“What’s her name?”
“Kristina Olsson. She was born . . . then she would be . . . let’s see . . . thirty-eight years old.”
“But that means she’s older than Jacob,” she pointed out.
“By seven years. That’s not so much.”
“No. But it’s not common either.”
“Maybe not. By the way, do you think you can interview her tomorrow? I’ve got a tip in the Speedy murder case that I need to check out.”
“Sure, that’s okay. Give me the note.”
“HELLO, SWEETHEART,” Krister spoke from the living room. The introductory notes of “The Evening News” could be heard in the background, and then a deep male voice reported dramatically on the latest bomb explosion in Spain.
Irene’s pet, Sammie, enthusiastically greeted her, trying to convince her that no one in the world had paid any attention to him all day. But his coat was shiny from being newly brushed, his paws were still damp after his recent walk, and his food dish was sitting in its usual place: Some remains of the dry food were lying at the bottom, but the leftovers they usually added were nowhere to be seen. Irene gave him a kiss on the nose. He snorted but realized that he had been found out. Still relatively content with his existence, he went into the living room to his master and lay down on the rug under the glass table.
Irene warmed the vegetable soup that was standing on the stove and made some generous liver paté sandwiches with piles of pickles. She knew that there must be a can of light beer in the refrigerator somewhere; after a few minutes of rummaging around in the far reaches, she found one. She put her dinner on a tray and carried it into the living room. She hadn’t liked the idea of having two TV’s in the house but if she and Krister wanted to watch anything other than ZTV or MTV, they were forced to use another set. Choosing television programs was the only thing the girls agreed about and their tastes didn’t coincide with their parents’.
Krister gave her an absentminded kiss, with one eye trained on the TV screen. Irene was too hungry to care about the lack of passion in his greeting. With a raging appetite, she practically inhaled the soup and all the sandwiches.
Sammie made an attempt at looking undernourished and pitiful, but Irene cold-heartedly refused to give up any of her sandwiches. She brusquely told him to stay put. Grunting, he went back to his place. He lay there staring at her through the glass tabletop with imploring eyes. For what must have been the thousandth time, Irene was sorry they hadn’t chosen the rustic coffee table made of thick pine when they bought the couches.
“Nice to see you eating, sweetie.”
Krister had lost interest in the news when the business report started.
“I ate pizza pretty late this afternoon and I haven’t had anything since, just a few cups of coffee,” she responded.
“Lucky for your colleagues that you’ve had a steady supply of caffeine. Otherwise they would have had to bring in the safety controller and close the station. Warning! Duck, guys and gals! She’s reloading!”
Krister spoke in his broadest dialect. Since he had grown up in Säffle and his family was still there, his Värmland dialect sounded genuine.
“Nice!”
Irene had actually tried to cut back on her coffee consumption, but it hadn’t gone very well. She had become tired and irritable. As the sum of your vices is said to be constant, and as she didn’t smoke and didn’t drink much, she had decided that coffee would be her vice.
Krister chuckled at his own joke but then became serious. “You should know that Katarina barely ate any soup. She ate about ten peas and that many carrot cubes, and that was it,” he said.
“Why? Doesn’t she usually eat? Her training takes a lot of energy.”
“She’s got the idea in her head of competing for Miss West Coast.”
“Miss . . . ! It sounds like a beauty contest!”
“It is. Apparently she sent in an application, and now she’s been chosen for some regional here in the western part of the city. If she wins, she’ll go on to the big final.”
Irene sat dumbstruck and tried to make sense of what her husband had just told her. The thought of participating in a beauty contest had never occurred to her, and the idea that one of their daughters would do it felt just as odd. She had to admit to herself that Katarina was prettier than she had been at that age. But to enter a beauty contest! Even though she suspected the answer, she asked anyway: “Why can’t she eat because she’s participating in Miss West Coast?”
“She says that she’s too fat.”
Too fat! Katarina was just like her mother, one hundred and eighty centimeters tall, but she probably weighed ten kilos* less. And Irene herself was slender; Katarina was already on the verge of skinny, in Irene’s opinion.
“Where is she now?”
“Ju-jitsu training. She’ll be home any minute.”
Irene tried to digest both the food and the news about her daughter’s new career as a beauty queen. Suddenly, she remembered something.
“I probably need to go to Karlstad tomorrow. But I’ll be home in the evening.”
“Hmmm,” said her husband, deeply engrossed now in the local news.
Chapter 7
IRENE CAUGHT THE SÄFFLE bus at Nils Ericsson Place; it would go on to Karlstad. This was not only much cheaper than taking the car, but much less tiring as well. She had decided to relax and read on the bus. Supplied with that day’s edition of GP, the Göteborg newspaper, a newly purchased paperback, a thermos, and two sandwiches, she got on the bus just after ten o’clock. The sun was shining in a clear blue sky. The temperature was only five degrees above zero, Celsius, but the air already felt as if it would warm up. Maybe the first spring day would finally arrive. The birds that were singing in the bushes outside the police station seemed convinced that it was on its way.
She hadn’t had time to open either the newspaper or the book when she fell asleep, only awakening when the bus left the Säffle station. With stiff fingers, she poured coffee into the thermos lid and drank. It was almost lunchtime, and the two wilted cheese sandwiches she had packed tasted heavenly. When she sipped the last bit of coffee, she thought back on her recent telephone conversation with Jacob Schyttelius’s ex-wife.
IRENE HAD called her at seven thirty. After just two rings, a woman answered.
“Yes?” The voice sounded weak and hesitant.
“I am Detective Inspector Irene Huss. I’m investigating the murder of your ex-husband and his parents. I wonder if you might be able to meet with me today or tomorrow.”
There was a long silence. Irene started to worry that the woman on the other end of the phone had hung up.
“I don’t want to,” Kristina Olsson whispered.
A second later, she started sniffling. Irene was at a loss, but decided to continue.
“I understand that this stirs up a lot of feelings, but I really must ask you to answer some questions. We’re investigating a terrible crime, and we don’t have any leads as yet. You knew Jacob and—”
“I don’t know! I don’t know!”
The last part sounded like a desperate scream. Irene wondered if Kristina Olsson was well. She was behaving very strangely. Irene became determined to meet her as soon as possible.
“What would be best for you? This afternoon, or tomorrow afternoon?” she asked.
Again there was a long pause. Then a dejected sigh was heard and the thin voice whispered, “After two o’clock, today.”
IRENE HAD been surprised by the poor rail connections between Göteborg and Karlstad. She had already missed the first train, and the next one left too late. But as luck would have it, she managed to catch the Säffle bus. She wouldn’t be able to return by bus, since the last one left at two thirty. However, there was a train just before five o’clock that she should be able to catch.
The bus zigzagged forward between the parked taxicabs and stopped outside the central station in Karlstad. Irene took a taxi from the station, since she had no idea where
Sundstavägen was. The taxi stopped outside a three-story yellow brick apartment building. The house had a few years under its belt, but the area looked prosperous. Irene pushed the button next to the name “K. Olsson.” The call box crackled. Irene leaned forward and said, “It’s Irene Huss.”
No one answered, but there was a buzz and the lock opened. The stairwell was clean, but it needed to be painted. There was no elevator, so she had to walk up to the third floor.
On the top landing, Kristina Olsson let her half-open door slide fully open. Irene stopped dead in her tracks when she saw the woman in the doorway. There was almost no resemblance between Jacob and his sister Rebecka in the photos Irene had seen, but Jacob and Kristina, his ex-wife, could very well have been siblings. The same slender build and the same dark blond coloring. Later, Irene realized that it wasn’t just Jacob and Kristina who were alike: Jacob had married a younger version of his mother.
Kristina wore her shoulder-length, straight light hair in a neat ponytail at the nape of her neck. There wasn’t the slightest trace of makeup on her face. She had beautiful skin, though it was pale. Her pallor was enhanced by the dark circles under her eyes. Or maybe it was the pale, powder-pink sweater set that made her look wan. The straight gray skirt was no more vibrant, but to Irene’s surprise she was wearing bright orange crocheted slippers on her feet.
Kristina tried to stand straight and forced a grimace—which was supposed to represent a smile—to her lips. The hand that she held out shook from nervousness. When Irene took it, it felt ice-cold, unpleasant, like the hand of a dead person.
Kristina moved aside in order to let Irene into the small vestibule. The first thing Irene noticed was the faint smell of Ajax floating toward her. A dark-blue wool coat and a forest-green down coat were hanging on the rack by the wall. A pair of sturdy brown walking boots and a pair of semi-high black boots sat beneath the shelf. A black wool beret lay on top.
A rag rug in cheerful colors covered the floor in the vestibule. Irene thought she recognized its type. When she was shown into the living room and saw the rug under the coffee table, she remembered where she had seen one like it. The person who had woven the rugs that lay on the floors in this apartment had also made the rug that adorned the hall floor of Kullahult’s rectory.
Irene took a seat on an uncomfortable yellow silk-covered couch. Kristina sat on the edge of the matching chair. These were odd pieces of furniture to find in the home of a relatively young woman, thought Irene.
“It’s lovely when the sun shines on your beautiful rug,” she began.
“Yes,” was the toneless answer.
Irene refused to give up this early, so she continued. “Did you weave it yourself?”
“No. My sister.”
“There’s a similar rug in the hall of your former parents-in-law. Did your sister weave that one as well?”
“Yes.”
Irene suppressed a sigh and got right to the point. “Our investigation is complicated by the fact that we don’t have a motive. Can you think of one?”
Kristina shook her head in reply, and Irene saw tears forming in her eyes. Why was she so nervous? Too emotional to talk about her ex-husband?
There still hadn’t been anything in the papers about the pentagrams on the computer screens, but it was only a matter of time before someone would leak this tidbit to the press. Irene decided to start with the Satanic lead.
“Were you aware that Jacob was helping his father track Satanists via the Internet?”
Kristina jerked back and opened her eyes wide. She seemed to be about to say something, but instead sadly nodded.
“Can you tell me anything about it?”
Kristina nodded again like a small, well-disciplined girl, but it took quite a while before she started speaking in her weak voice. “His father was the one who came up with the idea. After the fire. They burned down the summer chapel. The Satanists, I mean. ...”
She left the sentence unfinished and there was a helpless, desperate look in her gray blue eyes. For the first time, she had uttered enough syllables for Irene to be able to make out her Norrländsk dialect. How can she work as a teacher? Irene wondered. As if she had read her thoughts, Kristina said, “I’ve been on sick leave since . . . the murder . . . murders.”
“Were you involved in the hunt for the Satanists?”
“No. I don’t know anything about computers.”
Her voice dropped off, and she looked down at her tightly clutched hands.
“Did you and Jacob have any contact after the divorce?”
“No.”
“Did you see Sten or Elsa afterward?”
“No.”
It was strange to see how crushed Kristina seemed to be, even though she claimed to have had no contact with either Jacob or his parents during the last nine months.
“When was the last time you spoke with Jacob?”
“Last July. When everything was done . . . after. . . .”
“And when did you hear from his parents last?”
“Last June. His father called and was . . . upset . . . because we ... we were going to. . . .”
She started sniffling quietly. She was incapable of saying the word “divorce.” The crucial point was getting closer, and it demanded an answer. Irene gave Kristina time to pull herself together, and then she asked, “Why did you and Jacob get divorced?”
Kristina straightened her back and took a deep breath. “He didn’t want to have children.”
It wasn’t the answer Irene had expected. Kristina didn’t look at her, focusing instead on a point behind Irene’s back. She bit her bottom lip hard to keep it from trembling.
“But he was a teacher. He must have liked children,” Irene said.
“Yes. But he didn’t want any of his own.”
Strange. Irene’s brain went into overdrive. “He wasn’t seeing other women?” she asked vaguely, for lack of anything better.
“No.”
Again Kristina sat, her head bowed, looking as if she was waiting for a punishment.
Now Irene became aware of the image in an embroidered wall hanging that was above the television. It was a Christ figure, a figure surrounded by light, raising his palms in a gesture of blessing toward the beholder. When Irene turned her head, she could see through the half-open door to the bedroom. A simple wooden cross in a light wood hung above the headboard of the bed. Otherwise, the walls were bare.
“Did you, or your sister, embroider this beautiful wall hanging?” Irene asked.
“I did. My sister weaves.”
“Where in Norrland are you from?”
“Vilhelmina. But we moved around a lot. My father was a preacher.”
“A preacher? In the Pentecostal Movement?”
“He . . . we were Laestadians.”
Irene had fuzzy recollections from school religious lessons about an ecstatic congregation that had been founded in Norrland in the 1800s. Weren’t they the ones who weren’t allowed to have curtains? Kristina had beautiful white lattice-woven curtains in her windows.
“You say ‘were’ Laestadians. You aren’t any longer?”
“No. My older sister left the congregation and joined the Swedish church. She’s a pastor and works here in Karlstad.”
“Is that why you moved here?”
Kristina hesitated but then she nodded.
“Is her name also Olsson?”
“Yes. Kerstin Olsson. She never married.”
“Are your parents still living in Norrland?”
“Father is dead. Mother lives near our brother outside Vitangi.”
“Are there any more siblings?”
“No.”
Irene unconsciously took a deep breath before she asked her next question. “Was it you or Jacob who wanted to get a divorce?”
“It was me.”
Kristina looked down at her clenched fists again.
“Because he didn’t want to have children with you?” Irene said for clarification.
Kristina nodded without raising her eyes from her hands.
Irene felt that it was impossible to come up with the right questions for her. And even if Irene asked the right questions, getting a real answer seemed hopeless. Was she hiding something? Or just terrified? Irene didn’t understand her.
IRENE WALKED back to the center of town. She followed the signs and used her good sense of direction. The shining sun felt wonderful, even if it had started to set and didn’t add much warmth. It was a few degrees colder in Göteborg than here. She passed over a glittering watercourse. Quacking ducks and honking Canada geese were swimming and walking along the edges. She didn’t know what the stream or river was called. Even though Krister’s family lived in Säffle and her own family usually spent several weeks every year in the parents-in-law’s cottage outside Sunne, she had been in Karlstad three times at the most. Which was really a pity.
As she strolled and peered into shop windows, she realized how hungry she was. She had an hour and a half before the train left, time enough to eat.
Once, long ago, on one of her three trips here, she and Krister had taken the kids to a cozy restaurant next to Stora Torget. She remembered that it was on the same side of the square as the magnificent city hall, but that you had to walk down one of the side streets. Her memories were fuzzy, but she managed to find the restaurant, which, she remembered now, was named Källaren Munken.
When she walked in through the heavy doors and down the worn stone steps, she recognized the basement with its many passages. It had been freshened up since her previous visit, but the cozy atmosphere still prevailed.
The maitre d’ showed her to a table which was covered with a white linen cloth. He recommended the day’s special, grilled char with almondine potatoes and chive sauce. Irene decided to take his advice, and ordered a Hof as well. After her interview with Kristina Olsson, she deserved a beer. Maybe two. The home-baked bread she was served was still so warm that the butter melted when she spread it. A feeling of pleasure suffused her, and she stopped thinking about the conversation she had just had. There would be plenty of time on the train.
The Glass Devil: A Detective Inspector Huss Investigation, Vol. 3 Page 8