatrice answered calmly.

  ‘The photograph is the only thing we have, isn’t it? The only thing we have, and that’s what we’re going to work with, as long as it holds up.’

  Ottosson took out a napkin, reached over, and wiped up the spilt liquid around Lindell’s cup.

  Lindell and Ottosson had only clashed once before. That had been in the context of an investigation of a young Peruvian’s death. That had been eight years ago and Lindell was not proud of her reaction. She sensed that Ottosson agreed with Riis and Beatrice, otherwise he would immediately have jumped to her defence, and that made her almost more chagrined. She felt betrayed but knew that there had to be limits and that they had now reached that point. A continued exchange could only end badly. She was not afraid of the battle, nor of Riis, whom she regarded as a genuine pile of shit, or even to quarrel with Ottosson as she knew she could make amends, but in a strange kind of way she was afraid of Beatrice. To become even more angry and throw out accusations would only play to the advantage of her colleague who had the ability to always keep her cool.

  ‘Okay,’ she said, taking a sip of coffee and giving Ottosson a look of thanks for wiping up the spill. ‘I’ll suggest that Marksson in Östhammar takes the initiative.’

  She felt Ottosson’s immediate relief.

  ‘Yes, then it will be up to him,’ he said in a tranquil tone.

  Lindell turned, coffee cup in hand, and walked off. She felt the gazes of her colleagues burn in her back.

  Back in her office she sank down in the visitor’s chair. She had not exactly expected a standing ovation for her discovery that the woman was from Thailand, but this general absence of interest was shocking to her. She could not understand their reaction. Riis – that was one thing. He was uninterested in most things, and Beatrice now had a habit of taking the opposite viewpoint – either quietly or with a tone of mild superiority – of anything Lindell suggested, but Haver and Ottosson? And Sammy Nilsson, the one who was closest to her when it came to a question of values? Incomprehensible. She re-examined the arguments she had used and found that they held up.

  The reason for their indifference must stem from the fact that they viewed their prospects of success as minimal. They probably thought that she would get bogged down in the Thai woman’s fate and forget everything else. It had happened before – according to her colleagues – that she had lost her sense of perspective and ended up out of synch with the others in the unit.

  She was aware of this undeniable weakness but in this particular case it was a no-brainer. All they had to do was get in touch with a police authority on the other side of the world and let them do the work.

  She called Bosse Marksson again and told him she would drive out again the next day. They agreed to meet outside Torsten Andersson’s house at half past nine.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Of course he had recognised the rifle, but he hadn’t wanted to say anything. Marksson had come by and showed him the antique piece, and asked if he had seen it before. It had to be at least sixty, seventy years old. Why should he say anything? What was done was done. Who could believe that Frisk was man enough to pull the trigger? What he didn’t understand was how Frisk had got hold of the weapon.

  Now he was out there again, Marksson. Was he whistling? Looked like it. Cops must get cheered up when there is some devilment under way. They come to life. Whistling.

  He recognised his dad too. Birger Marksson. That was not a voice you easily forgot. He was still called ‘the health enthusiast,’ dashing around in tights long before it became fashionable among idiot joggers. Now it seemed almost taunting. Birger Marksson had to use twin walking sticks to get around. Birger’s woman, on the other hand, had never gone for a run her whole life. She was from Snesslinge and th
ere one didn’t exert oneself. These days she dashed around to every sporting event like a mountain goat, took bus tours, and was active in every organisation in Östhammar.

  What was he waiting for? He had been standing there for at least ten minutes. Torsten Andersson had heard Marksson pulling up next to the mailboxes and how he, after a couple of minutes, had stepped out of the car, and then like a restless spirit started walking up and down the street, whistling, like some puffed-up small-town policeman. Now he was taking out his phone and making a call. How much did all these mobile phone calls cost? Everything worked just fine before all those things.

  Another car came driving around the bend. Torsten Andersson recognised it immediately. It was her, the Uppsala cop, the one who liked the crackle of a fire. The anxiety he had felt started to dissolve. It wasn’t him they were after.

  ‘Sorry,’ Lindell said. ‘I got hung up at the day care.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. I’ve been working a little,’ Marksson said generously. ‘I just called the postman who does this route. His name is Bengtsson, I know him from before.’

  Do you all know each other out here, Lindell wondered.

  ‘I asked him if Frisk ever got international mail but he said no. Bengtsson would remember something like that. I was thinking …’

  ‘Good thinking,’ Lindell said, realising she was starting to appreciate Marksson more and more.

  ‘… the woman might have received mail from home.’

  ‘From Thailand,’ Lindell said, and told him of her discovery.

  ‘Then we should call Sune Stolt,’ Marksson said immediately. ‘He lives in Thailand and can investigate on location.’

  ‘Who is Sune Stolt?’ Lindell said, laughing.

  ‘A colleague of mine who works with prostitution, paedophiles, and the like. There are probably two, three Swedish police officers down there. His brother is also on the force, at the Tierp station, but they were both from here originally. Sune was a speedway driver for Roslagen when he was young. Really promising but then he developed a problem with his sense of balance. Something with his ear. But for a police officer that’s fine, we’re off balance most of the time anyway.’