She looked out at the sea. Where on earth was Stina Ek?
ON THE SURFACE everything looked the same as usual in the residential area of Terra Nova. But inside Håkan Ek’s home, everything had changed. His parents were looking after his daughters for a few days, while he went around like a zombie, unable to sleep or eat. Beata and John refused to leave him for long; at the moment they were sitting on the terrace. Andrea was there too. It was as if they were seeking solace from each other. Håkan had poured strong mojitos for all of them. The alcohol helped – at least for the first few drinks.
‘The police came over to our place today. I’ve stopped counting how many times they’ve come to see us,’ sighed Beata. ‘I don’t know what they’re looking for any more. They ask the same questions, over and over.’
‘Well, what else can they do?’ said John. ‘If this was the United States, we’d all be sitting in jail.’
‘There are probably some people who think that’s where we belong,’ said Andrea tonelessly.
‘What do you mean?’ asked Beata.
Andrea shrugged. She took a big gulp of her drink and lit a cigarette.
‘I don’t know. But I bet some people think one of us is the murderer.’
‘You mean because people have been avoiding us? They probably just don’t know what to say,’ replied Håkan. ‘I feel that way myself.’
‘I think the majority opinion is the exact opposite,’ said Beata. ‘People have been talking to me, at any rate, but I suppose it’s not as sensitive an issue with me. I ran into Eva-Britt and Göran today. They hinted that there are rumours going around that Stina was the one who pushed Sam. And that’s why she’s staying away.’
‘Are they crazy?’ raged Håkan. ‘They think Stina would …? How can they possibly accuse her of something like that?’
Beata gave Håkan a searching look.
‘You shouldn’t think that everybody regards Stina as the sweetheart you think she is. Stina can actually be quite snobbish. And a lot of people think she’s been acting strangely lately. She has really retreated, not wanting to go for walks any more and turning down invitations to have dinner with the girls. She usually goes grocery shopping with Andrea, but she has stopped doing that too. Right?’ She turned to Andrea for support.
‘Yes, but there might be some other reason for that,’ said Andrea wearily. She was leaning back in her chair. Now she rubbed her forehead and closed her eyes. ‘Actually, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you, Håkan,’ she said suddenly.
‘What’s that?’ Håkan’s tone was aggressive, and he kept taking sips of his drink.
‘I’ve also noticed that Stina has changed. Quite drastically, as a matter of fact. How have things been between the two of you?’
‘What do you mean?’
Andrea opened her eyes and looked at him.
‘You always used to be so affectionate with each other. Really paying attention to each other. Holding hands and hugging. But I don’t recall you doing that sort of thing lately.’
‘In the past, Stina was always sitting on your lap,’ Beata added. ‘I haven’t seen her do that for at least a year.’
Håkan spat out his words. ‘There’s nothing wrong in our marriage. Things are great between Stina and me. Of course we have our ups and downs, just like everybody else. That’s how it goes when you’ve been together for a long time – you both know that as well as I do. And Stina and I have been faithful to each other, not sleeping with anyone else – unlike certain other people!’
The last remark was clearly aimed at Beata and John. It was well known that they had an open relationship when it came to sex.
‘Calm down, damn it,’ snapped John, joining the conversation for the first time. ‘Everyone makes their own choices about how to live. It’s none of your business.’
‘That’s OK as long as you stick to people outside of the immediate circle. And if you’re discreet about it. But that’s certainly not something I could ever accuse you of being. I’ve seen how you’ve tried to make a play for Stina. You’ve always been hot for her. We all know that. And I’m not even going to talk about you,’ Håkan screamed at Beata. ‘You’ll open your legs for anybody who’s got balls. It’s disgusting!’ He stood up furiously, downed his drink in one gulp, and stomped off into the house.
The others sat there as if turned to stone, holding their mojitos in their hands.
On the other side of the hedge, where the neighbours were having a dinner party, it was suddenly very, very quiet.
DURING THE AFTERNOON, the suspicion grew that Stina Ek was behind the murder of Sam Dahlberg. One of the crew members on the ferry thought he recognized her from the photos the police had shown him. He was almost positive that she had taken the Karlsö boat from Klintehamn on the evening before the others arrived on the island. He distinctly remembered that the rest of the group caught the nine-thirty boat on Sunday morning. The famous director Sam Dahlberg was with them, and that fact had not escaped notice. He was a well-known figure on the island.
At the same time that Knutas wanted to devote all his energies to the investigation, he was also struggling with personal problems. For one thing, he was concerned about Karin Jacobsson and her search for her daughter. Karin had been looking so pale lately, and she seemed even thinner than usual. He noticed that she was frequently lost in her own thoughts. He thought she was so lovely, and on a few occasions he had felt an inexplicable tension between them when they happened to be alone together outside of work. There was something, which he couldn’t understand or control. But he quickly dismissed the feeling. He’d been in love with Lina for so many years that his feelings for his wife overshadowed everything else that had to do with the opposite sex. It worried him that Karin often haunted his thoughts. That was so unlike him. He had to see to it that he and Lina spent more time together. They needed to find their way back to each other. When he suddenly recalled that she’d mentioned something about taking a trip with a girlfriend at the end of the summer, he felt an immediate urge to talk to her. They could do something together instead. Just the two of them. Impatiently he tapped in her number on his mobile. She picked up after it rang four rings, sounding just as happy and cheerful as usual. He found that reassuring.
‘Hi. What are you doing?’
‘I’m lying in the sun in the garden, feeling lazy. It’s such beautiful weather.’
Knutas looked out of the window. The summer was turning out to be marvellous after all the rain they’d had earlier in June.
‘Why don’t you come with me and the kids out to the country after we get back from Italy the third week of August?’
For several seconds there was only silence on the other end of the line. He could hear her breathing. What was she doing? Trying to think of something to say? Knutas felt his temper rising.
‘But, Anders, we’ve already discussed this. You know that I’m going on a trip with Maria to make the documentary.’
‘What documentary?’
‘Come on. I’ve told you all about it. We’re going to Cape Verde to do a report on childbirth. It’s for the book that Maria is writing.’
Knutas frowned. Cape Verde? Didn’t that sound awfully far away? An image of the football player Henke Larsson flashed through his mind. Wasn’t his father from there? Why on earth were they going there, of all places? He’d barely even heard of the country. At the same time Knutas remembered that Lina had told him something about the trip. But he hadn’t realized that the plans had been finalized.
‘Yes, but do you really have to go there during the summer holidays?’
‘Yes, we do. What’s so strange about that?’
‘And why do you have to be the one to help her with this book?’ he continued stubbornly. ‘Is she paying you anything?’
‘Cut it out. I don’t want to listen to this.’
When Lina got angry or upset, her Danish accent was stronger than usual.
‘But why do you have to go there in August
? Isn’t that the rainy season – loads of storms? Won’t it be miserable?’
‘Good God, Anders, we’re not off on holiday. We’re going to work, not lie on the beach. And by the way, I think the weather is good all year round. It’s in Africa, you know.’
‘But I still don’t understand why you have to go.’ Knutas couldn’t help hearing how plaintive he sounded.
Lina sighed.
‘Have you listened to anything I’ve said? The book is about childbirth in various parts of the world. I’m going along to help the author gather factual information and then make comparisons with the situation in Sweden. I’m really looking forward to the trip. End of discussion. Bye.’
She cut off the conversation with a click that echoed in his ears.
EARLY MORNING. HE parked over by the gardener’s shed and set off on foot. The asphalt under the soles of his shoes was level and dry. His footsteps made no sound and left no prints. He was wearing shorts and a T-shirt, exactly like 90 per cent of the men who lived in the area. In a few hours they would wake in their comfortable beds and get up to have coffee. Then they would sit under the apple trees in the well-kept gardens or on the verandas that they’d built themselves. Everyone had seen enough of Martin Timell or Ernst Kirchsteiger promoting home carpentry projects on TV. They’re the manly role models who reign in a place like this, he thought with a snort. The people were entrenched in their lives here. The cars were parked in the drives with the morning sun reflecting off the windscreens. He passed house after house, noting that the people who lived there were either asleep or away. It was the summer holidays, after all. But for him no such concept existed. For him, the time of year didn’t matter; he lived outside the normal world. He’d left it behind long ago, although no one could tell just by looking at him.
The house was at the very end of the street, near the little turning circle. A double garage, a gravel path that led to the somewhat ostentatious entrance with the pillars on either side and curving steps. Blue-painted clay pots planted with flowers that draped perfectly over the sides. A neatly mown lawn. First he merely walked past the house, pretending not to show any interest. A car was parked in the drive. A newspaper was sticking out of the letterbox. So the newspaper boy had already been there. Good. Nice and quiet. He glanced at his watch. Six fifteen. He took a quick look around before he slipped unnoticed on to the well-maintained property and crept around the corner of the house to the back, which faced the woods. Swiftly he surveyed the garden. A greenhouse that occupied the middle of the lawn revealed that football was not a priority here, but a trampoline stood in the far corner. A shed for gardening equipment, a covered bicycle rack, a group of patio furniture on the lawn, with more chairs up on the deck.
A low wooden fence surrounded the property, easy to climb over. He cautiously stepped on to the deck. It creaked loudly under his feet. At one end of the house a trellis had been put up to keep anyone from looking in. No neighbours from that direction would be able to see him. And, fortunately, the family that lived on the other side seemed to be away. There hadn’t been a car in the drive for several days. He would not be disturbed.
He moved forward and grasped the handle of the deck door. Locked, of course. He hadn’t expected anything different. He peered inside. The kitchen was modern and typically designed with an open floor plan facing the living room. The refrigerator and freezer and cooker hood were all made of stainless steel. Tiles on the floor. Shiny white kitchen cupboards. Hardly anything on the counters except for a gleaming coffee maker, kettle and mixer. No curtains or rugs; everything bright and shiny. Attractive but impersonal. Almost like in a furniture shop. Did these people spend as much time cleaning up after themselves as they did living? He discovered that he was breathing so hard on the windowpane that it had clouded up. He knew exactly what he had to do. He took off his backpack and got out his gloves and picklocks.
Then he set to work.
Ventspils, Latvia
THE DARKNESS OF night had faded, giving way to a hesitant morning light. A haze covered the sun. Janis Ullmanis was cycling as fast as he could over the bumpy cobblestone street lined with low, dilapidated brick houses on either side. The cramped inner courtyards were hidden behind tall wooden fences. The boy stopped so abruptly at the last house that his tyres shrieked. Then he knocked on the double window on the corner. The secret signal. Three quick raps, two slow, again three quick ones. He waited for thirty seconds as he caught his breath, then he repeated the same sequence. He’d barely finished the final rap before the door in the fence opened with a loud squeak. A pale boy’s face appeared. Two dark eyes under close-cropped hair. Bruno Lesinski was Janis’s best friend, and they were in the same class at school. But right now it was the summer holidays, with all that entailed, and school seemed far away.
‘Are you ready?’ asked Janis.
Bruno held his index finger to his lips and whispered, ‘Shh. My mother is such a light sleeper.’ Then he cast a glance over his shoulder before grabbing his bicycle, which was parked just inside the fence.
The next second they were on their way. They pedalled hard, riding along side by side since there were no cars on the road. Two skinny thirteen-year-olds with scraped knees, filled with anticipation. They’d fastened their nets and buckets to the bike panniers. They headed to the shore just beyond the harbour. But it wasn’t fish that they were going to catch.
Ventspils was a rundown little town about 160 kilometres west of the capital of Riga, but its harbour was one of the biggest in Latvia. It was considerably oversized in comparison to the modest town with only fifty thousand inhabitants, but it was strategically located, close to both Sweden and Finland and right on the mouth of the Venta River, in the direct path of the Russian natural-gas pipeline. For that reason it had expanded rapidly and become one of the largest ports on the Baltic Sea. The town hadn’t kept up with its growth.
The boys passed the two piers that extended into the outer harbour like protective arms, breaking the waves and embracing visitors from the sea. At the end of each pier stood a lighthouse guarding the entrance. To the south a promenade had been built and it was very popular because it also provided a vantage point with an impressive view. At the moment nobody was there.
The long sandy beach began just beyond the south pier and stretched for several kilometres. The sand was coarse and the water quite murky. Rubbish was scattered about: ice-cream wrappers, plastic bottles and pieces of rusty old junk. But it was still a popular place for people to sunbathe in the summertime. The people who lived in Ventspils were not very particular.
When the boys reached the beach, they found it deserted except for a few seagulls strutting about in search of something to eat. The strong winds of the night had subsided, and the hesitant rays of the sun were growing stronger. It was just past seven o’clock, and the fishing boats that were usually moored at the dock had already gone out to sea.
Janis and Bruno knew that they had to get an early start if they were to have any luck at all. A few days earlier a woman from the area had found a piece of amber that weighed over a kilo at this very spot on the beach. And interest in looking for the amber had increased considerably.
They flung their bicycles down on the sand, picked up their buckets and nets, and squelched along the water’s edge in their ungainly sea boots. Sometimes it was possible to find several hectograms of amber in one day after a strong wind. The amber was torn away from the sea floor or seaweed and tossed on to shore by the surging waves.
Eagerly the two boys searched the beach. Hunched over and with their eyes fixed on the ground, they scanned the shore, centimetre by centimetre. Every once in a while they talked about how they would spend the money they were going to get for the amber. If they were lucky.
A little later Bruno called to Janis, who assumed that he must have found some amber. He turned around expectantly to look at his friend, who had stopped some distance away. Bruno was pointing out towards the water.
‘Look at that!�
� he yelled.
An empty rowing boat was bobbing on the waves. It looked old and leaky, with a rusty motor at the stern. The rowlocks were empty. It had obviously been drifting about, probably after the high winds of the night had torn it from its mooring.
‘Let’s bring it in,’ suggested Bruno. ‘Maybe we can keep it.’
‘It’d be great to have our own boat! Then we could go out fishing and put out nets,’ exclaimed Janis. He pictured the two of them setting out to sea. If they were lucky, nobody would lay claim to the boat. It had probably come from far away, drifting out of Riga Bay and continuing south along the coast. It looked so decrepit that the owner might not make much of an effort to track it down.
Bruno waded out into the water until it reached way over the tops of his boots. He reached for the prow and pulled on the boat. Janis hurried forward to help, but then stopped abruptly. Bruno heard his friend breathing hard.
In the bottom of the boat lay a gaunt old man, curled up in a foetal position. He was wearing a dark-blue woollen pullover and black trousers. His head was half hidden under one arm, but it was clear that he was badly injured. A huge gash was visible on his forehead, crusted with blood.
The man wasn’t moving.
DETECTIVE INSPECTOR MARTIN Kihlgård of the National Criminal Police arrived early the following morning. Kihlgård had assisted the Visby police on several previous occasions, and it was obvious from the reception he received at police headquarters that he was more than welcome. Everyone seemed aware that the boisterous and popular colleague from Stockholm had arrived, because more and more people poured out of their offices to greet him. Knutas couldn’t help being impressed by the sheer number of friendships that Kihlgård had managed to make among the police during the time he’d spent on Gotland. He seemed to know more people than Knutas did, which was admittedly a bit annoying. He’d always felt slightly competitive towards Kihlgård, even though he tried to hide it. He actually found the effusive welcome rather pathetic, since it was exactly what was expected whenever NCP officers arrived in an out-of-the-way town to offer assistance. In spite of the island’s sixty thousand inhabitants, their district was small potatoes compared to Stockholm. But there was no denying that Kihlgård was a nice guy. In addition to his fun-loving personality and good humour, he was energetic, tenacious and fearless. He also possessed a sensitivity and empathy for others that he put to good use in his job as police interrogator. One of Kihlgård’s most distinguishing traits was his tremendous love of food. There was never any risk of too much time passing between meals whenever he was around. Knutas noted that a large basket of fresh cinnamon rolls had been ordered for their usual morning coffee, just so that Kihlgård would feel at home.
The Double Silence (Andas Knutas 7) Page 14