Read The Man from Beijing for Free Online Page B

at the press conference, by the way.”
    “I hate talking to journalists.”
    “Too bad.”
    Robertsson left. She was about to go and sit down in her car when she noticed that Huddén was waving to her. He was approaching and had something in his hand. He must have found the murder weapon, she thought. That would be a stroke of luck.
    But Huddén was not carrying a weapon. He handed over a plastic bag. Inside it was a thin red ribbon.
    “The dog found it. In the forest. About thirty yards from the leg.”
    “Any footprints?”
    “They’re looking—but when the dog found the ribbon, he showed no sign of wanting to follow a trail.”
    She lifted the bag and peered closely at it.
    “It’s thin,” she said. “It seems to be silk. Did you find anything else?”
    “No, that’s all. It seemed to sparkle in the snow.” She handed back the bag.
    “Well, we have something at least,” she said. “At the press conference we can announce that we have nineteen dead bodies and a clue in the form of a red silk ribbon.”
    “Maybe we’ll find something else.”
    When Huddén had left she sat in her car to think. Through the windshield she could see Julia being led away by a woman from the home help service. Ignorance is bliss, thought Sundberg.
    She closed her eyes and let the list of names scroll through her mind.She still couldn’t connect the various names to the faces she had now seen on four different occasions. Where did it start? she wondered. One house must have been the first, another one the last. The killer, whether or not he was alone, must have known what he was doing. He didn’t pick the houses haphazardly, he made no attempt to break into the day traders’ house, or that of the senile woman.
    She opened her eyes and gazed out through the windshield. It was planned, she thought. It must have been. But can a madman really prepare for that kind of deed? Surely it doesn’t add up.
    She poured out the last few drops of coffee from her thermos. The motive, she thought. Even a lunatic must have a motive. Perhaps inner voices urge him to kill everybody who crosses his path. But would those voices point him to Hesjövallen of all places? If so, why? How big a role was played by coincidence in this drama?
    The boy may be the key, she thought. He doesn’t live in the village. But he dies even so. Two people who have lived here for twenty years are still alive. Then it dawned on her—something Erik Huddén had said. Did she remember correctly? What was Julia’s surname?
    Julia’s house wasn’t locked. She went in and read the document that Huddén had found on the kitchen table. The answer she found to her question made her heart start beating faster. She sat down and tried to marshal her thoughts.
    The conclusion she reached was improbable, but it might be correct anyway. She dialed Huddén’s number. He answered immediately.
    “I’m sitting in Julia’s kitchen. The woman standing on the road in her nightdress. Come here right away.”
    “Will do.”
    Huddén sat opposite her at the table. Then stood up again and looked down at the chair seat. Sniffed at it, then changed to another chair. She stared at him in bafflement.
    “Urine,” he said. “The old lady must have peed herself. What did you want to say?”
    “I want to try out a thought on you. It seems implausible but is somehow logical nevertheless. I have the feeling that there’s a sort of underlying logic to what happened here last night. I want you to listen, and then tell me if I’ve got the wrong end of the stick.
    “It’s to do with names,” she began. “We still don’t know the boy’s name, but if I remember rightly he’s related to the Andersson family wholived and died in the house where we found them. A key to everything that happened here last night is the names. Families. People in this village seem to have been called Andersson, Andrén, or Magnusson. Julia’s surname is Holmgren. Julia Holmgren. She’s still alive. And then