‘But?’
‘There was no “but” there. He was excellent soldier material.’
‘Do you know if he had plans for a military career?’ asked Petra.
‘Not in Sweden anyway. I recall that he was very critical of Sweden’s neutrality policy. On the other hand, he was extremely curious about the French Foreign Legion.’
Petra straightened up.
‘I’m an old legionnaire myself,’ Takacs explained. ‘He wanted to know all about what it was like, what was required, what they did, and how you got accepted. I gave him all the information I had. I don’t recommend becoming a foreign legionnaire to just anyone, because it’s really no walk in the park, and I told him that. But I gave him a number of useful tips.’
‘Did you get the impression that he was serious?’ Petra asked.
‘I don’t consider that unlikely,’ Takacs answered. ‘He would have passed the admission test easily with the qualities he had.’
‘Mentally too?’
‘Are you joking? That kid was strong as an ox, both physically and mentally.’
Petra smiled to herself and noted that she and the old foreign legionnaire presumably did not share the same concept of mental health.
Petra summarized the information she had. Peder Fryhk was an intelligent, educated man. Smart, polished, well-to-do. But he was also a liar. To show himself in a better light, he had lied about working for Doctors Without Borders. In reality he was a warmonger who had left behind a wife and child in order to murder people with whom he had no quarrel in foreign lands, with a uniform as a cover. Perhaps in Lebanon. Perhaps somewhere else. Perhaps he was just as well informed about all wars as the one playing out in Lebanon. Perhaps it had been extremely easy to rape women in that uniform. Perhaps, thought Petra, it was also the case that his daughter was the result of a rape. A rape that he camouflaged by going to the minister with his victim, shrewd as he was. Best for everyone involved. That could be the reason that contact between him and his wife, between him and the child, was for ever broken. A deeply hidden secret that was in everyone’s interest to conceal. That must have been where it started, thought Petra. But a leopard never changes its spots. He was the person he had always been, only now he was considerably more cunning and had refined his methods.
Thursday Evening
It was almost three o’clock on Thursday afternoon when Sjöberg and Hamad got out of the car outside Åkerbärsvägen 31. The snow here, unlike in the city, had started to settle like a white blanket over the residential neighbourhood, and muffled all the usual sounds from the metro and a few busy roads in the vicinity. The quiet twilight snowfall evoked a feeling of Christmas spirit on the idyllic street, with its mature gardens and old wooden houses. It was hard to say what his colleague’s sense of winter and Christmas was, but Sjöberg knew that he had moved to Sweden as a small child with his family, fleeing from Lebanon’s civil war. Jamal Hamad was as Swedish as you could be in Sjöberg’s eyes, except that he still refused to eat pork. Possibly, despite his Swedish wife, he was more Lebanese at home than he let on to his co-workers.
The two men looked like they were exhaling clouds of smoke as they inched their way with tiny, tiny steps up the slippery path to Ingrid Olsson’s house.
‘How the hell did they think the old lady would manage this hill in her condition?’ Sjöberg exclaimed, without really being clear who ‘they’ were.
‘Spikes,’ Hamad answered pragmatically.
‘Hmm,’ Sjöberg murmured, taking the house key from his jacket pocket.
They climbed up on to the porch and stamped as much of the wet, packed snow from their shoes as they could, while Sjöberg unlocked the door.
It was dark in the house and Sjöberg fumbled for the switch on the wall inside. The house, for some reason, felt smaller now than it had the last time, when it had been literally swarming with people. It smelled old but not unpleasant, more cosy. But it didn’t feel particularly cosy. The furniture gave an even shabbier impression today than it had before. Sjöberg got a sense that the furnishings had been chosen and placed without care. Ingrid Olsson appeared to be a very lonely person and it struck him just how many lonely people there seemed to be in this country.
His own mother, for example. His father had died from the complications of a mysterious illness when Sjöberg was only three years old. While he was growing up, they lived in a couple of different apartments in Bollmora, where his mother worked in the cafeteria at his school. As far as he could recall, she never socialized much and had no close friends. Her personality didn’t invite that. She was basically a negative person, reserved and not easily amused.
Everything was in order and the house seemed clean. Hansson had done a good job as usual, Sjöberg observed. Not just as a police officer but also in purely human terms.
‘What is it we’re hoping to find?’ asked Hamad as they stood in the living room, aimlessly looking around.
‘Papers, books, photographs, souvenirs – how do I know? Anything that might suggest a connection between Olsson and Vannerberg. A connection that perhaps they didn’t even know about themselves. Are there any storage spaces?’
‘There’s a basement and a garage.’
‘No attic?’
‘No attic.’
‘We’ll take the top floor then, to start with,’ said Sjöberg. ‘I haven’t been up there.’
They went up the narrow stairway that led from the end of the hall and Sjöberg now understood why there was no attic. The upper floor was the attic, renovated into a living area; two rather large rooms in terms of floor space, but with steeply sloping ceilings, making large sections unusable for anything other than storage. One was Ingrid Olsson’s bedroom and the other served as a kind of office. There was a desk and a wobbly little bookcase, plus a small table, on which there was a sewing machine.
They made a joint attack on the bedroom. While Sjöberg went through the drawers in the bedside table, Hamad turned on a transistor radio sitting on a stripped wooden dresser by a small window facing on to the garden in front of the house. Sjöberg was startled by the sudden sound, but then smiled in appreciation. The sixties music that was playing felt happy and alive, while Ingrid Olsson’s furnishings from the same period left an impression of sadness and hopelessness. The house also suffered from an almost total lack of books. Nor did Ingrid Olsson have any houseplants, which Sjöberg imagined must be unusual among women of her generation.
The bedroom concealed no secrets, nor did they find anything in the office that might be of interest to the investigation. The drawers in the desk mostly held sewing patterns, but also standard office supplies such as a stapler, hole punch, scissors, pens, paper, tape and glue. The bookshelves were full of old magazines from forty years ago, meticulously organized chronologically in various types of magazine holders. The two policemen observed that this was probably a gold mine for collectors and that Ingrid Olsson could surely make a fortune if she decided to sell them – the most interesting thing the house had revealed so far. On the other hand, they found no connection between Ingrid Olsson and Hans Vannerberg.
For a long time they worked in silence, each occupied by his own thoughts. Occasionally one might suddenly start a conversation or pick up the thread of an earlier one, which for one reason or another had languished.
‘Maybe Ingrid Olsson is the murderer after all,’ Hamad threw out, tired of the monotonous searching.
‘She has an airtight alibi, as you know,’ said Sjöberg.
‘Yes, sure, but she could have hired someone.’
‘Perhaps through an ad in the local paper: “Seventy-year-old woman seeks hit man for possible partnership.” ’
‘Did you ask her whether she has a boyfriend?’ Hamad wondered.
‘No, you’re right about that, damn it! Maybe the old lady has a man somewhere. She needn’t be alone just because she’s a widow.’
‘We would have heard about him. Then she probably wouldn’t have to stay with Margit Ol
ofsson,’ said Hamad.
‘Presumably not. I think we’ll have to abandon that theory.’
The top floor took a couple of hours for the two men to look through, the garage and basement another two, but they found nothing of any interest until they came to the main floor. Hamad was perched on a kitchen chair, rooting in one of the cupboards above the refrigerator, while Sjöberg sat at the kitchen table examining the contents of a drawer in which Ingrid Olsson apparently stored various objects with no particular home. Besides batteries, flashlights, rubber bands, a roll of cotton twine, drawing pins, a bicycle lamp, a few keys and a number of loose stamps of various denominations, the drawer also contained a bundle of papers. He leafed slowly through the pile, carefully studying all the receipts, discount coupons, bills, instruction manuals, account statements and warranties that passed before his eyes. A receipt from a grocery store in Sandsborg gave him the idea that perhaps Vannerberg and Olsson did their shopping at the same place, and he made a mental note of that for further investigation.
‘Jamal, do you remember where Pia Vannerberg works?’ Sjöberg suddenly asked.
He was holding a receipt from a visit to the dentist Ingrid Olsson had made a few months earlier at Dalen’s Dental Health Service. Jamal Hamad was widely known at the police station for his extraordinary memory. If he had heard or read something, you could be almost certain that he would remember it, months, maybe even years later. In this particular case, Sjöberg was fairly convinced that his own memory did not betray him, but to be on the safe side he wanted to double-check.
‘She works as a dental hygienist at the National Dental Health Service,’ Hamad replied.
‘Which office?’ Sjöberg asked.
‘At Sandsborg, over there,’ said Hamad, with a gesture in a direction that Sjöberg was not capable of geographically assimilating. ‘I think it’s called Dalen.’
‘Ingrid Olsson has a receipt from there,’ said Sjöberg. ‘Maybe this is the connection we’re looking for.’
‘Look,’ said Hamad, glancing at his watch, ‘we’ll have to check that out tomorrow. It’s already twenty past eight.’
‘Oh boy,’ said Sjöberg. ‘Time really flies when you’re having fun. And we haven’t even got to the living room yet.’
‘And the big job is waiting there,’ said Hamad, a hint of resignation in his voice. ‘That’s where she keeps her photos.’
Sjöberg suddenly realized that he had forgotten to phone Åsa. As he called her, Hamad concluded his work above the refrigerator and climbed down from the kitchen chair. Then the two men silently continued their hunt for the breakthrough lead.
It was already nine-thirty when they took on the last room in the house, the living room.
‘I’m very curious about those photographs,’ said Sjöberg, ‘but I don’t think I can keep going without anything to eat. I’ll go and get us some food. What would you like?’
‘Whatever. No pork.’
‘Okay, we’ll have to see what I can find. I’ll be back as soon as I can.’
Sjöberg left the room and shortly after Hamad heard the outside door slam shut.
Ingrid Olsson had no particular order to her photos. Some were neatly placed in albums, but most were in the envelopes they came in after processing. Some were in large manila envelopes and others were piled in heaps right on the shelves in the cabinet. He chose an envelope at random and started leafing through the pictures. There was an eclectic mix of old black-and-white and colour photos. A few had notes on the back. One old black-and-white photograph, dated June 1938, depicted a man and a woman standing behind two small girls who each sat dangling their legs on a chair. All of them were oddly bundled up for the time of year. He guessed that this was Ingrid Olsson and her sister posing for the photographer along with their parents. Now Ingrid Olsson was the only one left of the people in the picture, and the man she later shared her life with was dead too.
The man who was presumably her husband appeared in a number of fading colour photos, which he assumed were taken during the seventies, on a trip to what might be a Spanish seaside resort. The two of them looked happy and tanned, and the pictures were nice, if not particularly good in the technical sense. There were also about a dozen pictures of a little wire-haired dachshund in various poses: by the food bowl, on the brown couch Hamad was sitting on, on a bed, on a lawn, in the arms of his master and mistress. Ingrid Olsson did not look much like her pictures from the seventies, but because he knew it was her, he could see the similarities that were there. She was thinner now, he thought. Her hair had been long and blonde before; now it was grey and cut short. She already had glasses at that time, but then they were large with heavy, brown plastic frames, as was the fashion then.
He stopped at a black-and-white photograph of a group of children, presumably a school class, lined up in two rows in front of a wall, where several old seasonal posters were hanging that he recognized from the windows of antique shops. The teacher stood behind them in the middle, looking serious, as did the majority of the children. He turned the picture over and read the handwritten text: ‘Forest Hill ’65/’66.’ Then he bundled up the photographs, put them back in the envelope and turned to a beautiful album bound in light-brown leather.
Two albums and a dozen envelopes later, Sjöberg finally showed up with food.
‘I couldn’t find anything close by, so I thought it was just as well to go to McDonald’s by Globen. McChicken – is that all right with you?’
‘Super.’
Sjöberg unpacked the bag of food on the coffee table and divided the french fries and drinks between them. He was having a Big Mac himself, well aware that this type of food was detrimental at his age. True, he was not too overweight, and he also worked out several times a week. Two hours of exercise was part of his job, and he used them for strength training in the police station’s own gym. He and Sandén also had a regular tennis slot in the Hellas tent at Eriksdal every Friday morning at seven o’clock, which they tried to make the best use of. He was already forty-eight, and it was crucial to keep your body in shape to prevent a heart attack.
‘Did you find anything?’ he asked Hamad, taking a bite of his hamburger.
‘No, nothing special. Holiday pictures from the seventies and eighties, lots of pictures of some pooch – a dachshund. Maybe they couldn’t have children. Old black-and-white pictures from ancient times. Nothing with a connection to Vannerberg. Provided they weren’t on the same holiday in Spain in 1975.’
‘We’ll keep going until we’ve looked through everything anyway. If nothing else, to create a picture of Ingrid Olsson as a person. Have you seen her smiling in any of the photos?’
‘Yes, actually. She was probably happier before, when she wasn’t so lonely.’
‘That’s not so strange when you think about it. Even if the chance of making new friends increases with the number of smiles you spread around you.’
‘By the way, I don’t think there was a camera in the house during the fifties and sixties,’ said Hamad.
‘No?’
‘No, there are almost no photos from that time, which is too bad. Just studio pictures of the bride and groom, as far as I could see, and those are from 1957.’
‘So they got married in 1957,’ Sjöberg said meditatively. ‘Well, then they had thirty-three years together anyway, if the old man died sixteen years ago.’
‘So, you think fifty-five is old?’ Hamad said mischievously, watching Sjöberg stuff a handful of french fries into his mouth.
Sjöberg glanced at him, but chose not to reply.
‘Are there any more recent pictures?’ Sjöberg asked.
‘Not many since the old man died. But she and her sister seem to have done a few things together. I found pictures from Prague and London and a few more everyday photos. She doesn’t seem to have had any friends.’
They finished their meal. Sjöberg picked up the rubbish and wiped off the table with a damp paper towel. Then they continued ploughing through t
he piles of photographs. Sjöberg browsed through a stack of photos from a little cottage where Ingrid Olsson and her sister apparently spent a summer in the early nineties. He was struck by the absence of children in all of Ingrid Olsson’s pictures. There were simply no children in her surroundings. Neither she nor her sister had kids, and clearly no one else did either, in the limited circle of acquaintances who appeared in her photos over the years. Of course it’s like that, thought Sjöberg, if you or those closest to you don’t have kids, then you just don’t meet any kids. He had never thought about it before, but Swedish society was extremely age-segregated. Children went to school and nursery; adults worked and went to restaurants. Two separate worlds, and, as an adult, if you neither work with children nor have any of your own, you simply have no contact with them. How sad it must be never to hug a child, never experience the unmistakable aroma of a filthy child fresh from nursery, never take a pinch of smooth, soft baby fat.
His thoughts were interrupted by Hamad.
‘Conny, look at this,’ he said, placing an approximately thirty-year-old photo on the table in front of him.
The picture depicted a number of mostly toothless children aged five or six who were lined up in front of the photographer. Farthest back to the left stood a woman in her forties, with long blonde hair and large glasses with brown plastic frames.
‘What the hell –?’
Sjöberg felt a stab in his belly from tension. He turned the picture over and read the sprawling pencil notation on the back: ‘Forest Hill 1974/’75’, then he turned the photo face up and set it down on the table again.
‘That’s Ingrid Olsson!’ he said excitedly, pointing at the only adult in the picture.
‘Of course it is,’ said Hamad eagerly. ‘And what’s more – I’ve seen a similar photo from the mid sixties. I have no idea where that picture is now, and I didn’t realize then that Ingrid Olsson was in the picture. She didn’t look the same.’
‘Look for it then,’ said Sjöberg. ‘I’ll go through the piles we haven’t checked and see if I can find more pictures like this.’
The Gingerbread House Page 15