Frozen Moment (12 page)

    'I'm
afraid we can't comment on that at the moment, for technical reasons. But we do
need your help, in view of the fact that you live nearby and might have seen
something.'

    She
shrugged her shoulders.

    'I
don't know about nearby. I mean, I don't keep a check on everybody who drives
past; I can't even see the road all that clearly from the window. But I know a
number of cars went past that evening. I think there was an open viewing of a
house a couple of kilometres away. Not that people are exactly rushing to view
houses around here at the moment, but this was a manor house from the nineteenth
century. I know that because the agent, a young girl, got her car stuck in the
ditch when she met somebody coming the other way up by Sankan and Bo, my
husband, helped her out.'

    Fru
Rappe started telling them about an occasion in her youth when she had visited
this particular manor house, but then she heard a noise from the room next door
and broke off. She stood up, raised her huge voice again and bellowed for Bo.

    Gonzales
thought quietly to himself that these people from the country were a bloody
sight odder than the Chileans and Yugoslavs who lived on his street. He turned
back to the woman. By this stage she had polluted the air so thoroughly with
her cigarettes that his eyes were watering.

    'Do
you know Lise-Lott Edell and Lars Waltz?'

    'Well
no, I wouldn't say that I know them. Waltz hasn't been living here all that
long. I've bumped into Lise-Lott from time to time, as you do in a small place.
My husband knew Lise-Lott's former husband's father; they used to hunt with the
same club. Lise-Lott married into the farm but perhaps you already know that.
Her first husband, Thomas, died of natural causes. I think it was his heart.
Not that he was very old, but I suppose it was in his genes. His father died of
heart problems too. And I think Thomas was fond of a drink, just like his
father. He didn't take a lot of water with it, if you know what I mean. That's
the way life is for some people. And Lise-Lott had plenty to console herself
with - the farm is quite substantial. Reino wasn't too pleased, of course.'

    
'Reino?'

    Beckman
noticed that Gonzales was scribbling feverishly and wished she had brought the
tape recorder along. Sitting in the kitchen with a dyed-in-the-wool gossip, you
were bound to find out all kinds of interesting things. Perhaps even the odd
motive for murder.

    
'Reino.
Gosta and Barbro's son.
Thomas's brother.'

    
'Right.'

    'I
mean, you can understand it.
It's
one thing for your
father's inheritance to go to the older brother, but quite another to watch his
widow drive the business into the ground. Because she's not much of a farmer,
Lise-Lott, you certainly couldn't call her that. It would be just as well if
she packed her bags and moved somewhere else, to a nice little house - at least
I suspect that's what Reino thinks. Not that I've ever been particularly fond
of Reino, but I can understand how he feels. I don't think things are very easy
for him on Gertrud's farm. It's too small to make a profit, really.'

    She
leaned back in her chair, running her fingers over the edges of a plastic tray.

    'You
should know when you don't have what it takes. Lise-Lott ought to know. I mean,
we did.'

    She
gave a wry smile, revealing a row of yellowing teeth.

    'Did
what?'

    'We
moved to this nice little house. Bo had a bad back, and he couldn't cope with
running the Rappe farm - it's the first house after the main road, the yellow
one. It was in his family for four generations. Our son and his wife have taken
it over. You have to step aside for those who have the ability. And we got this
house for a good price. Anna-Maria's mother, Anna-Maria is our daughter-in-law,
she-'

    'Thank
you.'

    Beckman
broke in by holding up both hands, smiling at the same time to compensate for
the sharpness in her voice.

    'That's
fine for the moment. If you happen to think of anything else that might be of
interest with regard to Lars Waltz, please do get in touch.'

    She
placed her card on the table in front of fru Rappe.

    'Wouldn't
it have been better to let her carry on talking? She seems to know plenty about
the people around here. We might have found out something interesting,' said
Gonzales. They had established that fru Rappe's next-door neighbours were not
at home and were walking back to the car.

    'I
don't know, but I'm sure you're right. I was actually thinking the same when
she was going on, but she just lost me. Who was Anna- Maria?'

    
'Their daughter-in-law.
But more importantly, who's this
Reino? It seems he had a motive for killing Waltz.'

    
'But why?
It's Lise-Lott he should be getting rid of,
surely?'

    'Maybe
he doesn't want to murder a woman, so he takes the man instead. He thinks
she'll be broken by grief, and she'll move away so she doesn't have to live
with all the memories.'

    'Do
me a favour,' Beckman said and pulled out on to the road. She glanced at the
clock on the dashboard. 'We've only got three more places to visit. That's the
advantage of investigating a murder in the middle of nowhere.'

    Gonzales
cackled.

    'True.
But there are one or two disadvantages as well.
These
farmers, for a start.
If I was in their shoes, regardless of whether I
had anything to do with the murder or not, and if I wasn't mentally subnormal,
I certainly wouldn't have behaved as suspiciously as most of the ones we've met
so far.'

    'If
you
weren't
mentally subnormal, you say…'

    1993

    As
time went by, Maya began to settle at the school.

    The
actual work was no
problem,
in fact it turned out to
be a source of pleasure. She had dropped out of grammar school in a fit of
existential questioning and had caught the commuter train into Gothenburg every
morning to hang out in the Northern Station cafe with a gang of other kids on
the loose. They would meet in the morning, scrape together enough for a cup of
tea each, preferably Twinings Söders Höjder; then they would sit there with the
same infiiser, and by the afternoon would always end up drinking 'silver tea' -
a mixture of hot water and sugar. They wrote on serviettes and in visitors'
books, and smoked roll-ups.

    
The youth centre, which was the only thing on offer to those who
refused to study, was totally uninteresting.
They were obliged to spend
two days in a remedial class and three doing some crap job for no pay. Maya
became aware of this after only a week, and not without a certain elitist
attitude towards her classmates - boys with bum-fluff moustaches who nicked
cars. None of this bothered her as much as the fact that they couldn't actually
spell their own surnames. Nor did she feel any kind of affinity with their
admiring girlfriends, all chewing gum and bleached blonde hair.

    At
the root of Maya's aversion to staying on at grammar school, and of her
contempt for the unfortunate remedial kids, was a refusal to conform. School
was classed as the most obvious form of oppression. And when it came to Maya's
mother, she had not merely contented herself with trying to persuade her
children to carry on studying by means of bribes, threats and guilt; in
addition, she had limited their choice of study options to the subjects she
herself would have liked to pursue but had not been allowed. As a general rule,
Maya's mother had always found it difficult to distinguish where she ended and
other people began.

    Up
to this point Maya had never realised that learning could be fun; it had
certainly never struck her that she had a talent for absorbing knowledge. But
it did now. She was praised for her writing in Swedish, lost herself in the
study of literature and also, quite unexpectedly, science, which extended
before her like an exotic country waiting to be explored. She flicked through
university prospectuses and chose unashamedly among completely diverse
professions: architect, biologist, psychologist, school teacher.

    The
social aspect of school life was considerably more difficult. A Maya she had
not seen in daylight for several years came creeping out, the quiet and
submissive girl who melted into the wallpaper. She was the only alternative to
the truculent mask of the past few years. It was like starting afresh, sitting
there in class and waiting in agony for the teacher you have had for six months
to remember your name.

    The
students at the school came from different social backgrounds and were all
there for different reasons. Many simply wanted a break, to find some peace, or
perhaps to find
themselves
. Some were there to get to
know other people, to break out of their isolated existence. At seventeen Maya
was the
youngest,
and she felt ignorant yet also
weighed down by experiences she just couldn't share. There was a boy she
vaguely recognised in one of the other classes - she thought his name was John.
On one occasion he came up to her and asked if she was from Borås. She said no.
She would rather be alone than mix the two worlds together - the Maya she had
been had no place here.

    She
kept herself to herself, reading in her room or in the library. She went for
walks around the lake. She didn't join the gang of younger students who hung
out together in the evenings, sitting on the lawn, playing the guitar and
singing, having parties in their rooms as they giggled and drank booze someone
had smuggled in. No one was allowed to have alcohol in their rooms.

    In
fact she found it less painful to be alone than to be the one who was alone.
She was perfectly happy on her own, but was almost ashamed when someone from
class put their head around the door of the library to find her sitting there with
her books:
Are you sitting here all on your own?
As if there were
something seriously wrong with her.

    Caroline
was the one who made her feel just a little more interesting, at least Maya
imagined that the others noticed them together. Caroline had an air of
independence because of her position at the school; she could move in and out
of groups as she pleased. Most of the students seemed to feel privileged to be
in her company; only a few whispered that she was a bit odd.
Unpleasant,
somehow.
That she was supposed to have
those eyes.

    Maya
found herself reacting with primitive jealousy whenever she saw Caroline
talking to one of the others - particularly if it was one of the outgoing,
self-confident girls, and she saw them laughing together. Then she would feel
inferior, like the seventeen-year-old she was.

    That's
what Caroline does to people,
Maya wrote in her book.
She makes the
person she turns to feel chosen, while the person she turns her back on is left
shivering in the cold.

    2006

    At
some point Melkersson had told Seja that in days gone by it was possible to
reach the lake, lsjön, by following designated paths across what was now
cleared land where the trees had been felled. As a young man he had had a
sweetheart in Lerum and he used to go and visit her by walking through the
forests. It wasn't all that far as the crow flies, according to him. Since then
the tree-felling machines had churned up the ground, and the paths were unidentifiable.
The few remaining trees had fallen victim to storms because of their exposed
position, which gave the area an even more chaotic appearance.

    The
lake was situated quite high up, as was Stenaredsberget. These
days
local families made their way up by car, but had to
take a detour down into the village and back up again via Stora Alsjovagen to
the car park. From there they could walk with their blankets and picnic baskets
to reach the communal swimming area, with its diving boards, trampoline and a
small building where people could get changed.

    She
and Martin had spent the holiday among the crowds on the sandy beach over on
the Olofstorp side. On the far side of the lake they could see the rocks
leading down into the water on the Stenared side, which were wide and smooth
with an oval-shaped inward curve that was just perfect for one or two
sunbathing bodies. They had swum easily across the lake and lay down to dry off
on the rock.