Frozen Moment (25 page)

    'Cheer
up, my partner in misfortune.'

    They
clinked
glasses again, but deep inside Tell was
suffused with a happiness that was growing in direct proportion to the amount
of alcohol he consumed. He was a lucky man, and he gave Karlberg's shoulder a
reassuring squeeze.

    'Feeling
a bit low?'

    Karlberg
nodded.

    'She's
decided, has she?'

    'Marie,
yes,' Karlberg replied morosely. 'It's not just that - she's met someone new. A
mate of mine bumped into them outside some leisure centre. No doubt he's some
kind of mountain-climbing market analyst.'

    'Yes,
but it won't last. Relationships on the rebound never do. He's just a stopgap.'

    Tell
amazed himself with his cheerfulness. However, Karlberg didn't seem inclined to
be convinced. Tell decided to do what any decent man would do, follow his
unfortunate friend down into a morass of alcohol. He ordered two double
whiskies.

    'We
could just hope that he falls down a mountain and hurts himself.'

    Karlberg
looked at Tell in surprise, as if he'd never seen him be so upbeat - which in
fact he hadn't - but he followed his example and knocked back the Scotch. He
shook his head, laughing.

    'If
I didn't know you better I might have believed Bärneflod the other day, when
you overslept. He said you'd got yourself a woman.'

    Tell
buried his nose in his glass, the fumes bringing tears to his eyes.

    'That's
what I've always said. It isn't a workplace at
all,
it's a bloody coffee morning.'

    It
was getting on for two o'clock when Andreas Karlberg gave in to the alcohol and
let his head fall back against the soft leather armchair. People were starting
to make a move.

    Tell
tried to shake some life into his colleague, who opened one eye a fraction,
only to decide a second later that nothing could possibly be worth the effort.
Tell considered whether he should take Karlberg home with him - he could crash
out on the sofa for a couple of hours until he was in a fit state to get home
under his own steam. But then he thought about Seja, who might be waiting for
him in the double bed, if he was lucky. That decided the matter. He called a taxi
and propped Karlberg up in the street as they waited. The taxi driver shook his
head anxiously when Tell gave him the address.

    'This
is my own car.'

    Presumably
he was afraid that Karlberg might throw up, but Tell took no notice and
manoeuvred Karlberg into the back seat. If the taxi driver refused to take
everyone who was drunk, he would never manage to balance his books at the end
of the month.

    Tell
lit a cigarette after the taxi had gone and started hunting for his cloakroom
ticket. He heard voices nearby and spotted Palmlöf canoodling with the sparkly
blonde
under a balcony a little way off. The girl laughed
again, her voice high-pitched and carefree. Tell went back inside to the stoic
remains of humanity who were determined to stay till the bitter end. At the bar
he met Beckman.

    'Christian.
I haven't seen you on the dance floor this evening. Or anywhere else, come to
that.'

    She
tapped him hard on the chest, unaware of her own strength in the way people
who've had a bit too much to drink tend to be. He backed away and smiled
patiently,
suddenly glad he'd switched to mineral water a
couple of hours earlier, when he thought about Seja, and had regained
perspective.

    'What's
hiding in there, behind that… facade?'

    
'Somebody who's very tired and is about to go home.
I just
came over to say hello.'

    She
laughed and put her arm around him. They went over to the table together to
gather their things. Palmlöf and his
blonde
were right
behind them, the night air still in their clothes.

    'Are
you leaving already? Not you, Karin, surely - the evening has only just
started. We can manage a couple more beers before we call it a night. Come on,
Tell. I won't take no for an answer.'

    When
he came back he was balancing four tall glasses of Irish coffee on a tray.

    Johan
Björkman came over to join them.

    They
started chatting about old memories - not that there were many. Soon after completing
his training, Björkman, a dyed-in-the- wool Borås man, had been stricken by
homesickness, and when he was offered a post in his home town he had accepted
quicker than you could say patrol car. But it was possible to make a good
career there too, he said.

    He
went on to talk about the wave of narcotics that had flooded the town, finding
its way into places where they hadn't even heard of drugs twenty years ago.

    'They
picked up a guy in Svaneholm, no more than thirty, who'd been selling amphetamines
to sixth-form students. It turned out he had a stash out in his old man's barn
worth a couple of million.' He shook his head.
'The whole
bloody country's being poisoned, no doubt about it.'

    Tell
nodded in agreement, even if he had heard it all before and was far too tired
for such a serious conversation. He tried not to stare at Palmlofs hand,
resting on the
blonde's
knee. Björkman had introduced
her as one of his inspectors.

    'At
the moment the whole team is investigating a murder just outside Kinna,'
Björkman went on, undeterred. 'Presumably it has something to do with drugs as
well. Some
guy
up past the Frisjo area got shot the
other day, way out in the forest. It was just like an execution,
bang bang,
like an American movie,
then
the cold bastard reversed
over him in a car.
Twice.
There wasn't much left of
the body. You have to wonder what things will be like in another twenty years.
Particularly in view of the fact that they're now saying we shouldn't have any
police officers in rural areas. I mean, an unmanned police station, what's the
point of that? It takes a bloody hour before anybody turns up if someone raises
the alarm.'

    Tell
closed his eyes and tried sobering up through sheer willpower. 'Hang on. What
you just told me. Can you go over it again? Tell me about the Frisjo murder.'

    Björkman
looked up in surprise. 'You want to talk about work?'

    Tell
nodded and reached for a half-full bottle of Vichy Nouveau. 'I do.'

    Ten
minutes later - Beckman had also sobered up with impressive speed - Björkman
had finished telling them about the murder, which clearly had sufficient in
common with their own investigation to be worth looking into.

    'I'll
see you tomorrow morning, first thing.
At the station in
Borås.'
Tell's watch showed twenty past three. 'Let's say nine o'clock.'

    'But…'
Björkman looked at Tell in bewilderment. 'But… it's New Year's Eve tomorrow.
We're not at work.'

    'You
appear to have missed the point,' Tell replied. 'Nine o'clock. And don't be
late.'

    Tell
had found his way to the right floor in the police station in Borås and had
managed to track down Johan Björkman's office. And there he sat behind his desk
at precisely nine o'clock, still wearing his coat and more asleep than awake.
Björkman got to his feet with some difficulty and shook Tell by the hand.

    'Bloody
hell, I feel a bit rough this morning,' he greeted Tell.
'Coffee?'

    'A
pot, please.'

    Björkman
set off for the coffee machine, and Tell took the opportunity to look around.
It was obvious that Björkman was still very tidy. The red and black files were
arranged separately on the bookshelves, and not one sheet of paper sullied the
empty surface of the desk.

    Tell
thought about
his own
desk. At least he knew where
everything was. Besides, he was suspicious of people who were too tidy; any
form of enthusiasm for work had to be combined with a certain amount of mess,
he felt. A Freudian would no doubt have pointed to Tell's father, who had made
it a question of honour to maintain an absurd level of order in every single
aspect of his daily life. Only when he was an adult did Tell realise that his
father was something of a compulsive neurotic. This insight somehow made it
easier to accept his mania.

    It
hadn't always been easy. As a teenager he couldn't stand his father's routines:
everything in its place, packaged in countless plastic bags fastened with
elastic bands. If something ended up in the wrong place, which of course it
constantly did, thanks to other members of the family, his father had to sort
it out. Indeed
Tell
would sometimes deliberately hang
the scissors on the wrong hook in the larder or move the emulsion paint to the
shelf for gloss, just so he could watch - with a mixture of sadistic pleasure
and disgust - his father anxiously rearranging things. As if to demonstrate
that the world would come to an end if you lost control of things for a single
second.

    Tell
also sabotaged the orderliness that was so vital to his father because his
parent made him so incredibly angry.
The thought of those
oceans of wasted time.
All those hours he and his mother and sister had
to wait. He had seen only the self-righteousness in his father's actions, his
lack of awareness that there was something wrong with him, and his
condescending attitude towards those who chose to organise their lives in a
different way. It had been difficult to see that these habits were his father's
way of handling fear and anxiety.

    These
days Tell's father was no longer able to maintain such a regime, since he no
longer had a home of his own; he was completely in the hands of the staff at
his care home and whatever routines they chose to follow. It was undeniable
that he looked quite carefree these days, despite the aches and pains that
inevitably came with age. Perhaps he was enjoying the fact that he no longer
had any choice.

    Björkman
reappeared with a flask of coffee and two chipped mugs. Tell realised the depth
of his addiction as the aroma drifted up towards his face. He was a serious
caffeine junkie and had only managed to knock back half a cup that morning. He
had drunk it standing up in the kitchen with the imprint of the buttons of
Seja's nightshirt engraved on his cheek.

    
She
had stayed.
She'd been there when he got home at half past three in the
morning. The thought filled him with happiness but also a sense of unease that
the first thing he had done, and on New Year's Eve, was to head off to work yet
again. But on the other hand, she might as well get used to it. If she couldn't
cope with that kind of thing, then she couldn't cope with living with him,
that's just the way things were. That's what the job was like.
Sometimes, at least.

    'Did
you want me to come out with you?'

    'Is
it far?' asked
Tell,
despite the fact that they both
knew this was irrelevant.

    Björkman
shrugged his shoulders. 'No.
A few kilometres.'
He
leaned forward and sniffed Tell's breath. 'Are you really in a fit state to
drive?'

    'No,
but then neither are you. Shall we talk on the way?'

    'OK.'

    They
left the police station and drove through the town just as children were
starting to arrive at the play areas with their parents and the first retired
couples of the day were feeding the ducks in Annelund Park. Shop owners were
putting out signs advertising fireworks, and in a couple of hours the car park
at Knalleland would fill up with people buying the essentials for their New
Year parties. The town was getting ready to welcome in 2007.

    
'Idiot!'
Björkman slammed on the brakes and sounded his horn
at a lorry driver who had ignored his obligation to give way. When they were on
the move again, he said, 'So how will you be celebrating the New Year, Tell?'

    'I…'
He hadn't given it a thought. 'I've been invited to a party by some former
colleagues.' This was actually true, although Tell had forgotten to let them
know whether he was coming or not. 'What about you?'

    'I'm
going over to some neighbours. A few of us take it in turns to have a party on
New Year's Eve. It works really well - it's hard to get hold of a taxi after
midnight.'