Free Mind's Eye by Håkan Nesser Page B

a confusion of shacks, sheds, fences, and net racks. He wondered if there could be any room for integrity in a place like this. People lived in each other’s kitchens, and every bedroom must be surrounded by listening ears.
    The higher the sky, the lower the people, he thought as he rang the doorbell. Why did there have to be people in every kind of landscape?

    The woman who peered at him through the barely open door was small and thin. Her hair was short and straight and completely white, and her face seemed to be somehow introverted. Van Veeteren recognized the expression from lots of other old people. Perhaps it had something to do with their false teeth…. As if they had bitten into something thirty years ago, and stubbornly refused to let go ever since, he thought.
    Or was there more than that to this woman?
    “Yes?”
    “Mrs. Ringmar?”
    “Yes.”
    “My name’s Van Veeteren. It was me who phoned.”
    “Please come in.”
    She opened the door, but only wide enough for him to be able to squeeze through.
    She ushered him into the drawing room. Indicated a sofa in the corner. Van Veeteren sat down.
    “I’ve put the coffee on. I suppose you’d like some coffee?”
    Van Veeteren nodded.
    “Yes, please. If it’s not too much trouble.”
    She left the room. Van Veeteren looked round. A neat, attractive room. A low ceiling and a degree of timelessness. He liked it. Apart from the television set, there was not much about it later than the fifties. The sofa, table, and armchairs all in teak, a display case, a little bookcase. The windowsill tightly packed with potted plants—to prevent people from seeing in, presumably. A few paintings of seascapes, family photographs. A newly married couple. Two children, at various stages. A boy and a girl. They looked to be similar in age. The girl must be Eva.
    She returned with a coffee tray.
    “Please accept my condolences, Mrs. Ringmar.”
    She nodded and clenched her teeth even more tightly. She made Van Veeteren think of a stunted pine tree.
    “There’s been a police officer here already.”
    “I know. My colleague, Inspector Münster. I don’t want to inconvenience you, but there are a few questions I’d like to ask you, just to complete the picture.”
    “Fire away. I’m used to it.”
    She poured out the coffee and slid a plate of biscuits toward Van Veeteren.
    “What do you want to know?”
    “A bit about…the background, as it were.”
    “Why?”
    “You never know, Mrs. Ringmar.”
    For some reason she seemed happy with this answer, and without his needing to prompt her, she set off talking.
    “I’m on my own now, you know—are you a chief inspector?”
    Van Veeteren nodded.
    “I don’t know if you can understand, but it’s something I always seemed to know would happen. I’ve always sort of known I’d be the last one left.”
    “Your husband?”
    “Died in 1969. It was better that way. He wasn’t…wasn’t himself those final years. He drank a lot, but it was the cancer that got him.”
    Van Veeteren slipped a small, pale-colored biscuit into his mouth.
    “The children didn’t miss him, but he meant well. It’s just that he didn’t have the strength to do what he should have done. Some people are like that, aren’t they, Chief Inspector?”
    “How old were the children then? Am I right in thinking there was Eva and a son?”
    “Fifteen. They are twins…were twins, or however I should put it.”
    She took a handkerchief from her apron pocket and blew her nose.
    “Rolf and Eva. Ah well, it was a good job they had each other.”
    “Why was that?”
    She hesitated.
    “Walter had what you might call old-fashioned ideas about bringing up children.”
    “I see. You mean, he beat them?”
    She nodded. Van Veeteren looked out the window. He didn’t need to ask any more questions. He knew the implications; he only needed to think back to his own childhood.
    Locked in the attic. Heavy footsteps on the stairs. That dry cough.
    “What