The Man from Beijing by Henning Mankell

same way I do every tip and suggestion. And believe me—there are masses of them here, phone calls, letters, e-mails. You name it, we got it. Who knows, something may turn up.”
    She reached for a notepad and asked Birgitta Roslin to repeat her story. When she had finished making notes she stood up and escorted her visitor to the exit.
    Just before they came to the glass doors, she paused.
    “Do you want to see the house where your mother grew up? Is that why you’ve come here?”
    “Is it possible?”
    “The bodies are gone. I can let you in, if you’d like to. I’ll be going there in half an hour. But you must promise me not to take anything away from the house. There are people who’d be only too pleased to rip up the cork tiles on which a murdered person has been lying.”
    “I’m not like that.”
    “If you wait in your car, you can follow me.”
    Vivi Sundberg pressed a button, and the glass doors slid open. Birgitta Roslin hurried out into the street before any of the reporters who were still gathered in reception could get hold of her.
    As she sat with her hand on the ignition key, it struck her that she had failed. Sundberg hadn’t taken her seriously. It was unlikely they’d look into the Nevada lead, and if they did it would be without much enthusiasm.
    Who could blame them—the leap between Hesjövallen and Nevada was too great.
    A black car with no police markings drew up beside her. Vivi Sundberg waved.
    When they reached the village, Sundberg led her to the house. “I’ll leave you here, so that you can be alone for a while.” Birgitta Roslin took a deep breath and stepped inside. All the lights were on.
    It was like stepping from the wings onto a floodlit stage. And she was the only person in the play.
8
    Birgitta Roslin stood in the hall and listened. There is a silence in empty houses that is unique, she thought. People have left and taken all the noise with them. There isn’t even a clock ticking anywhere.
    She went into the living room. Old-fashioned smells abounded, from furniture, tapestries, and pale porcelain vases crammed onto shelves and in between potted plants. She felt with a finger in one of the pots, then went to the kitchen, found a watering can, and watered all the plants she could find. She sat down on a chair and looked around her. How much of all this had been here when her mother lived in this house? Most of it, she suspected. Everything here is old; furniture grows old with the people who use it.
    The floor, where the bodies had been lying, was still covered in plastic sheeting. She went up the stairs. The bed in the master bedroom was unmade. There was a slipper lying halfway under the bed. She couldn’t find its mate. There were two other rooms on this upper floor. In the one facing west, the wallpaper was covered in childish images of animals. She had a vague memory of her mother having mentioned that wallpaper once. There was a bed, a wardrobe, a chest of drawers, a chair, and a heapof rag-rugs piled up against one of the walls. She opened the wardrobe: the shelves were lined with newspaper pages. One was dated 1969. By then her mother had been gone for more than twenty years.
    She sat in the chair in front of the window. It was dark now, the wooded ridges on the other side of the lake were no longer visible. A police officer was moving around at the edge of the trees, lit up by a colleague’s flashlight. He kept stopping and bending down to examine the ground, as if he were looking for something.
    Birgitta Roslin had the feeling that her mother was near. Her mother had sat in this very place long before Birgitta had ever been thought of. Here, in the same room at a different time. Somebody had carved squiggles into the white-painted window frame. Perhaps her mother. Perhaps every mark was an expression of a longing to get away, to find a new dawn.
    She stood up and went back downstairs. Off the kitchen was a room with a bed, some crutches leaning against a wall,