Caroline got up. 'Thank you for your kind words; they've warmed the poor heart of an inveterate navel-gazer! Next time it's your turn to lie on the couch.'
'No thanks.'
Maya rubbed at her frozen arms and shoulders. Cautiously, as if she were approaching a timid animal, Caroline leaned over her and placed her hands on Maya's shoulders, gently at first, as Maya held her breath.
Caroline smelled of smoke and sugar.
* * *
Chapter 9
2006
Lise-Lott Edell's slightly sunburned nose and cheekbones glowed in ridiculous red blotches against the pallor around her eyes.
'Breathe,' mumbled Tell, gently but firmly bending the shocked woman's head down between her knees. She struggled against him, whimpering as if he were hurting her.
'You have to breathe. In, out. In, out. That's it.'
Beckman stuck her head round the kitchen door without speaking, just to show that she had arrived. Tell nodded briefly at her, then knelt down in front of Lise-Lott Edell.
'You're in shock, and you shouldn't be left alone. Would you like me to ring someone? A relative, a girlfriend? Karin Beckman here will drive you if you want to go to someone's house. Or we can drive you to the doctor's. You might need something to calm you down, help you sleep.'
She shook her head, and he heard a sob.
'No. No, I don't need a doctor. My sister is a doctor. She only lives a few kilometres from here.'
Beckman bent down and placed her hand gently on Lise-Lott's hand.
'I'll drive you over there as soon as you're ready.'
With a pang of sadness she noticed the pretty ring on the right hand. A wedding band with a turquoise stone. They hadn't had very long to love each other for better or worse.
'We're going to need to talk to you as soon as possible, Lise-Lott. We can do it now, but if you'd rather not, that's absolutely fine. A colleague and I can go with you to your sister's and talk to you there. Or we can have a chat first thing tomorrow morning. Or we can ring your sister and ask her to come over here.'
Lise-Lott shook her head violently.
'No. I don't want anyone coming over to Angelika's with me. I'd rather talk now, get it out of the way.'
Beckman glanced enquiringly at Tell; he shrugged almost imperceptibly. Carry on.
'Thank you, Lise-Lott. We appreciate it. The sooner we can sort out the circumstances surrounding this tragic… death, the quicker the person who did it will get the punishment they deserve. Just tell me if you want to stop.'
'Could I have a glass of water, please?'
Her teeth were clenched so tightly that her temples had turned white. The suntan covered her face like a mask, and Tell realised how far away Puerto de la Cruz must seem right now, the heat she had left behind only a few hours ago. Since then her whole world had collapsed.
'He was planning a book of photographs of the area,' said Lise-Lott, nodding towards a pile of prints. She had curled up in the corner of the sofa with a blanket around her shoulders, her hands wrapped around the cup of tea Beckman had produced. 'He was fascinated by the landscape around here, the fact that it was so… untouched. That it's always looked like this, through the ages.'
She gazed out of the window.
'I've heard that the forest over by Kitjärn could be classed as primeval. It was an old man on the council who told Lars; something to do with the fact that no human hand has shaped it…'
'I believe Lars wasn't from this area.'
'No. I suppose you have to come from somewhere else to notice how impressive the surroundings are out here. Lars comes from the city. Came. From Gothenburg.'
Her tears had dried up, but her expression was glassy. Tell suspected that she had taken something to calm her down a little while ago and he couldn't blame her.
'I moved here with my parents when I was a teenager. Of course at the time I thought it was the pits.'
A wry smile passed over her face, turning to a grimace a second later.
'He enjoyed life so much. It's dreadful… unthinkable that someone…'
Tell waited while she pulled herself together, but Beckman got in first:
'That's just what we've been wondering. I know it might be difficult to think about it right now but can you think of anyone who might have wanted to hurt Lars? Someone he's fallen out with, through work or… Do you know if he might have been doing anything… suspicious? We have to ask,' she said quickly as Lise-Lott looked at her in surprise.
'No, of course not. Who would want to murder him? He was an honest person, decent through and through.'
'Take a moment,' Tell interrupted. 'Even if you have no proof, even if it seems like something completely banal. Has anyone threatened him? Has anything happened recently that you thought was strange? Anything out of the ordinary? Or has he met anyone new?'
The furrow between Lise-Lott's eyebrows indicated that she was trying to think, but in the end she shook her head helplessly.
'No, I can't think of anyone he's quarrelled with. I suppose it would be a customer who wasn't happy with the bill, maybe? I mean something to do with the garage…?'
She shrugged her shoulders.
'Lars did have an… an argument is overstating it, but he did have some differences of opinion with the person at the council in Lerum who used to give him commissions. Per-Erik Stahre, his name is. Lars thought they had agreed that he would be the first port of call for any photographic commissions for the council, but Stahre seemed to think he had the right to make decisions based on price, and last autumn he gave a big job to someone who was cheaper. It involved taking photographs of a new residential area on the outskirts of the town, and… well, it was going to pay quite well. Lars just thought Stahre should have discussed the price with him before he gave the job to someone else. We could have done with the money.'
She shook her head. Tell nodded and made notes, but he could feel his spirits falling. You don't murder someone because of a garage bill or a minor dispute at work.
'We'd like you to keep us informed if you think of anyone else who might be of interest.'
'His ex-wife. Lars got divorced when we met, and divorce is never much fun. There's always one person who draws the short straw. She didn't want to split up and there was a great deal of bitterness. He has two sons as well - they're only just grown up, seventeen and nineteen.'
In Tell's experience people talked more if you asked fewer questions - particularly in the unfamiliar and often frightening circumstances of a police interview - so he let the silence have its effect.
He put down his pen and tapped a cigarette out of the packet.
'Do you mind?'
'No, carry on. It was the house too. She - his ex-wife, I mean - couldn't afford to stay there and she became quite depressed. I can understand her in a way. At her age - at our age - it isn't easy to be left alone.'
She laughed, a harsh sound that seemed to bury itself in her throat as she realised she was now in the same situation. Tell lit the cigarette, ignoring Beckman, who made a point of moving away from him on the big sofa.
'When you say depressed,' she began, 'do you mean in some way mentally unstable?'
Lise-Lott sighed.
'No. Well, she'd had problems with her nerves, as they say, for a while, but… There was a time right at the beginning, when she found out where Lars was after he'd moved out of the house. She would ring up during the night and… she didn't make any sense. She turned up here once or twice and made a scene. But it passed. After that any contact was mostly to do with things she was disputing legally, their joint possessions. And this is a long time ago. I don't think Lars has had any real contact with Maria for a few years.'
'And the sons?'
'Joakim and Viktor. No, not much unfortunately. That was a source of great sorrow for Lars. He did try, but… I suppose they thought he'd let the family down. Their mother had convinced them that was how things were, and they were loyal to her. Children usually are. Anyway, the
y refused to come here, but they would meet up with their dad now and again. At a pizzeria or something like that. Lars did feel guilty because of the boys, it was painful to see. I don't have any - children, I mean. Never had any with my first husband, although we did want them at the beginning. We never found out whose fault it was, and suddenly it was too late.'
Beckman, who had had her first child when she was almost forty, wanted to protest, but she bit her tongue and instead decided to try to stop Lise-Lott Edell from exposing herself emotionally. It was quite normal for people in a state of shock to start sharing their innermost thoughts and feelings with the police during an interview. Only afterwards did they realise this made them feel even more exposed. Of course it was a balancing act, since a large part of an investigation involved getting people to reveal what they would prefer to hide. But at the moment she didn't believe Lise-Lott had anything to do with her husband's death, and they would soon know for sure once they had checked with the travel agency.
Just as Beckman was about to ask if anyone wanted more tea, a woman in a red coat appeared in the doorway. Her heels tapped across the parquet flooring, and in a second she was by Lise-Lott's side, hugging her.
'Sweetheart!'
She rocked her sister back and forth, tears glistening on her thickly made-up eyelashes. Tell closed his notebook and discreetly stubbed out his cigarette on the sole of his shoe. He cleared his throat.
'We'll need to talk to you again, Lise-Lott, but that's enough for now. My condolences once again.'
He met her sister's eyes above Lise-Lott's drooping head, and she nodded at him. She would take care of her sister. They could go now.
* * *
Chapter 10
The paint was peeling off in great lumps and the wood on the window- sill felt like cold, soggy sponge beneath her fingers. The water must have been running down the inside of the pane for years. In the mornings a thin layer of frost obscured the view over the woodpile and the manure heap on the edge of the glade. The windows definitely needed sealing, or replacing.
Seja sighed. She knew nothing about maintaining a house, having grown up in an apartment. Behind her Lukas snorted in the box Martin had managed to build before he disappeared. It was made of coarse, untreated pine with a green door. It wasn't really a stable, but a storage shed in which old man Gren, who had sold them the cottage, had installed his carpentry workshop. The workbench was still there along one wall under sacks of oats and feeding pails. The heater warmed up a radius of a couple of metres.
After a cold night like the last one Seja suffered from a guilty conscience when she opened the door and revealed the flickering light bulbs and Lukas, shaking the straw off the hugely expensive olive- green blanket she had bought at the beginning of November. It was just as cold in the stable as it was outside.
She had spread a layer of straw inside for him, thick as a mattress, and put a rug down outside the box despite the fact that Martin had said she was crazy. As Christmas approached she had even placed a holder with Advent candles in the gloomy little window of the shed. At least it looked cosy, she tried to convince herself, and soon it would be spring again.
Seja slid her arms around Lukas's neck and hid her face in his coarse mane. She didn't really know anything about horses either. Like many others she had started riding lessons as a child, but after her mother had stopped teaching, the family finances had been under pressure. Not that anyone ever came out and said that the riding school was expensive; it was more a question of reading between the lines, sensing the atmosphere when the bills had to be paid and everything that was unnecessary had to go. She had given up riding and stuck to the community piano school and the choir instead. Writing was free too, as was the recreation centre.
As far as she remembered, she hadn't really suffered as a result of being deprived of horses. The fact was that, as a child, the huge animals had frightened her, as had the sharp elbows of the older stable girls. There had been a kind of relief in not having to make the decision herself to step outside the equine community.
And yet Lukas had become hers. Despite the fact that she'd got him cheap (he was getting on a bit), he still took up all her savings and a large part of her student loan each month, not to mention time and commitment, but she had never regretted it.
The day old man Gren showed her and Martin around the cottage right at the top of Stenaredsbacken (he called the place the Glade), she had seen the horse in a vision of how their future would look. He had been standing just where the glade turned into forest and small pine trees clambered up a moss-covered hill behind the house; he was eating grass and drinking out of an old bathtub. Since then she had fenced in that particular patch as Lukas's exercise area. The bathtub was still there among the trees, the surface of the water covered with a sheet of ice strewn with pine needles. At least that part of the vision had come true.
With her cheek pressed against Lukas's warm neck she could usually push away thoughts of Martin, but today it was difficult. In her mind's eye she replayed the scene that had made her so happy until a few months ago. They were sitting in the kitchen of their tiny cluttered one-room apartment on Mariaplan and had spotted a small advert in the newspaper, Goteborgsposten: 'Cottage, needs modernising, going cheap for quick sale.' They had arranged to go over straight away, caught the bus as they didn't have a car, and had reached the end of the line as it was starting to get dark. They had to walk from there to the Glade, up all those hills and into the forest.
A taxi was waiting by the gravel track and an old man climbed out of it on weak trembling legs. Old man Gren. Six months earlier he'd had a stroke, he told them, and it looked as if he was going to have to stay in the nursing home down in Olofstorp, so he'd decided to sell up.
In order to get to the house they had walked past a marshy area, the old man moving with infinite slowness and caution along the track. The cottage had neither an indoor toilet nor a shower. The outside toilet was joined to the shed, and at the back there was an outdoor kitchen with a showerhead and warm water. They got the place for next to nothing.
Many times she had asked herself what had happened. When it had all started to go so wrong. If there had been signs that Martin didn't feel as if he had found his home out here. That it was only she who felt a sense of calm spreading through her body as she toiled up the hill, got to the top of Stenaredsvägen and turned off into the forest, with its powerful scent of earth, pine needles and rotting leaves. There must have been signs, of course there must.
The fact that he chose to stay in their crash pad in town more frequently was one sign. He would be working late, meeting up with a friend, or just felt like a hot bath rather than a shower in the glow of the outside light behind the cottage. Increasingly she found herself alone in the house, along with Lukas and the cat she had acquired when she was buying some things at one of the eco farms over in Stannum. Each time Martin left the cottage, he took a few more of his possessions with him. One morning he drove into town and never came back.
He explained over the phone: he couldn't take the sense of restlessness the place gave him. The silence. The walls were closing in on him. The quiet that she loved was for him like taking a huge stride towards death. The boredom was killing him, he said. What about me, she wanted to say, am I a part of that boredom?
He had once said that he never understood how someone could live with the same partner for their whole life. Live in the same place, work at the same thing.
'I didn't understand it until I met you,' he said, smoothing things over when he saw her surprised expression, but doubt had already sunk its claws into Seja. Perhaps in some way she had sensed that things would turn out like this. Martin was an uneasy soul: he always wanted to be moving on, travelling, meeting new people, trying new things. From this very basic point of view they were different. Internal journeys were enough for Seja, and for those outer calm was essential, a frame within which dreams could flow. Riding in the forest early in the morning, the ice-cold autumn di
p in the mountain pool, these were events. This was enough.
Since Martin's disappearance she had developed a close relationship with her sorrow and all its stages. To a certain extent it was a matter of what you did. Most of the time it was perfectly possible to keep that small amount of control necessary to stop her from losing her grip altogether. At least this far down the line, when the sharpest edges of her grief had been worn down. These days her sorrow only made its presence felt at night, and in situations that specifically reminded her of what she had lost.
Several months after clearing out all his things she found the battered red Converse trainers in a box in the stable. She had been searching for fuses; she still hadn't learned that it wasn't possible to do the vacuuming, make coffee and have the computer on standby all at the same time, and suddenly the shoes were there in her hand. Despite the fact that she could hardly even see her hand in front of her in the darkness she knew that there were holes in both soles and that the logo on the ankle was so worn you could barely read it. The memory of a sleety afternoon, scrupulously divided between two different shops selling household goods and clothes, had come back to her. The wet had seeped in through the holes, and Martin's feet had lost all feeling because of the cold, which he had not been slow to point out.
'I'm going to catch a cold, I just know it. I haven't got time to be ill - can't we go home now? What the hell do we need more pillows for, we've already got one each. How much stuff are you going to pack into that little house, anyway? I can't afford all this.'
'What you can afford is irrelevant, Martin,' she had said. 'It's always me who pays when it comes to the home we share. It's a question of priorities. Your priority is going into Gothenburg several times a week and drinking beer. At the moment my priority is this. Fine. For God's sake stop moaning. The only thing I ask of you is that you walk alongside me and pretend to be happy and interested. lust for today?'
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