The Man From Beijing Read Online Free PDF Page B

bit of a cold. Tom spent all day chopping wood.’
    ‘Did you speak to any of your neighbours?’
    ‘Tom exchanged a few words with Hilda, but we’ve already told you that.’
    ‘Did you see any of the others?’
    ‘Yes, I suppose I must have. It was snowing. People always come out to shovel and keep the paths clear. Yes, I saw several of them without really noticing.’
    ‘Did you see anybody else?’
    ‘What do you mean,“anybody else”?’
    ‘Somebody who doesn’t live here? Or maybe a car you didn’t recognise?’
    ‘No, nobody at all.’
    ‘What about the previous day?’
    ‘I suppose it was more or less the same. Nothing much ever happens here.’
    ‘Nothing unusual?’
    ‘Nothing at all.’
    Vivi took out her notebook and a pencil.
    ‘Now I’m afraid I have to ask you something difficult,’ she said. ‘I must ask you for the names of all your neighbours.’
    She ripped out a sheet of paper and placed it on the table.
    ‘Draw a map of the village,’ she said. ‘Your house and all the rest. Then we’ll give each one a number. Your house is number one. I want to know the names of everybody who lived in each of the houses.’
    The woman stood up and fetched a bigger sheet of paper. She sketched out the village. Sundberg could see that she was used to drawing.
    ‘How do you earn your living?’ Sundberg asked.
    ‘We’re day traders – stocks and shares.’
    It occurred to Vivi Sundberg that nothing ought to surprise her any more. Why shouldn’t a pair of ageing hippies in a village in Hälsingland deal in stocks and shares?
    ‘And we talk a lot,’ Ninni added. ‘We tell each other stories. People don’t usually do that nowadays.’
    Sundberg felt the conversation was drifting away from the point.
    ‘The names, please,’ she said. ‘Preferably ages as well. Take your time so that you get it right.’
    She watched the pair of them huddled over the piece of paper, muttering to each other. The thought crossed her mind – maybe one of the villagers was responsible for the massacre.
    Fifteen minutes later, she had the list in her hand. The number didn’t tally. They were a name short. That must be the boy. She stood by the window and read through the list. There seemed to be basically three families in the village: the Anderssons, the Andréns and two people by the name of Magnusson. As she stood there with the list in her hand, she considered all the children and grandchildren who had moved away, who a few hours from now would be hit by this terrible news. Many, many people would be affected, and the resources required would be considerable.
    All the first names flitted through her mind: Elna, Sara, Brita, August, Herman, Hilda, Johannes, Erik, Gertrud, Vendela. . . . She tried to picture their faces in her mind’s eye, but they were blurred.
    Then a thought suddenly struck her, something she had overlooked entirely. She went outside and shouted for Erik Huddén, who was talking to one of the forensic officers.
    ‘Erik, who was it that discovered all this?’
    ‘Some guy called us – had a heart attack and crashed into a truck with a Bosnian driver.’
    ‘Could he be the one responsible for all this?’
    ‘Maybe. His car was full of cameras. Probably a photographer.’
    ‘Find out what you can about him. Then we need to set up some kind of HQ in that house over there. We have to go through the list of names and find their next of kin. What happened to the truck driver?’
    ‘He was breathalysed, but he was sober. He spoke such poor Swedish they took him to Hudiksvall instead of interrogating him in the middle of the road. But he didn’t seem to know anything.’
    Huddén left. As she was going back indoors she noticed a police officer running along the road towards the village. She went to the gate and waited for him.
    ‘We’ve found the leg,’ he said, clearly shaken. ‘The dog uncovered it about fifteen yards in among the trees.’
    He pointed towards the edge of the