Free The Man From Beijing by Henning Mankell Page A

throughout the Hälsingland forests. Many villages in the area had few inhabitants. There was talk of people acquiring guns, of dogs, alarms and barricaded doors.
    Birgitta Roslin slid the newspaper to one side. The house was empty, silent. Her sudden and unwanted free time had come out of the blue. She went down to the basement and fetched one of the wine lists. She decided to order the case of Barolo Arione online. It was really too expensive, but she felt the urge to treat herself. She thought about doing some cleaning, an activity that was almost always neglected in her household. But she changed her mind just as she was about to bring out the vacuum cleaner. She sat down at the kitchen table and tried to assess her situation. She was on sick leave, although she wasn’t really ill. Is having high blood pressure really being ill? Maybe she really was close to burning herself out, and perhaps it could affect her judgement in court?
    She looked at the newspaper in front of her on the table and thought again about her mother and her childhood in Hälsingland. An idea struck her. She picked up the telephone, rang the local police station and asked to speak to Detective Chief Inspector Hugo Malmberg. They had known each other for many years. At one time he had tried to teach her and Staffan to play bridge, without arousing much enthusiasm.
    She heard Malmberg’s gentle voice at the other end of the line. Most people imagine police officers sound gruff; Hugo would convince them otherwise. He sounded more like a cuddly pensioner sitting on a park bench feeding the birds.
    She asked how he was and wondered if he had time to see her. He agreed. She’d walk.
    An hour later, Birgitta Roslin entered Hugo Malmberg’s office with its neat and tidy desk. Malmberg was on the phone, but he gestured, inviting her to sit down. The call concerned an assault that had happened the previous day.
    Malmberg hung up and smiled at her. ‘Would you like a cup of coffee?’
    ‘I’d rather not, thank you.’
    ‘Meaning what?’
    ‘The police station’s coffee is just as bad as the brew they serve up in the district court.’
    He stood.
    ‘Let’s go to the conference room,’ he said. ‘This telephone rings nonstop. It’s a feeling I share with every other decent Swedish police officer – that I’m the only one who’s really working hard.’
    They sat down at the oval table, cluttered with empty coffee mugs and water bottles. Malmberg shook his head disapprovingly.
    ‘People never clean up after themselves. They have their meetings, and when they’ve finished they disappear and leave all their rubbish behind. How can I help? Have you changed your mind about those bridge lessons?’
    She told him about what she’d discovered, about her connection to the mass murders.
    ‘I’m curious,’ she said. ‘All I can gather from what’s in the papers and the news bulletins is that many people are dead, and the police don’t have any leads.’
    ‘I don’t mind admitting that I’m glad I don’t work in that district right now. They must be going through sheer hell. I’ve never heard of anything like it. In its way it’s just as sensational as the Palme murder.’
    ‘What do you know that isn’t in the newspapers?’
    ‘There isn’t a single police officer the length and breadth of the country who isn’t wondering what happened. Everybody has a theory. It’s a myth that police officers are rational and lack imagination. We start speculating about what might have happened right away.’
    ‘What do you think happened?’
    He shrugged and thought for a moment before answering.
    ‘I know no more than you do. There are a lot of bodies, and it was brutal. But nothing was stolen, if I understand things correctly. The probability is that some sick individual was responsible. What lies behind it, goodness only knows. I assume the police up there are lining up known violent criminals with psychological problems. They’ve doubtless been