Before the Frost Read Free Page B

roll out of bed and walk out the front door to take my morning piss, if you’ll pardon my language.”
    She looked at him with amusement.
    â€œIs that it?”
    â€œDo I need a better reason than that? Come on, let’s go.”

    â€œLet’s walk around the house one more time.”
    This time she looked more closely at the place, as if she were the prospective buyer and her father the agent. She sniffed around like a dog.
    â€œHow much?”
    â€œFour hundred thousand.”
    She raised her eyebrows.
    â€œThat’s what it says,” he said.
    â€œYou don’t have that much money, do you?”
    â€œNo, but the bank has pre-approved my loan. I’m a trusted customer, a policeman who’s always been as good as his word. I think I’m even disappointed I don’t like this place. An abandoned house is as depressing as a lonely person.”
    They left. Linda read a sign on the side of the road. MOSSBY BEACH. He glanced at her.
    â€œYou want to go down there?”
    â€œYes. If you have time.”
    This was the place where she had first told him about her decision to become a police officer. She was done with her vague plans to refinish furniture, become an actress, as well as her extensive backpacking trips all over the world. It was a long time since she had broken up with her first love, a young man from Kenya who was studying medicine in Lund. He had finally returned to his home-land and she had stayed put. Linda had looked to her mother Mona to provide her with clues about how to live her own life, but all she saw in her mother was a woman who left everything half-done. Mona had wanted two children and only had one. She had thought that Kurt Wallander would be the great and only passion of her life, but she had divorced him and married a golf-playing retired banker in Malmö.
    Eventually Linda had started looking more closely at her father, the detective chief inspector, the man who was always forgetting to pick her up at the airport when she came to visit. The one who never had time for her. She came to see that in spite of everything, now that her grandfather was dead, he was the one she was closest to. One morning, just after she had woken up, she had realized that what she wanted was to do what he did, be a police officer. She had
kept her thoughts to herself for a year and only talked about it with her boyfriend at the time, but finally she became sure of it, broke up with her boyfriend, flew down to Skåne, took her father to this beach, and told him her news. He asked for a minute to digest what she had said, which made her suddenly anxious. Before she told him she was convinced he would be happy about her decision. Watching his broad back and his thinning hair blowing up in the wind, she prepared for a fight. But when he turned around and smiled at her, she knew.
    They walked down to the beach. Linda poked her foot into some horse prints in the sand. Wallander looked at a seagull that hung almost motionless in the air.
    â€œWhat are your thoughts now?” she asked.
    â€œYou mean, about the house?”
    â€œI mean, about the fact that I’ll soon be wearing a police uniform.”
    â€œIt’s hard for me even to imagine. It will probably be upsetting for me, though I don’t feel that way now.”
    â€œWhy upsetting?”
    â€œI know what lies in store for you. It’s not hard to put the uniform on, but then to walk out in public is another thing. You’ll notice that everyone looks at you. You become the Police Officer, the one who is supposed to jump in and take care of any conflicts. I know what it feels like.”
    â€œI’m not afraid.”
    â€œI’m not talking about fear. I’m talking about the fact that from the first day you put on the uniform it will always be in your life.”
    She sensed he might be right.
    â€œHow do you think I’ll do?”
    â€œYou did well at the academy.