‘Ragnar Vinterman,’ said the clergyman, taking Alex’s hand and then Joar’s.
Alex noted that he could not have been on the steps for long, because his hand was still warm. And large. Alex had never seen such large hands before.
‘Let’s go in,’ said Ragnar Vinterman in a deep voice. ‘Alice, our parish assistant, has provided some refreshments.’
There were coffee cups and a generous plate of buns set out on one of the big tables in the parish rooms. Other than that, the whole place looked deserted, and Alex could feel how chilly the place was even before he took off his coat. Joar kept his on.
‘I’m sorry it’s so cold,’ said Ragnar with a sigh. ‘We’ve been trying to sort out the heating here for years; we almost despair of ever getting it to work. Coffee?’
They accepted the hot drinks gladly.
‘I should probably start by expressing condolences,’ Alex said cautiously as he put down his cup.
Ragnar nodded slowly, head bowed.
‘It’s a huge loss to the parish,’ he said quietly. ‘It’s going to take us a very long time to get over it. The grieving process is going to be hard work for us all.’
The man’s bearing and voice filled Alex with instinctive trust in him. Alex’s daughter would have said that the vicar had the body of a senior athlete.
The vicar ran a hand through his thick, dark brown hair.
‘Here in the church we always follow the saying “Hope for the best but prepare for the worst”, but to do that you need to form a clear view of what the worst conceivable thing would be.’
He stopped abruptly and fiddled with his coffee cup.
‘I fear we who work and worship here had not really done that on this occasion.’
Alex frowned.
‘I don’t think I quite understand.’
‘Everybody here knew about Jakob’s health problems,’ he said, meeting Alex’s gaze. ‘But only a few of us knew how bad things sometimes got for him. Only a handful of colleagues and parishioners knew he had had electric shock treatment several times, for example. When he was in the clinic we would generally say he was at a health resort or away on holiday. He preferred it that way.’
‘Was he afraid of being seen as weak?’ asked Joar.
Ragnar turned his gaze to the younger man.
‘I don’t think so,’ he answered, leaning back in his chair slightly. ‘And he knew, just as we did, that there are so many preconceptions about the condition he suffered from.’
‘We gather he’d been living with it for a long time,’ said Alex, kicking himself for not yet having got hold of Jakob’s doctor.
‘For decades,’ sighed the vicar. ‘Ever since his teens, really. Thank goodness treatment in that area has made such strides as time has gone on. From what I can understand, those early years were pretty ghastly for him. His mother was apparently diagnosed with the same thing.’
‘Is she still with us?’ asked Joar.
‘No,’ said the vicar, and drank some coffee. ‘She took her own life when Jakob was fourteen. That was when he decided to take holy orders.’
Alex gave a shudder. Some problems seemed to pass from generation to generation like a relay baton.
‘What’s your view on what happened yesterday evening?’ he said tentatively, seeking eye contact.
‘You mean do I think Jakob did it? Did he shoot Marja and then himself?’
Alex nodded.
Ragnar swallowed several times, looking past Alex and Joar and out of the window at the snow covering the trees and ground.
‘I’m afraid I think that is exactly what happened.’
As if he had just realised that he was sitting very uncomfortably, he shifted position on his chair and put one knee over the other. His big hands rested on his lap.
The only other sound was that of Joar’s pen at work, adding to the half-page of notes he already had.
‘He was in such a wretched state those last two days,’ Ragnar said, his voice strained. ‘And I regret, yes, I regret with all my heart that I didn’t sound the alarm and at least tell Marja everything.’
‘Such as what?’ asked Alex.
‘About Karolina,’ said Ragnar, leaning forward over the table and resting his face in his hands for a few moments. ‘Little Lina, whose life had gone so far off course.’
Alex registered that Joar had stopped writing.
‘Did you know her well?’ he asked.
‘Not as an adult, better when she was younger,’ said Ragnar. ‘But I heard reports from Jakob every so often on how she was living. On her addiction and her attempts to get free of it.’
He shook his head.
‘Jakob didn’t realise what her problem was until a few years ago,’ he went on. ‘I mean, she’d always demanded so much of herself, and when she couldn’t really reach that standard in her student years she started taking various kinds of drugs. At first to enhance her performance, but later on the addiction was yet another problem she had to deal with.’
‘But her mother, Marja, she must have been aware of the problem, too?’ Alex said dubiously.
‘Of course,’ said Ragnar. ‘But the girl was much closer to her father, so he was the only one with the full picture. And since they had other problems in their life, he chose not to pass on to his wife all the details of what was happening to their daughter.’
‘But she must have noticed something,’ said Joar. ‘As I understand it, the girl had been severely addicted for a number of years.’
‘That’s right,’ said Ragnar, a sharpness coming into his voice. ‘But with a bit of determination, things can be glossed over well enough, especially if the mother can’t cope with the truth, even if she chose to see it.’
‘You mean she chose to shut her eyes to aspects of her daughter’s state?’ said Alex.
‘Yes, I do,’ Ragnar said firmly. ‘And I don’t know if it’s all that surprising really. They had had problems for many years with Jakob’s condition, and suddenly their daughter was another problem. I suppose it was all too much for Marja. That’s how it is sometimes.’
Alex, himself the father of two children, was not sure that he agreed with the clergyman, but then he had no experience of what it was like to live with someone suffering from severe depression. There certainly was a natural limit to how much misery any one person could bear. Ragnar Vinterman was right in that respect.
‘He got the news on Sunday evening,’ Ragnar went on. ‘He rang me just afterwards and sounded shocked, desperate.’
‘Who broke it to him?’ asked Alex.
Ragnar looked momentarily confused.
‘I don’t actually know. Does it matter?’
‘Probably not,’ said Alex, but he still wanted to know.
Joar shifted uneasily.
‘But he said nothing to his wife?’ he asked.
Ragnar bit his lower lip and shook his head.
‘Not a word. And he begged me not to say anything, either. He said he needed to try to understand the implications himself before he told Marja. I saw no reason not to do as he asked, and gave him until Wednesday, until today.’
‘Until today?’ echoed Alex.
The vicar inclined his head in assent.
‘Marja was coming to a parish meeting here today, and if Jakob still hadn’t told her, I was going to do it myself. I mean, she had to know.’
The thoughts went round and round in Alex’s head. A picture was slowly taking shape.
‘Did you speak to him again later, or was that the last time you were in touch?’
‘We spoke once more after that,’ said Ragnar, sounding strained again. ‘Yesterday. He sounded oddly relieved on the phone, said he was going to tell Marja all about it in the evening. Said everything would be all right.’
The vicar took a deep breath. Alex did not expect him to start crying, and nor did he.
‘Everything would be all right,’ repeated the vicar, his voice thick. ‘I should have realised, should have done someth
ing. But I didn’t. I didn’t do a thing.’
‘That’s very common,’ Joar said in such a matter-of-fact voice that both Alex and the vicar stared at him.
Joar put down his pen and pushed away his notepad.
‘We think we’re going to be rational and understanding in all situations, but unfortunately human beings don’t work like that. We aren’t mind readers, in fact the only thing we are good at is “realising” afterwards, when all the facts are at hand, what we should have done. And then we hold ourselves responsible. When there’s no need.’
He shook his head.
‘Believe me, you lacked vital information that, with hindsight, you’ve convinced yourself you had all along.’
Alex looked at his younger colleague in astonishment.
There’s so much we don’t know about each other, he thought.
‘Some of Marja and Jakob’s other friends say it’s out of the question for Jakob to have shot his wife and himself,’ he said, moving the conversation on.
Ragnar Vinterman appeared to hesitate.
‘You mean Elsie and Sven?’ he said gently. ‘It’s a long time since they were really good friends with Marja and Jakob, and there was a lot they didn’t know.’
Like the daughter’s drug habit, Alex thought to himself.
‘Why was that?’ asked Joar. ‘Why weren’t they such good friends any more?’
‘Oh, they were still good friends,’ said Ragnar. ‘Just not as close, from what Jakob said. Why? Well, I hardly know. They fell out over something a few years ago, and it was never quite the same after that. Then Elsie and Sven retired early, and when they left the parish they had even less contact with Jakob and Marja.’
Joar was making notes again.
‘And what about their other daughter, Johanna? Did she have problems as well?’ asked Alex.
The vicar shook his head.
‘No, not at all,’ he said. ‘I only ever heard good things about her. On the other hand,’ he added uncertainly, ‘I suppose I did hear rather less about her. She made it clear at quite an early stage that she wasn’t as interested in the Church as the rest of the family, wasn’t a believer, and that created a certain distance.’
‘Do you know what she’s doing now?’ Alex asked curiously.
‘She’s a lawyer,’ replied Ragnar. ‘I’m afraid I don’t know any more than that.’
‘So you don’t know where we can get hold of her?’ asked Joar.
‘No, unfortunately not.’
They sat in silence for a while. Alex drank some coffee and mulled over what they had discovered. Most of it now seemed quite logical. Jakob had not cancelled the dinner date because it might have made Marja wonder what was going on. And the reason he had sounded so relieved on the phone was in all likelihood the classic one: he had decided to end their lives and thus found peace.
The only question mark was the daughter Johanna. Had she really drifted so far apart from her family that Jakob felt it legitimate to rob her of her parents? They really did need to get hold of her, and fast.
He decided to ask one last question.
‘Say we pretend we don’t think Jakob was disturbed enough to take his own life and his wife’s, who else could it have been? Can you think of any possible alternative perpetrator?’
Ragnar frowned.
‘You mean someone Jakob and Marja had such a violent disagreement with that they were murdered?’
Alex nodded.
‘No idea. None at all.’
‘Jakob did a lot of campaigning on refugee issues . . .’ began Joar.
‘Yes, that might have landed him in trouble, of course,’ said Ragnar. ‘I don’t know anything about it, though.’
With that, the meeting was over. The men ate the last of the buns and drank up their coffee, chatting about the snow, which was causing various disruptions. Then they shook hands and parted.
‘I’m afraid his assessment may be correct,’ Alex said thoughtfully in the car on the way back to Kungsholmen. ‘But we must get hold of the daughter first and check that story against hers. And we must talk to the doctor in charge of Jakob’s treatment.’
But by the time Alex and Joar left work some hours later, they still had not located either of them. And although Alex had thought he had everything under control, a sneaking suspicion was beginning to grow that this might not be the case.
Fredrika Bergman was running for her life. With a protective hand round her belly, she was running faster than she had ever run before through the dark forest. The long tree branches clawed at her face and body, her feet sank into damp moss and hot summer rain plastered her hair to her head.
They were close now, her pursuers. And she knew she was going to lose. They were calling to her.
‘Fredrika, give up! You know you can never escape us! Stop! For the sake of the baby!’
The words lashed her onwards. It was the baby they wanted, it was the baby they were trying to get at. She had seen that one of the men had a knife. Long and glinting. When they caught her, they would cut the baby out of her stomach and leave her to die in the forest. Just as they had all the other women she could see lying on their backs among the trees.
She could not go on much longer and her desperation grew. She would die in the forest, unable to save her unborn child. The tears pulled and tugged at her, slowing strides that had been so long and swift at first.
She finally tripped over a tree root and fell hard. Landed awkwardly, on her stomach, and the baby froze to ice and stopped moving.
Within a few seconds they were in a ring around her. Tall and dark. Each with a knife. One of them squatted down beside her.
‘Now come on, Fredrika,’ he whispered. ‘Why are you making it so hard when it could be simple?’ They crowded round her exhausted body, forced her onto her back, held her down.
‘Breathe, Fredrika, breathe,’ said the voice, and she saw one of the knives being raised.
She screamed with the full force of her lungs, fought to get free.
‘Fredrika, for Christ’s sake, you’re frightening the life out of me,’ boomed a familiar voice.
She forced her eyes open, looking around in confusion. Spencer’s hard arms were holding her firmly; her legs were tangled in the duvet. She was sweating all over and tears were running down her face.
Spencer felt her relax, and sat down on the edge of the bed. He held her in silence.
‘Good God, what’s wrong with me?’ whispered Fredrika, sobbing into his neck.
Spencer said nothing, just hugged her tightly.
‘I’m sorry I didn’t get here sooner,’ he said quietly. ‘I’m sorry.’
Fredrika, not even able to recall that they had arranged to meet, was just glad he was there and said nothing for a long while.
‘What time is it?’ she finally asked.
‘Half past eleven,’ sighed Spencer. ‘The plane from Madrid was delayed.’
A memory forced its way to the surface. Madrid. He had been at a conference in Madrid. He was meant to land at half past six, they were going to have dinner together. But in the event he had only got there just before midnight, letting himself in with his own key. Before she got pregnant they had always met at Spencer’s father’s old flat but now, with the baby, and Fredrika having such a hard time, they more often met at her flat instead. New challenges meant new routines.
Tears of disappointment welled in her eyes.
‘I’m so bloody fed up with all this. I thought you were supposed to be happy when you were pregnant; placid. Pathetic, almost.’
Spencer gave that wry smile that had made her want to have him more than she had ever wanted any other man.
‘Pathetic, you?’ he grinned, taking off his outdoor things.
‘You didn’t even hang your coat up?’ Fredrika asked foolishly.
‘No, you were making such a racket when I came in that I thought I’d better see to you first.’
He padded swiftly back. Tousle-haired, with tired eyes.
He was no youngster, Spencer. And he would soon be a father for the first time in his life.
‘Good Lord, Fredrika, is this how it is every night?’
‘Almost,’ she replied evasively. ‘But you’ve seen me like that before.’
‘Yes, but I thought it only happened now and again. It’s awful to think of this going on when I’m not here.’
Be here then, Fredrika wanted to say. Leave your boring wife and marry me instead.
The words froze inside her, swallowed up by an ocean of habit. Her relationship with Spencer was as crystal clear as it had always been: they were a couple, certainly, but only within certain limits. He had never led her to believe things would be different just because he accepted his role as father of her child.
Fredrika got out of bed and went to the bathroom. Spencer had vanished into the kitchen to make a quick sandwich. She threw her sweat-drenched nightdress into the washing basket and took a shower. The warm, gentle jets of water felt desperately welcome on her skin. She twisted and turned under the flow, too tired to register that she was crying. Afterwards she wrapped herself in a big towel.
At least she had had a good day at work. Short, but good. It had been hard to find anyone to translate the Arabic on her scraps of paper because all the translators were tied up on a big immigrant-smuggling case, with lots of material to work on for the national CID. Finally one of them had taken on her small enquiry and agreed to report back the next day.
Fredrika suppressed a sigh. There certainly would be plenty to do tomorrow. The translator’s feedback to go over, of course; and the doctor who had been responsible for Karolina Ahlbin when she was admitted to hospital and then died of the overdose was also due to get back to her. The only concrete result of Fredrika’s day was a memo about a big property out at Ekerö, a house and some land, that was registered in the names of the Ahlbin sisters and had previously been under their parents’ names. Maybe that was the house where the family spent time together?
Silenced: A Novel Page 7