Tell Tale Tit E-Book

Ulla Bolinder

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 382

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

The year is 1957. In a small Swedish village, fear and anxiety spread when one of the village women is found dead in a meadow. The case seems to remain unsolved, and in the village the suspicions and gossip grow stronger. The solution is within reach, but the small, detached details, which together show what really happened, are difficult to detect. The question is whether it will ever happen. TELL TALE TIT is, apart from a story about a crime, a realistic depiction of time that with great wealth of details and genuine atmosphere gives a picture of life in the 1950s when the Swedish folk home was built and faith in the future was bright and strong.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Lilly Olofsson 1961

Journal at Ulleråker Hospital’s northern women’s ward

Ingrid

Gustav Landin

Ingrid

Gösta Dahlström, Detective Chief Inspector and Murder Investigator

Ingrid

Gösta Dahlström

Ingrid

Ingrid

Ingrid

Gösta Dahlström

Ingrid

Ingrid

Gösta Dahlström

Ingrid

Ingrid

Ingrid

Ingrid

Ingrid

Gösta Dahlström

Ingrid

Ingrid

Ingrid

Holger Zetterberg, retired district medical officer

Ingrid

Ingrid

Ingrid

Ingrid

Gösta Dahlström

Ingrid

Ingrid

Journal at Ulleråker Hospital’s northern women’s ward

Lilly Olofsson 1961

Lilly Olofsson 1961

In October 1957, I came to know that a woman had been found murdered in the village where my older sister Signe lived with her husband and their nine-year-old daughter Ingrid. The dead woman was their closest neighbour.

Signe and I used to talk to each other on the phone several times a week, and she now began to express concern that the police suspected her of having killed the neighbour’s wife. She also said that she had a feeling that people were speaking ill of her in the village and that the villagers shared the police’s suspicions because she and the neighbour’s wife a few months earlier had fallen out and no longer were on visiting terms.

She kept coming back to this, and despite persistent attempts I didn’t succeed in reassuring her. She became increasingly anxious and confused. In the end, she didn’t answer when I called, and a few weeks later I was told that she had been admitted to Ulleråker Hospital. We have mental illness in the family, but I could never have believed that Signe would be affected. She refused to receive me at the hospital, and when she got home, she didn’t want to talk to me on the phone or see me.

However, the thoughts of what had happened gave me no peace, and lastly, I decided to try to find out what could be behind it. By agreement with my brother-in-law, I visited my sister’s home on several occasions, which she reluctantly accepted. I talked to my brother-in-law and to my niece, with whom I have always had a good relationship, but I didn’t succeed in reaching Signe. She withdrew and didn’t want to answer my questions.

Ingrid and her father didn’t have much to say about the matter either, and I didn’t get any clarity in what was behind my sister’s feelings. Her thoughts that she was suspected of the murder of the neighbour’s wife were probably just a symptom of her illness and nothing else.

Journal at Ulleråker Hospital’s northern women’s ward

9.12.1957: Admitted to ward 11 after application by her husband Erik Lundin, who also signed the life story report. Care certificate issued on 8.12.1957 by temporary district medical officer H. Zetterberg.

The care certificate announces: Pat. has had 14 siblings. The mother has been cared for at Ulleråker Hospital for about 20 years. A sister and a brother have been mentally deranged and cared for at Ulleråker, now healthy. Pat. has a 9-year-old daughter.

Pat. is usually kind, friendly, happy, and home-loving. A dispute with a neighbour’s wife some time ago took her hard. She has been afraid of vagrants and wanted to lock the door when her husband, who has employment in Uppsala, was away.

Previously not insane. 14 days ago, been overstrung and seemed absent and confused for a couple of days, then better. Since 4 days, her oddities have increased more and more. Worried, wandering around, sleepless. Has, however, been able to stay alone at home when her husband has been at work up to and including on 6.12. On 8.12 pat. wanted to go down to the Fyris River to see what dead people were in the water. She has walked anxiously back and forth in the very well-kept home and listened and looked out. It was considered justified to call a doctor.

Status praesens in the patient’s home 8.12.1957:

Somatic: Nothing remarkable.

Mental: When the doctor has entered the lower floor of the villa, pat. comes descending from the bedroom with a quilt around her. She moves forward while somehow listening. Explains that she is not ill but complains of pain in the back of her head. Cannot be examined. She explains: “I have not recognized myself, everything is unreal, I don’t recognize my sister and not the man either.” Behaviour, posture, movements like a sick queen, alternating with fear. Irresolute. Attention slack, distracted. Sometimes perceives correctly. Memory very uncertain, mixes old and new. Thought processes fragmented. Mental disorders. Says: “Someone is saying right now: You should sit at the gate and go up in the air. Come right away.” Shouts: “Come right away!” Laughs, explains: “It’s Martin Ljung who shouts.” So, she says to her husband: “Open the window and shout! What is this? Come right away! Damn oxen!” And after a while: “I see. There are so many people around the house. There are so many people around the house. There are so many men with white hats sitting around the house looking at me.” Goes to the window. “They stare me straight in the eyes.” So, she wants to go out in the dark, and when her husband tries to stop her, she threatens to hit him and says: “To hell with you!” Returning to the reasoning about Martin Ljung. Then goes anxiously back and forth for a while. “They are staring at me. I see their eyes. At six o’clock tonight there will be a bang and a fight and fylladelfia.” When asked, she replies that she married in 1954. “It’s eleven years ago.” Hallucinations for sight and hearing. Escape of thought. Memory loss. Thought disorder.

The need for care is urgent because it is completely impossible to know what she can do if she were to come out and get the idea to go and look at the dead people in the Fyris River. In any case, her husband must now refrain from his work and guard her.

9.12.1957: Admitted to dept. 8. Comes from her home in the company of her husband. Orderly behaviour. Smiles and says that her “nob feels a little heavy”. Will be home again soon, assuredly for Christmas. Fully oriented. Short and inaccessible for further conversation. Rejects medicine for the night.

10.12.1957: Conversation (doc. Berglund): Pat. comes in laughing with a yellow cap on her head. Talks fairly freely about her psychotic experiences. Has felt “nice” the last few days. Does not know why she has come here. “Must definitely have escaped,” she laughs. Comments that she laughs easily, “has been so almost always”. Claims that she is warm on her back – just for the day it is icy cold in the expedition because the heat supply does not work.

Admits that there has been unrest lately. “I have played a little theatre, sung and trolled and acted out a little. You have to do that from time to time. Of course, I have spoken with voices, otherwise you cannot play. They answer me as they should answer.” Admits influences of fellow human beings, especially the nearest neighbour influences her. “I see like faces in front of me. If people are talking, I see them.” She mostly sees the eyes of each person, for instance the neighbour’s wife, and recognizes them by their eyes. Laughs out loud when it comes to actress Sif Ruud, whom she has seen. “She broke her ass twice, but it does not matter, because no one knows about it.”

Summary: Mood elevated and inadequate. Fragmented thought process. Visual and auditory hallucinations, possibly feeling. Influence ideas, a sense of unreality. No disease insight.

Diagnosis: Schizophrenia.

Therapy: Hibernal in combination with insulin coma treatment.

11.12.1957: Seems happier. Friendly and accommodating. However, does not think it is necessary with insulin treatment.

15.12.1957: Does not contact fellow-pat. Does not need any company, has enough from what she “sees and observes” in the room. Talking about someone being on the go with radar, one sees it in the sky. “Some call it stars, but it is a lot of aeroplanes.”

22.12.1957: More sociable with fellow-pat. Tolerates the insulin treatment well.

24.12.1957: Picked up by her husband for leave during Christmas.

28.12.1957: Back from leave in good spirits.

30.12.1957: Insulin treatment exposed after 12 inj.

31.12.1957: Discharged on trial to home.

12.2.1958: Requested by letter to her husband Erik Lundin.

20.2.1958: The husband announces that pat. is very caring and careful about what she is responsible for. Is calm in her behaviour. The husband believes that pat. def. can be discharged from present hospital.

26.2.1958: Discharged, improved. /pat. informed/.

My name is Ingrid Elisabet Lundin and I am nine years old. I am turning ten this autumn.

My mother’s name is Signe and my father’s name is Erik.

I have no siblings.

I have been to a party where the Christmas tree was to be stripped of decorations. It was with a girl named Anita. As soon as we came in, we each got a paper hat that we would wear. Mine was red with glitter on. Then we drank soft drinks and ate buns and cakes.

A little later there was a fishpond. In the bags we fished up there were fruit and sweets and gingerbread hearts with white glaze on them. The fishpond was a blanket that they had hung up in a doorway. Behind the blanket sat Bengt, Anita’s big brother, hooking the bags on the fishing line that we threw down.

I didn’t know some of the children who were there. Anita’s cousins I think it was. I mostly talked to Gun-Britt, who lives next to us. She is two years older than me and is in fifth grade. She is eleven and I am nine. I turn ten in October. Gun-Britt turns in July. With her, in any case, I was mostly at the party.

Before we threw out the Christmas tree, we played ring games, so we got all sweaty. Becke and Stickan went out and threw themselves into a snowdrift when they got too hot.

Once when I was at Gun-Britt’s house, we had a pillowfight in her mom’s and dad’s beds. Then we also became sweaty. We are not allowed to be in their beds, but that time everyone was out picking potatoes, so no one saw us.

It’s rather untidy at Gun-Britt’s house. Sometimes the beds in the bedroom are not made all day, and it’s full of clothes and things everywhere. I think that’s a bit unfamiliar. In the kitchen, they have two canaries that litter. Putte and Stina are their names. And it’s full of dirty dishes on the sink and things on the table and clothes on the chairs.

Sometimes when I am at Gun-Britt’s, we are in their basement. There they have packs of old weekly magazines that we look through and cut out paper dolls from. I have got Grace Kelly, Gina Lollobrigida, and Elizabeth Taylor from magazines in her basement.

Dad, he reads Upsala Nya and Mål och Medel and Mom reads Svensk Damtidning and Husmodern, which have serial stories in them. From Gun-Britt’s mom she sometimes borrows Såningsmannen and Hela Världen. At least before she did, before they disagreed. Mom didn’t want to meet Aunt Eivor anymore because she had talked crap about Mom or whatever it was. Then I wasn’t allowed to go to Gun-Britt and play anymore. I thought that was wrong because it wasn’t Gun-Britt and I who were angry. So, I went anyway. I didn’t ask for permission before because Mom just said no.

Gun-Britt’s mother is dead now. She was murdered one day when she was out walking in the meadow. First, she was gone, then Gun-Britt’s dad found her down by the river. It was the day before my birthday. Two uncles, who were police officers, came to our house and talked to Mom and Dad. But we knew nothing about it because Mom and Dad didn’t usually meet Aunt Eivor. I was the only one who did it sometimes when I was at Gun-Britt’s house playing.

No one knows who murdered Aunt Eivor. The police have not figured it out yet. It was Stig and Bengt who found her in the meadow. First it was them and then it was Uncle Tore. And then they saw that she was dead.

My name is Bengt Hallgren and I am fifteen years old.

My mother’s name is Aina and my father’s name is Sten.

I have two sisters who are younger than me.

My buddy’s name is Stig and he is thirteen years old.

It was Stickan and I who found Eivor. We were down in the meadow to pull up the raft on dry land. We built it this summer and it became quite decent, so we didn’t want it to remain in the river over the winter and maybe freeze fast in the ice.

Otherwise, I don’t spend much time with Stickan nowadays. He is quite childish, and he can’t shut his gob. You can get quite tired of it.

It took a while to get the raft up and when it was fixed, it had gotten dark. But we know the way down there, so it didn’t matter. We made our way. The river glistened and kind of lit up a bit.

It was when we were almost at the cow-track by the gates that we saw her. At first, we didn’t know it was her, but we saw that someone was lying there. Stickan became yellow and didn’t dare to go any closer, but I took a few more steps. As I said, it was quite dark, but I saw who it was, because she was lying face up. I was completely empty-headed and didn’t get it at first. Why the hell is she lying here? Did she stumble and fall over? Is she sick? Has she had a heart-attack and kicked the bucket?

I cautiously approached and listened. The wind was quite brisk, so it was difficult to hear anything but the whispering of the pines and the rustle of the reeds. I coughed to see if she would react, but she didn’t. She was lying there without stirring a limb. I thought about going forward and grabbing her, but it was too creepy, I thought.

I went back to Stickan and said as it was, and he thought we should go away from there and pretend like nothing had happened. He was funky and wanted to make himself scarce at once. But I knew it was wrong and said she might live and would lie there and catch a cold and get pneumonia and maybe die if we did nothing. At the same time, I was pretty sure that she was already dead and that it didn’t matter what we did.

We went away from there. I was shaking and feeling rotten. It was the first time I saw a dead person in real life, and it felt quite uncanny.

When we got up on the road, I saw that light shone from the kitchen window at Tore’s, and I told Stickan that we had to go there and tell him. Then we saw that someone was walking around in the garden and shining with a torch. It was Tore who was out looking. When we had told him that we had found Eivor, he set off down towards the meadow. We saw how the light from the torch swept and scanned as he ran. We waited up on the road until he came back. Then, when he had been indoors and called, we followed him back down.

It was the ambulance that came first. The ambulance guys saw that she was dead and that meant they couldn’t take her with them from there. They had to wait for the police.

Two cops in a radio patrol car came first, and then came others. There was a lot of talking and sharing information before they started their investigations, and everything was dragging on, so finally Stickan and I got tired of standing there and went home.

My name is Gustav Landin and I am a Detective Chief Inspector and a Crime Scene Investigator.

I would like to begin by saying a few words about Mrs. Johansson, the tragic victim of this senseless outrage. We have collected pretty much everything there is to know about her life, marriage, family relationships, and other relations. We have also mapped her circadian rhythm and daily routines. These investigations were motivated, among other things, by the spread of rumours that arose after her death, and which presented her in a dubious light. There have also been allegations of tensions between her and relatives. Unfortunately, this can often be the case when evil tongues have a serious crime to be involved in.

Now people generally don’t like to speak ill of a dead person, but we have carefully tried to get as objective views as possible, and I can therefore unconditionally deny all negative statements about Mrs. Johansson. She was a thoroughly decent woman, living exclusively for her home, her husband, and her children. She was also an unusually steady person, who had never appeared in any less flattering contexts.

In my understanding, it must be a person unknown to Mrs. Johansson who has committed the crime. The motive is still unclear. It’s clear, however, that Mrs. Johansson was found dead early in the evening by her husband in a meadow near the home. Mr. Johansson may not have had time to understand all the details, but it was immediately clear to him that his wife was injured and that she must had been subjected to violence. Shocked and confused, he ran home to the phone and called for an ambulance.

According to the regulations, the ambulance personnel couldn’t bring the dead body from the scene. Instead, police were called. It was a commanding officer’s car from the radio police that was directed there. The policemen met with the ambulance staff and Mr. Johansson, who after his phone call had returned to the meadow where his wife was lying dead. A couple of boys were also on the scene but kept a safe distance.

The procedure in the event of a death is that the preliminary examination of the body is done by the radio patrol that first arrives at the scene. It’s these police officers who must decide whether it is a case of murder, suicide, or natural death. It has happened that the police interpreted the circumstances as natural, when in fact it was a murder, and if you happen to judge the death as not a crime, and it later turns out that the death was caused by someone else’s acting, you inevitably end up in a difficult situation. Namely, there are always the occasional wiseacres among the colleagues, who consider themselves compelled to subsequently criticize and devalue the incorrect assessment afterwards. In addition, senior officers don’t always realize the difficulties that may be associated with quickly assessing a death without a thorough examination.

Instead of becoming more confident over the years, I myself have taken an increasingly cautious approach and am less and less inclined to try to answer the question of crime or non-crime on my own. In more difficult cases, I always want to hear other people’s opinions as well. Stars, who with a single glance at the dead body consider themselves able to decide whether it is a crime or not, or young inexperienced police officers who become overambitious and instead of immediately arranging effective cordon of the site in a misdirected zeal give in to play detectives and thereby destroy important tracks or upset the primary condition of a crime scene, one would rather be without.

The fact that young and inexperienced police officers will have to answer for decisions that may be decisive for the entire further investigation is a fundamentally objectionable system, which still prevails in large parts of our country. It should instead be the case that the police officers who are first on site only do a short routine examination and then hand over the responsibility to more experienced colleagues. When in doubt, the National Homicide Commission must be mobilized, which has happened in this case. That was how my colleague Gösta Dahlström and I came into the picture.

The National Homicide Commission, which is a reinforcement of the state police’s criminal department in Stockholm, and which has access to a number of specialists with ultramodern equipment, turn out to various murder sites across the whole country as soon as a police authority needs and requests expert help with crime scene investigations, search, interrogations and the like. Another very important task we have, is to try to find solutions to older murder mysteries, where the period for prosecution hasn’t expired and where previous investigations for various reasons have failed.

I am thirteen years old and my name is Stig.

My big brother is twenty-three years old and his name is Åke.

My little sister is eight years old and her name is Ninni.

Mom’s name is Viola and pop’s name is Gunnar.

Our family name is Ekström.

Becke and I were there and saw when the pling-plong-taxi and the copper came, and then we went there again. It was Becke and I who found her. When we got to know that she had been murdered, I thought it was much like in the Alibi Magazine, which I had just borrowed from my bro. Drama in the Night, a detective novel by Öyulv Gran, type of.

Åke, my bro, was also there. He took the car there. He had to park up on the road, because only the ambulance and the police cars were allowed to drive down.

The car that my bro has is a Chevrolet Fleetmaster. He calls it the rack wag, but it’s quite decent for a ‘46, I think. Although I am not an expert.

I am more for trains and railways. Märklin-trains, that is. I have a steam locomotive, a German mail van, and two passenger cars. The parts are damned expensive. A passenger train locomotive runs to forty-five and a Swiss locomotive runs to eighty-three. You have to take it a little easy and wish for Christmas and birthdays.

I like Meccano too. With the tenth construction box, you can build an entire crane. Actually, I have done that.

I am technically inclined, but I also like sports. Bandy in the winter and football in the summer it usually is. Becke is two years older than me and has acquired some other interests as well, but we still have some fun together. Fiddling about with the rag like Nacka Skoglund and Gunnar Gren, jumping on ice floes, fishing in the river, and constructing gadgets. This summer, for instance, we built a raft down by the river. It was that one we had… The same evening we found Aunt Johansson dead, we had been there and pulled it ashore. This spring we will launch it again.

When we heard about the murder, I thought we would be something like Kalle Blomkvist and try to solve the case, but Becke didn’t believe in it and didn’t want to participate. Some things I do nowadays he thinks are childish, although he did the same things himself not so long ago. For example, he has stopped reading Biggles and collecting Alpha images and shooting with a cap pistol. One must say! But I will soon stop doing such things myself, I guess.

Before, we played Indians and cowboys quite often. The most difficult thing was when you were in a hurry and had to put in a new roll of caps. The rolls are in small cardboard boxes, and it’s important to get them up quickly and put them in correctly and make sure you don’t squeeze your finger when the shot goes off.

I wasn’t very good at that. I am better at yo-yo. Actually, I am quite a dab hand at that. I have a Kalmar pulley, and I can do some stylish stuff with it. The easiest thing is to spin, that is let go of the yo-yo and jerk so that it spins around at the bottom of the string. It’s important that the string isn’t twisted too tightly for it to go well. More difficult things to do are the Waterfall, the Cradle, the Semicircle, and Walk the Dog. If you walk the dog, you first throw out a quick spin, then you lower the yo-yo until it almost touches the ground, and then you walk away a bit with the pulley rolling in front of you. When the speed starts to slow down, you make a twitch in the string so that you get the yo-yo up to your hand again. It looks easy but requires quite a lot of practice.

Well, Becke and I still do some stuff together, but it’s not what it used to be, it really isn’t. For example, we no longer laugh at the same things. One must say! And he seems annoyed that I imitate people or tell funny stories that he has already heard. He also seems tired of me reeling off advertising verses. Take it easy, take a Toy! Easier washing with Surf! Health for the throat – Bronzol! Things like that get stuck in you and have to come out sometimes. Before it went well, but now he mostly tells me to shut up when I start. He thinks I am too childish and don’t fit into his new style.

When he turned fifteen, he got a moped from his pop. It’s an Apollo Motorette with Zündapp engine and helicopter frame. It’s sharp, I think. Costs around eight hundred and fifty, I have heard. But Becke’s old man is rather flush and can probably afford to cough it up. He works on construction. My old man is a raisin wrinkler, and my bro is a toilet diver. No, I am just kidding. Pop works at the post office and my bro is an electrician.

My bro likes rock and sharp babes. That’s what Becke has become interested in as well. But there is probably no chick who wants him. His clock is full of red dots, and he has had that for a long time now. No ointments have helped. When he tried a quartz lamp once, he looked like a boiled lobster instead.

My bro went steady with a chick for quite a long time. One almost began to believe that they would get hitched up. But it didn’t last. When it ended, he started gliding around in his Chevy again, looking for new broads. There are some places in town where the raggare hang out. But the girl he is knocking about with now, he didn’t get hold of there.

My bro has trained for a profession, and I intend to do the same. I am thinking of becoming a fireman or a pilot. Directly after school, you may have to work as a delivery boy for a while and perform errands for some store, but eventually I will invest in a good education.

In a family, it’s the man who brings home the dough. He is the one who has a job and gets paid. Without his money, there will be no food on the table and the family will perish. It’s the man who is most important in the family. The woman is also important, but not as important as he. She takes care of the household and looks after the children, but you can’t live on what she does. She must ask for money and doesn’t know how much the man has. He is the one who has the power, because he is the one who brings home the dough that the family will live on.

If you play with girls, you are a milksop. You can play with girls if no one sees it, but preferably not. Once, when I played mothers and fathers with a girl, my buddies caught me. You are weak if you play with girls. I was ashamed and started teasing her to show which side I was on.

Girls are generally worse at things that guys can do. For example, they can’t hit the ball with the round bat when they play rounders. They must use the flat girl’s bat. And they can never hit the ball as far as a guy can. A guy always wins over a girl.

In school, girls can be good at certain subjects, such as reading, writing, and drawing. Sometimes they can even be better than guys. They curry favour with the teacher and sit at home and study to get more gold stars and better grades than the boys. But that’s wrong, since the guys are the best. A guy is stronger and can easily beat up a girl if he wants to. It’s not fair to hit someone who is weaker, and a girl is always weaker, but the opportunity exists.

Åke, my bro, has beaten a girl once. That’s why he was suspected of the murder of Aunt Johansson. And the same night it happened, someone had seen his car on the way down to the river. The Chevy, that is. Everyone knows it belongs to him. But he says he wasn’t there, and then you have to believe him.

Ingrid

Now in the winter when Gun-Britt and I play, we are mostly out making snowmen and snowball lanterns which we put candles in, or caves in snow drifts if it’s the kind of snow that you can dig in. Then you get snow in your boots and lumps of ice on your mittens. Gun-Britt sucks them off, but I think that’s disgusting. And she eats snow and licks on icicles. Mom has forbidden me to do that, because she says that the snow and ice can be poisoned by things that the Russians have let out.

When it’s cold outside, it steams when you breathe. Sometimes I take a stick and use it as a cigarette. I hold the stick between my fingers as smokers do, and then I suck on it and pretend that what comes out when I breathe is cigarette smoke. It looks like you really smoke then. You feel jaunty and tough when you pretend to smoke.

I like when there is a storm in the winter. Then it zings in the telephone wires and the snow is whirling. But I feel sorry for Dad who must shovel away so much snow when the walkway has got blocked with drifting snow.

In the woods there is a swamp that we skate on when it’s cold. But sometimes the ice is so crunchy that it’s impossible. In that swamp we catch tadpoles in the spring.

At school, the caretaker floods water on the boys’ football ground so it becomes ice. There, the boys play ice hockey and bandy. They have ice hockey skates or whatever it’s called. The girls, some of them, have figure skating skates. I have some called Princess, and Kerstin, who I mostly am together with in school, have some named Piruett. But I can’t do any tricks. The only things I can do is cut cake and spin a little on the thorns and glide on one leg.

Once when the boys were playing ice hockey, Tommy in my class was knocked over and got a cut in his lip by a skate so it started to bleed. Then he had to go with our master to the hospital and be sewn. Afterwards the lip was thick and blue with black stitches in it.

I go by bus to school because it’s a long way there. The bus stops where Stig and Ninni live, so Gun-Britt and I have to walk or bike there. In the winter we walk, because then it’s dangerous to cycle. Before it starts to snow, they set up juniper branches along the roadsides, so they know where the ditches are if the road gets blocked with snow. Then the plough truck comes first and then the sand truck. When the sand truck has gone, you can no longer go kick-sledding on the road. Maybe so if they have not sanded all the way to the edges.

When I go to school, I pick up Gun-Britt, and then we walk together to the bus. I live farthest away, because in the other direction there are no children. Only in the summer a girl and a boy live further away. But then you don’t go to school.

The bus goes in pretzel hooks and picks up children. When it comes to us it’s empty, and when it arrives at school it’s full. In the winter, when there is a lot of snow, the bus may get stuck or slip into a ditch. There is a road that goes straight over a field, and on that road it’s very icy sometimes. There the bus went down into the ditch once. That day we arrived at school too late.

It must be difficult for the drivers when it’s so slippery. A driver called Fransson often sits and swears while driving. And he doesn’t tolerate anyone in the bus fooling around. The guys do that sometimes, and then he gets angry and starts scolding them, so he turns red like a peony in the mug. They may have been throwing apple-cores or starting to fight or talking too loudly. Once he stopped in the middle of the road and went to the back of the bus to Uffe, who goes to my class, and twisted his ear. Another time he braked when I shouted because a guy made a horse bite on me. I was about to go off in a faint, because at first I thought it was me he was mad at. But he had stopped because he had seen in the rear-view mirror that Tommy and Uffe had started to slither on their soles after the bus just when they had gotten off. He ran out and scolded them and lifted Uffe up. It’s dangerous to slither on your soles behind a bus because you can lose your grip and fall under the bus and be run over, and if that happened when it was Fransson who was driving, he would be blamed for it, perhaps he feared.

Gustav Landin

A first extremely important question in case of murder is whether the finding-place and the crime scene are identical. In this case, no trail tracks could be observed on the hard ground. If the ground hadn’t been so hard, there should have been opportunities to secure shoe tracks and other things, but this couldn’t be done.

The clothes of the deceased were found to be in good order. The apron was as it should be, and the blouse and the cardigan were buttoned right up to the neck. But there were some reddish-brown spots on the blouse collar and on the back of the cardigan, which later turned out to originate from the victim’s own bleeding. The skirt, the apron, the knickers, and the corset, with properly fastened garters, didn’t provide any information whatsoever to the crime scene investigators.

However, a pair of black boots, an empty basket, a torch, and a denture lying next to her body indicated that Mrs. Johansson’s death could have been preceded by a fight. Although there were no traces or other signs pointing in that direction. A strange detail was that some withered maple leaves had stuck to her clothes, even though trees of that kind didn’t grow nearby. Our theory was therefore that the murder had taken place in a different place than where Mrs. Johansson was found. The murderer must have carried her, despite her sixty-two kilos, or dragged her there and then placed the objects she lost next to her body.

The site was photographed, and the dead body was examined for livor mortis, how far the rigor mortis had developed, if there was residual body heat and the like. As one doesn’t always have access to doctors who can be responsible for the first physical examination, the crime scene investigator himself must have a fairly solid knowledge of such things.

When examining a dead body, you start with the head. The torso, the arms, and finally the legs are then examined. All the time you keep careful notes about the condition and position of the clothes, damage and contamination of the clothes and the body, in which directions body fluids such as blood, saliva, urine, and more have flowed, and so on. With the help of these simple observations, it’s often possible to clarify whether a person was standing, sitting, or lying down when he or she received a certain injury.

To begin with, you mustn’t unnecessarily disturb the dead body from the primary position. Sometimes, however, one has to search the dead person’s pockets for identification documents, but this must be done with the utmost care, so that nothing is disturbed or can easily be restored to its original position.

After the dead person has been examined, the detailed examination of the site, which is also usually the crime scene, is started. You take it point by point, so that nothing is forgotten, and photograph from all necessary angles. After that, it remains to complete the photography by making sketches of the current location.

Mrs. Johansson’s body was taken to the mortuary late at night. According to the pathologist’s statement, which came some time later, she had died of a severe blow to the head, in the curve between the back of the head and the neck. The area around the brain stem is a very vulnerable place, and any serious damage in that area can be fatal.

After the pathologist’s statement, the unknown perpetrator appeared in an even more eerie light. This was apparently a cold-blooded man, who probably first had beaten his victim senselessly and then brought the body down to the river, perhaps with the intention of getting rid of it in the water. The act took place early on Thursday evening, between 18.00 and 19.30, probably closer to the first-mentioned time.

The terrain between the country road and the river was combed out by police with dogs. A dog handler from the state police was out with his Alsatian dog who was to sniff at the site but without getting weathering so that it was enough for track hunting. Special two-man patrols went from house to house to hear neighbours and others who might have made observations at the time. Three detectives were directed to investigate nearby barns with emphasis on the so-called pole barn in Kungsängen, which is an infamous haunt for vagrants. Two others were sent to the brickyard in Röbo and other similar “heating cabins” which in cold weather are often used by traveling elements. Alarms spread to surrounding police districts along all major highways. In other words, the murder hunt was at full blast.

Ingrid

I have got new furniture for my room. Dad let me choose the furniture myself in the store. Only the bed, the chest drawer, and the mirror are the same as before. Gun-Britt thinks I am a lucky dog who has my own room. She doesn’t have that because she shares with her big sis. She says I have nice things.

I have been given a secretaire, a bookshelf, a table and two chairs. And I have got light green curtains with ruffles and a green bedspread. Before I used to have yellow curtains, but Mom took them down because they had become so faded.

When Dad was going to repaper my room, I could choose from a large book with wallpaper in which kind I would like to have. I could get exactly the one I wanted, and then I chose a pink one with red roses on it. So, that wallpaper I have now.

Next to my room is Mom’s and Dad’s bedroom. I think there should be a door between the rooms and not just a drapery, because Dad is snoring so I can’t sleep sometimes. I have to get up and push him so that he stops. Then he is silent for maybe two minutes, but then he starts again. Sometimes I don’t want to get up. Instead, I shout to him to be quiet so that he wakes up and stops.

On the wall in my room, I have a painting with a small puppy on it that Dad bought for me when I was two years old, he has told me. I also have a real dog. Her name is Lady, and she is twenty-eight dog years old. It takes seven dog years to equal a human year, and she is four human years.

Before, we also had a cat. We had gotten him from Grandpa. There was a she-cat that had given birth to kittens up on their haymow, and I could choose one and take it with me home. Then I took Murre. Lady and he were friends and playing. But he is gone now.

There was someone who came with Lady to Dad’s job and wanted her killed because she couldn’t walk. A nasty man had thrown her down a flight of stairs, so she had been paralyzed in her hind legs. But Dad took her home to us. He knew that I wanted a dog, so he took her home and gave her medicine, and after a while she got well and was able to walk and run again.

Lady has a blue tongue, because she is a cross between a Norwegian elkhound and a Chinese spitz. You can also say Chow-Chow. I have taught her some tricks. She can put out a paw nicely and catch a piece of sugar from her nose. If I put a sugar lump on top of her nose and say now, she throws it up in the air and catches it, and if I reach out my hand and say thank you, she lifts her paw and thanks me. It was dead easy to teach her that.

I collect dog pictures, but I don’t know many dog breeds. Before my birthday, I wished for a dog book that all breeds would be in, but I didn’t get such a book, so I don’t know how to learn about them either. In magazines, there are only pictures of dogs that I already know, or it doesn’t say what kind it is. That’s potty, I think.

Last year in the autumn, they sent a dog into space from Russia. It was in a rocket called Sputnik. I don’t know what happened to that dog later. They couldn’t bring it down to earth again, so it probably died. Her name was Laika. I was angry with the Russians then, because I felt so sorry for that dog who had to sit trapped all alone and be afraid just because they had to experiment with rockets.

It’s a good thing that I have got a new bookshelf, so that I can find room for all my books. I have so many. It’s Dad who buys them for me. I still have all the ones that I have had since I was little. Before, I mostly read about animals, but nowadays I rather read books like the Kitty-books, where there is a girl who solves mysteries, and the Five-books which are about four children and a dog that chases thieves. Kerstin, who I usually am together with at school, likes the Cherry Amesbooks best. Those books are about a nurse.

In Mom’s and Dad’s bookshelf there are books that Mom doesn’t allow me to read. One which is called Naked and one which is called The Housewife’s Medical Book. Mom had hidden them behind the other books, but I found them and read them secretly because I was a nosey parker. But there was nothing special in them.

There is quite a lot you have to do in secret when you are a child. Play doctor, for example, because I am not allowed to do that either. Gun-Britt and I hang blankets over their garden table and there under we are. I don’t think that there should be books and games that are forbidden for children. Children want to know everything, and then I think they should be allowed to do that. How naked grown-ups look, and how it works when they do a certain thing, for instance. When I was little, I thought that those who were married only did it when they wanted children, but they do it all the time because they think it’s nice. That’s what Gun-Britt says. That’s why they must have rubbers, so they don’t get too many children.

It’s nice in our house, I think. If I am to list all the furniture we have in the living room, it’s a couch, a table, two armchairs, a floor lamp, a piano, a radiogramophone, a bookshelf, and a secretaire. In the secretaire, Dad has all his important papers. I arrange them sometimes to get them in order and read the verses on his telegrams.

There are nice pictures on telegrams. The Swedish flag that blows out from a pole, or a newlywed couple sitting in a boat with sails and flower garlands and angels on it, or three large gold crowns with three smaller crowns under them. They look like faces, with eye, eye, nose, mouth. No, they have no nose. And then there is one with red roses on it.

There are several such telegrams, but I don’t remember all of them. Dad got them when he turned fifty. Then he had a huge party in town. They photographed everyone who attended the party, and there are seventy-two people in the picture. On some of them, Mom has drawn over their eyes with a ballpoint pen. It’s on those she thinks have evil spirits in them.

My name is Aina

and my better half is called Sten.

Our surname is Hallgren.