The Preacher

by Camilla Lackberg

  ‘You didn’t hear anything last night, or see anything either?’

  ‘No,’ said Robert, annoyed. ‘We already told that to the other officers. How many times do we have to repeat it?’

  ‘I beg your pardon, but I have to ask these questions. Bear with me for a moment, please.’

  The sympathy in his voice was genuine. It was a hard job to be a cop sometimes, especially on occasions like this when he had to delve into the lives of people who had much more important things to think about. But he received unexpected help from Solveig.

  ‘Robert, please co-operate. We should do everything we can to help them catch whoever did this to our Stefan, you know that.’ She turned to Patrik.

  ‘I thought I heard a sound, and a minute later Robert called for me. But we didn’t see anyone, either before or after we found him.’

  Patrik nodded. Then he said to Linda, ‘Did you happen to see your brother Jacob last night?’

  ‘No,’ said Linda in surprise. ‘I was staying over at the manor house. He was at home at Västergården, wasn’t he? Why do you ask?’

  ‘It seems he never came home last night, so I just thought you might have seen him.’

  ‘No, as I said, I didn’t. But check with Mamma and Pappa.’

  ‘We’ve done that. They haven’t seen him, either. Do you happen to know of somewhere else he might be?’

  Now Linda was beginning to look nervous. ‘No, where would that be?’ Then an idea seemed to occur to her. ‘Could he have driven to the farm at Bullaren and slept there? Of course he’s never done that before, but …’

  Patrik hit his thigh with his fist. It was crazy that they hadn’t thought of Bullaren. He excused himself and went to ring Martin. He would have to drive out there immediately and check it out.

  When he returned to the waiting room the mood had changed. While he was talking to Martin, Linda had called home on her mobile. Now she was looking at him with all the defiance of a teenager.

  ‘What’s going on, anyway? Pappa said that Marita called you and reported Jacob missing, and that those other two cops were out there asking a bunch of questions. Pappa sounded worried as hell.’ She was standing in front of Patrik with her hands on her hips.

  ‘There’s no reason to worry yet,’ he said, repeating the same mantra that Gösta and Martin had used at the manor. ‘Your brother has probably gone off to be alone for a while, but we have to take all such reports seriously.’

  Linda gave him a suspicious look, but seemed to be satisfied. Then she said in a low voice, ‘Pappa also told us about Johannes. When were you planning to tell them about it?’

  She tossed her head in the direction of Robert and Solveig. Patrik couldn’t help watching in fascination the arc that her long blonde hair made in the air. Then he reminded himself of her age. He was shocked at the thought that all the upheaval involved in starting a family may have triggered a tendency to lechery in him.

  He replied in the same low voice, ‘We’re waiting a bit on that. Now doesn’t seem like a good time, considering Stefan’s situation.’

  ‘You’re wrong about that,’ said Linda calmly. ‘Right now they could use some positive news. And believe me, I know Stefan well enough to say that the discovery that Johannes didn’t take his own life would be welcome news in this family. So if you’re not going to tell them, I will.’

  What a cheeky person. But Patrik was inclined to admit that she was right. He may have already waited too long. They had a right to be told.

  He nodded affirmatively to Linda and cleared his throat as he sat down.

  ‘Solveig, Robert, I know that you had some objections to the fact that we opened Johannes’s grave.’

  Robert jumped up like a rocket from his chair. ‘What the hell, are you crazy? Are you going to bring that up now? Don’t we have enough to worry about right now?’

  ‘Sit down, Robert,’ Linda snapped. ‘I know what he’s going to say and believe me, you’ll want to hear it.’

  Shocked that his skinny cousin was giving him orders, Robert sat down and shut up. Patrik continued, as Solveig and Robert glared at him, reminded of the humiliation of seeing Johannes’s coffin raised from the ground.

  ‘We had a pathologist examine … uh … the body and he found something interesting.’

  ‘Interesting,’ Solveig snorted. ‘Well, that’s a nice choice of words.’

  ‘Yes, you’ll have to excuse me, but there’s no good way to say this. Johannes did not take his own life. He was murdered.’

  Solveig gasped for breath. Robert sat as if frozen to the spot, unable to move.

  ‘What did you say?’ Solveig grabbed for Robert’s hand and he let her take it.

  ‘You heard what I said. Johannes was murdered. He did not take his own life.’

  Tears began running from Solveig’s already red-rimmed eyes. Then her entire huge body began to shake, and Linda gave Patrik a triumphant look. They were tears of joy.

  ‘I knew it,’ Solveig said. ‘I knew that he would never have done anything like that. And all those people who said that he committed suicide because he killed those girls. Now they’ll have to eat their words. The same person who killed the girls must have murdered my Johannes. They’ll have to crawl on their bare knees and beg us for forgiveness. All these years that we’ve – ’

  ‘Mamma, that’s enough,’ Robert interrupted her, sounding annoyed. It looked as though he hadn’t really grasped what Patrik said. He probably needed the words to sink in.

  ‘What are you going to do now to catch the person who murdered Johannes?’ Solveig asked eagerly.

  Patrik turned round to face her. ‘Well, it’s probably not going to be that easy. So many years have passed, and no evidence was preserved that might give us a lead. But naturally we’re going to try, and we’ll do the best we can. That’s all I can promise you.’

  Solveig snorted. ‘Well, if you work as hard trying to catch Johannes’s murderer as you did to put him in jail, then there shouldn’t be any problem. And now I want an apology from the police even more!’

  She wagged her finger at Patrik. He realized that it was probably time for him to be leaving before the situation deterior ated even further. He exchanged a glance with Linda, and she signalled discreetly for him to go. He had one last request for her. ‘Linda, if you hear from Jacob, promise to ring us right away. But I should think you were right. He must be at Bullaren.’

  She nodded, but the worry was still there in her eyes.

  They were just turning into the car park at the police station when Patrik rang. Martin drove back out on the road in the direction of Bullaren. The heat had begun to creep up the therm om eter again after a mercifully cool morning, and he turned up the fan a notch.

  Gösta pulled at the collar of his short-sleeved shirt. ‘If only this blasted heat would lay off for a while.’

  ‘If you were out on the golf course you wouldn’t be complaining,’ Martin laughed.

  ‘That’s a completely different story,’ Gösta said sourly. Golf and religion were two things nobody joked about in his world. For a brief second he wished he was working with Ernst again. It was certainly more productive to ride with Martin, but he had to admit that he liked the laziness of working with Ernst more than he’d previously thought. Ernst had his faults, of course, but he never protested if Gösta sneaked off for a couple of hours to hit a bucket of balls.

  The next moment the photo of Jenny Möller appeared in his mind, and he was struck by an acute sense of guilt. In a brief instant of clarity he saw that he’d become a bitter and hostile old man, frightening like his father in his old age. If he kept on like this, sooner or later he’d be sitting alone in an old folks’ home mumbling about imagined injustices like his father; although without any children to look in on him now and then out of a guilty sense of duty.

  ‘Do you think he’s there?’ he said to break off his unpleasant thoughts.

  Martin hesitated for a moment, then he said, ‘No, I’ll be very surpri
sed if he is. But it’s still worth checking out.’

  They swung into the yard and were amazed once again at the idyllic scene before them. The farm seemed eternally drenched in a mild sunlight that made the Falun red colour stand out in lovely contrast to the blue lake behind the house. As before, teenagers darted purposefully about, fully engaged in their activities. Words popped into Martin’s mind: magnificent, healthful, clean, useful, Swedish, and the combination of those words infused him with a slight feeling of dis comfort. Experience told him that if something looked too good to be true, it probably was.

  ‘A slight Hitler Youth atmosphere about the place, don’t you think?’ said Gösta, putting words to Martin’s discomfort.

  ‘Yeah, maybe. Your choice of words is a bit strong, though. I wouldn’t go bandying comments like that about too freely,’ said Martin dryly.

  Gösta looked offended. ‘Excuse me,’ he said grumpily, ‘I didn’t know you were the thought police. And by the way, they wouldn’t take in boys like Kennedy if it was some fucking Nazi camp.’

  Martin ignored the comment and headed for the front door. One of the female instructors at the farm opened it.

  ‘Yes, what do you want?’

  Jacob’s grudge against the police had obviously rubbed off.

  ‘We’re looking for Jacob.’ Gösta was still sulking, so Martin took the lead.

  ‘He’s not here. Try him at home.’

  ‘Are you sure he’s not here? We’d like to take a look for ourselves.’

  Reluctantly the woman stepped aside and let in the two policemen. ‘Kennedy, the police are here again. They want to see Jacob’s office.’

  ‘We know the way,’ said Martin.

  The woman ignored him. With rapid steps Kennedy approached them. Martin wondered whether he was some sort of permanent guide at the farm. Or maybe he just liked showing people about.

  Without a word he led Martin and Gösta down the corridor to Jacob’s office. They thanked him politely and opened the door expectantly. No sign of Jacob. They entered and looked carefully for any trace that might indicate that Jacob might have spent the night there, a blanket on the sofa, an alarm clock, anything. But there was nothing. Disappointed, they left the office. Kennedy was calmly waiting for them. He raised his hand to push his hair back from his face, and Martin saw that his eyes were black and unfathomable.

  ‘Nothing. Not a damned thing,’ said Martin when the car was rolling in the direction of Tanumshede again.

  ‘No,’ said Gösta curtly. Martin rolled his eyes. He was evidently still sulking. Well, let him.

  But Gösta’s thoughts were occupied with a completely different matter. He had noticed something during their visit to the farm, but it kept eluding him. He tried to stop thinking about it and let his subconscious do the work, but it was as impossible as ignoring a grain of sand under his eyelid. There was something he’d seen – and should have remembered.

  ‘How’s it going, Annika? Did you find anything?’

  She shook her head. Patrik’s appearance worried her. Too little sleep, too little real food, and too much stress had stripped away the last of his suntan and left only a grey pallor behind. His body seemed to be sagging under the weight of something, and it didn’t take a genius to work out what that burden could be. She wanted to tell him to separate his private emotions from his work, but she refrained. She too was feeling the pressure, and the last thing she saw before she closed her eyes each night was the desperate look on the faces of Jenny Möller’s parents when they came in to report their daughter missing.

  She decided to limit her comments to a brief: ‘How are you doing?’ She gave Patrik a sympathetic look over the rims of her glasses.

  ‘As well as can be expected under the circumstances.’ He impatiently ran his hands through his hair, making it stand straight up like a caricature of a mad professor.

  ‘Like shit, I’m guessing,’ Annika said frankly. She had never been much for glossing over things. If something was shit, it would still smell like shit even if you poured perfume all over it. That was her motto in life.

  Patrik smiled. ‘Yes, something like that. But enough about me. Did you find anything in the records?’

  ‘No, unfortunately. There was nothing in the register of citizens about any other children of Johannes Hult, and there aren’t very many other places to look.’

  ‘Might there be children anyway, even though they’re not registered?’

  Annika looked at him as if he were a little slow in the head and snorted, ‘Well, thank goodness there’s no law that compels a mother to name the father of her children. There may be some children of his concealed under the heading “father unknown”.’

  ‘And let me guess, there are quite a few of them, right?’

  ‘Not necessarily. It depends on how wide you want to extend the search geographically. But people have actually been surprisingly respectable in these parts. And you have to remember that it’s not the Forties we’re talking about here. Johannes would have been most active during the Sixties and Seventies. And by then it was no great shame to have a child out of wedlock. During certain periods in the Sixties it was probably considered almost an advantage.’

  Patrik laughed. ‘If you’re talking about the Woodstock era, I really don’t think that flower power and free love ever made it to Fjällbacka.’

  ‘Don’t say that. Even in the calmest waters …’ said Annika, glad that she could lighten up the mood a bit. The station had felt like a funeral parlour the last few days. But Patrik quickly turned serious again.

  ‘So theoretically you should be able to put together a list of the children within, say, Tanum county, who do not have a father registered?’

  ‘Yes, I could do that not only theoretically, but also in practice. But it’ll take a while,’ Annika warned him.

  ‘Just do it as fast as you can.’

  ‘How are you going to use that list to find out who might be Johannes’s offspring?’

  ‘I intend to start by ringing round and asking. If that doesn’t work, I’ll think of something else.’

  The door to the reception area opened and Martin and Gösta came in. Patrik thanked Annika for her help and went to meet them. Martin stopped, but Gösta fixed his eyes on the carpet and went into his office.

  ‘Don’t ask,’ said Martin, shaking his head.

  Patrik frowned. Friction among the personnel was the last thing he needed. It was bad enough with the way Ernst was acting up. Martin read his thoughts.

  ‘It’s nothing serious, don’t worry about it.’

  ‘Okay. Shall we have a cup of coffee in the lunchroom and compare notes?’

  Martin nodded. They went in, poured themselves some coffee, and sat down facing each other at the table. Patrik said, ‘Did you find any sign of Jacob at Bullaren?’

  ‘No, not a thing. It doesn’t look as though he’s been there. How did it go for you?’

  Patrik quickly told him about his visit to the hospital.

  ‘Have you thought about why the blood analysis didn’t produce anything?’ asked Martin. ‘We know that the perp we’re searching for is related to Johannes, but it’s not Jacob, Gabriel, Stefan or Robert. And considering the nature of the sample, we can rule out the women at once. Do you have any ideas?’

  ‘Yes, I’ve asked Annika to try to compile some data on whether Johannes had any children out of wedlock in the area.’

  ‘That sounds smart. With a guy like him I’d be surprised if he didn’t have any illegitimate kids scattered about.’

  ‘What do you think of the theory that the same person who beat up Stefan is now after Jacob?’ Patrik cautiously slurped a little coffee. It was freshly brewed and scalding hot.

  ‘It would undeniably be a very odd coincidence. What do you think?’

  ‘The same as you. That it would be a hell of an odd coincidence if it’s not the same person. It seems as if Jacob has completely vanished from the face of the earth. Nobody has seen him since last n
ight. I have to admit I’m worried.’

  ‘You’ve had a hunch the whole time that Jacob was hiding something. Could that be the reason something has happened to him?’ Martin said hesitantly. ‘Could somebody have heard that he was at the police station and thought he was going to blab about something, something that this person didn’t want to come out?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Patrik said. ‘But that’s precisely the problem. Anything is possible right now, and all we have are a bunch of speculations.’ He counted on his fingers. ‘We have Siv and Mona murdered in ’79; Johannes murdered in ’79; Tanja murdered now, twenty-four years later; Jenny Möller abducted, presumably when hitchhiking; Stefan beaten up last night, and maybe even killed depending on the prognosis; and Jacob who has vanished without a trace. The whole time the Hult family seems to be the common denominator, and yet we have evidence that it’s not one of them who is guilty of Tanja’s death. And all indications are that whoever murdered Tanja also murdered Siv and Mona.’ He threw out his hands in frustration. ‘It’s a mess, that’s what it is. And we’re standing in the middle of it all and can hardly tell our arse from our elbow.’

  ‘You’ve been reading too much of that anti-police propaganda again,’ Martin said with a laugh.

  ‘So, what do we do now? I’m all out of ideas. Time must be running out for Jenny Möller, or it could already be too late.’ He hastened to change the subject to drag himself up from his morose thoughts. ‘Have you invited that girl out yet, by the way?’

  ‘What girl?’ said Martin, trying to force his face into a neutral expression.

  ‘Don’t even try. You know who I mean.’

  ‘If it’s Pia you’re talking about, it wasn’t anything like that. She helped us out with a little interpreting, that’s all.’

  “‘She helped us out with a little interpreting, that’s all”,’ Patrik mocked him in falsetto, wagging his head from side to side. ‘Let go of the sideboards and get into the match now. I can tell when you talk about her that’s what you’re thinking. Although she may not be your type. Are you sure she doesn’t already have a boyfriend?’ Patrik smiled to take the sting out of his teasing.