The Intruder
Page 38
“Fine, it seemed like. Or, maybe she got a little annoyed that first I asked her to come and then … But she said she understood.”
“And it was on the morning of the twenty-seventh you said that?”
“Yes.”
“So on that occasion you were only together for one night?”
“Yes.”
“But you met again in Copenhagen?”
“No.”
Fredrik tried to conceal his surprise. Who besides Katja could have written the comment on Malin’s blog?
“Wasn’t she at the hotel on November sixteenth?”
“Yes. She was there. But we hadn’t been in touch or anything. She just showed up.”
“But she must have known that you would be there?”
“Yes, of course. I must have said something about that time, too.”
“So what happened?”
“I had to ask her to leave. It got a little tiresome.”
“In what way?”
“She took it okay, but it was a little painful to send her away. She was disappointed, it was noticeable, but there was no big drama or anything.”
“Did she try to make contact with you again after that?”
“She sent a couple of e-mails and asked if I would be going to Copenhagen anymore, or to Stockholm. She also called at some point and left a message on my cell phone. But I never answered that.”
“But she never came to St. Petri again?”
“No.”
“And there was nothing in what she said or wrote that was threatening? Or that you perceived as strange in any other way?”
“No,” said Henrik. “Not at all.”
The phone in the room rang. Fredrik excused himself.
“Yes?”
It was Sara.
“I think Ellen wants her dad now.”
“Okay,” said Fredrik. “Then I’ll finish up here.”
Henrik took the words as a sign that the last question had already been asked and got up before Fredrik had even hung up. He seemed eager to get out of there. Fredrik extended his hand.
“Thanks for coming in.”
“You’re welcome.”
Fredrik followed Henrik and Ellen through the building and let them out on the front side. He had solved his first case since he came back into service for real. What ought to have been a simple one-person job on Fårö had turned out quite differently. He had a definite feeling that he would remember them a long time. Both the dead and those who remained.
94.
The day was mild, cloudy, and windy. The sea neither threatening nor beautiful, just gray and a little sad. Malin had often talked about nature on Fårö, how it had two sides. Today, Friday the sixteenth of October, it didn’t seem to have any side at all.
Axel, was the first thing Henrik thought when he came into the light, open church sanctuary along with Ellen.
Axel.
The two caskets were at the front by the chancel. The larger casket with Malin to the left and the smaller one with Axel to the right. Henrik knew that they would be there, he knew what they would look like. He was the one who had chosen them. Two simple white caskets with two simple wreaths of spruce. No pictures. He had said no when the woman at the funeral home asked if he wanted to have portraits on the caskets. In this context, he preferred his own internal image, a living image, rather than a frozen moment. And he wanted all the others who came to the funeral to have their own images, undisturbed.
He went down the center aisle holding Ellen by the hand, felt her small fingers moving against his, and without exerting himself, without even thinking about it, he felt Axel’s even smaller fingers against his free hand. Hundreds of times Axel’s little hand had slipped into his, hundreds of times, perhaps thousands, to get support, strength, consolation, or simply in search of an obvious intimacy.
With every step he took it was as though the grief stabbed a sword deeper and deeper into his chest, with every step death came ever closer and could finally whisper right into him. A cold voice that reached to the very depths of his soul. This is you. This is everyone you love. Malin, Axel, Ellen. You.
Candles were lit on the altar and alongside the caskets. Above the altar no soothing Jesus, simply God’s all-seeing eye in the form of a simple sun. Without being able to take his gaze from the two caskets, he took the final steps up and sat down trembling in the front row with Ellen beside him. Maria came right after and sat down next to Ellen.
The newspapers had not missed any details. Everything would be out in the light, wide open. Names, pictures, and places. The hotel. “Here he met the murderer.” They had ferreted out Agnes and Thomas. They declined to be interviewed, for which he was grateful. Not because it made any great difference. Everything was there, every miserable detail. But it meant a lot to him that they had still done what they could to protect him.
But not a single line about Maria. That had escaped them. Or possibly had not been defensible to publish. Maria remained a secret.
Ewy and Staffan sat in the pew behind Henrik. They spoke as little as possible with him. He could not blame them. In their eyes everything was his fault and maybe they were right. If he had not betrayed Malin the way he did, she and Axel would still be alive now. Betrayed. What a pleasant paraphrase for his having slept with a complete stranger in a hotel in Copenhagen. A stranger who then killed his wife and his child.
The bells started ringing, and he looked cautiously around the sanctuary. Right across the aisle, on the second pew from the chancel, sat three friends of Malin who had come down from Stockholm. Tyra had worked at Kakan, the other two, Viktoria and Måns, were old friends from high school. Behind them sat Janna, Thomas, and Agnes, and then the neighbors from Kalbjerga, Bengt and Ann-Katrin.
Two vacant pews behind them he noticed Alma. His sister.
He had not noticed her when he came in. He tried to catch her eye, but it was directed forward toward the caskets and the chancel.
The funeral would take place in Fårö church and the burial in Stockholm. Thankfully that had been easy to agree on despite the icy chill between him and Ewy and Staffan. Because they had such a hard time talking with one another they decided that Henrik would decide on the funeral arrangements and Ewy, Staffan, and Maria the burial. In the background lurked an unspoken tug-of-war about which family Malin really belonged to. The first one she had been born into, or the second one that she had formed together with him? Henrik could only hope that the struggle would remain hidden. He did not want to start a war over Malin’s dead body.
Maria still talked with him. Perhaps she had a harder time judging. Between the two of them the obstacles were of a different kind. But she sat beside him. No, she sat next to Ellen. Maybe it was only for Ellen’s sake.
The minister stepped up to the head end of the two caskets and began the funeral service.
“We are gathered here today to follow Malin Andersson and Axel Andersson Kjellander to their final rest. Mother and son…”
The minister’s words, the customary ones, restored him in one stroke to the present. The funeral, death. Malin and Axel. The bodies in the caskets. Under the lids. He could not understand that they were there, under the white lids. How were they lying? What did they look like?
Ellen’s hand was damp against his. The funeral attendees kept silent around him. The room was white and stripped down. A chancel with two doors to the sacristy, a pulpit in the corner. The minister’s voice. She spoke about Malin and Axel. He could hear the wind outside, then a car passing on the road.
Henrik had met the minister three times to talk about the funeral, how he wanted it. But mostly they had talked about Malin and Axel. He had tried to describe them to her. She had listened, asked a question or two. It had not been difficult for him to talk about them, even if he was forced to stop sometimes because his voice got stuck or death became far too real.
The last time they met before the funeral he had talked about guilt. The thoughts that it was his fault. It
couldn’t be avoided. However you twisted and turned it, it was his fault, somehow.
The minister listened to him for a long time. Then she looked at him with a gaze that was both sympathetic and demanding. “I think your daughter needs you more than your guilt needs you.”
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to Daniel Åhlén at the Gotland Police Department, as well as to Sune Jacobsson, formerly with the same agency, whose viewpoints I always listen to and almost always adapt to. Sometimes, however, police realism has had to take a backseat to fiction.
Many thanks also to Inger Nennesmo and Lars Rambe, who contributed medical and legal details.
* * *
The Intruder is partly inspired by true events, but all persons are fictional, as is the story in its entirety.
About the Author
HÅKAN ÖSTLUNDH grew up in Stockholm, Sweden, where he still lives today. He has worked as a journalist for Sweden’s bestselling morning paper and spends summers on Gotland with his wife and three sons. You can sign up for email updates here.
Also by Håkan Östlundh
The Viper
Thank you for buying this
St. Martin’s Press ebook.
To receive special offers, bonus content,
and info on new releases and other great reads,
sign up for our newsletters.
Or visit us online at
us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup
For email updates on the author, click here.
Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Håkan Östlundh
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously.
THE INTRUDER. Copyright © 2011 by Håkan Östlundh by agreement with Grand Agency. Translation © copyright 2015 by Paul Norlen. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
thomasdunnebooks.com
www.minotaurbooks.com
Cover photograph © Chris Lofqvist Photography / Getty Images
eBooks may be purchased for business or promotional use. For information on bulk purchases, please contact Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department by writing to MacmillanSpecialMarkets@macmillan.com.
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-1-250-02948-5 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-250-02949-2 (e-book)
e-ISBN 9781250029492
First published in Sweden as Inkräktaren by Ordfront in 2011
First U.S. Edition: August 2015