He explained briefly that they needed to ask a few questions due to an incident earlier in the day, and at Sara’s suggestion they sat down at the kitchen table.
She turned on the light over the table. The kitchen was dark, even though it was still completely daylight. It was presumably more pleasant in the mornings when the sunlight shone in through the crowns of the trees outside.
“You’re on sick leave,” said Fredrik. “Is this the first day?”
“Yes. I started feeling poorly last night.”
“In what way?” he asked.
“What do you mean? Did the insurance company send you?”
Stina smiled a little provocatively at Fredrik.
“No,” he answered. “Unless we discover some serious insurance fraud we aren’t going to coordinate our information with them.”
Sara gave him a look. Perhaps he had let himself be too sarcastic in his response. He made a more correct addition.
“No, we haven’t been sent out by the insurance company.”
The smile disappeared from Stina’s lips. She seemed to have liked the first answer better.
“I felt cold, I had pain in my joints. Typical flu symptoms, so I called my boss last evening.”
“Have you been at home in the apartment the whole day?”
“Yes.”
Stina’s eyes moved between Fredrik and Sara before she continued.
“Why are you asking me this? I don’t really understand.”
“If we ask our questions first, then perhaps we can answer yours later,” said Fredrik.
Stina raised her eyebrows and gave a barely perceptible nod.
“If that’s what you say.”
Fredrik had noticed a faint odor of cat pee when he came into the hall. Now he seemed to see a pair of yellow eyes gleaming under the couch in the living room.
“What were you doing between eleven thirty and twelve thirty today?” he asked.
“I was here,” Stina answered, as if she thought he was a bit dense.
“And doing what?”
“I was reading.”
She made a gesture toward a four-inch-high pile of newspapers and magazines. In the middle of the pile the edge of a book peeked out. Fredrik had noticed several piles of books and newspapers around the apartment.
“Did you read anything in particular?” asked Fredrik.
“No, I read the local paper and browsed in a few magazines. I got up really late.”
“I see, when was that?”
“Nine thirty.”
“And you sat here at the table?” he asked. “Between eleven thirty and twelve thirty, I mean.”
“Yes,” Stina answered, and with each question she got a more and more confounded expression.
“Are there any neighbors in the building or in the buildings nearby who can confirm that you’ve been at home here today? Someone who may have seen you?”
“Don’t think so,” said Stina Hansson. “But you can always ask. But can’t you at least tell me what this is about?”
“These are routine questions,” said Sara Oskarsson. “We’re questioning a number of people here in the area.”
“I see.”
Stina Hansson did not look convinced.
“Do you know Henrik Kjellander?” asked Sara.
There was silence for a moment. Stina leaned against the back of the chair.
“Yes,” she said lingeringly. “Or knew, at least. We went to the same school here in Fårösund. And one year at Säve.”
“You had a relationship? Is that correct?” asked Sara when Stina did not continue.
Stina laughed.
“Good Lord,” she sighed. “Yes, we did. But that was ages ago. I must have been nineteen or twenty and had just moved to Stockholm.”
The initial image of a healthy young woman was somewhat changed when Fredrik had been sitting across from her at the table for a while. For some reason he got a feeling that Stina Hansson did not go out much, or that in any event she kept to herself. He was not sure whether it was the dry skin, the piles of books, the cat odor, the complete seasons of Friends on the bookshelf that made him think that, or whether it was something completely different.
“Did you live together?” Sara continued the questioning.
“Yes, but only a few months. It was more for practical reasons. I had nowhere to stay for a while.”
“How long did the relationship last?”
“A year, approximately.”
“Who ended it?”
“He did. Henrik.”
The name sounded so domestic in her mouth, as if she was talking about someone close to her, thought Fredrik.
“Did you live with him then?” asked Sara.
“Yes, but I had just gotten a student apartment. Sometimes I wonder if he waited to break up until I had somewhere to live. To be nice.” Stina laughed lightly and looked at Sara with clear, unperturbed eyes. “Are you really interested in my relationship with Henrik Kjellander fifteen years ago?”
Sometimes I wonder, thought Fredrik.
They heard the ferry departing. The metallic scraping from the ramp, the diesel engines picking up speed. It was five thirty.
“We are interested in Henrik Kjellander and everything that concerns him,” said Fredrik. “He is not suspected of anything, but for various reasons that we can’t go into right now this may be important.”
Stina looked at him with a curl on her upper lip.
“I guess I’ll have to be content with that,” she said.
“I guess you will, for the time being.”
It would probably not be long before the village gossip reached her, or she read about it in the newspaper.
Sara Oskarsson continued to probe into Stina Hansson’s relationship with Henrik. As they had already understood from the phone call with Henrik, she had taken it very hard when he broke up with her.
“In some way I got the idea that it had nothing to do with me as an individual,” she said, stroking her fingers over her cheek. “Instead it was that I didn’t fit into his life because I came from Fårösund.”
“But Henrik is from here, too, isn’t he?”
“Exactly,” said Stina with a crooked smile. “But he wanted to get away. Not only away from Fårösund and Gotland. He wanted to become a different person: successful photographer, someone who moved out in the world among significant, glamorous people. Something like that. Then he happened to meet me. I think he really liked me, got attached to me, but then it was like he suddenly thought that he was stuck in the past, in Gotland—through me. I became part of what stuck firmly to him and that he had to get rid of in order to get where he wanted. I had a hard time letting go. I was probably pretty annoying. But that was because I thought it was such a shame. I don’t really think he was tired of me, it was that other stuff that got in the way.”
She fell silent and looked out into the dark garden. Two pale roses were seen on her cheek. She had spoken calmly and collectedly, but it was still a revealing harangue to be about something that had ended fifteen years ago.
Fredrik wondered whether there really could be something in what Stina had said. Three years later Henrik met a waitress and started a family with her. Not exactly glamorous.
“And now he’s back. It did come as a surprise,” said Stina. “Especially that he chose Fårö.”
“What do you mean by that?” said Sara.
“I think it’s extremely strange after everything that happened with his family. Everyone probably thinks that.”
“How did you react to the fact that he was back here?” said Fredrik. “Besides being surprised.”
“Isn’t that enough?” she answered in a joking tone.
“If I were to put it a little more clearly,” said Fredrik, “how did you feel about running into him here in Fårösund?”
Stina’s eyes wandered off; she thought before she answered.
“Of course it felt a little strange after not having seen him for years, b
ut … Well, I don’t know what I should say. It wasn’t really a big problem. I was more curious about what made him change his mind.”
“Did you stop your car outside the Fårösund school on Monday morning?”
Stina looked in amazement at Fredrik. She waited to answer.
“Yes…”
“What were you doing there?”
“Is she the one who said that? Malin?”
Fredrik sat quietly, waiting for an answer to his question.
Stina sighed.
“I caught sight of the car when I was on my way to work. Their red Mercedes SUV. They’re the only ones who have a car like that here, so … It was far away on Strandvägen. I suddenly had the desire to talk with Henrik, I thought it was him who…”
She stroked her hand across her cheek again, slowly and meditatively, stopped with the nail of her middle finger on a flake of skin.
“When I turned up from Strandvägen the car was parked outside the day care. I stopped a short way from there and got out and waited.”
“Why didn’t you stop next to Henrik’s car if you wanted to talk with him?” said Fredrik.
“I don’t really know.”
“What happened then?”
“Yes, then she came out. For some idiotic reason it’s like I took it for granted that it was Henrik in the car. I was at a total loss. I just stood there staring for a long time before I thought of getting in the car again. I assume it seemed strange. Did she say that? That I’m strange in some way?”
Fredrik ignored the question.
“What was it you wanted to talk about with Henrik when you decided to follow the car?”
“I don’t remember.”
“You don’t remember? That sounds strange, I think. If you took the trouble to follow him in order to talk with him, there must have been something you wanted to say, right?”
Stina Hansson squirmed worriedly in the chair and looked out through the window.
“I don’t remember,” she repeated.
30.
Malin hung up the phone. Her sister had made up her mind at once when Malin told her what had happened. She would come down and stay at least until Henrik was back from his trip.
Malin looked out toward the big ancient sundial that was squeezed between the treetops and a dramatic cloud formation to the west. The apples shone green and red in the warm glow and the pears had started to turn yellow. It was time to harvest. It surprised her that they could grow at all there in the stony ground.
Far away Kalbjerga’s metal roofs glistened above the pines. The family on the farm and Ann-Katrin and Bengt were their only neighbors. Then nothing. Just forest and meager meadows with bleating sheep. When the sun went down they were alone in the dark.
That thought was easier to bear since Maria said that she would come.
Everything that was whirling around in her head quieted down enough that she could think. She and Maria had always been close. From the very start it was mostly Malin who pitched in and took care of her little sister. But with every year that passed the three years between them meant less and less. Not even when Malin was fifteen or sixteen and should have thought it was awkward to have a little sister hanging at her heels did she push her away. That probably made Maria a little precocious, but also secure and self-confident. Confidence that Malin could lean against when she needed it.
Maria was the only one who had been on Malin’s side when she quit medical studies to open a café instead. Stubbornly, she had wrangled with Mother and their big brother, Staffan, who thought she was an idiot. Say no to becoming a doctor. How stupid can you be? She had probably never completely recovered from those quarrels. Superficial and bourgeois, Maria’s words echoed in the dining room during the family’s Sunday dinners.
Mother and Staffan had become a little more conciliatory when they saw that things were going well for her, anyway. The third year with Kakan she had received an award from the Entertainment Guide.
Maria would arrive on the eleven o’clock boat tomorrow. She would be on Fårö before four o’clock. Malin counted the minutes. It would feel so nice to have someone there who understood her one hundred percent and who made her feel safe.
She thought about Stina Hansson. As if it was not already bad enough as it was, perhaps this woman who carried off Ellen in her car had some sort of connection to Henrik. Had even had a relationship with him. Fifteen years ago, to be sure, but only three years before he met her. Malin had a hard time believing it was true. That he could have slept with that woman. Whispered that he loved her. Or maybe he hadn’t done just that. She hoped it wasn’t the case.
When Henrik had told about her it was as if she was suddenly there in their home. Moved in with them. Stina Hansson. Why hadn’t he said that he had seen her? Didn’t you do that? Would she have done that herself? She thought so anyway.
Maria had dismissed all such thoughts. Why should he have said anything about it, an old ex from when he was twenty? Knock it off.
Malin had Googled Stina Hansson. She wanted to see what she looked like. But she was nowhere. No Facebook page, no sports club, nothing. The slender figure with the light long hair, jeans, and military-green jacket who stood staring at her outside the school had etched herself in her memory. But the image was incomplete. The piercing, cold eyes continued to stare at her from a face that was no more than a light speck of skin.
Henrik must have pictures of her. Without a doubt. But Malin was reluctant to ask him. She was not sure she wanted to see Stina Hansson smiling lovingly at the man behind the camera.
31.
Simon swore at a setback in the game and yelled out a comment via Skype to a classmate who was sitting at home with his computer taking part in D-Day, or was it the Ardennes offensive? Fredrik had learned to interpret the sounds that penetrated the closed door to the boy’s room. He had also realized that Simon had quietly learned to set the router so that his own computer was prioritized. With both Web games and Skype with images it ate up all the bandwidth. Fredrik’s and Ninni’s computers just sat and churned when they tried to get on the Internet.
He knocked on the door and heard a mumbled yes between the considerably more emotionally charged shrieks.
Simon gave him a quick look over his shoulder as he came into the room.
“How’s it going?” asked Fredrik.
“Justfinehowaboutyou,” mumbled Simon in a single long, hard-to-decipher string of words.
“It’s fine,” said Fredrik. “How are things at school? Have you gotten started for real?”
“Yes.”
Simon tossed a hand grenade, changed weapons, and advanced, quickly shooting four Germans who were trying to hide behind a burned-out tank.
“You don’t have any homework you have to do?”
“We have a theme week.”
“So you don’t have any homework then?”
“No!” shouted Simon as a red half-circle became visible on the screen.
He had been hit, lost power. When the circle was complete you were dead. Now it turned pale instead.
“You didn’t answer,” said Fredrik.
“No. Or yes, but I’ve done it.”
“So what’s the theme?” Fredrik asked.
“Marie Curie,” said Simon.
“That sounds like a narrow theme.”
“No, but women in history, that is. I’m working on Marie Curie.”
Simon sounded irritated. He hammered on the keyboard. Fredrik could not say for sure whether he was irritated at being disturbed or because the game was going poorly.
“Speak up if you need any help.”
His dreary questions about homework were not much to offer compared with defending Bastogne. But Fredrik had a strong feeling that he would have no chance against the game whatever he had to offer.
“Listen,” he said. “I have to get on the Internet. Can you think about taking a break?”
Simon took a deep breath, but held back the sigh.
�
�Sure,” he said, sounding surprisingly cooperative. “Just five minutes.”
* * *
It took more like fifteen minutes, but finally Fredrik managed to capture a little space on the family broadband. “Malin’s Table,” which was under Coop’s home page, showed Malin Andersson in the kitchen at home in Kalbjerga. She stood smiling behind a small marble table that was loaded with vegetables and fruit, carefully arranged with a metal can of Greek olive oil. On the kitchen counter in the background a large loaf of bread and a couple bottles of red wine could be seen.
Fredrik had been to the site before, but only in haste to get a sense of what Malin did. Now he studied it more carefully. He clicked through the registry of recipes. Many were simplified variations on familiar dishes, primarily from French and Italian cuisine, mixed in with some Swedish home cooking.
Fredrik clicked through the blog. He was surprised when he saw that the most recent entry had been made only a few hours before. It was about an Asian cucumber preserve, an obvious side dish for every conceivable Asian entrée, but which could also add a surprising zest to moose steak with cream gravy and lingonberry jam. The entry was brief, but it was still hard to understand how she managed to sit and blog about cucumber after what had happened earlier today. He guessed that a professional blogger had an archive of more or less general entries that could be tossed in if you were short on time. Or even when your daughter was kidnapped.
He heard steps behind him. Then Ninni was standing there resting her hands lightly on his shoulders.
“Are you planning dinner for tomorrow?” she asked.
The thought of lying flew momentarily through his head, but then he said what it was.
“No, it’s work. It’s connected to the girl who was taken away.”
He pointed at the screen.
“This is the mother’s blog.”
He leaned his head back and looked up at Ninni.
“I probably shouldn’t be sitting with this now, but…”
Ninni looked skeptical.
“But it’s not impossible that I’ll find something good,” he continued. “There’s quite a bit here.”
The Intruder Page 14