The Beige Man (6 page)

“And he was interested in his family tree, judging by the book. I suppose that’s also a form of collecting. You collect members of your family as you go back through the years,” Irene mused.

Hannu looked at her and gave one of his rare, fleeting smiles.

“You could be right,” he said.

“K
ATARINA
’
S JUST TEXTED
me. They’ve touched down in Tenerife,” Jenny yelled from upstairs.

“So when do they arrive at Landvetter?” Irene shouted back, balancing on one leg as she tried to pull down the stiff zipper on her boot.

This was by no means easy, as Sammie was winding himself around her at the same time, demanding attention. He was twelve years old, and would be thirteen in a few months. His eyesight and hearing were deteriorating. When it suited him he pretended to be stone deaf, but this was nothing new; he’d been doing it ever since he was a puppy. Otherwise he was bright and happy. If anyone had asked him what kept him young, he would no doubt have replied, “Hunting.” His master could have explained that his quarry was cats and smaller dogs, but squirrels and birds were also acceptable. Just as long as they moved so that he could see them, although these days he sometimes missed them completely.

“Midnight. Felipe’s dad is picking them up,” Jenny replied.

Irene was relieved that she wouldn’t have to drive out to the airport in the middle of the night. She was also grateful that her other daughter was safe and on her way home.

Katarina and Felipe had been in Brazil for four months. They had stayed with Felipe’s relatives, studying and teaching capoeira, the dance that was also a martial art, although the description could easily be reversed: a martial art with
elements of dance. To Irene’s sorrow, Katarina had completely given up jiujitsu and was now putting all her efforts into capoeira.

At first Irene and Krister had been doubtful about the trip. However, the argument that Felipe had been to Brazil many times, spoke fluent Portuguese and had lots of relatives and friends in the country had finally persuaded them to agree. After all, their daughter was technically an adult.

Katarina had found a job immediately after graduating from high school at the beginning of June. She had spent the whole summer working at the Liseberg amusement park, and because she was still living at home, she had been able to save most of what she earned. She had used all her savings for the trip, and judging by her travel blog, it had been worth every single krona.

In spite of the fact that Irene had been able to follow their experiences online, she had felt anxious all the time.

She knew that Krister had been worried, too, even though he had tried not to show it. Several times she had woken up in the middle of the night and heard him wandering around the house. His insomnia had resumed in the fall, when he had been diagnosed with depression due to exhaustion. The pace of work at the exclusive restaurant where he worked was relentless, and the pressure to retain its star in the gourmet guide weighed heavily on all the staff.

As head chef, Krister had carried a considerable burden, and in the end he just couldn’t cope any more. After a few months he had gone back to work, but only part-time due to ill health. Meanwhile, Glady’s had appointed a new head chef who was very good, and he had taken over some of Krister’s previous areas of responsibility. Irene thought Krister was getting back to his old self, although it would probably take time before he fully recovered. He was nine years older than her, but it was only during the last twelve months that she had given
the age difference any thought. Something happens when you get past fifty, she often thought. Although she wasn’t there yet—not by a long way.

“Evening, honey!” she heard her husband call from the kitchen.

A seductive aroma crept out into the hallway. Irene tiptoed across the kitchen floor and wrapped her arms around Krister from behind, as he was busy with various kitchen implements at the stove.

“Mmm, that smells delicious! I’m starving,” she murmured into the nape of his neck.

“Roast fish soup. Well, the peppers and other vegetables have been roasted in the oven, not the fish and the shellfish. I’m cooking those separately as usual,” Krister said, turning his head to try to kiss her.

It was essential to cook and serve the fish and shellfish separately because Jenny had been a vegan for several years now. These days it wasn’t really a problem, but Irene had found it difficult to get used to the idea. Some days they all ate vegan food, and on other days Jenny warmed up the leftovers while the rest of the family had something different. They usually prepared vegetable dishes that could be complemented with meat or fish for those who wished to partake.

Jenny came downstairs. She had let her hair grow without coloring the roots, which were golden blonde. The rest was coal black. The band she had been in for several years had split up after the summer, and Jenny hadn’t made much of an effort to find a new one; she had been fully occupied working in various daycare facilities over the fall and winter, employed on an hourly basis.

Jenny poured some of the soup into a smaller pan. She then added half the contents of a tin of butter beans in order to make it more substantial and richer in protein. She looked thoughtfully at her father as she slowly stirred the soup.

“Any chance you might be able to fix me up with a job at Glady’s?” she asked.

Krister raised his eyebrows. Jenny was a good cook when it came to preparing delicious vegan meals, but she had never shown any real interest in the restaurant industry.

“Doing what?” he wondered.

She shrugged. “Don’t know. Like, helping to cook maybe?”

“We have trained chefs with years of experience who are desperate to work for us. Glady’s is a top-class establishment. You might possibly be able to help out as a general kitchen hand. Or as a dishwasher. Although the cleaning is contracted out to another company, so the restaurant isn’t responsible for that anymore.”

“Right,” she said. She couldn’t hide her disappointment, even though she was trying hard.

“I thought you were happy working at the daycare,” Irene said.

“I am. But it doesn’t feel like it’s what I’m really meant to do.”

“And what about your music?” Krister asked.

“I won’t give that up, but right now I just feel like I want to do something different.”

“Any idea what?”

“No. Well … I think working in a restaurant would be pretty cool.”

“You mean cooking.”

Jenny nodded and lifted the pan off the heat. The soup smelled delicious. She poured it into a bowl and scattered chopped fresh parsley over the top. The contrast between the bright red paprika soup and the green parsley was beautiful. Krister gazed thoughtfully at the results of her efforts.

“You’ve actually got a feeling for food, and an eye for what looks good. But you don’t have any formal training. And the fact that you’re vegan is another problem. You’d have to learn to cook meat and fish if you’re going to work in a restaurant.”

“Not if it’s a vegetarian restaurant,” Jenny shot back.

“So you’d like to learn to cook vegetarian food?”

Jenny nodded again.

“In that case you need to try to get yourself a job in a vegetarian restaurant.”

“That’s not easy. There are only, like, two or three in the whole of Göteborg,” Jenny said.

“In that case you’ll just have to get in touch with those two or three restaurants and introduce yourself. And you can tell them who your dad is,” Krister said.

He smiled at Jenny, who smiled back.
They’re so alike
, Irene thought, feeling a warm glow around her heart.

W
HEN
I
RENE WENT
over to the bedroom window to close the blinds, she saw that it was snowing heavily. She decided to get up early the next morning so she would have time to clear the snow off her car and wouldn’t run the risk of being late for work again.

“So she wants to take up cooking—how about that!” Krister said into the darkness when they had switched off the lights. He couldn’t hide the satisfaction in his voice.

“Do you think she’s serious?” Irene asked.

“I hope so, I really do. I think it would suit her.”

Irene felt slightly put out, somehow. She had always thought that her daughter would choose music. A vegan cook. Oh well, why not?

J
UST A SPOONFUL
of snow in Göteborg, and it’s chaos
, Irene’s mother, Gerd, always used to say. There was more than a grain of truth in her comment since she was speaking with seventy-seven years’ experience.

During the night several spoonfuls of snow had fallen; almost twenty-five centimeters covered the city. There was traffic chaos everywhere. The snowplows had hardly even started clearing the streets when the morning rush hour began. As usual, the residents of Göteborg were caught off guard by the fact that heavy snow had fallen this year, too. Those who didn’t have winter tires—which was a lot of people—were slithering around in the slush. Cars slid off the road and crashed into one another. Because of all the mishaps and narrow escapes, the traffic was more or less at a standstill. Irene realized she was going to be seriously late for the first time in her sixteen years with the Violent Crimes Unit. She sat there calling down the worst retribution of Judgment Day on those responsible for this pathetic attempt to clear the snow. Which didn’t really help at all. She was stuck there, gridlocked along with her fellow drivers. Her only consolation was that the temperature had started to creep upward.

I
RENE WAS ALMOST
half an hour late when she arrived at the department, extremely stressed. She saw Fredrik Stridh further down the corridor.

He waved and called out, “Take it easy. Hannu and Birgitta aren’t here yet.”

It felt good to have time for her morning ritual. She hung up her coat, exchanged a few words with Tommy, then headed for the coffee machine. To be on the safe side, she took two cups of coffee into the briefing with her.

The others were sitting chatting in the meeting room. It was a little while before Irene realized that Superintendent Andersson was missing.

“Where’s Sven?” she asked.

Both Jonny Blom and Fredrik Stridh looked surprised.

“Isn’t he around somewhere?” Fredrik said. “He’s usually the first to arrive in the mornings.”

“I suppose he’s stuck in the goddamn snow like everybody else,” Jonny said.

“Birgitta just called. They’ll be here in ten minutes,” Tommy Persson relayed as he came into the room.

“Have you seen Sven?” Irene asked.

“Nope. Isn’t he here?”

“No.”

They sat down around the table with their coffee. Irene told them about the keys that had been found in the victim’s pocket, and that one of them opened the door to Torleif Sandberg’s apartment.

“Which means that it’s likely that Torleif is our victim. They’re doing a dental X-ray this afternoon; apparently the lower jaw is pretty much intact,” she said.

There was an uncomfortable silence as they remembered the crushed head.

“Muesli was a bit of a bore—all that jogging and chewing on stuff that tasted like straw. And he didn’t drink,” Jonny said with his usual inability to read the atmosphere.

“I wouldn’t have said he was a bore,” Tommy chipped in. “But he had his … principles.”

“Principles, exactly! The man was a big ball of principles!” Jonny said. He suddenly stared at Tommy. “Did you ever hang out with Muesli?”

“Not really. But it doesn’t necessarily mean he’s boring, just because—”

“Doesn’t it? Do any of you know whether Muesli ever spent time with anybody at all?” He glanced at each person in turn. They all shook their heads, and Jonny said triumphantly, “Nobody hung out with him because he was so goddamn boring. Just imagine being invited to dinner at his place.” He cleared his throat, then spoke in a falsetto, “Welcome to my home this Friday evening; we’ll be having bean soup with water.”

The others laughed at the performance until they noticed Andersson in the doorway. The look he gave Jonny was venomous.

“I used to hang out with Torleif,” he said tersely.

In the silence that descended over the room, he lumbered over to his place at the head of the table. Puffing and panting, he sank down on the chair, which creaked beneath his weigh. He looked old and tired, Irene thought. Which of course he was, she reminded herself. Sixty-two, seriously overweight, high blood pressure and asthma—it was a pity his friend Torleif hadn’t had more influence on his lifestyle and eating habits. But it was news to Irene that Torleif Sandberg and the superintendent had spent time together. It was difficult to think of two more different individuals. What had they had in common? It struck her that she didn’t actually know anybody who hung out with Sven Andersson outside work. Irene looked at her boss as she remembered Torleif’s apartment. She realized what the common denominator was: loneliness.

“I had no idea you and Muesli were friends,” Jonny said, genuinely surprised. As usual he had put into words precisely what everybody else was thinking.

Andersson looked down at his hands for a little while before he spoke. “We had … a number of things in common. When I got divorced, he’d been through the same thing. We talked quite a lot back then.” Suddenly he looked up and smiled at his colleagues around the table. “He actually invited me round for cabbage pudding once, and it was one of the tastiest things I’ve ever eaten.”

“Cabbage pudding? But that has ground beef …” Jonny began.

“He used some kind of soy substitute, but it took a while before I realized it wasn’t real meat.”

“You’ll be telling us next that he offered you a beer as well,” Jonny said, rolling his eyes.

“He did, actually. Low-alcohol beer, but still.”

Andersson was interrupted by the arrival of Birgitta Moberg-Rauhala. There was a brief period of confusion as she started to tell them about a pile-up on the highway outside Floda, while at the same time apologizing for her and Hannu’s late arrival.

“We’ll have a quick meeting before the press conference at ten,” Andersson decided. Then he turned to Tommy and asked, “The body that was found yesterday—where are we on that?”