The Preacher

by Camilla Lackberg

  Leaning on his cane Ephraim walked along the path from the farm over to Västergården. He really didn’t need the cane because by his own estimation his physical condition was as good as a twenty-year-old’s. But he thought it looked stylish. A cane and hat gave him a look befitting a landowner, and he made use of that image as often as he could.

  It bothered Ephraim that Gabriel was making the distance between them get worse with each year that passed. He knew that Gabriel believed that he favoured Johannes, and to be honest, he supposed he did. It was only that Johannes was so much easier to deal with. His charm and his openness made it possible to treat him with a kind indulgence, which made Ephraim feel like a patriarch in the true sense of the word. Johannes was someone he could reprimand harshly, someone who made him feel needed, if for nothing other than keeping his son’s feet on the ground with all the womenfolk who were always running after him. With Gabriel it was different. He always regarded his father with a contempt that made Ephraim respond with a demeanour of cool superiority. He knew that in many respects the fault was his own. While Johannes had bounced with joy each time Ephraim held a worship service in which the boys had a chance to be useful, Gabriel had shrunk back and grown increasingly sullen. Ephraim noticed this and took full blame upon himself, but after all he had done it for their own good. After Ragnhild died, the family had to depend on his charm and his gift of the gab to put food on the table and clothes on their backs. It was a lucky accident that he proved to be such a natural talent that the dotty widow Dybling ended up leaving him her estate and her fortune. Gabriel probably should have paid more attention to the end result, instead of constantly bothering him with reproaches about his ‘terrible’ childhood. The truth was that if Ephraim hadn’t had the brilliant idea of using the boys in his worship services, they wouldn’t have had everything they owned today. Nobody had been able to resist those two delightful little boys, who through God’s providence had received the gift of healing the sick and the lame. Combined with Ephraim’s own charisma and gift for speaking, they had been unbeatable. He knew that he was still a legendary preacher within the world of the free church, and it afforded him boundless amusement. He also loved the fact that in popular parlance he had been given the nickname of The Preacher.

  But it had surprised him to see how distressed Johannes was to receive the news that he had grown out of his gift. For Ephraim it had been a simple way to conclude the deception, and for Gabriel it had also come as a great relief. But Johannes had mourned. Ephraim had always intended to tell the boys that it was all a trick on his part and that the people they had ‘healed’ were in fact perfectly healthy. He had given them a coin so that they would play along with the spectacle. But as the years passed he began to have doubts. Sometimes Johannes seemed so fragile. That’s why Ephraim was so worried about this whole thing with the police and their interrogation of Johannes. He was more vulnerable than he seemed, and Ephraim wasn’t sure how it would affect him. That’s why he’d decided to take a walk over to Västergården and have a talk with his son. Get a feeling for how he seemed to be handling the situation.

  A smile passed over Ephraim’s lips. Jacob had come home from hospital a week earlier and was spending hours up in his grandfather’s room. He loved the boy. He had saved Jacob’s life, which forever united them with a special bond. On the other hand Ephraim wasn’t as gullible as they all thought. It was possible that Gabriel believed Jacob to be his son, but Ephraim had seen what was going on. Jacob was probably Johannes’s son, he could see it in Johannes’s eyes. Well, he wasn’t going to get involved with that. But the boy was the pride and joy of his old age. Of course he also liked Robert and Stefan, but they were still so young. What Ephraim liked most about Jacob was how wise he could sound and how fervently he listened to his grandfather’s stories. Jacob loved to hear the stories about when Gabriel and Johannes were little and travelled around with their preacher father. ‘The healer stories,’ he called them. ‘Grandpa, tell me the healer stories,’ Jacob would say every time he came upstairs to say hello. Ephraim had nothing against reliving those times, because they had certainly been fun. And it didn’t do the boy any harm if he embellished the stories a little extra. He had made it a habit to conclude the stories with a dramatic pause and then point with his knotty finger to Jacob’s chest and say, ‘Oh, you Jacob, you also have the gift within you. Somewhere deep inside it’s waiting to be coaxed out.’ The boy used to sit at his feet with his eyes wide and his mouth hanging open. Ephraim loved to see how fascinated the boy was.

  He knocked on the door of the house. No answer. Everything was quiet. Solveig and the boys didn’t seem to be at home, either. He could usually hear the boys from several kilometres away. There was a sound from the barn, and he went over to have a look. Johannes stood there doing something with the combine harvester and didn’t notice that his father had come in until Ephraim was standing right behind him. He jumped.

  ‘Plenty to do, I see.’

  ‘Yep, there’s always something to keep me busy on the farm.’

  ‘I heard that you’d been to see the police again,’ Ephraim said. He normally got straight to the point.

  ‘Yep,’ said Johannes.

  ‘What did they want to know now?’

  ‘It was more questions about Gabriel’s testimony, of course.’ Johannes kept working on the combine and didn’t look at Ephraim.

  ‘You know that Gabriel doesn’t mean to hurt you.’

  ‘I know that. It’s just the way he is. But the result is still the same.’

  ‘How true, how true.’ Ephraim stood rocking on his heels, unsure of how to go on.

  ‘It’s great to see little Jacob on his feet again, isn’t it?’ he said, looking for a neutral topic. A smile spread across Johannes’s face.

  ‘It’s wonderful. It’s like he was never sick.’ He straightened up and looked his father in the eye. ‘I’m eternally thankful to you for that, Pappa.’

  Ephraim simply nodded and stroked his moustache, feeling pleased.

  Johannes went on, cautiously, ‘Pappa, if you couldn’t have saved Jacob … Do you think that …’ He hesitated, but then continued in a firm voice as if trying to overcome his embarrassment. ‘Do you think that I could have found the gift again? To be able to heal Jacob, I mean?’

  The question made Ephraim step back in astonishment. He was shocked to realize that he had created a bigger illusion than he’d intended. His regret and guilt ignited a defensive spark of rage, and he lashed out fiercely at Johannes.

  ‘How stupid are you anyway, boy? I thought that sooner or later you’d grow up enough to see the truth, but I suppose I should have written it on your nose. None of that was for real! None of the people you and Gabriel ‘“healed”’ – he made the quotation marks with his fingers – ‘were really sick. They were paid! By me!’ He shrieked out the words, making spittle spray out of his mouth. The next second he regretted what he had said. All colour had vanished from Johannes’s face. He wobbled back and forth like a drunkard, and for a moment Ephraim wondered whether his son was having an attack of some sort. Then Johannes whispered, so quietly that he could hardly hear it:

  ‘Then I killed those girls for nothing.’

  All the anxiety, all the guilt, all the regret exploded inside Ephraim and pulled him into a dark black hole, where he had no choice but to get rid of the pain of this confession somehow. His fist lashed out and struck Johannes in the chin with full force. In slow motion he saw Johannes fall backwards with a look of shock towards the metal of the combine. A dull thud echoed through the barn when the back of Johannes’s head struck the hard surface. Ephraim stared in horror at Johannes lying lifeless on the ground. He knelt down and tried desperately to find a pulse. Nothing. He put his ear to his son’s mouth, hoping to hear even the faintest sound of his breathing. Still nothing. Slowly he realized that Johannes was dead. Felled by his own father’s hand.

  His first impulse had been to run and ring for help. Then his survival i
nstinct took over. And if there was anything that could be said about Ephraim, it was that he was a survivor. If he called for help he’d be forced to explain why he hit Johannes, and that must never come out at any price. The girls were dead and so was Johannes. In some biblical way, justice had been done. Nor did Ephraim have any desire to spend his last days in prison. It would be punishment enough to live the rest of his life with the knowledge that he had killed Johannes. Decisively he set about the task of concealing his crime. Thank goodness he had a number of favours he could call in.

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  Jacob felt that he was getting on quite well with his life. The doctors had given him six months at most, and at least he could spend those months in peace and quiet. Naturally he missed Marita and the children, but they were allowed to come and visit once a week, and the rest of his time he spent in prayer. He had already forgiven God for abandoning him at the end. Even Jesus had stood in the garden of Gethsemane and shouted to Heaven, asking his Father why He had forsaken him, the night before God sacrificed His only son. If Jesus could forgive, so could Jacob.

  The garden at the hospital was the place where he spent most of his time. He knew that the other prisoners were avoiding him. They were all serving sentences for something, mostly for murder, but for some reason the others viewed him as dangerous. They didn’t understand. He hadn’t enjoyed killing the girls. He hadn’t done it for his own sake. He did it because it was his duty. Ephraim had explained that he, just like Johannes, was special. Chosen. It was his obligation to make use of his inheritance and not let himself waste away with a disease that was stubbornly trying to exterminate him.

  And he wouldn’t give up yet. He couldn’t give up. The past weeks he had come to the understanding that he and Johannes may have chosen the wrong way to proceed. They had tried to find a practical method to reclaim the gift, but perhaps that was not how to do it. Perhaps they should have begun by searching inward instead. The prayers and the silence here had helped him to focus. Gradually he had become better and better at achieving the meditative state in which he felt he was approaching God’s original plan. He could feel the energy beginning to fill him. On those occasions he tingled all over with anticipation. Soon he would be able to start harvesting the fruits of his newfound knowledge. Of course he regretted even more that lives had been wasted unnecessarily, but there was a war raging between good and evil, and from that perspective the girls were necessary sacrifices.

  The afternoon sun warmed him as he sat on the park bench. Today’s prayer session had been especially powerful, and he felt as though he were competing with the sun for radiance. When he looked at his hand he saw a thin band of light surrounding it. Jacob smiled. It had begun.

  Next to the bench he caught sight of a dead pigeon. It was lying on its side, and nature had already begun to reclaim the body and convert it to earth. Stiff and dirty, it lay with eyes that had taken on the milky membrane of death. Excited, Jacob leaned forward to study the bird. It was a sign.

  He got up from the bench and squatted down next to the pigeon. Tenderly he studied its body. His hand was now glowing as if a fire were burning inside his limbs. Trembling he reached out the index finger of his right hand to the pigeon and let it rest lightly on the ruffled plumage. Nothing happened. Disappointment threatened to wash over him, but he forced himself to remain in the place where the prayers usually led him. After a while the pigeon twitched. One of its stiff legs began to shake. Then everything happened at once. The pigeon’s feathers regained their lustre, the white membrane covering the bird’s eyes vanished. It got to its feet and with a powerful flap of its wings the bird took off towards Heaven. Jacob smiled, content.

  By a window facing the garden, Dr Stig Holbrand stood watching Jacob together with Fredrik Nydin, a resident physician who was doing part of his practice in criminal psychiatry.

  ‘That’s Jacob Hult. He’s a bit of a special case here. He tortured two girls while attempting to heal them. They died of their wounds and he was convicted of murder. But he didn’t pass the criminal psychiatric examination, and he also has an inoperable brain tumour.’

  ‘How long does he have left?’ asked the resident. He understood the tragic nature of the case, but at the same time couldn’t help thinking that it was enormously interesting.

  ‘About six months. He claims that he’ll be able to heal himself, and he spends large parts of his days in meditation. We let him have his way. He isn’t hurting anyone.’

  ‘But what is he doing now?’

  ‘Well, that’s not to say that he doesn’t behave oddly sometimes.’ Dr Holbrand squinted through the window and shaded his eyes with his hand to see better.

  ‘I think he’s throwing a pigeon up in the air. At least that poor creature was already dead,’ he said dryly.

  They moved on to the next patient.

  Acknowledgements

  Once again I would like to thank my husband Micke, who true to form always puts my writing first and is still my biggest supporter. Without him it would have been impossible to manage both the baby and the writing.

  A big thank you also to my agent Mikael Nordin, along with Bengt and Jenny at the Bengt Nordin Agency, who all worked, and continue to work, indefatigably to get my books out to a broader public.

  The officers at Tanumshede police station and their chief Folke Åberg deserve a special mention, since they took the time to read the material and offer suggestions. They also showed immeasurable equanimity when I placed a couple of apparently incompetent officers at their workplace. In this case reality does not resemble fiction!

  One person who was invaluable during the work on The Preacher is my editor and publisher Karin Linge Nordh, who with greater exactitude than I could ever muster scrutinized the manuscript and offered judicious advice. She has also taught me the essential expression, ‘When in doubt – delete’. Everyone at my new publishing house, Forum, has made me feel welcome.

  Other people who have been a big help to me during the work on this book, as well as the first one, include Gunilla Sandin and Ingrid Kampås. And Martin and Helena Persson, my mother-in-law Gunnel Läckberg, and Åsa Bohman all willingly read and commented on the manuscript.

  Finally I would also like to give a special thanks to Berith and Anders Torevi, who not only marketed The Ice Princess in an enthusiastic manner but also took the time to read and comment on the manuscript of The Preacher.

  All characters and events are fictitious. Fjällbacka and its environs are described accurately, although sometimes I have taken liberties with the geography.

  Enskede, 11 February 2004

  Camilla Läckberg

  www.camillalackberg.com

  By The Same Author

  THE ICE PRINCESS

  Copyright

  HarperCollinsPublishers

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  Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2008

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  Copyright © Camilla Läckberg 2004

  Published by agreement with Bengt Nordin Agency, Sweden

  English translation © Steven T. Murray 2008

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