The Double Silence (Andas Knutas 7)

by Mari Jungstedt

  As soon as she had turned eighteen, she had moved away from home and applied for a job with various airlines; the biggest of them hired her. It wasn’t long before she met Håkan on a flight across the Atlantic. He looked to be at least ten years older than her and projected a self-confidence that she had never before encountered in a man. They chatted more than she usually did with passengers, and before he got off the plane, he had given her his business card.

  A few days later Stina was seized by an impulse and phoned him. He sounded happy to hear from her and invited her to lunch in Stockholm. A year later she moved in with him on Gotland, in the house where he and his ex-wife had lived. At first that bothered her. Håkan already had two children and a dog, and living all around them were neighbours and former friends that he and his wife had known. And then she arrived. A mere slip of a woman, sixteen years younger than Håkan, and to top it all off, Asian in appearance – as if directly imported. Of course people had made an effort to be nice, but she was aware of what they said when her back was turned. It was a relief to move away from there to the newly developed Terra Nova, where everyone was starting from scratch. Nobody knew anyone else. She had been pregnant and immediately found new friends. All it took was one visit to the antenatal clinic. There she met Andrea, who had just moved in and was also expecting a baby. They became best friends, and gradually their group of acquaintances expanded.

  As her family and social circle grew, Stina began to feel more secure. And they had a good life, she and Håkan. Two wonderful daughters, a big house with a garden and a swimming pool that they’d had installed last year when the company gave Håkan an extra big bonus. She still enjoyed her job as a flight attendant. Maybe it was because the atmosphere on board suited her. It was a temporary situation; everyone was always on their way somewhere else, and she had only superficial contact with the passengers. She forged no permanent bonds with anyone. Her colleagues came and went, and she was always working with new people.

  She had filled the emptiness in her own way. No one had any idea what went on underneath, but soon everything was going to change. Her life was about to take a dramatic turn. Although she was terrified by the thought of the consequences, she realized that this change was inevitable. She had reached a crossroads. With one blow her secure existence would be turned upside down, and she was the one who had made that choice.

  There was no going back.

  AT THE FOOT of the stairs, she stops abruptly. She is staring upwards, nervously biting her lower lip. Her expression is rigid, focused. Her body is on high alert, like a hunted animal, listening, watching. Not a sound. She is pale but beautiful; her lips are painted red. Her dark tresses reach all the way past her waist. Her body is slender; she has long bare arms; she is wearing a skimpy top and shorts. She has kicked off her shoes. She puts one foot on the stairs made of Gotland limestone. Her red-painted toenails look like ripe wild strawberries – a lovely contrast with the grey. The light falls in from the side, creating a suggestive shadow play.

  Just as she’s about to go upstairs, she hears a sweeping sound behind her and she freezes. In a second the man is upon her, grabbing hold of her long hair and yanking her backwards. She falls on to the hall floor.

  ‘Cut!’

  Sam Dahlberg lifted his eyes from the monitor, relaxed, and brushed the hair back from his forehead. The actors cast him enquiring looks. Was he finally satisfied? This was the twelfth take of the same scene. The lead actress, Julia Berger, was starting to get a headache.

  ‘We’ll take it one more time.’

  Stifled sighs, resigned expressions. One person dared to shake his head, cursing the director who was never satisfied. And the cinematographer felt the same way. It was stuffy and hot in the house near Bungeviken where they were shooting the very last scenes, and the crew was running out of patience. It was past seven in the evening, and they’d been at it since dawn.

  Everyone was exhausted and hungry. Julia Berger shrugged and turned her hands palm up as she spoke to the director.

  ‘First, I’m going to need a cigarette and a glass of water. Just so you know.’

  She and her fellow actor disappeared out to the veranda facing the sea. A crew member rushed to take them some water. It was important to keep the star in a good mood. She was a temperamental diva, and on more than one occasion she had simply walked out, leaving the whole film crew in the lurch, because she’d lost patience and didn’t get her own way.

  Sam Dahlberg refused to be deterred. He could feel in his gut that this movie was going to be good. Really good. That was why he didn’t want to take any risks. Retakes were necessary. He and the cinematographer had agreed to make sure that they had enough footage when they went to the editing room.

  Sam quickly finished off a bottle of mineral water. In spite of the heavy downpour, it was damned hot. The crew relaxed, chatting to each other. One person ran to the toilet; another went out for a smoke. Everybody knew that the break would last a few minutes.

  When Sam once again took his seat in the director’s chair, the effect was immediate.

  ‘OK, let’s do it again,’ shouted the director’s assistant.

  The hum of voices stopped at once. Everyone turned to look at Sam, then at each other. Their posture changed from relaxed to alert, their expressions attentive. An air of concentration filled the set. Sam looked at the people around him. It was like a dream play every time. The actors, the script, the cinematographer, and the rest of the film crew: everyone with an important part to play in completing the scene. He loved it, the way everybody joined forces in one intense moment. There was something magical about it. And an unpredictability. It was impossible to tell what might happen. Often something unexpected would occur, no matter how well he planned the production, going through the script in great detail with everyone involved, spending weeks in advance with the cinematographer and checking out all the film locations. He had to know how the light fell at various times of the day, what sounds they could count on hearing, how the site would function in practice for everyone involved. He liked to be well prepared. Only then was there room for spontaneity. Sam Dahlberg had spent years learning these techniques. He loved his job. For him, it was the very heart of his life, giving him the space to breathe. He surveyed the set one last time. Everything was ready. A giddy feeling filled his stomach; everyone was awaiting his signal. All of these people. They were waiting for him and no one else. He cast a quick glance at his assistant director.

  ‘Quiet. Rolling. Camera.’

  The same scene was repeated. In Julia Berger’s defence, it had to be said that even though she might be feeling annoyed, she gave her all every time the cameras rolled – no matter now many takes it took. He admired her professionalism. When they finished the scene, everyone waited in tense silence. Now Sam had everyone’s attention. He hid his face behind a handkerchief and wiped away both the sweat and a few tears that had trickled from his eyes. Then he looked at his colleagues and his face broke into a happy grin.

  ‘Bloody good job. I think, by God, that we’ve just done the last take on the film. Just a second.’

  He motioned for the cinematographer, and together they watched the scene on the monitor, accompanied by some indistinct murmuring. Then they nodded and slapped each other on the back. Everyone waited tensely. Sam raised his eyes.

  ‘I think we’ve made a movie here.’

  A grateful cheer rose from the set. The lead actors, who had just been involved in a fight, embraced each other a bit longer than might be considered purely professional, if anyone from the film crew had bothered to notice. But everybody was busy congratulating each other, hugging and patting one another on the back.

  ‘Unbelievable,’ exclaimed Sam happily. ‘That’s a wrap. Two months of filming are over. You’ve all been amazing. Now it’s time to celebrate.’

  HÅKAN EK LEFT the office early on that Friday afternoon. He had five weeks of holiday ahead of him. He couldn’t remember when he’d been away from hi
s job for so many weeks in a row. If ever. He enjoyed his work as the sales manager for a large electronics company in Visby, but now he felt he needed a holiday.

  His mobile beeped before he’d even left the car park. A message from Klara. Phone me. He frowned. What now? His daughter from his first marriage was his only real worry. She was a restless young woman who lived in central Stockholm and suffered from an eating disorder. She’d also had problems finding a job and coping with various boyfriends. But Håkan was used to it. By now Klara’s troubles were an inevitable aspect of his life, like a body part that was always tender and needed care.

  But his daughter was not his only child from a failed relationship. From his second marriage he had a son who was now in his late teens, but he had little contact with the boy. The divorce had been a painful and long-drawn-out affair. He hardly ever spoke to his second wife, Helena. After they divorced, she and their son had moved in with her parents in Haparanda in the far north. But he was in regular touch with his first wife, Ingrid. Their marriage had fizzled out so many years ago that it felt like another lifetime. After they went their separate ways, it had taken years before she decided to remarry. She said she was very picky. She used to quip that she was used to the best. Håkan appreciated the fact that they were able to joke about their past, sometimes talking on the phone for hours. Nobody could make him laugh the way she did. The thought regularly occurred to him that he’d actually been happier with Ingrid than he was with Stina. They both belonged to the fifties generation and had a lot in common. They had watched the same TV programmes, gone to the same dance clubs. They knew the same dances, songs and bands. They liked the same musicians, and they had the same sense of humour.

  As Håkan drove home he grew pensive. He ought to be looking forward to the summer holidays, but something was preventing that. Almost like dirt on the windscreen that was impossible to remove. His thoughts turned to his third wife.

  Everything was different with Stina, and in many respects more complicated than with either of his ex-wives. It was because of her childhood and upbringing, her rootlessness and insecurity. He was aware that she needed to view him as a father figure. He had been fascinated by Stina from the first moment he saw her on board the plane, with her shiny, raven-black hair reaching to her shoulders in a blunt cut, her slim figure in the attractive uniform. Her soft, dark eyes had fixed on his, and after that he didn’t want to let her go. Not for anything in the world. Divorcing his second wife seemed like such an obvious decision that he wanted to get it out of the way as quickly as possible. Helena became a mere shadow for him. In hindsight, he could see how selfishly he had behaved.

  But that was all in the past.

  Right now he and Stina were anticipating a long holiday. And it would start off with the annual trip with their closest friends. In reality he would have preferred to do something all on their own, just the two of them. They needed time together; for quite a while now they had spent far too little time with each other. That must be what was worrying him, causing a deep disquiet. He could hardly remember when they’d last had sex. Sometimes that was what happened with Stina. She would distance herself from him, almost as if she was avoiding him. He had tried to talk to her about it, asking her what was wrong, but she assured him that it was nothing special. She was just feeling tired.

  Stina had to work a couple more weeks before she could take an extended holiday from her job. But they could at least spend a few days together. Later their summer holiday awaited them, and they were planning to go island hopping in Greece with the children. He was looking forward to that. Since Stina had a hard time relaxing at home, they needed to go on a trip together, preferably abroad so that she could leave all her obligations behind.

  He tapped in the number for home and felt both relieved and a little uneasy when he heard her voice. She didn’t sound happy, but not really sad either.

  No, he didn’t need to stop for groceries. If they weren’t going away he would have bought her flowers.

  But it wouldn’t be worth it just now.

  HE SAW HER from far away as she came walking towards him with her rather sauntering gait on the other side of Norra Hansegatan. Detective Superintendent Anders Knutas stopped to wait for her, observing her slender form as she approached. His colleague Karin Jacobsson always walked to work because she lived in the middle of town. She was wearing her iPod earbuds, as usual, and jeans that sat low on her hips. She had on a white T-shirt with a drum set printed on the front and trainers. The wind had tousled her cropped brown hair. Her eyes were fixed on the pavement, and she hadn’t yet noticed Knutas. He wondered what she was thinking about, wondered what he was going to do with her.

  Karin was the colleague he was closest to at work, and she acted as his deputy when necessary. But it was no exaggeration to say that she had really made a mess of things. A little less than a year ago she had confided a secret that Knutas couldn’t possibly ignore. He knew that eventually he would have to do something about it – and sooner rather than later because her confession had placed him in an untenable position ever since.

  Of course he was grateful that Karin had finally unburdened her heart, but he wished the circumstances had been different.

  He, on the other hand, had trusted her right from the start, and she knew almost everything about him. All about his personal life as well as his professional career. Karin was always willing to listen, and Knutas considered her one of his best friends. But she had always found it difficult to talk about her own private life. She was forty-one years old, lived alone with her cockatoo in a lovely attic flat on Mellangatan, played football, and devoted herself to her job. He had never heard her mention a man or a boyfriend in her life. Or a woman, for that matter.

  Then one evening last summer, when they happened to be in Stockholm in connection with a difficult murder case, they had been sitting in a restaurant drinking wine and she had suddenly fallen apart. She told him that as a teenager she had been raped and became pregnant. By the time her pregnancy was discovered, it was too late for an abortion, so she had carried the child to term. It was a girl, and her parents had forced Karin to give the baby up for adoption. Against her will, the child was taken from her immediately after the birth, and she had never seen her again. All her life Karin had kept this sorrow to herself. But now she had decided to search for her grown-up daughter.

  It was as if a dam had burst, and Karin had wept and talked nonstop all night. She had also revealed something so serious that she risked being sacked if it ever came out. To Knutas’s horror, Karin told him that the previous year she had allowed a double murderer named Vera Petrov to escape. Part of her explanation had to do with her own trauma. The police had been hot on the heels of Petrov, but during the chase Jacobsson had discovered the woman in the throes of labour in a cabin aboard the Gotland ferry. Instead of alerting her colleagues, she had helped bring the baby into the world. Since a tragic story had prompted Petrov to commit the two murders, Jacobsson had let her go. She had kept her actions secret until confiding in Knutas on that night in Stockholm.

  Knutas was shocked when the truth came out. Certainly it was a distressing case, and of course he understood feeling empathy for the killer, but what Karin had done was the most grievous dereliction of duty, and his first thought had been to suspend her immediately. But then he had relented. He couldn’t bring himself to do it. Vera Petrov was still being sought by international authorities; so far no trace of her had been found. Time had passed, and now Knutas was also implicated. He still didn’t know how to solve the problem, but he realized it was inevitable that sooner or later he would be forced to do something about the matter. It was no exaggeration to say that Karin had placed him in the greatest dilemma of his life.

  Yet he still felt a tenderness for her as she approached. She raised her head and looked straight at him with those eyes, nut-brown and doe-like. Her face broke into a smile, revealing the gap between her front teeth. He found it worrisome that her charm had such
a powerful effect on him and that he had become dependent on her. They shared a deep bond. It had grown stronger over all the years they had worked together. Sometimes he almost mistook it for love. Even though he loved his wife, Lina, part of his heart belonged to Karin.

  And no doubt it always would.

  THE SHOWER WATER poured over her sweaty body. Goose bumps appeared on her skin as Andrea Dahlberg reached for the soap container. With brisk, light movements she massaged in the expensive shower gel that Sam had brought back for her from his latest trip. He was always so thoughtful, even after twenty years of marriage. He’d been to a film festival in Berlin. Just as a spectator. None of his own films had won any prizes. Not yet.

  She stepped out of the mosaic-lined shower stall and wrapped herself in a thick terrycloth towel. Then she paused in front of the mirror and noticed to her satisfaction that she was already nicely suntanned. A few aches and pains after yesterday’s evening workout at the gym, but she was in perfect bikini shape for the summer. She let go of the bath towel and it dropped to the floor. Then she turned around so she could see herself in profile in the mirror; it was the angle she liked best. She still looked just fine after passing forty and having three children. Her breasts were large and well shaped, but that was because she’d had work done on them after Mathilda was born. She couldn’t stand the thought of spending the rest of her life with those flabby, drooping sacks that her breasts had become after all the breastfeeding she’d done. Now the part of her body that made her most proud was her bosom. She smiled at herself and went through the bedroom to the walk-in closet that Sam had built just for her. There was plenty of room for all her shoes and clothes, lined up in perfect order. An enormous mirror covered one wall so she could stand there in peace as she chose what to wear. Later today they would be going out to Fårö for the Bergman festival, and then continue on to Stora Karlsö.