Guiltless

by Sten, Viveca

  Father would be here soon. He had to be. Thorwald would beg him for forgiveness and promise to make up for what he had done. He would never, ever run away again.

  He would promise anything, just as long as his father let him out.

  A little voice inside whispered that no one could save him, that Gottfrid would never come. Vendela might still think he was gone, that he was far away.

  Surely Father couldn’t leave him locked up forever?

  CHAPTER 47

  Thomas glanced at his watch; high time he set off. The first ferry was due to leave in half an hour.

  Nora cleared her throat.

  “I wanted to ask you a question . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “Don’t laugh, but something occurred to me when I heard you on the phone.”

  “OK.”

  Thomas settled back onto his chair and waited.

  “What if . . .” Nora broke off, looking embarrassed. “What if the arm thawed out because the body parts were transferred between different places on the island?”

  Thomas was paying close attention. Nora had good instincts, and had made helpful observations several times in the past. It was partly her legal training, he thought. She had been taught to think logically, analytically, like police detectives were. It was no coincidence that a law degree was required for the highest ranks on the force.

  “What do you mean?”

  Nora ran a finger over the candlestick in the middle of the table.

  “I wondered if the killer might have hidden the body parts at home while he waited for everything to settle down.”

  “But where would he have hidden them?”

  “Well . . . in the freezer, maybe?”

  “In the freezer?”

  “It’s possible.” A faint flush appeared on her cheeks. “If you put the parts in plastic bags, you could stow them in a freezer and leave them there for a while.”

  She stood up and pointed to the appliance in the corner of the kitchen.

  “He needed a good hiding place, and a large freezer would be perfect. No one goes and looks in someone else’s freezer, and there’s no risk of the remains starting to decay and smell. It would be ease to pull out the bags at a later date and bury them in the forest.”

  Thomas gazed at his childhood friend; there was no mistaking her conviction.

  “The ground must not have been frozen when he moved them,” Nora went on, “since that would have made it impossible to dig. So the arm thawed out after it had been buried, then the temperature dropped and it froze again.”

  The expression on Thomas’s face made it clear that he wasn’t convinced. “Yeah, but—”

  Nora was having none of it.

  “My theory also explains why the body was dismembered. You can’t store a body in a freezer unless you chop it up.” She was almost pleading with him: “You have to admit I could be right.”

  Thomas remembered Mats Larsson’s words: There is a logic, however twisted, in the perpetrator’s actions. Evidence must be removed, and chopping up the body is the most rational way to go about it.

  To the ordinary person, it came across as grotesque rather than rational.

  “Don’t you remember that woman who kept her newborn baby in the freezer? That was in your district, wasn’t it?” Nora said.

  Thomas nodded. The case of the mother in Gustavsberg who had killed her twin babies immediately after their birth, then kept one in the freezer, had been bizarre. She was arrested after the body of the other baby was found in the forest.

  “There you go. If you can hide a baby, you can hide a dismembered body. Most people out here have great big freezers, especially if they hunt or fish.”

  Thomas linked his hands behind his head and thought for a moment.

  “Funnily enough, I saw a huge freezer yesterday. At the Östermans’.”

  Nora took a sharp breath.

  “Bengt and Ingrid?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thomas, I need to show you something.”

  She went into the living room and returned with several black notebooks. Thomas raised his eyebrows. “What’s this?”

  “I found them in Aunt Signe’s desk. They’re diaries, written by Karolina Brand, Signe’s aunt, when she was a young girl.”

  “OK, so?”

  “She writes a lot about the Österman family. Karolina was very taken with a boy named Thorwald, who had a sister called Kristina. I asked Mom if she knew the story, and she told me that Thorwald was Bengt Österman’s father.”

  Thomas had no idea where this was going.

  “What’s that got to do with the case?”

  “Thorwald and Kristina’s father, Gottfrid, seems to have been a nasty piece of work who abused both his wife and son, while his daughter could do no wrong. He also disinherited Thorwald and left everything to Kristina.”

  “And?”

  “I’m getting there,” Nora said stubbornly. “Mom said the two sides of the family broke off all contact after that. Bengt and Marianne have nothing to do with each other, even though they’re cousins.”

  Thomas was the very personification of a question mark.

  “What did you say?”

  Nora looked at him in surprise. “You do know that Bengt Österman and Marianne Rosén are cousins?”

  Thomas shook his head. “I had no idea. It’s odd that no one’s mentioned it.”

  “Maybe not.” Nora rested her chin on her hands. “They hate each other, so I guess there’s nothing much to say. According to Mom, there’s always been a lot of bitterness in that family. She remembers Kristina from when she was a girl; she says she acted like she didn’t even have a brother.”

  Thomas picked up the top notebook and flipped through it.

  “But all this happened a very long time ago?”

  “Yes, but Mom says the resentment is still there. Thorwald had a wretched life—those were her exact words.”

  “Like his son,” Thomas murmured, picturing Bengt Österman, the pitiful alcoholic.

  Nora took a deep breath and spoke slowly and with great precision: “I lay awake last night wondering whether the Östermans might be involved in Lina’s disappearance in some way. Because of the feud.”

  She kept her eyes fixed on Thomas’s face. The sound of the TV could be heard in the background. A sudden shout of laughter from Simon made them both jump.

  The image of Ingrid Österman’s dead body on the bed came into Thomas’s mind. Her husband, sitting on the stained sofa and trying to answer their questions. The photograph of Sebastian in the living room.

  He remembered something else.

  “Louise Hammarsten told us that Lina felt guilty about Sebastian Österman,” he said. “Apparently it was Lina who persuaded Sebastian to drive the boat, and she always blamed herself for his death.”

  “Did Bengt and Ingrid know?”

  “I don’t think so. Louise said Lina hadn’t told anyone else about it.”

  “What if they found out somehow?” Nora’s voice was both eager and concerned.

  Thomas ran a hand through his hair, thinking fast.

  Was it possible that Bengt and Ingrid blamed Lina Rosén for their son’s death? Maybe Ingrid had killed the girl, alone or with her husband’s help, and then taken her own life when she could no longer bear the guilt?

  Or Bengt had murdered Lina, then killed his wife when she threatened to expose him.

  A person who loses a child is capable of just about anything, Thomas thought. When the barriers that hold us back come crashing down, there are suddenly no inhibitions.

  He was overwhelmed by a feeling of shame.

  He had held Pernilla responsible for their daughter’s death, in spite of the fact that, deep down, he always knew it wasn’t true. He didn’t want to contemplate what he might have been capable of if Emily had died under different circumstances, and he had known for sure who was to blame.

  Focus.

  He reached for the teapot and refilled
his mug, then leaned back in the white kitchen chair and stared out the window. It was snowing so heavily now that it was only just possible to make out the fir trees.

  Bengt and Ingrid Österman lived on Sandhamn year-round. Bengt was probably a hunter, like so many in the archipelago. He should call Erik, check if either of them had a license. He also needed to speak to Margit, who had interviewed Ingrid just days before her death. He wondered whether she thought Ingrid would have been capable of murdering Lina Rosén. Was Nora’s theory just a shot in the dark?

  “But what happened to trigger the attack on Lina in October?” he said after a minute or so.

  “Maybe that was when they found out what actually happened when Sebastian died. The old grudge against Lina and her family was stirred up, and when they saw her in Sandhamn that weekend, they decided . . .”

  Nora didn’t need to finish the sentence. Thomas made a decision.

  “I’ll call the psychologist who’s working with us, see what he thinks about your hypothesis.”

  Mats Larsson had mentioned alcohol abuse, which could be a significant factor in the context. And Thomas had seen Bengt Österman’s relationship with booze.

  If Nora was right, then Jakob Sandgren was just a violent, spoiled rich kid who needed a serious talking to about respecting women before something really bad happened.

  And the motive for the murder of Lina Rosén lay much further in the past than any of them could have suspected.

  CHAPTER 48

  Mats Larsson answered on the fifth ring. He sounded like he was in a school gymnasium; Thomas could hear children’s voices and a whistle in the background.

  He briefly ran through the conversation he had just had with Nora, and explained about the family feud and Thorwald being cut out of his father’s will.

  “Is it possible that someone could still feel so bitter they’d decide to take their revenge like this?”

  “You said the Östermans’ son died a couple of years ago?”

  “Yes, he drowned in a boating accident. He got trapped under the hull when the boat flipped over.”

  Thomas could still remember the ghostly silence after the collision with the RIB in the middle of the night, followed by the panic-stricken screams of the kids struggling in the water.

  “And now the son’s second cousin has been murdered. Did she have any siblings?”

  “No, she was an only child.”

  “So both cousins have been left childless within a few years.”

  “That’s right,” Thomas said.

  There was silence as Mats Larsson thought things over.

  Thomas paced up and down in the kitchen. Nora’s theory seemed kind of far-fetched, but too many things made sense for him to dismiss it out of hand.

  Once again he pictured the dead woman in the bedroom, the unkempt man who stank of booze. The rough hands grasping the bottle of vodka.

  Had his wife killed herself because she could no longer live with the truth, or had those pills been forced down her throat?

  The line crackled as Larsson began to speak.

  “It’s difficult to comment without having met the individuals in question, of course, but from a purely theoretical point of view, your friend could be on to something. It sounds as if a kind of balance, however absurd that sounds, has been achieved between the two warring branches of the family.”

  Thomas listened, almost holding his breath.

  “The combination of an old grudge, overwhelming grief, and large quantities of alcohol can certainly trigger the rage of a presumptive killer. That’s all I can say without more information, but I think you should follow up. It’s definitely worth a closer look.”

  “Thanks,” Thomas said. “That’s exactly what I needed to know.”

  Nora looked around warily as she approached the Östermans’ house. The place was in darkness, and there was no sign of neighbors. A four-wheeler with a snowplow attached was parked next door, but it looked like no one was home. The area was deserted, except for several birds chirping away in the trees—a faint reminder that the year was turning, that the darkness was diminishing and the spring equinox was on its way.

  Without hesitating, she opened the gate and quickly walked up the path. The snow was crisscrossed with footprints, and she tried to avoid leaving any fresh ones.

  Where was Bengt Österman? It was just after eleven; he might still be passed out drunk in bed.

  Nora had no wish to be confronted by an angry Bengt Österman wondering what the hell she was doing. It was bad enough that she’d crept away while Thomas was on the phone. She had mumbled something about buying milk, and slipped out of the house. It couldn’t do any harm, she told herself. Just a quick look.

  She pulled up her hood, and, once more, she scanned the area: nothing. The shed Thomas had mentioned wasn’t locked; she pushed open the door and slipped inside.

  The freezer glowed white in the half-light. It was an older model, an Elektrohelios, large and rectangular. There was a padlock through the hasp, but it was open. Nora unhooked it and lifted the heavy lid.

  Empty.

  She shone the beam of her flashlight around inside to see if she could find anything: traces of blood, strands of hair, anything to indicate that the earthly remains of Lina Rosén had been kept in here.

  But it appeared to be spotless. Slowly Nora lowered the lid and switched off her flashlight. As she turned away, she was struck by a thought.

  Why would anyone put a padlock on the lid of an empty freezer?

  It was a little thing, but it added fuel to the fire of her speculation. The padlock could have been used when something other than fish or meat had been stored inside, something the Östermans didn’t want anyone to see. Perhaps the freezer was empty now because it had been filled with large black plastic bags.

  A sudden noise outside made her shrink back into the shadows; it sounded like a door closing nearby. She peered through the little window and saw Bengt making his way down the steps. Nora glanced around; there was nowhere to hide except in the freezer. The idea made her feel claustrophobic, and she dismissed it immediately.

  Instead she pressed herself against the wall so that she would be hidden by the door if it opened. This meant she couldn’t see out of the window; she listened for Bengt’s footsteps, her nerves jangling.

  She held her breath as the seconds passed; was he on his way?

  Luck was on her side. She heard a thud followed by a stream of curses, and when she risked looking out, she saw Bengt lurch to his feet, then shamble off in the direction of the village.

  Nora waited a few minutes, then hurried away. But the question pounded in her brain: Why did the Östermans have a padlock on their freezer?

  Sandhamn 1928

  “Thorwald! Are you there?”

  The voice woke him. He thought maybe he was dreaming, but then he heard it again.

  “Thorwald, are you in there?”

  He tried to answer but managed only a hoarse croak. His throat was so dry that no words would come. His tongue was stuck to the roof of his mouth.

  “Thorwald?”

  He tried again, with the same result. He was so tired, so utterly exhausted, so thirsty.

  He had no idea how many times he had fallen asleep and woken up, no idea how much time had passed. So far he had waited in vain, but now someone was calling his name. The voice was familiar.

  Arvid. Arvid had found him.

  He had to make a noise to stop his friend from walking away. Laboriously he crawled over to the hatch and tried to bang on it, but he was too weak. His hand refused to obey, so he grabbed his wrist with the other hand to try to increase the impact. Still no good. He slumped to the floor.

  Arvid mustn’t walk away.

  He made a huge effort and kicked the hatch instead. It moved only a fraction, but it was enough.

  “Are you in there, Thorwald? It’s me, Arvid.”

  The relief was indescribable. Arvid had heard him.

  “It’s padl
ocked—I need to go get some tools. I’ll be back soon.”

  Don’t go, Thorwald wanted to yell. Don’t leave me here. Instead he curled up in a ball, closed his eyes, and gave himself up to the darkness.

  The light struck him like a blow. He blinked repeatedly, shying away like an injured animal.

  After a moment he focused on Arvid’s ashen, horrified face. His friend leaned forward and grabbed Thorwald.

  “What happened?” he said, pulling Thorwald’s arms. “Who did this?”

  Thorwald could barely form the word: “Father.”

  There was no mistaking the skepticism in Arvid’s eyes, but he didn’t argue.

  “Come on, let’s get you out of here.”

  Thorwald pulled away.

  “Not home,” he croaked. “Not to Father. Need to hide.”

  Arvid nodded to show that he understood, then helped his friend to crawl out into the pale evening sunshine. He closed the hatch; there was no point in advertising the escape.

  Thorwald’s legs refused to cooperate, so Arvid had to drag him out of the churchyard, his useless feet leaving drag marks in the sand.

  “Shed,” Thorwald mumbled, pointing to a dilapidated building a few hundred yards away, not far from the butcher’s barn. Arvid’s family used it to store their tools and wood, and when Thorwald and Arvid were little they often used to play there.

  Inside, Thorwald collapsed on the floor.

  “Water, “he whispered to Arvid, who was standing on the threshold looking anxious. “Water.”

  When Arvid came back, Thorwald had passed out, but Arvid gently woke him and held a mug to his lips.

  Thorwald drank slowly; Arvid realized that he was too exhausted to do anything else. He refilled the mug and Thorwald emptied it again, then leaned back against the wall. Arvid held out a piece of bread. Thorwald took it with trembling fingers and ate it. He lay down on the rough wooden floor.

  “Need to rest,” he murmured, closing his eyes with a sigh.

  Arvid didn’t know what to do. Something terrible had happened to his friend, but he found it hard to believe Gottfrid could do this to his own son.

  The villagers had searched the whole island for Thorwald. People said he must’ve run away, and Arvid was disappointed that he hadn’t confided in him.