Seventeen

On her way to the police headquarters in Salagatan, Ann Lindell walked past what was to be her new workplace come fall. A giant of a building was rising up at the end of Kungsgatan and it was already giving the city a new skyline.

It was not only a geographic shift. It also accorded police authority a more central position from a purely psychological standpoint. The building on Salagatan gave an uninspired and mundane impression. The first time she laid eyes on it, it made Ann think of disconsolate individuals at an unemployment agency. In contrast, the new creation with its provocative façade of glass and plaster promoted the position of the police in the city, gave them a more contemporary flair. Someone had compared it to a palatial bank or the offices of an insurance company.

Ann thought about the police headquarters in Malaga that she had visited on the job a few years back, an enormous building with an imposing exterior, but still with a relaxed atmosphere in the airy entrance, despite its location in an area with chaotic traffic.

In front of Uppsala’s new police station the motorists now wound their way rather gingerly around the newly constructed and, according to many, unnecessarily complicated roundabout. Several accidents had already occurred there and letters to the editor called it a new traffic disaster.

Several of Ann’s colleagues had been by on study trips and admired the view of the city they were there to protect. Sammy Nilsson said something about Uppsala being enjoyed best from above and that the uppermost floor was most likely reserved for the senior administration. From there they could both look down on their fellow citizens and be close to heaven.

“The higher up you get, the smaller the problem looks,” Sammy said.

“We’re already cramped,” Ola Haver filled in, “even before moving in. The Recovered Goods department is moving to the Fyrislund industrial area.”

“That’s only so people won’t be able to find it,” Sammy said. “Then we can sell the loot and throw parties for the police club.”

Ann Lindell smiled as she traced her way around the roundabout and was still in a good mood when she turned onto Väderkvarnsgatan. She was looking forward to leaving Salagatan. It would be a fresh start, she imagined, kind of like leaving a rundown rental in some far-flung suburb to a centrally located, sophisticated loft.

Whether their crime-fighting efforts would become more effective was not as certain. She recalled Sammy’s comment that it would be better to have ten, fifteen smaller stations scattered over town. That was his alternative to “the fortress” as he called the new structure.

“And anyway it’s built on such slippery ground that we’re probably going to sink into the Uppsala clay.”

Sammy’s brother, who worked in construction, had told them about all of the problems with the foundation. Marked heights changed from one day to the next as if the ground was playing tricks on the workers.

“But they used piles,” Haver objected.

“Piles,” Sammy said with a snort. “Nature has her own laws.”

Ann drove into the parking garage, parked the car, and took the elevator up to Violent Crimes, where things were almost completely quiet. A copier was spitting out paper, someone shut a door, and another colleague was whistling the theme song from the movie Titanic, another colossus that nature had taken care of.

She wondered who the building’s Celine Dion was and deduced that it had to be Asplund, the new recruit, a young man who seemed as if he had recently stepped into the big world outside his boyhood bedroom. They should talk but he would have to wait. The work on the passenger lists was probably not done yet.

Ann Lindell knew that the investigation of the two murders was floundering. The conditions were not ideal. They had not found anything to lead them forward. Ottosson would talk about the “blindness of a lack of imagination.” A good criminal investigator, or technician, had to have the ability to read the scene of a crime, and even be able to identify the victim’s landscape.

Ann thought she had been able to come up with an idea of Petrus Blomgren. His landscape was known to her; she could articulate the connections that had directed Blomgren’s life. With two exceptions: the intended suicide and the prescribed sleeping pills. These constituted a tear in the fabric that drew the gaze, that nagged at her.

She had encountered this before. It could be a person’s dream, an old injustice, a humiliation that needled, itching like a stubborn mosquito bite.

Sometimes it was love, or the absence of love. Ann knew what that meant. Petrus Blomgren had lived a quiet life in an environment that he knew through all his senses. Everything was familiar and reassuring. Blomgren had had work, food, firewood and therefore warmth, and he could live, function as a citizen in Vilsne village, Jumkil county, Sweden, but something was missing: love, closeness to another person. Hadn’t he written something about the fact that he had to make all of his decisions alone? There was the tear in Blomgren’s life.

Ann wrote a few lines on her pad, got up from her desk, walked over to the window, and tried to link her line of reasoning with the second victim, Jan-Elis Andersson. He appeared just as alone but in this case the loneliness was of a different order.

“A load of shit,” she said out loud and returned to her desk.

The primness of the Andersson household gave a different impression. Suddenly she thought of what it was: there was something calculatingly parsimonious about the house.

At Petrus Blomgren’s the impression had been of something else, a kind of warmth that suffused the house in Jumkil. You could sense it in the small details like the occasional decorative items, the pictures on the walls, the little TV room, predictable in its simple, worn appearance, but nonetheless radiating a personableness that was absent in the house in Alsike.

At Jan-Elis Andersson’s the bookshelves were the dominating feature, filled to bursting with light brown folders in hard-pressed cardboard, carefully arranged in chronological order. Why did one keep accounts, receipts and vouchers, ancient sale agreements and contracts with such meticulous care?

Money, Ann decided and doodled a little on the page. It was the concern about his own finances, need for order and a nervous cataloging of debit and credit that controlled Jan-Elis Andersson’s life.

Perhaps he was happy with his folders, but there was probably also a source of concern and perhaps even anxiety. Was that the tear in Jan-Elis Andersson’s life?

“BLOMGREN—LOVE” she wrote in capitals on her pad, followed by a heart. On the next line there was “ANDERSSON—MONEY” and a dollar sign.

The investigation into Andersson’s life was in full swing. Sammy Nilsson and Ola Haver were the ones who were doing the digging and Ann believed they were going to verify her theory that money was the driving force in the murdered Andersson’s life.

Lindell was speculating, she knew this, but from the swaying tower of loose theories that she was now constructing she would perhaps be able to provide herself with an overview.

She saw the process in an inner graphic, how she scrutinized the landscape, binding together Vilsne village, Jumkil and Norr-Ededy village, Alsike, and in the intersection between the imagined lines she would find the answer.

“It’s that simple,” she muttered, drew a few lines, and threw down her pen, suddenly aware of the fact that it was the first time she could see Uppsala and the surrounding area in her mind, exactly as she could with her childhood Ödeshög. She had become an Upplander.

With this conviction she left the office but returned immediately. It’s not quite so simple, Upplander or not, she thought and opened the telephone directory. There she quickly found Birger Rundgren’s name and number, and pulled the phone over.

The voice that answered betrayed the fact that Ann Lindell was speaking with an old man. He could not remember Petrus Blomgren, which did not surprise Lindell. Blomgren was not the one who ran to the doctor at the slightest twinge.

“But his medical entries are most likely still there,” Birger Rundgren croaked. “My son, who has taken over the practice, can surely help you.”

Lindell took down the number to Lars-Erik Rundgren, thanked him for his help, dialed the number, and smiled to herself as the phone rang.

It turned out that Rundgren Jr. sounded like his father.

“I have an upper-respiratory infection and shouldn’t be speaking at all,” he managed to squeeze out.

Lindell explained what she was after, gave the doctor her e-mail address, asked him to look for Blomgren’s records, and then send her the information he felt was relevant.

The mail arrived in five minutes. Petrus Blomgren had, of his own accord, contacted Birger Rundgren, whose office was on Kungsgatan at that time, on the eighth of June 1981. They had never met before. Blomgren had cited sleeping difficulties as the reason for the visit. The reason for the problem was “that the pat. has felt anxious for a while.” The doctor had noted that “not fin., wk, rel., loss.”

Otherwise he appeared healthy, employed as a farmer and construction carpenter. He was prescribed Ansopal, one tablet per night. No follow-up visit was required.

Lars-Erik Rundgren concluded with an explanation of his father’s cryptic abbreviations. According to his father there were four main reasons for poor sleep: bad finances, unhappy at work, love problems, or the loss of someone close to you. In other words, in Blomgren’s case Rundgren senior had ruled out all four explanations.

What does that leave? Lindell wondered as she read the mail a second time. She surmised that the doctor’s conversation with Blomgren had been short, that no real examination had taken place, that no diagnosis had been made, and that Rundgren had taken the easy way out.