‘You see, that was what I expected. We exchanged letters for a year, and I could hardly wait to get her here.’ He nodded at the catalogue in Ernst’s lap. ‘And then she arrived.’ He sighed. ‘It was a hell of a cold shower, I have to tell you. And it started immediately: “Bertil, darling, buy this and buy that.” I even caught her going through my wallet when she thought I wasn’t looking. I swear, it’s a hell of a mess.’
He patted the nest of hair on top of his head, and Ernst noticed that the Mellberg who was so careful about his appearance was gone. Now his shirt was once again stained, and the sweat rings under his arms were as big as salad plates. It felt reassuring somehow. Things were back to their natural order.
‘I’m counting on you not to go babbling about this.’ Mellberg wagged his finger at Ernst, who shook his head vigorously. He wouldn’t say a word. Relief washed over him; he wasn’t going to get the sack after all.
‘Could we forget about this little incident, then? I’ll see to it that it’s taken care of. The first plane home is what it’s going to be.’
Ernst got up and backed out of the office with a bow.
‘And you can tell everyone out there to stop whispering and start doing an honest day’s work instead.’
Ernst broke out in a wide grin when he heard Mellberg’s gruff voice. The chief was back in the saddle.
If Patrik had any doubt about the correctness of Annika’s advice, it disappeared as soon as he walked through the door. Erica flung herself into his arms, and he saw the exhaustion like a veil covering her face. His guilty conscience immediately started gnawing at him. He should have been more sensitive, more attentive to Erica’s state of mind. Instead, he had buried himself in work even more than he did normally and let her wander about the house with nothing interesting to occupy her time.
‘Where are they?’ he whispered.
‘Out in the garden,’ Erica whispered back. ‘Oh, Patrik, I can’t stand it if I have to put up with them another day. They’ve been sitting on their bums all day and expecting me to wait on them. I can’t take any more.’
She collapsed in his arms and he stroked her hair. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll take care of this. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have worked so much the past week.’
‘You asked me whether it was all right and I said okay. And you didn’t really have a choice,’ Erica murmured against his shirt front.
Despite his guilty conscience, Patrik was inclined to agree. How could he do otherwise when a girl was missing, perhaps held captive somewhere? At the same time, he needed to put Erica and the baby and their health first.
‘I’m not the only one at the station. I can delegate a good deal. But first we have a more urgent problem to solve.’
He detached himself from Erica, took a deep breath and went out in the garden.
‘Hello, all. Have you been having a good time?’
Jörgen and Madde turned their neon-coloured noses towards him and nodded happily. I bet you’ve had a good time, he thought – with full service all day long, thinking that this is some fucking hotel.
‘Listen, I’ve solved your dilemma. I called round and checked it out. There are vacancies at the Grand Hotel, because so many people have left Fjällbacka, but since you seem to be travelling on such a tight budget perhaps that wouldn’t be appropriate?’
Jörgen and Madde, who at first looked nervous, eagerly agreed. No, it was not appropriate.
‘But don’t worry,’ said Patrik, seeing to his gratification the furrows on their brows appear once again. ‘I also rang the youth hostel on Valö, and would you believe it? They have a vacancy! Great, isn’t it? Cheap and clean. Couldn’t be better!’
He clapped his hands in exaggerated delight, anticipating the objections he saw forming on his guests’ lips. ‘So it’s probably best if you start packing right away. The boat leaves in an hour from Ingrid Bergman’s Square.’
Jörgen started to say something, but Patrik held up his hands. ‘No, no, there’s no need to thank me. It was really no trouble. All it took was a couple of phone calls.’
With a grin he went back to the kitchen, where Erica was eavesdropping from the window. They high-fived each other and had to restrain themselves to keep from giggling.
‘Nice,’ Erica whispered with admiration. ‘I didn’t know I was living with a master of such Machiavellian calibre!’
‘There’s a lot you don’t know about me, darling. I’m a very complex person, you see …’
‘Indeed, you are. And here I always thought you seemed rather one-track,’ she teased him with a smile.
‘Well, if you didn’t have that big belly in the way, you’d see exactly how one-track I am,’ Patrik flirted back. He felt the tensions begin to melt away with their affectionate banter.
He turned serious. ‘Have you heard any more from Anna?’
Erica’s smile vanished. ‘No, not a peep. I went down to the pier to check but the boat wasn’t moored there.’
‘Do you think she went home?’
‘I don’t know. Either that or they’re sailing further up the coast somewhere. But you know what? I just don’t have the energy to worry about it. I’m so damned sick of her touchiness and the way she turns sour as soon as I say anything wrong.’
She sighed and started to say something else, but they were interrupted by Jörgen and Madde sweeping past them to go pack up their things.
A while later, after Patrik had given the reluctant holiday-makers a lift down to the boat for Valö, they settled down on the veranda to enjoy the silence. Eager to please and still with a feeling of having a good deal to make up for, Patrik massaged Erica’s swollen feet and calves as she sighed with pleasure. He pushed away any thoughts of the murdered girls, and the missing Jenny Möller. Sometimes his soul had to get a little rest.
The call came in the morning. As a part of his decision to take care of his wife a little better, Patrik had decided to take the morning off. They were sitting eating breakfast in the peace and quiet of the garden when Pedersen rang. With an apologetic look at Erica he got up from the table, but she just waved him away with a smile. She already looked much more content.
‘Have you come up with something interesting?’ said Patrik.
‘You might say that. If we start with the cause of death for Johannes Hult, my first observation was correct. Johannes did not hang himself. If you tell me that he was found on the floor with a noose round his neck, then the noose was placed there after death had occurred. The cause of death was actually a powerful blow to the back of the head with a hard object, but not a blunt one. Something with a sharp edge. He also has a crushing injury to his jaw, which could indicate a blow from the front.’
‘So there’s no doubt that we’re talking about murder?’ Patrik had a tight grip on the phone.
‘No, it would have been impossible for the wounds to be self-inflicted.’
‘How long has he been dead?’
‘It’s hard to say. But he’s been in the ground a long time. My guess is that the time of death corresponds quite well with the time he was assumed to have hanged himself. So he wasn’t buried at some later date, if that’s what you’re after,’ said Pedersen in an amused tone.
A moment of silence followed as Patrik pondered what Pedersen had told him. Then a thought occurred to him. ‘You indicated that you found something more when you examined Johannes. What was it?’
‘Oh yes, you’re going to like this. We have a summer intern here who’s a real go-getter, and she got the idea of taking a DNA sample from Johannes, since he’d been dug up anyway, and compare it with the semen sample that was found on Tanja Schmidt.’
‘Yes?’ Patrik could hear himself breathing hard, tense with anticipation.
‘The devil take me if there isn’t a close similarity! The person who murdered Tanja Schmidt is definitely related to Johannes Hult.’
Patrik had never heard the very proper Pedersen swear before, but now he was inclined to echo his sentiments. Well, I’ll b
e damned, he thought. He paused to collect his wits and then said, ‘Can you tell how they’re related?’ His pulse was pounding in his chest.
‘Yes, and we’re looking at it now. But we need more reference material, so your task now will be to gather blood samples from all known members of the Hult family.’
‘All of them?’ said Patrik. It made him tired just thinking about how the clan would react to that incursion into their privacy.
He thanked Pedersen for the information and went back to the breakfast table, where Erica sat like a madonna, with her white nightgown billowing and her blonde hair flowing. She still took his breath away.
‘Go on,’ she said, waving him away, and he kissed her gratefully on the cheek.
‘Do you have anything to do today?’ he asked.
‘One advantage of having demanding guests is that I look forward to spending a day relaxing. In other words, I’ve decided not to do a thing today. Just lie outside and read, and eat a little good food.’
‘That sounds like a plan. So I’ll see to it that I get home early today. I’ll be here by four at the latest, I promise.’
‘Do the best you can. I’ll see you when I see you. Run along now, I can tell that your shoe soles are burning.’
She didn’t have to say it twice. He hurried off to the station.
When he came in twenty minutes later. the others were sitting in the lunchroom drinking their morning coffee. Guiltily, he saw that it was later than he thought.
‘Hi, Hedström, did you forget to set your alarm clock today or what?’
Ernst, whose self-confidence had now been fully restored, sounded as overbearing as usual.
‘Just taking a few hours off to make up for all that overtime. My wife needed some TLC too,’ said Patrik, winking at Annika, who’d just popped in from her place at the reception desk.
‘Well, that’s probably one of the perks of being chief investigator, to sleep in a few extra hours when he pleases,’ Ernst couldn’t help retorting.
‘I am in charge of this investigation, of course, but I’m not the chief,’ Patrik pointed out mildly. The look Annika gave Ernst was not as friendly.
Patrik went on, ‘And as the head of the investigation I have some news – and a new assignment.’
He told them what Pedersen had said, and for a moment the mood felt triumphant in the lunchroom of the Tanumshede police station.
‘So, now we’ve rapidly narrowed the field to four possible suspects,’ said Gösta. ‘Stefan, Robert, Jacob and Gabriel.’
‘Yes, and don’t forget where Tanja was seen last,’ said Martin.
‘According to Stefan, that is,’ Ernst reminded them. ‘Don’t forget that it’s Stefan who claims to have seen her. Personally, I’d like to find a witness who’s a bit more reliable.’
‘But Linda also says that they saw someone when they were there that evening, so – ’
Patrik interrupted Ernst and Martin. ‘It may be a moot point. As soon as we’ve brought in everyone in the Hult family and done a DNA test on them, we won’t need to speculate any longer. We’ll know. On the way over here, I rang to request the permissions we’ll need. Everyone knows why this is urgent, so I’m expecting a go-ahead from the prosecutor’s office any time now.’
He poured himself a cup of coffee and sat down with the others. He placed his mobile in the centre of the table, and nobody could help glancing at it.
‘So what did you all think about that scene yesterday?’ Ernst chuckled. He had quickly forgotten his promise not to gossip about what Mellberg had told him in confidence. By this time they had all heard about Mellberg’s mail-order bride, and they hadn’t had such a good laugh in a year and a day. It was something that would be discussed out of the chief’s earshot for a long time to come.
‘The poor devil,’ laughed Gösta. ‘If you’re so desperate for a woman that you have to order one from a catalogue, then you only have yourself to blame.’
‘What a face he must have made when he went to collect her at the airport and he realized that his expectations had been crushed, to put it mildly.’ Annika had a good laugh at the chief’s expense. Laughing at others’ misfortune didn’t feel quite as bad when it was Mellberg who was the target.
‘Well, I must say that she didn’t rest on her laurels. She went straight to the shop to fill up her bag. And it didn’t seem to matter much what she stole, either, as long as it had a price tag on it,’ laughed Ernst. ‘Although speaking of stealing, listen to this. Old man Persson, the one Gösta and I went out to visit yesterday, told us that some idiot used to steal that damned fertilizer from him. He’d lose a couple of big sacks every time he ordered a new supply. Can you believe that someone would be so damned stingy that he’d pinch sacks of shit? Of course the shit is obviously expensive, but still …’ He slapped his knees. ‘Oh, Jesus,’ he said, wiping a tear from the corner of his eye. Then he realized that it was dead silent all round him.
‘What did you just say?’ asked Patrik in an ominous voice. Ernst had heard that voice only a couple of days before, and he knew that he’d screwed up again.
‘Yeah, well, he said that somebody used to steal sacks of fertilizer from him.’
‘And considering that Västergården is the closest farm, it didn’t occur to you that this might be valuable information?’
His colleague’s voice was so cold that Ernst felt frostbite on his skin. Patrik turned to Gösta. ‘Did you hear this, Gösta?’
‘No, the farmer must have told him that when I was in the toilet for a couple of minutes.’ He glowered at Ernst.
‘I didn’t think anything of it,’ said Ernst with a whine. ‘Damn it, I can’t remember everything.’
‘That’s exactly what you’re supposed to do. But we’ll talk more about this later. The question is, what does it mean for us?’
Martin held up his hand, as if he were still in school. ‘Am I the only one who thinks we should start to zero in on Jacob?’ No one answered so he explained. ‘First of all, we have testimony, albeit from a dubious source, saying that Tanja was at Västergården right before she vanished. Second, the DNA that was found on Tanja’s body is from someone related to Johannes. And third, sacks of fertilizer were stolen from a farm literally next door to Västergården. That’s at least enough reason to make me think we should bring him in for a little chat. And during that time we can take a look round his property.’
Still no comment, so Martin went on with his argument. ‘As you said yourself, Patrik, it’s urgent. We have nothing to lose by looking round a bit and tightening the thumb-screws on Jacob. The only way we lose is if we do nothing. Sure, we’ll find out something after we’ve tested all the Hults and compared the DNA, but we can’t sit here in the meantime twiddling our thumbs. We have to do something!’
Finally Patrik took the floor. ‘Martin is right. There’s good reason to believe it would be worthwhile to have a talk with him, and it couldn’t hurt to take a look at Västergården as well. So this is what we’re going to do: Gösta and I will bring in Jacob. Martin, you contact Uddevalla and ask them for reinforcements to do a search of the whole farm. Ask Mellberg for help getting the warrants, but make sure that they apply not only to the residence but to all the other buildings on the grounds too. We’ll all report in to Annika as needed. Okay? Any questions?’
‘Yes, what should we do about the blood samples?’ asked Martin.
‘Damn, I forgot about that. We need to clone ourselves.’ Patrik thought for a moment. ‘Martin, can you take care of that too, if you get help from Uddevalla?’ Martin nodded. ‘Good, then contact the clinic in Fjällbacka and take along someone who knows how to take blood samples. And be damned sure that the samples are labelled correctly. Then drive them down to Pedersen’s lab as fast as you can. All right, let’s move. And don’t forget why we’re in a hurry!’
‘So what should I do?’ Ernst saw his chance to regain favour.
‘You stay here,’ said Patrik, and wasted no words on further di
scussion.
Ernst muttered but knew it was time to lie low. But he should really have a talk with Mellberg when this was all over. He hadn’t screwed up that badly. He was only human, after all.
Marita’s heart swelled in her breast. The outdoor worship service was wonderful as usual, and in the centre of it stood her Jacob. Straight-backed and strong and sure of voice he proclaimed God’s word. Many people had gathered. Besides most of those on the farm – some of them had not yet seen the light and refused to participate – another hundred faithful followers had come. They sat on the grass with their eyes fixed on Jacob, who stood in his usual place on the rock with his back to the lake. Around them stood a towering grove of birches, providing shade when the heat was most oppressive and rustling in accompaniment to Jacob’s melodious voice. Sometimes she could hardly believe her good fortune. That the man whom all regarded with such admiration in their eyes had chosen her.
When she first met Jacob she was only seventeen. Jacob was twenty-three and already had won a reputation as a powerful man in the congregation. This was partly thanks to his grandfather, whose fame had rubbed off on him, but most of it was thanks to his own charisma. The unusual combination of kindness and strength gave him a radiance that no one could avoid noticing. Marita and her parents had been members of the congregation for a long time and never missed a worship service. Even before they attended the first service that Jacob Hult was going to lead, Marita felt a tingle inside her like a premonition that something great was about to happen. And it did. She hadn’t been able to tear her eyes away from him. She had stared at his mouth, from which God’s word had spilled as easily as flowing water. When Jacob’s eyes began to meet hers she had started sending prayers to God. Feverish, imploring, entreating prayers. She, who had been taught that one must never pray for anything for oneself, was praying for something as worldly as a man. But she couldn’t stop. Despite the fact that she felt the fires of purgatory beginning to scorch her in their hunt for the sinner, she kept up her fervent prayers and didn’t stop until she saw that Jacob was looking at her with desire in his eyes.
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