The Man From Beijing (9 page)

‘Never. Good luck.’

Roslin immediately dialled the number she’d been given. An answering machine invited her to leave a message.

Once again she took out the vacuum cleaner, but couldn’t bring herself to use it. Instead she returned to the computer and within an hour or so had decided on a trip to Tenerife departing from Copenhagen two days later. She dug out an old school atlas and began dreaming of warm water and Spanish wines.

Maybe it’s just what I need, she thought. A week without Staffan, without trials, without the daily grind. I’m not exactly experienced in confronting my emotions or indeed my life. But at my age I ought to be able to look at myself objectively and face up to my weaknesses and to change things if necessary. Once upon a time, when I was young, I used to dream of becoming the first woman to sail around the world single-handed. It never happened. But nevertheless, maybe I could do with a few days sailing out to Denmark, or strolling along a beach in Tenerife. Either will work out if old age is already catching up with me, or if I can scramble out of the hole I’m sinking into. I managed menopause pretty well, but I’m not really sure what’s happening to me now. What I must establish first of all is whether my high blood pressure and panic attacks have anything to do with Staffan. I must understand that we will never feel content unless we lift ourselves out of our current dispirited state.

She started planning her trip without further ado. There was a glitch that prevented her from finalising her booking online, so she emailed her name and telephone number, and specified the package she was interested in. She had an immediate reply, saying she would be contacted within an hour.

Almost an hour later the telephone rang. But it wasn’t the travel agency.

‘Vivi Sundberg here. I’d like to speak to Birgitta Roslin.’

‘Speaking.’

‘Ah. I’ve been informed who you are, but I’m not sure what you want. As you can probably understand, we’re under a lot of pressure right now. Am I right in thinking that you are a judge?’

‘Yes, I am. I don’t want to make too much of a fuss about this, but my mother – who died several years ago – was adopted by a family called Andrén. I’ve seen photographs that suggest she lived in one of the houses in Hesjövallen.’

‘Contacting the next of kin is not my responsibility. I suggest you speak to Erik Huddén.’

‘But am I right in thinking that some of the victims were in fact called Andrén?’

‘Since you ask I can tell you that the Andrén family was the largest one in the village.’

‘And are all of them dead?’

‘I can’t tell you that. Do you have the first names of your mother’s foster-parents?’

She had the file on the desk in front of her; she untied the ribbon and leafed through the papers.

‘I’m afraid I don’t have time to wait,’ said Vivi Sundberg. ‘Call me when you’ve found the names.’

‘I have them here. Brita and August Andrén. They must be over ninety, possibly even ninety-five.’

There was a pause before Sundberg responded. Roslin could hear the sound of papers rustling. Then Sundberg picked up the phone again.

‘They are on the list. I’m afraid they are both dead, and the oldest was ninety-six. Please don’t pass that information on to any newspaper.’

‘Why in God’s name would I want to do that?’

‘You’re a judge. I’m sure you know what can happen, and why I’m asking you to keep the details to yourself.’

Birgitta Roslin knew exactly what was meant, although she had occasionally discussed with her colleagues how they were seldom if ever buttonholed by journalists – reporters hardly thought that judges would release information that ought to be kept secret.

‘I’m obviously interested in how the investigation is going.’

‘Neither I nor any of my colleagues has time to release specific information. We are besieged by the mass media here. I recommend that you talk to Erik Huddén if you phone Hudiksvall.’

Vivi Sundberg sounded impatient and irritated.

‘Many thanks for calling. I won’t disturb you any longer.’

Birgitta Roslin hung up and thought over what had been said. At least she was now quite certain that her mother’s foster-parents were among the dead. Like everybody else, she would have to remain patient while the police went about their work.

She considered phoning police HQ in Hudiksvall and talking to this Erik Huddén. But what would he be able to add? She decided not to. Instead, she started reading more carefully the papers inside the file devoted to her parents. It was many years since she had last opened it. She realised that, in fact, she had never read some of the documents before.

She sorted the contents of the thick file into three piles. The first one comprised the life history of her father, whose body was lying on the seabed in Gävlebukten. The water in the Baltic Sea was so salty that skeletons did not corrode especially quickly. Somewhere in the silt were his bones and cranium. The second pile dealt with the shared life of her mother and father, and she featured in there herself, both before and after she was born. The third pile was the largest and contained papers relevant to Gerda Lööf, her mother, who became an Andrén. She read slowly through everything, especially when she came to the documents referring to the time when her mother had been fostered by the Andrén family. Many of them were faded and difficult to read, despite the fact that she used a magnifying glass.

She slid over a notepad and wrote down names and ages. She herself had been born in the spring of 1949. Her mother was then seventeen, having been born in 1931. She also found the birth dates of August and Brita Andrén: she was born in August 1909, and he in December 1910. So they had been twenty-two and twenty-one respectively when Gerda was born, and under thirty when she came to join them in Hesjövallen.

She found nothing to indicate that Hesjövallen was the place where they lived, but the photograph that she now checked again with the picture in the newspaper convinced her. There could be no mistake.

She started to examine the people standing upright and stiff in the ancient photograph. There were two younger people in it, a man and a woman standing a little to one side of the elderly couple at the centre of the picture. Could they be Brita and August? There was no date, nothing written on the back of the picture. She tried to work out when it might have been taken. What did the clothes indicate? The people in the photograph had obviously dressed up for it, but they were rural people for whom a suit could last for a whole lifetime.

She pushed the photos to one side and turned to the other documents and letters. In 1942 Brita had suffered from some stomach problem and been treated in the hospital in Hudiksvall. Gerda writes her a card and hopes she will soon be better. She is eleven at the time, and her handwriting is awkward. Some words are misspelled, and she has drawn a flower with irregular petals on one side of the card.

Birgitta was quite touched on reading this card and surprised that she hadn’t noticed it before. It had been lying inside another letter. But why had she never opened it? Was it because of the pain she felt when Gerda died, which meant that she didn’t want to touch anything that would remind her of her mother?

She leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. She had her mother to thank for everything. Gerda didn’t even finish school, but she had always urged her daughter to continue her studies. It’s our turn now, she’d said. Now it’s time for daughters of the working classes to get themselves an education. And that is precisely what Birgitta Roslin had done. During the 1960s, when no longer only middle-class children flocked to universities, it had been only natural for her to join radical left-wing groups. Life was not just a matter of understanding, but also of bringing about change.

She continued working her way methodically through the documents. She discovered another letter. The envelope was pale blue, and postmarked from America. The thin paper was filled with tiny handwriting. She focused the light from her desk lamp and with the aid of the magnifying glass tried to make out what the letter said. It was written in Swedish but contained a lot of English words. Somebody called Gustaf is describing his work as a pig farmer. A child called Emily has just died, and there is ‘stor sorrow’ in the household. He wonders how things are back home in Hälsingland, how the family’s doing, and the harvests and the animals. The letter was dated 19 June 1896. The address on the envelope was August Andrén, Hesjövallen, Sweden. But my maternal foster-grandfather wasn’t even born then, she thought. Presumably the letter must have been addressed to his father, since it had been kept by Gerda’s family. But why had it been passed down to her?

Right at the bottom, under the signature, was an address:
Mr Gustaf Andrén, Minneapolis Post Office, Minnesota, United States of America.

She checked her old school atlas again. Minnesota is farming country. So one of the Andrén family in Hesjövallen had emigrated there more than a century ago.

But she found another letter that showed another member of the Andrén family had ended up in different parts of the United States. His name was Jan August, and he evidently worked on the railway that linked the East and West Coasts. His letter asked about relatives, living and dead, though large parts of the letter were illegible. The writing had become blurred.

Jan August’s address was:
Reno Post Office, Nevada, United States of America
.

She continued reading, but found nothing else in the piles that related to her mother’s connection with the Andrén family.

She put the documents back in the file, returned to the Internet and, without much hope of success, tried to find the postal address in Minneapolis that Gustaf Andrén had given. As expected, she came to a dead end. She tried the address in Nevada and was referred to a link to a newspaper called the
Reno Gazette-Journal.
Just then the phone rang: it was the travel agency. A friendly young man with a Danish accent ran through all the details of the package holiday with her and described the hotel. She didn’t hesitate. She made a preliminary booking and promised to confirm it the following morning at the latest.

She returned to the computer and called up the
Reno Gazette-Journal
again. She was just about to move on to another page when she recalled that her search was for Andrén, not merely the postal address. So there must be some reference to that name in a recent issue of the
Reno Gazette-Journal.
She started reading through the list of articles and subjects, clicking her way from one page to the next.

She gave a start when the relevant page eventually appeared. At first she read it without really grasping its implications. Then she read it again, more slowly, and began to wonder if she could believe her eyes. She stood up and backed away from the computer. But the text and the pictures didn’t disappear.

She printed them out and took them with her to the kitchen. She read everything once more, very slowly.

She sat there motionless. The sound of a rubbish truck drifted up from the street below.

For the first time, she felt fear creeping up on her. As if she were being observed unawares.

She went to check that the front door was locked. Then she returned to the computer and started to work her way backwards through the articles in the
Reno Gazette-Journal.

The rubbish truck had moved on. It was starting to get dark.

7

Long afterwards, when the memory of everything that had taken place began to grow dim, she sometimes wondered what would have happened if she had in fact gone on that holiday to Tenerife, then come home and returned to work with her blood pressure lowered and her tiredness banished. But reality turned out differently. Early the next morning she called the travel agency and cancelled her holiday. As she had been sensible enough to take out an insurance policy, the cancellation cost her only a few hundred kronor.

Staffan came home late that evening, as the train he was working on had been stranded, thanks to an engine failure. He had been forced to spend two hours consoling disgruntled passengers, including an elderly lady who had taken ill. By the time he got home he was tired and irritated. She let him eat his evening meal in peace. But when he’d finished she told him about her discovery of what had happened in distant Nevada, and how in all probability it was linked to the mass murders in Hälsingland. She could see he was doubtful, but didn’t know if that was because he was tired or because he didn’t believe her theory. When he went to bed she returned to the computer and kept alternating between Hälsingland and Nevada. At midnight she made a few notes in a pad, just as she did when she was preparing a judgement. No matter how unlikely it might seem, she was convinced that there must be a connection between the two incidents. She was also well aware that, in a way, she was an Andrén too, even if her name was now Roslin.

Was she in danger? She sat for hours, hunched over her notepad. Then she went out into the clear January night and looked up at the stars. Her mother had once told her that her father had been a passionate stargazer. With long intervals in between, she used to receive letters from him describing how he would stand on deck at night in faraway places. Studying the stars and their various constellations. He had a strange belief that the dead were transformed into stars. Birgitta Roslin wondered what he had been thinking when the
Runskär
sank in Gävlebukten. The heavily laden ship had keeled over in the severe storm and sunk in less than a minute. Only one SOS signal had been sent out before the radio fell silent. Had he had time to realise that he was about to die? Or had the freezing water taken him so much by surprise that he had no time to think? Just sudden terror, then an icy chill, and death.