Inspector Ackerman was studying her face. The column of ash on his cigarette was long and fell onto the table. He brushed it off his papers with a flick, pulled the ashtray closer and put the cigarette out.
“I understand that when you studied here, a group of you were close.” He launched straight into it and pointed at a chair for her to sit.
“Yes?” She drew up the wooden chair to his desk and sat down.
“Other students say you behaved like a secret society.”
This surprised her. They hadn’t been interested in the other students and it felt strange that other students would remark about them.
“There seems to have been a lot of resentment against your group,” he said.
“I had no idea,” she said. “It’s true we were close. Perhaps a ‘secret society’ is how it appeared to others.”
“You lived together?”
“No. We had our own accommodations. But we studied in my apartment.”
“From what people have told us, Britta didn’t make new friends after you left.”
“It might have been difficult for her to . . . join in, after we left. I know it would have been for me.”
Though if anyone could have, it would have been Britta. Britta had chosen not to.
“And yet you haven’t stayed in touch with one another since leaving. Don’t you think that’s strange?”
Laura shrugged.
“The war, of course,” he said. “But I wonder if something happened that made you not want to stay in touch?”
Laura tightened. It was all flooding back: Matti’s frightened eyes; Karl-Henrik reeling off the same things over and over, like someone obsessed; Erik throwing a glass at the wall.
“No,” she said. She could tell him, she thought. It was irrelevant. But the whole thing had lodged in her memory as reprehensible. She was ashamed of own her part in it.
He was looking at his papers. “Don’t you think there is something you should have told me when you saw Britta’s body?”
She shook her head. “What?”
“Her eye was gouged out.”
“Yes.”
“Only one,” the policeman said.
“Yes?” Her chest squeezed together.
He banged the table with his palm. She jumped.
“Don’t act as if I’m stupid!” he snapped. “People we spoke to say your group were obsessed with the old Norse tales. If I’m not mistaken, Odin lost one eye. When you saw her, you must have thought of it.”
But nobody knew about their interest in the Norse tales. Nobody could know this. There had only ever been the five of them. They hadn’t spoken to anyone else about what they did together. They had no other friends. And then she realized where he was heading.
“You think it was one of us.”
“I am exploring all avenues.”
She shook her head. Couldn’t believe it.
“This has nothing to do with us,” she said.
He didn’t respond.
“And in that case, it could only have been me or Erik,” she continued. “The others are gone.”
The policeman looked down at his papers. “Matti Karppinen works for the Ministry of Information in Finland. He has followed the Finnish foreign minister to Sweden on numerous occasions. Karl-Henrik Rogstad was injured in a bomb attack in Oslo in early January. Since then, he has been recovering in an apartment in Stockholm. The night Britta was killed, you were all in Stockholm. It could have been any one of you.”
The others were in Stockholm? She had no idea.
“Someone said your group fell out with each other.”
Who was it? Who?
“Who?”
“Are you saying it’s true?”
“No.” She found herself avoiding his gaze. “I just wonder who would think they knew us that well. We kept to ourselves.”
“Was there anyone among you who had a reason to want her dead?”
“No.” This was absurd.
“Britta died the night before you found her. Where were you the day she was killed?”
She shook her head. But his gaze didn’t waver. She cleared her throat.
“I was at work for the trade delegation.” She paused to think. “That day, we had a lot of translation to do. I worked late. I finished around ten. Then I walked home. The next morning, Andreas called.”
“Did anyone see you later that night?”
“I live on my own.”
“So no,” he said, writing notes.
“Are you going to interview the others?”
“Of course.”
“I spoke to a fellow student who said she thought Britta might have been in love,” she said.
He frowned. He didn’t like her asking the questions. “We heard that, too, but nobody seems to know who he was.”
“When I was in her room looking for her, her brown leather satchel was missing. Did you find it?”
“No?”
“She used to have her notebooks in it, all her school work.”
“We didn’t find a bag.”
“She might have noted something down. Her wallet might have been in it, too.”
“We’ll keep it in mind,” he said.
He didn’t care, she thought, but he was the kind who did. She got an image in her head, the outline of a shadow, the killer, tall, dark, throwing the bag in the river.
There was one more thing she had to know. “Have you come across any . . . Germans in your investigation?”
“Germans?” He scoffed. “Miss Dahlgren, this is not a spy novel. Why would there be Germans?”
“I just thought,” she mumbled, “with the war and so on.”
The inspector shook his head. “We have come across no Germans during our inquiries.” He pushed back his chair, made to stand up.
“Andreas Lundius has disappeared,” she said quickly.
“What do you mean?”
“A boy at his dorm says he left bringing a big bag.”
He raised his eyebrows.
“Did you not know this?” she asked.
He shook his head. “On the contrary, we asked him to stay put.”
“He seemed frightened, too. Did he tell you anything of value when you interviewed him?”
“Nothing.”
“But . . .”
“Stop.” He raised a hand. “Are you going around asking questions?”
Her lack of answer was answer enough.
“That ends right now,” he said. “If there are developments, I will let you know. Meanwhile, you can go back home, Miss Dahlgren. Rest assured we will speak again.”
“Just one last question,” she begged.
He paused, frowning.
“Have you spoken to Professor Lindahl?”
His behaviour nagged at her. He had cared too little about the death of a woman who had been his student for eight years. But perhaps he kept more distance from them than she had thought. Or perhaps she just hadn’t liked the way he sent her off without helping.
“Of course,” he said.
She nodded. Alright. “Do you need help in packing up her things? I’d like to do it.”
He hesitated.
“Her family might want them back.”
“We’ve gone through her room already . . . Yes, you can pack them up.”
As she stood up, her knees were weak. She had sweated through her shirt. She walked down the stairs and thought about him knowing about Odin. That had surprised her. She wouldn’t have taken him for the kind who knew about Norse history. Why? Because he was a policeman? How prejudiced she was.
He suspected them. That was unbelievable. None of them could have harmed Britta. She’d been the center of everything, the heart of all of them.
LAURA PUT DOWN the boxes she had gotten from the student dorm administration and sat down on Britta’s bed. The room now smelled sour, like old cigarettes. The bed linen was soft under her hands, not washed for a while. She allowed herself the tears, felt herself melt.
There was a knock on the door. Laura quickly wiped her cheeks. She opened the door. There was a policeman outside. He was in uniform. His face looked pasty and grim.
“Inspector Ackerman asked me to help.”
Of course. He wouldn’t leave her alone in here. Silently, she swore to herself.
“Wonderful,” she said. “I’ve started with her desk. Do you mind folding up her clothes?”
The policeman tore through the wardrobe. Laura would have wanted to take her time, to touch the garments, remember when she last saw them. And shouldn’t he feel in the pockets? But perhaps they had already done that.
She turned to the desk, working fast now so that he wouldn’t come to help. She threw the bottles and dried flowers into a garbage bag. The photo of her and Britta, she put aside. She would take that one herself. With the postcards, she hesitated. Would Britta’s parents want them, to see that their daughter had been popular, loved, or would it open old wounds? She read the cards. On one postcard, there was no text, but a large heart drawn with blue ink. She turned it around. The postcard showed the House of Parliament, windows lit, people walking on the bridge, a car driving across, the photo taken before the war. Greetings from Stockholm, it said in white type. It was a tourist card that you could buy anywhere. The postmark said Stockholm. It had been sent last November. Had he sent this? Her lover? House of Parliament? And what kind of a person sends just a heart? An individual who is certain the recipient will know who it is from. Someone who is not one for many words. She looked over to the back of the policeman, folded it and put it in her pocket.
There was a scribbled note, on a page torn from a notebook: Worst is that evil which could be normal. Britta had crossed out normal and replaced it with good.
“Did you find anything?”
She startled. “A lot of garbage.”
“Is this box done?” He pointed to the one by the desk.
She nodded. As he walked out, she put the note in her pocket with the postcard.
The room was bare and looked small without its things. Another student will live here, she thought and felt a sting of pain. Another student with dreams, hopes, loves and heartbreaks.
“Are you ready?” the policeman asked.
As much as she’d ever be, yes.
14.
Jens
What did he know about Kristina?
Jens stared at the blank paper before him on his desk.
He knew her, his mind protested, while another, smaller, voice told him that if he was honest with himself, he didn’t know her that well. They’d met at a foreign affairs department party a while before Jens had been appointed Günther’s secretary, flying high, self-assured smile on his face, knowing the recruitment was his for the taking. Another smile, mischievous, her eyes on his a fraction too long. You think you’re special? Kristina was shrewd, spirited, long dark hair and blue eyes, her slim figure encased in an emerald green dress. The two of them had met again a couple of days later—this time on their own—and ended up at her flat. They’d gotten engaged two months after that.
Kristina worked for her father. Managing her father’s assets in Stockholm, passing messages, writing letters, accounts . . . Secretarial work. That was how he’d thought of it.
He hadn’t met her parents. Kristina’s father was a diplomat, stationed in South America—Rio? Mexico City? They hadn’t been back to Sweden since Jens and Kristina met. Jens had felt he ought to have obtained her father’s permission before asking her to marry him, but Kristina had made him understand that, in view of the circumstances, her father wouldn’t mind and they could go ahead and make plans. Jens had introduced Kristina to his father, of course. It was an awkward meeting. Both Kristina and his father had seemed uncomfortable but did their best to hide it. “I always trusted your decisions,” his father had said later.
It struck Jens now what a nice thing that was—for a parent to trust their child’s decisions—even though he was quite certain that Kristina was not what his father had imagined as a daughter-in-law.
Why?
His father was a schoolteacher. It was obvious that they would have different views on what a “good wife” was. He hadn’t spoken to his father for a couple of weeks. I must remember to call him, he thought.
No, he didn’t know Kristina’s parents and she didn’t have siblings. But he had met her godfather, Artur, many times. Artur wouldn’t stand for anything untoward with the Germans.
Or would he?
You couldn’t be sure, that was the thing. Many Swedes would have welcomed a Nazi occupation. Hitler was hailed as the savior of Europe; the organizer of an unruly patch of geography. It hadn’t just been the dread of Russia. It had been . . . adulation.
Even if Kristina had met with Schnurre, that didn’t mean she was pro-German. She might be working for Sweden. He had entertained the idea the other night that Barbro Cassel was a swallow for the C-Bureau. Perhaps Kristina was, too?
The idea was ludicrous. It made him scoff out loud. His girlfriend, a spy? He would have noticed!
There was certainly a perfectly reasonable explanation. He should have asked at once, instead of sitting here, making up stories.
I’m scared, he thought. I’m letting my work-related insecurities flow out into other areas of my life.
Well, that was a sobering thought. One he didn’t like one bit.
Instead, he tried to remember what Kristina had told him about her relationship with Barbro Cassel after the dinner with Schnurre. They had gone to school together. And now one of them was working for the German trade delegation and was friendly with Karl Schnurre. That was all he knew.
Kristina didn’t have many friends. She knew everyone, but at the same time no one. There wasn’t a close girlfriend who called all hours of the day, or with whom Kristina went to have coffees. There was no one he’d been introduced to as her “best friend.” Instead, she was always available to him and he had to confess that he rather liked it that way. Available, but not clingy. Supportive, but independent. Yes, he liked it.
That’s it, he decided. He knew Kristina. He’d asked her to become his wife. To love and to hold . . . Kristina was as upset about the war as he was, and there was no way she was on the side of the Germans or was a spy.
When he got home, he would ask her about it. He wouldn’t make a big deal out of it. “Oh, by the way, you have no idea who came out of my building this morning . . .”
He tapped his pen on the paper before him again. He was trying to draft a memorandum for the minister with suggestions about how to get more Jews safely to Sweden, but his thoughts were scattered.
He wondered again about those phone calls between the Nordic ministers.
He threw his pen down and rose then walked down the corridor to the archivist’s office. He knocked and opened the door. When he saw the woman at the desk, he momentarily thought he was in the wrong room. “I’m sorry . . .” he began.
She looked up at him. She was in her fifties, with graying hair and pink lipstick, and she was sitting at Daniel Jonsson’s desk. The room was different from the last time he’d been here; tidy, organized. The numerous coffee cups were gone. There was a potted plant on the desk and a couple of photo frames with pictures of two smiling children, the woman herself, looking two decades younger. And a new carpet?
“Jens Regnell, secretary to Christian Günther,” he said.
She rose and curtsied.
“I was looking for Daniel Jonsson.”
“Who is he?” she asked.
“An archivist. He normally sits here.”
She looked surprised at that.
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know. I was asked to come in.”
“But is he sick, or . . . ?” Jens tried.
“I don’t know,” she said again.
“Do you know how long you’re here for? Is it temporary?”
“No, I work here now, that’s what they said. They called last night.”
&n
bsp; Who called? he wanted to ask, but most likely it was the personnel department.
“Welcome,” he said instead.
“Thank you. Can I help you with anything?” she asked.
“No, you get settled in. It’s nothing urgent.”
He stopped by the administration office instead and sat down on the edge of the desk of one of the young women. She stopped typing and looked up at him: keen blue eyes, a smiling face.
“Yes, Mr. Regnell?”
He could feel the eyes of the other women on his back.
“I wonder if you could help me?” He lowered his voice. “Daniel Jonsson, the archivist, is not at his desk and there is a new woman there instead. Could you please find out where he’s gone and how to reach him?”
“Of course, Mr. Regnell.”
“He has a book of mine that I’d like to get back,” Jens said. “He probably forgot. No need to make a big thing of it—it would embarrass him—but if you could find out, that would be great.”
“Of course.”
“Oh, and if you could find out who the new woman is, that would be great, too. She told me her name, but I’ve forgotten it already.”
She smiled, and he smiled back. He rose and walked back to his office.
He sat back down at his desk. Where on earth had Daniel gone? He was certain that if the archivist had known he wasn’t coming back, he would have told Jens and said goodbye. What had happened to him? A transfer, perhaps?
He sighed, opened his drawer to get a letter opener and saw that thesis again. Nordic Relations Through the Ages—Denmark, Norway and Sweden on a New Path. By a Britta Hallberg. Why on earth had he kept it? It wasn’t as if he’d ever get the time to read it. He picked it up and threw it in the garbage bin.
Things would feel better after seeing Sven tonight. Sven had a knack for seeing things clearly, making things simple.
15.
Blackåsen Mountain
This bloody place,” Abraham said. He threw a stone into the creek. “I’ll never take a job in that hellhole. Fuck no.” He spat at the ground beside him.
Gunnar was silent. His friend was grieving. The mountain had just taken Abraham’s father, Georg. Gunnar knew what it felt like; he himself had lost a sister. All their fathers worked in the mine, came home broken. Meanwhile, without ever mentioning it, all the wives and children constantly worried, knew that there were worse destinies than being broken. It was a weight on their lives. Would something happen today? Or tomorrow?
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