Читать книгу Camilla Lackberg Crime Thrillers 1-3: The Ice Princess, The Preacher, The Stonecutter - Camilla Lackberg - Страница 13

He was watching when they carried her out. He wanted to wail and throw himself over her covered body. Keep her forever.

Now she was truly gone. Strangers were going to poke and dig at her body. None of them would see her beauty the same way he had done.

For them she would only be a piece of meat. A number on paper, without life, without fire.

With his left hand he stroked the palm of his right hand. Yesterday it had caressed her arm. He pressed his palm against his cheek and tried to feel her cold skin on his face.

He felt nothing. She was gone.

Blue lights were flashing. People were rushing back and forth, in and out of the house. Why were they in a hurry? It was already too late.

No one saw him. He was invisible. He had always been invisible.

It didn’t matter. She had seen him. She could always see him. When she fixed her blue eyes on him he felt that he was seen.

Now there was nothing left. The fire had been put out long ago. He stood in the ashes and watched as his life was carried off, covered by a yellow hospital blanket. At the end of the road there were no choices. He had always been aware of that, and now the hour had finally arrived. He had been longing for it. He embraced it.

She was gone.

Nelly had sounded a bit surprised when Erica called. For a moment, Erica wondered whether she was making a mountain out of a molehill, although she still couldn’t help thinking that it was very odd for Nelly to show up at Alex’s funeral reception. Not to mention the way she had talked almost exclusively to Julia. It’s true that Karl-Erik had worked for Fabian Lorentz as the factory’s office manager until the family moved to Göteborg, but as far as Erica knew they had never associated socially. The Carlgrens were far below the Lorentz family’s requirements for acceptable social class.

The drawing room she was ushered into was exquisitely beautiful. The view stretched from the harbour at one end to the open horizon beyond the islands at the other. On a winter day like this, when the sunshine was reflecting off the snow-covered ice, the view could compete with even the sunniest summertime panorama.

They sat down on an elegant sofa group and Erica was served small canapés from a silver tray. They were fantastic, but she tried to control her appetite so she wouldn’t look unrefined. Nelly ate only one. Afraid to add a gram of flesh to those knobbly bones.

The conversation flowed slowly but politely. In the long pauses between the words, only the ticking of a clock could be heard along with the dainty slurping as they sipped their hot tea. They kept the topics of conversation neutral. The flight of young people from Fjällbacka. The lack of work. How distressing it was that more and more of the lovely old homes were being bought up by tourists and turned into summer houses. Nelly talked a little about how it used to be, when she came to Fjällbacka as a young woman, newly married. Erica listened attentively, politely asking a question now and then.

It felt as if they were circling round the subject they both knew that they would have to broach sooner or later.

It was Erica who finally got up the courage.

‘Well, the last time we saw each other it was under rather sad circumstances.’

‘Yes, so tragic. Such a young woman.’

‘I didn’t realize that you knew the Carlgrens so well.’

‘Karl-Erik worked for us for many years, and of course we met his family on numerous occasions. It seemed only right to express my condolences in person.’ Nelly lowered her eyes. Erica saw that her hands were fidgeting nervously in her lap.

‘I got the impression that you also knew Julia. She wasn’t even born when the Carlgrens lived in Fjällbacka, was she?’

No more than a stiffening of her back and a slight movement of her head indicated that Nelly found the question uncomfortable. She waved a hand covered with gold jewellery.

‘No, Julia is a new acquaintance. But I think she’s a very enchanting young lady. Yes, I know that she may not have the same outer beauty as Alexandra, but unlike her sister, she has a strength of will and a courage that makes me view her as considerably more interesting than her foolish sibling.’

Nelly clapped her hand to her mouth. Besides the fact that, for an instant, she forgot she was talking about a dead person, for a fraction of a second she had revealed a crack in her façade. What Erica saw in that brief moment was pure hatred. Why would Nelly Lorentz hate a woman she could hardly have met except when Alex was a child?

Before Nelly had a chance to smooth over her faux pas, the telephone rang. With obvious relief, she excused herself and went to answer it.

Erica took the opportunity to snoop around the room. It was beautiful but impersonal. The invisible hand of an interior decorator hovered over the entire room. Everything was colour co-ordinated down to the smallest detail. Erica couldn’t help comparing it with the simplicity of the furnishings in her parents’ house. There nothing had been included for the sake of appearances; all the objects had been purchased over the decades based on their usefulness. Erica thought that the beauty of worn and personal items far surpassed this polished showroom. The only personal thing Erica could find was a row of family portraits on the mantelpiece. She leaned forward and studied them intently. They seemed to be in chronological order from left to right, beginning with a black-and-white portrait of an elegant couple in their wedding finery. Nelly was really radiantly beautiful in a white sheath dress that hugged her figure, but Fabian looked uncomfortable in his tuxedo.

In the next photo the family had grown; Nelly was holding a baby in her arms. At her side, Fabian still looked stiff and serious. Then there was a long row of portraits of children at various ages, sometimes alone, sometimes together with Nelly. In the last picture in the row, Nils Lorentz looked to be about twenty-five. The son who had vanished. After the first portrait of the whole family, it was as though Nils and Nelly were the only members left. Although perhaps Fabian wasn’t so eager to be in the picture and instead stood behind the camera. Photos of Jan, the adopted son, were conspicuous in their absence.

Erica turned her attention to a desk in one corner of the room. Made of dark cherrywood, with lovely inlays that Erica traced with her finger. It was completely bare and looked as if it served no other function than decoration. She was tempted to peek in the drawers but wasn’t sure how long Nelly would be gone. The phone conversation was apparently taking some time, but she could come back into the room at any moment. The wastebasket attracted Erica’s attention instead. There were some crumpled papers in it. She took out the paper ball on top and gently smoothed it out. She read it with growing interest. Even more astonished than before, she carefully replaced it in the wastebasket. Nothing in this story was what it seemed.

She heard someone clear his throat behind her. Jan Lorentz was standing in the doorway, his eyebrows raised quizzically. She wondered how long he’d been standing there.

‘Erica Falck, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, that’s right. And you must be Nelly’s son Jan?’

‘Also correct. Pleased to meet you. You’re a bit of a topic of conversation here in town, you should know.’

He gave her a big smile and came towards her with outstretched hand. She took it reluctantly. Something about him made the small hairs on her arms stand up. He held her hand a bit too long. She resisted the impulse to pull it back.

He looked as though he’d come directly from a business meeting, wearing a well-pressed suit and with a briefcase in his hand. Erica knew that he was the one who ran the family business. And very successfully.

He wore his hair slicked back, with a touch too much gel. His lips were a little too full and fleshy for a man, and his eyes were lovely with long dark lashes. If it hadn’t been for a square, powerful jaw with a deep cleft in his chin, he probably would have looked rather feminine. As it was, the mixture of angularity and luxuriance gave him a slightly odd appearance; it was impossible to say whether he was attractive or not. Personally, Erica found him repellent, but she based that opinion more on a feeling she got in the pit of her stomach.

‘So, Mother has finally managed to entice you here. You’ve been high on the wish list ever since you published your first book, I must tell you.’

‘I see. Well, I understand it’s been received as the event of the century here. Your mother has invited me before, but the time didn’t seem right until now.’

‘I heard about your parents. Very tragic. I really must express my sincere condolences.’

He managed a sympathetic smile, but the emotion never reached his eyes.

Nelly came back into the room. Jan bent over to kiss his mother on the cheek. She let him do it with an indifferent expression.

‘How nice for you, Mother, that Erica could finally come to visit. You’ve been looking forward to this for a long time.’

‘Yes, it’s very nice indeed.’

She sat down on the sofa. A grimace of pain swept across her face and she grabbed her right arm.

‘Mother, what is it? Are you in pain? Shall I fetch your pills?’

Jan leaned forward and placed his hands on her shoulders, but Nelly brusquely shook them off.

‘No, there’s nothing wrong with me. Just the aches and pains of age, that’s all. Nothing to worry about. Shouldn’t you be at the factory, by the way?’

‘Yes, I just dashed home to pick up some papers. Well, I suppose I should leave you ladies alone. Don’t over-exert yourself, Mother, remember what the doctor said …’

Nelly merely snorted in reply. Jan’s face showed a concern and sympathy that seemed genuine. But Erica could swear that she saw a tiny smile at the corners of his mouth when he left the room and turned to look at them for a second.

‘Don’t ever get old. With each year that passes, the old Viking idea of jumping off a cliff to one’s death looks better and better. The only thing to hope for is that you get so senile that you think you’re twenty years old again. That would be fun to relive.’ Nelly gave a bitter smile.

It didn’t seem like a particularly amusing topic of conversation. Erica muttered something in reply and then changed the subject.

‘In any case it must be a comfort to have a son who can carry on the family business. From what I understand, Jan and his wife live here with you.’

‘A comfort. Yes, perhaps it is.’

Nelly glanced quickly at the photographs on the mantle-piece. She said nothing more, and Erica didn’t dare ask any questions.

‘Enough about me and my family. Are you working on a new book? I must say that I loved your last one about Karin Boye. You make the people come so alive somehow. Why is it that you only write about women?’

‘At first it was more of an accident, I think. I wrote my dissertation at the university about great female Swedish authors and became so fascinated by them that I wanted to find out more about who they were as individuals. I began, as you probably know, with Anna Maria Lenngren, since I knew the least about her. Things have just snowballed from there. Right now I’m writing about Selma Lagerlöf, and I’m coming up with a lot of interesting angles.’

‘Haven’t you ever thought about writing something, what should I say … non-biographical? You have such a flair for language and it would be so interesting to read something fictional by you.’

‘Of course I’ve had some thoughts in that direction.’ Erica tried not to look guilty. ‘But at the moment I’m swamped with the Lagerlöf project. After that we’ll see what happens.’

She glanced at the clock. ‘Speaking of my writing … unfortunately I really have to get going. Even though there’s no time-clock in my profession, it’s important to maintain discipline. I must go home and write my daily quota. Thank you so much for tea – and the delicious canapés.’

‘Think nothing of it. It was delightful to have you here.’

Nelly rose graciously from the sofa. Now there was no sign of her aches and pains.

‘I’ll see you out. In the old days our maid Vera would have done that, but times change. Maids aren’t fashionable anymore, and besides hardly anyone can afford one. I would have liked to have kept her on, since we can afford it, but Jan refused. He doesn’t want strangers in the house, he says. Although it’s all right for her to come and clean once a week. Well, it’s not always easy to make sense of you young people.’

Evidently they had now reached a new level of familiarity, because when Erica offered her hand in farewell, Nelly ignored it and kissed her lightly on both cheeks instead. Erica now knew instinctively which side to begin on. She was starting to feel quite sophisticated and almost at home in the more refined drawing rooms.

Erica hurried home. She hadn’t wanted to tell Nelly the real reason for her departure. She looked at her watch. Twenty to two. At two o’clock the estate agent was coming to look at the house prior to putting it up for sale. Erica gnashed her teeth at the thought that somebody was going to walk around poking and prodding at the house, but there was nothing for it but to let events take their course.

She had left the car at home, and she picked up her pace to get there in time. Although he could just as well wait, she thought, slowing down. Why should she rush?

Happier thoughts crept into her mind. Dinner on Saturday at Patrik’s place had far exceeded her expectations. For Erica he had always seemed like a nice but slightly annoying younger brother, even though they were the same age. She had still expected Patrik to be the same irritating boy. Instead she had found a mature, warm and humorous man. He didn’t look half bad, she had to admit. She wondered how soon she could decently ask him over to dinner – just returning the invitation, that is.

The last hill up to the Sälvik campground looked deceptively level; it was a long, slow incline. She was panting heavily when she turned off to the right and went up the last small slope to the house. When she reached the top she stopped short. A big Mercedes was parked in front of the house, and she knew exactly who the registered owner was. She’d thought that the day’s activity couldn’t be any more trying than it already was. She was wrong.

‘Hello, Erica.’ Lucas was leaning against the front door with his arms crossed.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘Is that any way to welcome your brother-in-law?’ His Swedish had an accent but was grammatically perfect.

Lucas mockingly spread out his arms as if to give her a hug. Erica ignored the gesture. She could see that that was precisely what he’d expected. She’d never made the mistake of underestimating Lucas. That’s why she always observed a great deal of caution when she was in his presence. She wanted more than anything to walk right up to him and slap his grinning face, but she knew that could start something that she might regret.

‘Answer my question. What are you doing here?’

‘If I’m not mistaken … hmmm … let’s see, exactly one quarter of all this is mine.’

He gestured towards the house, but he might as well have been pointing at the whole world, his self-assurance was so vast.

‘Half is mine and half is Anna’s. You have nothing to do with this house.’

‘You may not be very well versed in the community property code, seeing as you haven’t succeeded in finding anyone stupid enough to get hitched with you, I mean. But according to that law, a married couple shares everything equally. Even ownership in a house by the sea.’

Erica was well aware that this was the case. For a brief moment she cursed her parents who had not been far-sighted enough to guarantee that the house was solely owned by their daughters. They had known what sort of man Lucas was, but they probably hadn’t reckoned that they had so little time left. No one likes to be reminded of his own mortality, and like so many other people they had postponed that sort of decision.

She chose not to take the bait and object to his pejorative comment about her marital status. She would rather be an old maid for the rest of her life than make the mistake of marrying someone like Lucas.

He went on, ‘I wanted to be here when the estate agent arrived. It never hurts to check up on one’s net worth. We want everything to go smoothly, now don’t we?’

He smiled that infernal smile of his again. Erica unlocked the front door and pushed past him. The agent was late, but she hoped he would show up soon. She didn’t like the prospect of being alone with Lucas.

He entered the house after her. She hung up her jacket and began pottering about the kitchen. The only way she could handle him was to ignore him. She heard him walking about the house, inspecting it. It couldn’t be more than the third or fourth time he’d been inside. The beauty of simplicity was not something that Lucas appreciated, nor had he ever shown the slightest interest in visiting Anna’s family. Their father couldn’t stand his son-in-law, and the feeling was mutual. When Anna and the children came to visit, they came alone.

She didn’t like the way Lucas was walking around touching things in the house – the way he was touching the furniture and the decorative objects. Erica had to repress a desire to walk behind him with a dust-rag and wipe off everything he had touched. With relief she saw a grey-haired man in a big Volvo turn into the driveway. She hurried to open the door for him. Then she went into her office and closed the door. She didn’t want to watch him go round looking at her childhood home and assessing its weight in gold. Or price per square metre.

The computer was already on. The file was open, waiting for her to get back to work. She had been up early for a change and had got a lot done. She had written four pages that morning for her draft of the book about Alex, and now she went back and read through them. She still had a number of problems with the form of the book. At first, when she’d thought that Alex’s death was suicide, she’d considered writing a book to answer the question ‘why?’ It would have been more of a biography. Now the material was increasingly taking on the form of a crime novel, a genre to which she’d never felt particularly attracted. It was people – their relationships and psychological motivations – that she was interested in; she thought that was something most crime novels had to give up in favour of bloody murders and cold shivers running down the spine. She hated all the clichés they used; she wanted to write about something that was genuine. Something that attempted to describe why someone could commit the worst of all sins – to take the life of another human being. So far she had written down everything in chronological order, reproducing word-for-word what was said to her, and mixing in her own observations and conclusions. She would have to pare down that material. Tighten it up to get as close to the truth as possible. How Alex’s nearest and dearest might react was not something she had wanted to consider yet.

She regretted not telling Patrik everything about her visit to the house where Alex had died. She should have told him about the mysterious visitor and about the painting she found hidden in the wardrobe. And about the feeling she had that something was missing, something that had been in the room when she first went inside. She couldn’t stand to ring him now and admit that there was more to tell. But if the right occasion presented itself, she would tell him the rest, she promised herself that.

She could hear Lucas and the estate agent walking around in the house. He must have thought she was behaving quite strangely, barely saying hello and then rushing off and locking herself in her office. The agent wasn’t to blame for the situation in which she found herself, so she decided to grit her teeth and display some of the good manners she had been taught.

When she came into the living room, Lucas was in the midst of describing in effusive terms the magnificent light let in by the big mullioned windows. Strange, Erica didn’t know that creatures that crept out from under a rock would appreciate sunlight. She had a vision of Lucas as a big, shiny beetle; she just wished she could have eradicated him from her life with a simple stamp of her boot-heel.

‘Please excuse my rudeness just now. I had some urgent business to tend to.’

Erica smiled broadly and held out her hand to the agent, who introduced himself as Kjell Ekh. He assured her that he was in no way offended. Selling houses was a very emotional affair. If she only knew what stories he could tell … Erica smiled wider and even permitted herself a sly little flutter of her lashes. Lucas looked at her suspiciously. She ignored him.

‘Well, don’t let me interrupt. How far did you get?’

‘Your brother-in-law was just showing me your lovely living room. It’s very tasteful, I must say. Quite beautiful with the light coming in through the windows.’

‘Yes, it is lovely, isn’t it. Too bad about the draught.’

‘The draught?’

‘Yes, unfortunately the windows are not properly sealed, so when the least wind blows you have to make sure you’re wearing your warmest woollen socks. But it’s nothing that replacing all the windows couldn’t fix.’

Lucas glared at her furiously, but Erica pretended not to notice. Instead she took Kjell by the arm; if he’d been a dog he would have been eagerly wagging his tail by this point.

‘You’ve seen the upstairs, I take it, so perhaps we should continue down to the cellar. And don’t worry about the mouldy smell. As long as you’re not allergic, there’s no danger. I practically lived down there, and it didn’t hurt me any. The doctors have assured me that my asthma has no connection with the mould.’

As the finishing touch she broke into a coughing fit so violent that she bent in half. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Lucas’s face take on a much redder hue. She knew that her exaggerated claims would be exposed in a closer inspection of the house. But until then, it was some small consolation to be able to annoy Lucas a bit.

Kjell looked very relieved when he got outside in the fresh air again, after being shown all the cellar’s good points by an enthusiastic Erica. Lucas was silent and passive during the rest of the tour. With a pang of uneasiness she wondered whether she’d carried her childish prank a little too far. He knew that a real appraisal would show that none of the ‘drawbacks’ of the house that she had revealed would have any substance, but she had attempted to make him a laughingstock. And that was something that Lucas Maxwell could not tolerate. With a slight feeling of dread Erica saw the agent drive off, waving happily, after promising that they would be contacted by a certified appraiser who would go through the house from attic to cellar.

Lucas followed her into the hallway. The next second she felt herself plastered to the wall, with Lucas’s hand in a brutal grip around her throat. His face was no more than half an inch from hers. The anger she saw there made her understand for the first time why it was so hard for Anna to get out of her relationship with Lucas. What Erica saw was a man who let no obstacle stand in his way. She stood stock-still, much too afraid to move.

‘Don’t you ever, ever do that again, do you hear me? Nobody makes a fool of me like that without consequences, so watch your step!’

He snarled the words so fiercely that he sprayed her face with saliva. She had to resist the impulse to wipe his spittle from her face. Instead, she stood as motionless as a pillar of salt, silently praying he would get out of her house and go away. To her astonishment he did just that. He released his grip on her throat and turned on his heel to head for the door. But just as she was about to heave a deep sigh of relief, he spun round and with a single step was in front of her again. Before Erica could react, he grabbed her by the hair and pressed his mouth to hers. Lucas forced his tongue between her lips and at the same time took such a tight hold on her breast that she felt the underwire of her bra cut into her skin. With a smile he turned, headed for the door, and vanished into the winter cold. Not until Erica heard his car start and drive off did she dare move. She sank down onto the floor with her back to the wall and wiped the back of her hand across her mouth in disgust. His kiss had somehow seemed more threatening than his stranglehold; she felt herself starting to shake. With her arms wrapped around her legs she leaned her head on her knees and wept. Not for her own sake, but for Anna’s.

Monday mornings were not associated with pleasant feelings in Patrik’s world. He didn’t begin to turn into a real human being until eleven o’clock. So he woke from an almost trance-like state when the hefty stack of papers landed on his desk with a thunk. The awakening was brutal. In one stroke, the pile of documents had doubled, and he let out a groan.

Annika Jansson gave him a mischievous smile and asked innocently, ‘Didn’t you say you wanted everything that’s been written about the Lorentz family over the past years? Here I do a magnificent job digging up every single word ever written about them, and what do I get as payment for my efforts? A groan. How about your eternal gratitude instead?’

Patrik smiled. ‘My eternal gratitude isn’t good enough for you, Annika. If you weren’t already married I would marry you and cover you in mink and diamonds. But since you broke my heart and insisted on keeping that lout of a husband of yours, you’ll have to settle for a simple thank-you instead. And my eternal gratitude, of course.’

To his great delight he saw that he’d almost succeeded in making her blush this time.

‘All right, now you’ve gone one step too far. Why do you want to look through all this? What’s it got to do with the murder in Fjällbacka?’

‘No idea, to tell you the truth. Let’s call it woman’s intuition.’

Annika raised her eyebrows. She decided that she probably wouldn’t get any more out of him for the moment. But she was curious. Everyone knew the Lorentz family, even in Tanumshede, and if they were somehow involved with a murder it would be a sensation, to say the least.

Patrik looked up as she closed the door. An incredibly efficient woman. He sincerely hoped that she could stand to be under Mellberg’s command. It would be a great loss for the station if she decided one day that she’d had enough. He forced himself to focus on the stack of papers Annika had placed before him. After quickly leafing through them, he could tell that it was going to take him the rest of the day to read all the material. He leaned back in his chair, put his feet up on the desk and picked up the first article.

Six hours later, he massaged his weary neck and felt his eyes itching and stinging. He had read the articles in chronological order, starting with the oldest newspaper clip first. It was fascinating reading. A lot had been written about Fabian Lorentz and his successes over the years. The great majority of it was positive, and for a long time life seemed to have dealt Fabian a winning hand. The company took off with astonishing speed. Fabian seemed to be a very talented, if not to say a brilliant, businessman. His marriage to Nelly was reported in the society columns with accompanying photos showing the handsome couple in evening attire. Then photos of Nelly and her son Nils began appearing in the papers. Nelly seemed to have been unflagging in her work for various charity and society events, and Nils was always at her side – often with a frightened expression and his hand securely held in his mother’s.

Even when he reached his teens and should have been a bit more reluctant to be seen with his mother in public, he was unfailingly there by her side, now with her arm tucked under his and with a proud expression on his face. Patrik thought he looked extremely proprietary. Fabian was seen less and less often; he was mentioned only when news of some big business deal was reported.

One article was different from the others and caught Patrik’s attention. Allers had a whole feature about Nelly in the mid-seventies when she took in a foster child, a boy who came from a ‘tragic family background’, as the Allers reporter described it. The article showed Nelly, carefully made-up and dressed to the nines in her elegant living room, with her arm around a boy of twelve. He had a defiant and sulky expression on his face. When the picture was snapped he looked as if he were about to shake off her bony arm. Nils, who was then a young man in his mid-twenties, was standing behind his mother, and he wasn’t smiling either. Serious and ramrod straight in a dark suit and slicked-back hair, he seemed to blend into the elegant atmosphere completely, while the younger boy stuck out like a sore thumb.

The article was full of praise about the sacrifice and great social contribution Nelly was making by taking in this child. It was hinted that the boy had been involved in some terrible tragedy in his childhood, a trauma that Nelly was quoted as saying she had helped him overcome. She was confident that the healthy and loving environment they were offering him would heal the boy and turn him into a productive human being. Patrik found himself feeling sorry for the boy. What naïveté.

About a year later, the glamorous society photos and enviable ‘at-home-with’ reports were replaced by big black headlines: ‘Heir to Lorentz family fortune missing’. For several weeks the local newspapers trumpeted the news, and it was even considered important enough for the Göteborgs-Posten to report. The eye-catching headlines were accompanied by an abundance of more or less well-founded speculations about what might have happened to young Lorentz. Every conceivable and inconceivable alternative was aired – he had embezzled his father’s entire fortune and was now in an undisclosed location living the life of luxury. Or he had taken his own life because he discovered that he was not actually the son of Fabian Lorentz, who had made it clear that he didn’t intend to let a bastard inherit his considerable fortune. Most of these rumours were not published in so many words, merely intimated discreetly. But anyone who had the least bit of sense could easily read between the lines.

Patrik scratched his head. For the life of him he couldn’t understand how he was going to link a disappearance from twenty-five years ago to the current murder case, but he had a strong feeling that there was a connection.

He rubbed his eyes wearily and continued going through the stack of papers, now nearing the bottom. After a while, with no new information about Nils’s fate, public interest had begun to flag and the disappearance was seldom mentioned anymore. Even Nelly made the society columns only rarely after that; she wasn’t written about even once during the Nineties. Fabian’s death in 1978 had prompted a large obituary in Bohusläningen, with the usual rhetoric about being a pillar of society, and that was the last time he was mentioned.

Their adopted son Jan, however, was in the papers more and more frequently. After Nils vanished, he became the sole heir to the family business, and when he turned twenty-one he stepped in at once as CEO. The company had continued to flourish under his leadership, and now it was he and his wife Lisa who were constantly written up in the society columns.

Patrik paused. A paper had fluttered to the floor. He bent down to pick it up and began reading with interest. The article was over twenty years old. It provided Patrik with a great deal of interesting information about Jan and his life before he ended up with the Lorentz family. Disturbing information, but fascinating. His life had changed radically when he became part of the Lorentz family. The question was whether Jan himself had changed just as radically.

Patrik resolutely gathered up all the papers and tapped the stack on the desk to even out the edges. He pondered what he should do now. So far he had no more than his – and Erica’s – intuition to go on. He leaned back in his office chair, put his feet up on the desk and clasped his hands behind his head. With his eyes closed, he tried to create some sort of order in his thoughts so he could weigh one alternative against another. Closing his eyes was a mistake. Ever since their dinner on Saturday, all he could see was Erica.

He forced himself to open his eyes and focused instead on the depressing light-green concrete of the wall. The police station was from the early Seventies, and presumably designed by someone who specialized in government institutions, with their predilection for ninety-degree angles, concrete and dirty green paint. He had tried to liven up the office a bit with a couple of potted plants in the window and some framed pictures on the walls. When he was married he had kept a photo of Karin on his desk. Even though the desk had been dusted many times since then, he still thought he could see a mark where it had stood. He obstinately set his pen-holder in that spot and quickly went back to weighing his options. What should he do about the material he had in front of him?

There were really only two courses of action. The first was to investigate this lead on his own, which would mean doing it in his free time. Mellberg always saw to it that his workload was enough to make him run about like a scalded rat all day long. He actually hadn’t managed to look at the articles during work hours, but only because of a rebellious desire to make trouble. He would have to pay for it by working a good part of the evening. He wasn’t very eager to spend the little free time he had doing the work Mellberg had assigned to him, so option two should at least be tried.

If he went to Mellberg and presented the matter the right way, perhaps he could get permission to follow up on these leads during working hours. Mellberg’s vanity was his weak point, and if it was massaged correctly he might be able to win his consent. Patrik was aware that the superintendent viewed the case of Alex Wijkner as a guaranteed return ticket to the Göteborg force. Based on all the rumours he’d heard, Patrik believed that Mellberg had burned all his bridges, but he still might be able to exploit the man’s vanity for his own ends. If he could exaggerate the connection to the Lorentz family a little, perhaps hint that he’d received tips that Jan was the father of Alex’s child, it might get Mellberg to go along with him. Not particularly ethical perhaps, but he felt deep in the pit of his stomach that the connection to Alex’s death could be found in the piles of papers in front of him.

With one fluid motion, he took down his feet from the desk and shoved back the chair so hard that it continued backwards on its wheels and banged into the wall behind him. Patrik picked up all the photocopies and went down to the other end of the bunker-like corridor. Before he could change his mind he pounded hard on Mellberg’s door and thought he heard him say, ‘Come in.’

As always he was shocked at how a man who did absolutely nothing could manage to amass such a huge amount of paper. Stacks of paper covered every inch of his desk. In the window, on all the chairs, and above all on the desk, thick piles of paper were collecting dust. The bookshelf behind the superintendent was sagging with binders, and Patrik wondered how long it had been since the documents had seen the light of day. Mellberg was on the telephone but waved for Patrik to come in. Patrik wondered in amazement what was going on. Mellberg was beaming like a star in the window on Christmas Eve. It’s a good thing his ears are in the way, thought Patrik, or that smile would wrap all the way round his head.

Mellberg’s half of the phone conversation was terse.

‘Yes.

‘Yes, of course.

‘Not at all.

‘Yes, that’s obvious.

‘You did the right thing.

‘Heavens no.

‘Yes, thank you so much, ma’am, I promise to get back to you.’

In triumph, he slammed the receiver down in the cradle, making Patrik jump in his chair.

‘That’s the way to do things!’

Mellberg continued beaming like a jovial Santa Claus. It occurred to Patrik that this was the first time he’d ever seen Mellberg’s teeth. They were astonishingly white and regular. Almost a little too perfect.

Mellberg gave him an expectant look, and Patrik gathered that he wanted him to ask what was going on. Obediently he did so, but he didn’t expect the answer he received.

‘I’ve got him! I’ve got Alex Wijkner’s murderer!’

Mellberg was so beside himself with excitement that he didn’t notice that his comb-over had slipped down over one ear. For once Patrik was not struck by a desire to giggle at the sight. He ignored the fact that the superintendent had used the pronoun ‘I’ indicating that he had no intention of sharing any glory with his co-workers. Instead Patrik leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and asked earnestly, ‘What do you mean? Have we got a breakthrough in the case? Who was that you were talking to?’

Mellberg raised his hand to stop the barrage of questions and then leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands over his stomach. This was a moment he intended to milk to the last drop.

‘Well, Patrik, when you’ve been in this profession as long as I have, then you know that breakthroughs aren’t something you get; they’re something you earn. Due to my extensive experience and skill, as well as my hard work, there has indeed been a breakthrough in the case. A certain Dagmar Petrén rang and passed on some interesting observations that she’d made just before the body was discovered. Yes, I’d even venture to say significant observations, which will eventually lead to our putting a dangerous killer behind bars.’

Impatience tingled like tiny pinpricks inside of Patrik, but he had sense enough to know that all he had to do was wait Mellberg out. Eventually he would get to the heart of the matter. Patrik only hoped that it would happen before he took retirement.

‘Yes, I recall a case we had in Göteborg, autumn of 1967 …’

Patrik sighed and prepared himself for a long wait.

She found Dan where she expected to find him. He was moving the pieces of equipment on the boat as easily as if they were sacks filled with cotton. Huge, fat rolls of rope, seamen’s sacks and enormous fenders. Erica enjoyed watching him work. In a hand-knit sweater, cap and gloves and with white vapour steaming out of his mouth with each breath, he looked as though he fit right in with the tableau behind him. The sun was high in the sky and the light reflected off the snow on deck. The silence was absolute. He worked efficiently and purposefully, and Erica could see that he was loving every minute of it. This was his true element. The boat, the sea, the islands in the background. She knew that in his mind he was picturing how the ice would start to break up and how the Veronica would head off for the horizon at full speed. Winter was merely one long waiting period. It had always been hard for people living on the coast. In the old days, if the summer was good they would salt down enough herring to make it through the winter. If not, they would have to find another way to survive. Like so many of the coastal fishermen, Dan couldn’t live on fishing alone, so he had gone to night school. He now worked as a substitute Swedish teacher at the high school in Tanumshede a couple of days a week. Erica thought he was a very talented teacher, but his heart was here, not in the classroom.

He was fully absorbed with his work on the boat. She padded along on light feet so she could watch for a while without disturbing him until he noticed her standing there on the wharf. She couldn’t help comparing him to Patrik. In appearance they were completely different. Dan’s hair was so blond that during the summer months it turned almost white. Patrik’s dark hair was the same colour as his eyes. Dan was muscular while Patrik was more of a lanky type. But in terms of personality they could have been brothers. The same calm, gentle manner, with a quiet humour that always surfaced at the right moments. Actually it had never occurred to her before how alike they were in temperament. In a way that pleased her. Since breaking up with Dan she had never been truly happy in a relationship. All these years she had either looked for or ended up in relationships with men of a totally different type. ‘Immature,’ Anna had pointed out. ‘You’re trying to raise boys instead of finding a grown man, so it’s no wonder that the relationships never work out,’ Marianne had said. Maybe they were right. But the years were slipping away, and she had to admit that she was starting to feel a bit panicky. The death of her parents was also a brutal wake-up call to examine what she was missing in her life. Then last Saturday night the subject had suddenly led her to think about Patrik Hedström.

Dan’s voice interrupted her musings. ‘Well hello, how long have you been standing there?’

‘Oh, just a little while. I thought it would be interesting to see how you work.’

‘Yeah, it’s certainly not the way you make your living. You get paid to sit on your backside and make things up all day long. Ridiculous.’

They both smiled. It was an old familiar subject for their bantering.

‘I brought along something good to warm you up.’ Erica waved the basket she held in one hand.

‘Oh, why the luxury treatment? What do you want now? My body? My soul?’

‘No thanks, you can keep both of them. Even though I’d call the latter wishful thinking in your case.’

Dan took the basket she handed to him and then helped her over the railing with a steady hand. She almost fell on her backside but was saved by Dan’s firm grip around her waist. Together they brushed the snow off the lid of one of the fish packing-cases. They sat down on top of their mittens, carefully laid out on the cases, and began unpacking the basket. Dan smiled in delight when he opened the thermos of hot chocolate and the salami sandwiches neatly wrapped in foil.

‘You’re a gem,’ he said with his mouth full of salami sandwich.

They sat in silence for a while, devoting all their attention to the food. It was peaceful to sit there in the morning sun, and Erica pushed away her guilt about her lack of work discipline. She had been working hard on the manuscript for the past week and thought she deserved a little time off.

‘Have you heard anything more about Alex Wijkner?’

‘No, the police investigation doesn’t seem to be making any headway.’

‘Well, according to what I heard in town, you have special access to inside information.’

Dan gave her a teasing smile. Erica never stopped being amazed at the speed and efficiency of the grapevine. She had no idea how the rumour of her meeting with Patrik could have already spread through town.

‘No idea what you’re talking about.’

‘Right. So, how far did the two of you get? Go for a test drive yet, or what?’

Erica whacked him across the chest with her arm but couldn’t help laughing.

‘No, I didn’t take him on a “test drive”. I don’t really know if I’m interested or not. Or rather, I am interested, but I don’t know if I want to let it go further than that. Assuming that he’s interested, that is. Which may not be the case at all.’

‘In other words, you’re chicken.’

Erica hated the way Dan was almost always right. Sometimes she thought he knew her too well.

‘Yes, I’m feeling a little insecure, I must admit.’

‘Well, you’re the only one who can decide to take the chance. Have you thought about how it might feel if it actually worked out?’

She had given it some thought. Many times over the past few days. But at this point the question was extremely hypothetical. All they’d done was have dinner together, after all.

‘Well anyway, I think you should go for it. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, and all that …’

Erica quickly changed the subject. ‘Apropos Alex, I happened to find something odd.’

‘Oh yeah, what’s that?’ Dan’s voice was full of curiosity.

‘Well, I was in her house a couple of days ago and found an interesting piece of paper.’

‘You were what?’

Erica didn’t feel like replying and just waved off his shocked response.

‘It was a copy of an old article about Nils Lorentz’s disappearance. Do you have any idea why Alex would have kept an article twenty-five years old hidden at the bottom of her underwear drawer?’

‘Her underwear drawer! Erica, what the hell!’

She held up a hand to halt his protests and continued calmly. ‘My intuition tells me that this has something to do with why she was murdered. I don’t know how, but it smells fishy to me. Besides, somebody came into the house and rummaged around while I was there. Maybe that person was looking for the article.’

‘Are you crazy?’ Dan just stared at her, gaping. ‘What the hell business is it of yours? It’s the police’s job to figure out who murdered Alex.’ His voice climbed to a falsetto.

‘Yes, I know. You don’t have to shout, there’s nothing wrong with my hearing. I’m fully aware that it’s really none of my business, but first of all, I’ve already been involved through her family, and second, we were actually very close at one time, and third, I’m having a hard time forgetting about the whole thing since I was the one who found her.’

Erica omitted telling Dan about the book. Somehow it always sounded more crass and cold-blooded when she said it out loud. She also thought that Dan was over-reacting, but he had always been incredibly solicitous of her. She had to admit that it didn’t sound awfully smart to be running around in Alex’s house, considering the circumstances.

‘Erica, promise me you’ll drop all this.’ He put his hands on her shoulders and forced her to face him. His clear eyes were unusually steely for Dan.

‘I don’t want anything to happen to you, and if you keep poking about in this I’m afraid you’re going to get in over your head. Let it go.’

Dan’s grip on her shoulders tightened as he stared into her eyes. Erica opened her mouth to reply, dismayed at Dan’s reaction, but before she could say anything she heard Pernilla’s voice from up on the wharf.

‘So, the two of you are having a cosy time, I see.’

Her voice had a coldness that Erica had never heard before. Her eyes were flashing and she kept clenching and unclenching her hands. Both of them had frozen at the sound of Pernilla’s voice; Dan’s hands were still on Erica’s shoulders. Like lightning, as if he’d burned himself, he snatched his hands away and stood at attention.

‘Hello, dear. Did you finish early today? Erica just came by with a little lunch and wanted to talk for a while.’

Dan jabbered on frenetically and Erica looked back and forth between him and Pernilla in astonishment. Erica hardly recognized her. Pernilla gave her a look of pure hatred. Her hands were clenched so hard that her knuckles turned white, and for an instant Erica wondered if she was going to attack her. She didn’t know what was going on. It had been years and years since they’d cleared the air about her and Dan. Pernilla knew that they no longer had feelings for each other, or at least Erica thought she knew. Now she was no longer sure. The question was, what had brought on this reaction? She looked back and forth from Dan to Pernilla. A silent power struggle was going on, and Dan seemed to be losing. There was nothing more for Erica to say, and she decided it would be best to slip away quietly and let them handle it on their own.

She hastily gathered up the cups and thermos and put them back in the basket. When she walked down the wharf, she could hear Dan and Pernilla’s agitated voices breaking through the silence.