Gieger

by Gustaf Skördeman

  Had they ever actually swum?

  Sara couldn’t remember for sure, but they must have done. Yes, she could definitely remember swimming costumes and the smell of sun cream. She’d never been able to stand the scent. Why? Was it perhaps because they’d spent their days sitting here covered in sun cream, but never swimming?

  Suddenly, she was uncertain – probably because she had remembered the reason for her visit. She turned around and headed towards the house.

  Big, white and stylish. Expensive even back when the Bromans had bought it, and probably worth a fortune today.

  It felt wrong not to ring the doorbell and wait for Aunt Agneta to open the door, or for the sisters to tumble out and hang on to the door handle, scrutinising their summoned playmate. Those moments on the porch steps had always seemed like an entrance exam. After that, everything was normal.

  But Sara didn’t ring the bell. She opened the door and stepped inside. She looked around.

  Nothing had changed.

  It was almost literally like stepping into the past.

  The hall was exactly as before, with the same coat rack, the same stool and the same telephone table. The same photos of Stellan with celebrities and politicians lined the walls. Everything she could see of the house’s interior from here was the same as it had been thirty years ago. Everything was in the same place – even the smell was the same.

  Was it possible for time to stand still?

  Sara remembered exactly what it had been like to cross the threshold into the house, how Agneta had always come to meet her, even if one of her daughters had opened the door. She was substantially more inclined to be welcoming to guests than the rest of the family were.

  In the living room, Forensics were working on the victim. The armchair was turned the other way, but Sara noticed an arm hanging lifeless on one side. She didn’t want to see any more. Not now. Instead, she asked one of the forensics team where Anna was and received a gesture towards the kitchen in return.

  As Sara approached the kitchen, she heard Malin’s piercing voice.

  ‘You have to find her!’

  ‘We’re working on it,’ Anna replied, in a slightly resigned tone.

  Malin was shaken and disorientated when Sara came into the kitchen. As soon as she caught sight of her childhood friend, she got up and hurried towards her, with her hands extended in a gesture to ward her off.

  ‘Sara, you can’t be here,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘Something terrible has happened.’

  ‘It’s OK. I’m a police officer,’ said Sara, showing her ID.

  Malin stopped herself.

  ‘Yes, of course – that’s right, so you are. Sorry, it’s so . . . Are you here on official business?’

  She looked afraid, as if the fact that Sara was there in her capacity as a police officer, and not as a childhood friend, made the nightmare situation even worse.

  ‘You didn’t have to come here,’ said Anna.

  Sara looked at Anna: short, fit and rapid in her movements. She inspired respect despite her diminutive stature. She had thick, black hair, brown eyes and dark skin, and she radiated decisiveness. They had often been at odds, but neither of them had previously got involved in the other’s job.

  ‘Yes,’ said Sara. ‘I did. It’s Stellan.’

  Malin emitted a sob when she heard her father’s name and Sara turned to her. Who had her childhood friend become?

  To begin with, she saw that Malin was no longer a natural blonde. Her roots were mousy-coloured, while the rest of her hair was platinum blonde. As expected, she was wearing expensive clothes. Sara guessed that Malin spent a lot of time shopping on Birger Jarlsgatan. Schuterman, Gucci, Prada – maybe even Chanel. Her handbag was Louis Vuitton. A little dull for Sara’s tastes. She remembered the sisters as big brand snobs and harsh judges of taste – remembered how happy she’d been on the few occasions she had won their approval.

  ‘Sara, they have to find Mum,’ said Malin in a small voice.

  ‘Is Agneta missing?’

  ‘Yes. And Dad is—’

  ‘I know. It’s completely insane. Stellan – shot.’

  ‘Where can Mum be?’ said Malin, looking at Sara.

  ‘Don’t know. But they’ll find her.’

  ‘How?’ Malin’s fear was turning into agitation. ‘She might have been shot, too. Or kidnapped. Or maybe she’s lying injured somewhere, and she’ll bleed to death if no one finds her.’

  Anna interrupted – perhaps more for Sara’s sake than Malin’s.

  ‘As I’ve said, we’ve got uniformed officers out searching the area,’ she said. ‘Questioning people and looking for clues. We’ve got a boat out on the lake. We’re trying to secure a helicopter. And if we don’t find her, we’ll bring in dogs.’

  ‘It’s my Mum!’ said Malin.

  ‘I know. But we can deal with this. Trust us.’

  Malin looked at Sara, who nodded reassuringly. When they were little, it had been the sisters who had been in charge, but now Malin had to be gracious and trust that she and her colleagues knew best.

  ‘Is she dead?’ said Malin, looking Sara in the eye.

  ‘Don’t you think she might have hidden somewhere? Given what happened to your dad.’

  ‘Yes. But then surely she could come out now?’

  ‘Perhaps she doesn’t know we’re here. Where do you think she might go if she wanted to reach safety?’

  ‘No idea. My house?’

  ‘Might she be there?’

  ‘No. Or . . . Well, we’re here. She might be there waiting for us.’ Malin’s eyes widened. ‘Is she there, Sara? Wondering where we are?’

  ‘Do you think she has a phone with her?’

  ‘No, it’s lying in the kitchen. We called it.’

  ‘Is Christian here?’

  ‘He was the one who called the police. I was . . . I just couldn’t.’

  ‘Can I ask him to go back to yours and check whether Agneta’s there?’

  Malin had no objection, and Sara turned to Anna.

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Absolutely. I’ll ask them to pick him up.’

  ‘He’s with the kids at C.M.’s,’ said Malin. ‘The neighbour.’

  Anna nodded curtly and left.

  Sara remembered C.M.: Carl Magnus something or other, an old friend of the family. He had lived in the house next door throughout her entire childhood and was apparently still there – a retired CEO who even during his working life had spent a lot of time playing tennis, golfing, and hunting with the king. He was renowned for having the most expensive rifle in the hunting club – more expensive than the king’s, which according to Stellan was something of a violation of etiquette. Fabbri – Sara remembered that the gun had been called that. As a child she’d thought it sounded like fabrik, the Swedish word for ‘factory’.

  She also remembered that C.M. had been fairly clueless on those occasions when Stellan and Agneta had asked him to check on the girls when they were away. But Christian was there, too, and the grandchildren doubtless sensed the gravity of the situation. If kids were good at one thing, it was reading adults’ state of mind. C.M. wasn’t needed as a babysitter – the important thing was that he offered the family a little calm in the midst of everything else.

  Sara examined Malin as she sat on a chair, staring vacantly into space. Underneath the makeup, her face was completely pale. What did it do to someone to find their father murdered? In their childhood home, too. Sara thought it would be better if Malin got professional help dealing with the trauma, but for the time being she, Sara, would try to calm her down by focusing on specific things.

  ‘Why did you come here?’ said Sara. ‘Were you visiting?’

  ‘We’d already been here. Us and Lotta and her family. Mum and Dad looked after the kids while we were in France, and we came back today to pick them up. We waved goodbye and left, but Molly had forgotten her banana doll, so we came back.’

  ‘Where did you turn back?’<
br />
  ‘Brommaplan.’

  ‘And when you came back, Stellan was already . . .?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s only ten minutes – maybe fifteen – for everything to have happened.’

  ‘Yes. It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t make sense . . .’

  ‘What does Lotta say?’

  Malin was silent as the words sank in.

  ‘Don’t know. She . . . I don’t know if Christian’s called her.’

  ‘He’s on the way – I’ll check with him . . . Malin?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I have to go and . . . look at him. Will you be all right?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  Malin sounded absent, as if the answer was nothing but a reflex.

  Sara went into the hall and then into the living room.

  And there he was, sitting in the old Bruno Mathsson armchair.

  Uncle Stellan.

  Lying on the floor beside him was a blood-spattered book. Goethe.

  And next to the stereo there was a CD case – the St Matthew Passion.

  He had died surrounded by beauty.

  Stellan Broman had been shot diagonally from behind, one of the forensics team advised, sweat running down her brow in the heat. The bullet had gone into the left-hand side of the back of his head, not far from his ear, and out of the side of his forehead, just above the end of the right eyebrow. Straight through the brain. Blood and brain matter had splattered onto his shirt, his cardigan, the armrest, the book and the floor.

  Shot while he was sitting reading. Hadn’t he heard the murderer?

  Surely Stellan hadn’t gone deaf? No, she couldn’t see a hearing aid.

  And what about Aunt Agneta? Where was she?

  If she had hidden, surely she ought to have ventured out by now. It must have been a couple of hours since Stellan had been shot, and the police had searched the house several times, according to Anna.

  So where was she?

  One option was that the murderer had taken her with them – an unpleasant thought, to say the least.

  A hostage drama with her friends’ aged mother. But why? Kidnapping was one of the toughest crimes to pull off successfully – Sara knew that much. It almost always went wrong.

  She looked around the room. It seemed so much smaller now than when they had been little. People had been born, grown up and had their own kids since she’d last been here.

  The Mathsson armchairs, well-filled bookcases, the sofa and coffee table from Svenskt Tenn covered in Josef Frank fabric – had they been reupholstered, or just carefully used?

  Everything in perfect order.

  She recollected that you didn’t play just anywhere at the Bromans’ – it wasn’t like at Sara’s, where there weren’t really any boundaries between Sara’s world and her mother’s. Perhaps because it was such a squeeze with toys and adult possessions on top of each other, despite the fact that Sara spent most of her waking hours at the Bromans’. Now she couldn’t understand how her mother had put up with it, but she was grateful that she had done, and that she had shown Sara a freer world – a home in which Sara was allowed to be present and to help set the rules.

  But at the Bromans’, you played outside or in the girls’ room. And if the weather or space requirements ever meant you needed to use the living room, you tidied up carefully afterwards.

  She remembered that it was never as much fun to play in the rest of the house as it was in the girls’ room or in the garden. But the sisters demanded that they did sometimes, in some sort of protest against the established order. They were always uninspired games whose rules were invented after the fact. Games that were never played twice.

  How could she have foreseen that she would be standing here today, with Stellan murdered in his armchair? Same house, same people, but nothing else the same . . .

  She had run into Aunt Agneta and Uncle Stellan a couple of times at the NK department store and at the market stalls at Brommaplan, and in those instances Agneta had seemed happier than Sara remembered her being during her childhood. When the girls were little, Agneta had seemed resolute, almost strict, with her big seventies-style glasses, carefully styled hair and elegant dresses from Paris. In the company of adults, she took a step up and became the perfect hostess. Stellan had been playful and inventive in an educational way – but only for brief periods. Then he had preferred to read or talk to a grown-up. He’d probably carried on being like that, Sara thought to herself. A man who only really cared about his job and his books. Unless the subject at hand was him, of course. Then he could talk forever.

  Uncle Stellan. When the girls were little, he had been the most famous person in the country, alongside Palme and the king. Everyone had watched Stellan’s shows, everyone had talked about them the next day, everyone had quoted them and been amused by them. The Happy Country, Good Neighbours, Sheer Madness. Televised entertainment with loads of practical jokes like ‘woollen cap day’ – when everyone had to wear a woollen cap on a set day. Or ‘let’s all be kind’ – greeting strangers and asking whether you could help them with anything. And who could forget ‘electrical fault’, when all the viewers had been encouraged to flash their lights at home simultaneously?

  All of Sweden had taken part.

  And loved it.

  Sara had always been jealous of her friends for having Stellan as their father, while she only had her mother. At the same time, she’d been grateful that she got to play in the home of the great man. He had become at least a partial replacement for the father she never had.

  Uncle Stellan. Cheerful Stellan, Playful Stellan, Sweden’s Stellan.

  Why would someone want to shoot him dead?

  When Anna came into the living room, Sara couldn’t stop herself digging a little, despite it not being her case. She reasoned that it was – on a personal level.

  ‘So what do you think?’ she said.

  ‘Break-in gone wrong.’

  ‘Stellan caught a burglar? But he was shot from behind, sitting down.’

  ‘Maybe he didn’t notice the burglar, but the burglar saw him and panicked. We’re in Bromma – there are burglaries all the time. There are often two or three different gangs working simultaneously.’

  ‘But they must have come in just as the families left,’ Sara objected.

  ‘They might even have seen the cars leaving and thought they had a green light. It might be some real brutal bastards – maybe one of the gangs from the east. They might have come into the house, despite knowing someone was at home, because the alarm wasn’t on. And then the first thing they did was get rid of a potential witness.’

  ‘And Agneta saw that and fled?’

  ‘Or they took her with them. Did they have a safe deposit box?’

  ‘Don’t know,’ Sara said. ‘Do you think they went there with her to empty it?’

  ‘They might even have known that he kept something specific in it. Have any of the papers written about something expensive he owns?’

  ‘Not a clue. But is there anything to suggest it was a break-in?’

  ‘His wallet is missing. Maybe a few valuables. We’ve not yet had the daughter check.’

  ‘What an unnecessary way to die,’ said Sara.

  ‘What were they like?’

  ‘As people? Stellan was friendly, but completely focused on his job and career. He loved being famous. Agneta was a bit reserved when we were little, but she was always nice to Stellan’s guests. And a dutiful mother. I think she turned into a bit of a doting granny when the grandkids came along. I suppose she was busy supporting Stellan’s career when we were little.’

  ‘Managing the home?’

  ‘And hosting parties and being a hostess. Wandering around with a long, brown More cigarette and a drink and talking to everyone, introducing them to each other. She was the one who came up with all the themes and rounded up whatever was needed – catering staff, musicians, entertainment, props.’

  ‘Props?�
�� Anna asked.

  ‘They always had themes for their parties. The Roman Empire, the Twenties, Dracula. Full costumes and matching music. And the whole house was done up. It was a massive job – they might have hundreds of guests. Artists, politicians, businessmen, authors, celebrities, researchers, foreign diplomats. Like Bindefeld’s bashes, but more fun. Something always happened. Naval battles in the lake, snowball fights in the middle of summer, wine fountains. Everyone loved the parties. Once, they built a water slide from the roof of the house into the lake. Another time, they filled the house with balloons – every single room – from floor to ceiling, and the guests had to fumble their way around. And things could get pretty wild. It’s said that Rita Berg once went waterskiing naked right in front of all the guests.’

  ‘And you were right there, in a corner?’

  Sara laughed. She’d never really grasped how unusual her childhood had been.

  ‘As kids, we mostly just watched. Until bedtime. And as I got older, I lost touch with Malin and Lotta.’

  ‘So you didn’t go to any celebrity parties?’

  ‘My husband’s are quite enough.’

  ‘That’s right – you really do move among the upper echelons.’

  ‘Well, higher up than at work – but not that high.’

  Anna grinned.

  ‘He’s in the kitchen.’

  A female uniformed officer with a black ponytail and hawkish nose stuck her head into the room, addressing Anna. Sara realised she meant Christian.

  ‘And some journalists have turned up,’ said hawk-nose as the three headed for the kitchen. ‘They want to know if something’s happened to “Uncle Stellan”.’

  Did ‘Uncle Stellan’ still sell papers?

  ‘Yes, of course they do,’ said Anna. ‘Just say that something’s happened, that we have no comment to make and that we’ll make a statement soon.’

  When they reached the kitchen door, the policewoman peeled away from them like a fighter jet breaking out of formation to pursue its own assignment.

  Before entering the kitchen, Anna stopped and grabbed Sara’s arm.

  ‘Don’t you feel something?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A presence. I feel a presence.’