“A real customer is going to be there at eleven.”
At first glance Angelika did not appear to have aged a bit. She hadn’t gained any weight and she moved as easily and gracefully as she had all those years ago. Perhaps her hair was just a shade darker—a shimmering mahogany—but that didn’t necessarily mean she was dyeing gray strands.
The color fit her perfectly and even matched her short, brown leather jacket. All her other clothes were black. Her V-neck angora sweater revealed an elegant gold cross in the gap between her collarbones. She walked across the floor in boots with sky-high heels, keeping her eyes on Tommy the whole time. For Irene, she barely condescended to give a glance from the corner of her eye.
Tommy got up and smiled widely as he held out his hand. “Hello! Please, sit down.”
Angelika smiled as well, but her smile no longer gave off the same sparks as fifteen years ago. There was exhaustion in her eyes that had not been there before.
“It’s been many years since I last saw you, but you haven’t changed a bit,” Tommy reassured her.
“Kind of you to say so,” Angelika said with the shadow of a smile.
As she sat down, she slipped out of her leather jacket to set it across her knees. As she looked at Tommy, tears shone in her dark eyes. In an unsteady voice, she asked, “When will I be able to take her?”
Tommy floundered for half a second before he realized what she was asking. “Sophie’s body?”
“Please.”
“It could still take a week or two before all the tests are finished. Sometimes a test has to be redone. Would you like me to find out when she will be released to you?”
“Yes, please. I’ve already contacted the funeral home.”
Angelika fumbled in her purse and finally pulled out a package of paper tissues. She wiped her tears and discreetly blew her nose. Irene could see that Tommy was off-balance—this questioning had taken a turn he hadn’t expected.
As if Tommy were reading her mind, he cleared his throat and subconsciously straightened his back as he tried to take back control of the conversation.
“We talked on the phone the day after the body had been identified. You were naturally very upset and emotional, and I decided to wait to talk to you. Now we’ve made some progress in the investigation and we would like to ask you a few questions, if you don’t mind.”
“Of course not. It’s just…it’s incomprehensible that anyone would murder her.”
Tears began to stream down her face and she pulled a handful of tissues from the package. She pressed one of them to her eyes and her voice was barely audible. “Sorry…I’m just so upset…and the funeral home today…can’t understand…that she’s dead.”
Irene could tell that Angelika’s grief was deep and authentic. It was not difficult to understand her despair over the murder of her daughter. But at the same time, Irene remembered she hadn’t shown nearly this level of grief when her former husband, Magnus Ericksson, had died. Then she had been more concerned about practical problems, such as the lack of insurance money.
Before Tommy began his questions, Irene slipped in one of her own, the one bothering her all these years. “Now that Sophie is deceased, can you give me an honest answer? Do you believe she set fire to the house all those years ago?”
Angelika swiftly wiped up all her tears. “Never. She was not the one who burned our house. That was Magnus! I am absolutely convinced. He was drunk and smoking…he’d done it before.”
Angelika began to gesture to underscore her point. Her eyes were now dry and she almost bobbed up off the chair she was sitting on. She said, “Sophie told me that she didn’t even know Magnus was in the house! It was dark and quiet when she came home from school. She ate a sandwich and used the bathroom. She must have had some stomach trouble—she was in the bathroom for a long time. So then she had to bike as fast as she could to get to her ride on time. Tessan’s mother always gave the girls a ride to the dance school, and she’d pick Sophie up at the convenience store.”
Her story lined up with what Frej had said, as well as with the letter Max Franke had written saying Sophie had explained her innocence to her father. Obviously she’d been able to talk to her nearest and dearest about what she’d done that half hour she was home. She had just refused to talk to the child psychologist and the police. Why?
Without revealing her line of reasoning, Irene asked a follow-up question. “If Sophie had nothing to do with the fire at Björkil, why do you think she was burned to death fifteen years later?”
The tears returned as Angelika barely whispered, “I have no idea.”
“You don’t even have a theory?” Irene said, feeling a sting of conscience as she pressed Angelika.
“No, none.” Angelika shook her head, lowering face so it was hidden behind the curtain of her bangs.
Angelika wanted to put up a shield. Or perhaps Irene was being unduly suspicious. Perhaps Angelika really had no idea what had happened to her daughter. Irene would have been able to accept that if the warning light of police instinct hadn’t been blinking in her brain. Sophie’s death and the death of her stepfather were much too similar to be coincidence.
Tommy ran through questions concerning Sophie’s friends and acquaintances, as well as potential enemies, without stumbling upon anything they didn’t already know. Still, it warmed Irene’s heart to hear Angelika say, “I am very happy that Sophie and I had a much better relationship the past few years.”
“Why did you have a bad relationship when she was younger?” asked Tommy.
“Well, I wouldn’t exactly call it bad…she was a difficult child. I probably didn’t understand her properly. Honestly, I was much too young when I got pregnant with her, and I conceived her with the wrong man. Ernst was even crazier than Sophie was!”
Irene decided to ask another question that had been on her mind since 1989. “How did you meet Ernst Malmborg?”
Angelika jerked, as if she’d forgotten Irene was even in the room. She wrinkled her brow unhappily and appeared to reflect, then shrugged and said in a voice devoid of emotion, “I was still studying dance, but managed to get a job with a dance troupe. We performed in a festival of modern ballet and music. Ernst had written a piece for one of the numbers. A girl named Gisela and I performed it. The piece was called Night and Day, and Ernst thought we looked like night and day. Gisela is very light, almost an albino. And, as you see, I’ve always been a bit more, shall we say, brunette.”
For the first time since she’d entered the room, she smiled flirtatiously and gave Tommy a glance from behind her eyelashes. Tommy’s expression said he definitely preferred a girl with a bit more melanin. In order to dispel the attraction between the two, Irene asked a new question.
“Was that Gisela Bagge? The woman who is now the Director of Instruction at the House of Dance?”
Angelika seemed surprised. “Do you know her? Yes, she’s the one.”
How interesting that Gisela was back in the picture. Why hadn’t Angelika mentioned her before? On the other hand, fifteen years ago Irene had been focusing on Sophie and not on Ernst or Angelika.
“I met her at the House of Dance this morning. She told me there would be a premiere of Sophie’s ballet The Fire Dance soon.”
Angelika nodded. “Yes, the first piece Sophie choreographed. She called it “A Saga in Dance . I didn’t go to any of the rehearsals because she told me she wanted to surprise me. Frej is in the ballet.”
“Frej dances?” Irene exclaimed in surprise.
“Of course he does. He’s been dancing since he was very young. Lately he’s been studying photography instead. All he dances these days is capoeira. He doesn’t have time for anything else.”
“Capoeira? Is this a ballet done with capoeira?” Irene was confused.
“There is no such thing as a capoeira ballet. Capoeira is more like an exhibition.” Angelika couldn’t help smiling through her tears.
She dried her eyes and blew her nose again. Talking
about dance seemed to calm her down. Perhaps because dance was her world and she felt more in control of the line of questioning.
“Of course, I was curious what she was up to and I tried to pump Frej for information. From what he said, there is some capoeira in this piece, as well as some daring new moves. I am really happy that they decided to go ahead with rehearsals so the premiere can go forward as planned. It certainly would be what Sophie would have wanted.”
Tommy and Irene sat together for a while after Angelika left. They discussed the case. Irene walked over to the map of Göteborg hanging on the wall. She tapped a spot with her forefinger and said, “Here is the crime scene. It is on the outskirts of the oldest part of the Högsbo Industrial Area. Nothing’s going on here because the buildings are going to be demolished for the new pharmaceutical plant. The actual shed in question is especially deserted since it faces the Nature Reserve of Änggård Mountain. It’s just two kilometers from Änggården.”
She moved her finger and tapped another spot on the map. “Here’s Angelika’s apartment on Distansgatan. It’s equally distant from the crime scene. Sophie disappeared from Park Aveny Hotel here.”
Irene turned to Tommy. She ticked off her questions on her fingers.
“Why did Sophie leave Park? How did she disappear? Who met her? Where was she taken? Where was she kept for three weeks? Why was she transported to the industrial area? Why was she abused? Why was she drugged? And the most important question: Who did all this to her?”
Tommy leaned back in his chair and gave Irene a taunting look. “My dear Watson, we will have the answer to that question once we’ve found the killer, not before.”
“I believe Sherlock needed to take cocaine to think. Right now I need a different kind of stimulant,” Irene said and sighed.
She walked out of the office to get two cups of coffee from the machine.
* * *
Katarina had nothing else to do, so she was happy to join Irene to go see capoeira. Their dog, Sammie, jumped into the back of their Kombi. He loved taking car rides. In his old age, he preferred riding in the car to going on long walks. For his whole eleven-year lifespan, he’d always believed the car belonged to him. His owners were allowed to drive it due to his largesse. In the last few years, he even allowed the younger family members to drive, as long as he could ride along.
At his last veterinary appointment, Sammie was diagnosed with cataracts in both eyes. During the day, it didn’t seem to bother him much, but in the evenings it did. He no longer wanted to go for walks once it got dark. The once plucky terrier now would bark at imagined ghosts whenever the wind rustled the tree branches or shadows moved outside the shine of the streetlights. More and more often, he would bang into mailboxes and posts. With a pang of sorrow, Irene realized that her beloved dog was truly getting old.
They parked near a streetlight so that it wouldn’t get too dark in the car. The temperature was nearing freezing, but Sammie would still be fine in the car for an hour or two. Irene wrapped him up in his blanket, and he sighed contentedly as he settled into his nest. It had been three months since his last professional grooming—his shaggy coat would help keep him warm.
There were many more people in the cafeteria than there had been that morning, and the air was filled with laughter and conversation. Irene caught sight of Frej’s blonde hair in the crowd. He was sitting next to the girl with pink braids, the girl Irene had watched earlier that morning as she practiced capoeira. Irene headed toward them.
“Hello again,” she said, smiling.
Frej looked up. “Hello. What are you doing here?” he said, without enthusiasm.
“I’m going to talk to Marcelo Alves after the session, and Felipe Medina has promised to interpret for me. I brought my daughter Katarina along so she could take a look at capoeira. She’s interested in the martial…”
Irene was stopped in the middle of the sentence by Katarina, who gently but firmly moved her aside. Katarina held out her hand to greet Frej and his female friend.
Frej smiled widely when he saw Katarina. Irene was again aware of how charming he could appear, in spite of that ugly soul patch. A style of the times, Irene thought. Was it rappers who started it? Hip-hop artists? Anyway, it was popular among the young men these days. Irene remembered seeing that tiny, square beard on some of the younger male reporters on television as well.
The pale capoeira dancer introduced herself as Lina.
“Do any of you have a key so we can get in there?” asked Irene, pointing at the glass doors closing off the hall to the rehearsal rooms.
“No, Marcelo has it. He lets us in half an hour before class so we can change,” Frej replied.
“He’s coming now,” Lina said, rising.
As if his name summoned him, Marcelo appeared in the hall on the other side of the glass doors. Irene had never seen him in person before; she’d only read his name in the police reports. He was just a tad bit shorter than Irene. He was dressed the way the other male capoeira dancers had that morning: bare chest and wide, white pants. He had delicate features, but was still attractive in a masculine way. Dark eyes dominated his face with their long, thick lashes; a small smile played around his well-formed lips; and his long dark brown hair sprang up in curly locks around his head. His way of moving reminded Irene of a sleek feline—control over every single muscle while still completely relaxed.
Both male and female faces turned toward the door when he opened it. From a separate table, the rest of the capoeira group got up. Irene remembered them from earlier that morning.
Irene went to Marcelo and introduced herself. Felipe Medina came over to them immediately.
“I’ve already told Marcelo you’d like to talk to him and I’d interpret,” Felipe said.
Marcelo smiled and nodded in agreement but he didn’t say anything. Irene wondered how much Swedish he actually understood.
As Frej walked past her, Irene said, “Hey, Frej, I’d like to stop by and take a look at Sophie’s apartment again.”
“Why? The police have already gone through it more than once.”
“I know, but my boss wanted me to take another look just in case there’s anything we missed. Are you home tomorrow afternoon?”
Frej looked at her resentfully, then shrugged. “I’m done by two or three, so, like, three thirty.”
“All right, I’ll be there at three thirty.”
Frej nodded and disappeared into the changing room.
Katarina found capoeira totally fascinating. She was as impressed by the acrobatics and sparring as Irene had been. Once the session was over, she said with determination, “I’m going to start taking capoeira.”
“What? What about your jiujitsu?” Irene exclaimed, alarmed.
Katarina sighed and rolled her eyes. “That’s your thing. You were the best in the world, not me. I’ll never be as good as you. I want to go into something different.”
“I wasn’t the best in the world,” Irene protested. “Just Europe.”
Still, deep inside, Irene knew that Katarina was right. Her daughter had never enjoyed jiujitsu as much as Irene had. In her last year at school, she had trained every single day. The other side of the coin was that her grades weren’t as good as they could have been. Still, the year after graduation she’d won the European championship.
Katarina had been in the junior league, and she had placed well, but during the past six months, she’d been losing motivation. Perhaps she did need to try something new. Irene tried to look at it positively, but she had trouble swallowing the lump in her throat.
When the class ended, Katarina went over to talk to Frej and Lina while Irene moved toward Marcelo and Felipe.
“We need to take a shower first,” Felipe said. “Let’s meet back in fifteen minutes.”
“That’s fine,” Irene said.
She walked back into the rehearsal room, which was now redolent with the smell of sweat. The ventilation in the ceiling was working full force and would soon clear
the air.
To tell the truth, Irene loved the smell of sweat in workout rooms. It spoke of people keeping their bodies in shape. She was a physical person, as her husband often said. Katarina and Frej were chatting in one corner, and Irene headed toward them, but when Frej noticed her approach, he quickly said goodbye to both of them and walked away.
“He’s going for a shower,” Katarina explained.
Katarina took a few tentative hops in front of the floor-to-ceiling mirror. She whirled in a clumsy pirouette and came to a stop in front of Irene.
“A beginners’ class is starting in January, and I’m going to register. This summer, they’re going to have a three-week intensive, and I plan to go.”
Irene still felt the lump of disappointment in her throat, so she could only nod. Katarina was eighteen, the age of majority in Sweden, and in the spring, she’d be nineteen. She could now marry whomever she pleased without permission from her parents. She had the right to vote. She was old enough to go to jail. Of course, Irene could not forbid her to take capoeira instead of jiujitsu. Katarina was free to train in any sport she wanted.
As if she could sense Irene’s distress at her decision to change her martial arts focus, Katarina rested her hand on Irene’s arm. “I’m not going to stop jiujitsu completely. Capoeira is only twice a week, so I can, you know, keep doing jiujitsu once a week or so.”
Marcelo and Felipe came back a few minutes later dressed in thin black jazz pants and tight white T-shirts. Felipe pulled out two mats and set them on the floor. As he moved, the wooden beads at the ends of his braids clicked.
“Go ahead and sit on this one,” he said with a smile, pointing to one of the mats.
Irene and Katarina sat down opposite the two dancers. The aroma of men’s body-wash reached them.
“We only have a half an hour. Marcelo has to teach a salsa class. I’m going to stick around to help get the class going. They’re all a bunch of newbies. Maybe you’d like to stick around?” Felipe smiled encouragingly at both mother and daughter.
The Fire Dance Page 12