The Double Silence (Andas Knutas 7)

by Mari Jungstedt

  ‘Swearing again.’ Kihlgård gave Jacobsson an admonishing look.

  She pretended not to hear him. What was his problem? He was turning into a regular language cop.

  ‘The question is: What does this mean for the murder investigation?’ Jacobsson went on.

  ‘Maybe some of them kept playing the sex games,’ suggested Wittberg. ‘Maybe they simply couldn’t resist.’

  Jacobsson noticed that he seemed delighted by the idea. Wittberg had undoubtedly conjured up a whole bunch of interesting images in his mind.

  ‘Sure, that’s one possibility. Maybe it was Sam and Stina out there near Svaidestugan. He could have borrowed his wife’s car.’

  ‘But who would want to kill them because of that?’ Kihlgård objected. ‘It would have to be one of their spouses, either Håkan or Andrea.’

  ‘What about the other two?’ asked Wittberg. ‘The couple that moved away and were part of the group for only a short period? Apparently that was during the period of time in question. And there was something odd about that. Why were they admitted to the group so easily when other people are rarely let in? And why did they disappear after attending those sex parties? Seems fishy, don’t you think?’

  ‘Definitely. Could you try to track them down? I don’t know what their last name is, or where they live now, but someone in the group must be able to tell us.’

  ‘One possibility is that Stina and Sam continued the sex games with that couple, and then something happened to make them quit. Or one of them, at least. They lived in the neighbourhood for only a short time, so they couldn’t have got to know each other very well. Maybe they were a couple of lunatics.’

  ‘But the others should have known if something like that happened,’ Kihlgård interjected. ‘At least Håkan and Andrea should have known. But they both claimed over and over that they had very happy marriages – which almost makes me suspicious.’

  ‘Exactly,’ murmured Jacobsson. ‘I’ve felt from the beginning that there was something wrong with that whole “one big happy family” idea. I sensed something desperate about all of them. They seemed to be hiding something. And now we know. Sex parties. Bloody hell.’

  ‘You’re swearing again,’ said Kihlgård.

  Jacobsson gave him a furious look. At that moment her mobile rang. Since she saw that the call was from the ME, she answered.

  ‘Hi, am I interrupting anything?’

  ‘We’re in a meeting, but that’s OK.’

  ‘Well, I wanted to call you because we just finished the post-mortem on Stina Ek, and I assume that you’d like to know about this at once.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Stina Ek was pregnant. About three months along.’

  KNUTAS WAS STARTING to get impatient. The doctor had insisted that he take sick leave for another week, even though he was feeling perfectly fine. When it came to the murder investigation, Jacobsson had been keeping him updated, but over the weekend he hadn’t heard a thing. She had sounded strange on the phone when he talked to her at the end of the previous week, but she hadn’t wanted to discuss it when he asked what was wrong. ‘We’ll talk about it later,’ she’d simply said. ‘After you get back.’ Right now there was nowhere he’d rather be than back on the job. In the meantime he’d been doing his own investigative work. It helped to quell the impatience and he was hoping that it might prove useful.

  At the heart of the whole case was the group of friends from Terra Nova, and that ought to be the starting point for the police investigation. It had all started when they went on holiday. Now two of them were not only dead, they had been murdered. And apparently the deaths had occurred only a couple of days apart. In Knutas’s opinion, there were two possible avenues to take. Either they started by digging into the past of these people, going way back in time; or they followed their footsteps very closely, trying to find out every nano-event that had taken place during that brief trip to Fårö and Stora Karlsö. Knutas had realized that the easiest thing for him to do was to start by finding out everything he could about the past of these friends.

  He’d been working on the case all weekend. By now he had separate piles of printouts detailing the story of each individual. On top of each stack was a photo of the person. It was a very tidy collection. He’d concluded that no one could be described as average in this circle of friends, in terms of either appearance or background. He’d started by looking at their family relationships, their jobs and education, as well as memberships of any associations. He already knew that none of them had any debts or financial problems, and none of them had ever been convicted of a crime.

  Yet he had managed to uncover a few secrets. His eyes fell on the oldest member of the group: Håkan Ek. He seemed to be the one to worry about: he had the messiest past. This conclusion was reinforced by the fact that he’d been married three times and had children with three different women. He’d moved a lot during his life and had never lived very long in any one place. The exception was when he settled in Terra Nova with Stina. Then it seemed as if he’d finally found his home. He’d lived there fifteen years and had held the same job even longer; his colleagues had nothing but praise for him. Maybe he and Stina were two lost souls who had finally found each other.

  His gaze moved to Stina. He felt a pang in his heart when he looked at the picture of the young woman smiling so warmly at the camera. She was truly charming, thought Knutas. She reminded him of Karin because of her petite size. And she had that soft, feminine side that Karin was so good at concealing. Knutas had the feeling that Stina had been something of a loner who went her own way, choosing to remain more or less on the sidelines. In that sense she was also like Karin.

  And then there was Sam Dahlberg. The director had made his breakthrough five years ago with a film that attracted a great deal of attention. But after that, nothing. Only now had he started shooting another feature film. Dahlberg had studied at drama school and then done an internship with Swedish TV. After that he’d spent several years working as an assistant for one of the great directors, Bo Widerberg. Sam didn’t seem to have had any major difficulties in life. He came from a culturally involved family in Visby. His mother was a librarian, and his father ran the Roxy Cinema in town. Maybe that was where Sam had got his interest in film. When he was a little boy, he started going to work with his father, helping out at the cinema. He had grown up with movies. Both of Sam’s parents were still alive, and he had two sisters. He seemed to have had strong ties to his family. What a tragedy for them to see their son fall victim to a murderer, thought Knutas.

  Then he moved on to Beata and John.

  John had left the United States with Beata, who was a native Gotlander from a stable middle-class family in Klintehamn. After a brief modelling career in New York and Los Angeles, she had met John Dunmar, a bartender from San Diego, who fell head over heels in love with the beautiful Swede. Beata soon became pregnant, and they decided to settle down in Sweden. John received both a residence and a work permit relatively quickly, and he learned Swedish so well that after only a year he was able to open his own bar in Visby. His business was thriving, and he was well liked by his colleagues and customers. Beata continued to work in the fashion world, as the buyer for a large clothing company. They’d had three children in quick succession and were the happy, proud owners of one of the biggest houses in Terra Nova. Knutas had found nothing noteworthy about them whatsoever.

  Finally he came to Andrea. Without a doubt, she was the most complex and interesting of the lot. She was also the one who seemed to have the most secrets. Knutas studied the picture of the dark-haired woman with the sharply etched features. Her expression was inscrutable, impossible to interpret.

  Knutas needed to get in touch with Jacobsson.

  But before he picked up the phone, he leaned back and read through all the material one more time.

  THE POLICE HAD gone to Andrea Dahlberg’s home, but she was away, visiting her children who were staying with their grandparents in the Stockholm a
rchipelago. They had gone on a sailing expedition, and no one knew exactly where they were at the moment. The police got hold of a cousin who said that they’d planned to be away at least a week, and it would be hard to track them down.

  Jacobsson tried numerous times to get through on the mobiles belonging to various family members, but without success.

  Then she discovered that she had missed several calls from Knutas. She tried to ring him, but the line was busy. Oh well, it could wait. Right now she was fully occupied with the investigation, looking into this whole business about the swinger parties and what the significance might be. In addition, there was the discovery that Stina Ek had been pregnant, in her third month. DNA samples had been sent to the lab to determine who the father was, but Jacobsson was not at all convinced it was Håkan.

  The first person they managed to get hold of was Beata, and half an hour later the woman was sitting in an interrogation room at police headquarters. Her red hair was swept up in a loose knot on top of her head, with decorative ringlets framing her face. She was casually dressed in a denim skirt and an especially low-cut T-shirt. She looked self-conscious as she sat at the table across from Jacobsson.

  ‘Why am I here again? You’ve already questioned me numerous times. I was in the middle of baking. We’re having a big family party tomorrow.’

  ‘I’m sorry we had to interrupt your housewifely duties,’ said Jacobsson without a trace of sympathy.

  Beata Dunmar pursed her lips.

  ‘You’ve been asked to come here because some new information has come to light in the case, and we want to talk to you about it. We’ve learned that you and your group of friends have held swinger parties. Is that right?’

  Beata opened her eyes wide. She stared at Jacobsson for a long time, apparently feverishly trying to work out how to respond to what she’d just heard.

  Jacobsson remained silent, her eyes fixed on Beata, waiting for her to say something.

  ‘What do you mean?’ she finally managed.

  ‘Exactly what I said. We’ve heard that you and your friends have held swinger parties. You, John, Stina, Håkan, Sam and Andrea, along with another couple who moved away from the area. Sten and Monica.’

  Beata seemed to realize that the game was up. It would do her no good to deny the claim. She stared in shame at the table as she answered.

  ‘That’s true,’ she said in a low voice. ‘But only a few times.’

  ‘How many times exactly?’

  ‘Three.’

  ‘What happened during these parties?’

  Beata fidgeted a bit before replying.

  ‘The first time it started out as an ordinary party at Sam and Andrea’s house. Their children weren’t home, so we had the place to ourselves. We drank an awful lot of wine at dinner and everyone got very drunk. We went on drinking afterwards as we sat in front of their big fireplace in the living room. They have big, comfy sofas and armchairs, and we ended up sprawled all over them. Somebody started talking about a film they’d seen. I think it was Ice Storm. It took place in an American suburb, rather like our own, with educated and established people who knew each other well, much as we do. They held parties where they put their house keys in a bowl in the hall when they arrived. Later, after dinner, all the women would take out a set of keys and go home and have sex with the man whose keys they’d chosen. They had worked out some sort of system so that nobody would ever get her own husband.’

  ‘I see. So what happened then?’

  ‘First we joked about it. What if we did the same thing? Then someone started teasing John because he’s American. Saying things like: Is that how you do things where you’re from? And John jumped in and said that he’d always had the hots for Stina and wouldn’t mind exchanging keys with her. At first we were all a little shocked, but at the same time there was an excitement in the air, because it was obvious that he really meant what he’d said.’

  ‘And how did you react to that?’

  ‘I pretended this was news to me, even though I’d noticed it long before. He tried to hide it, but it was perfectly clear that he thought Stina was super sexy. Whenever we had a party, he would always dance with her. Preferably all night long.’

  ‘What did you think about that?’

  ‘It didn’t really bother me. John and I have an open marriage. We’ve agreed that we can have sex with other people as long as we don’t expose each other to any diseases or feel compelled to report on our escapades. Neither of us believes in the illusion that people can stay together for a whole lifetime without being attracted to anyone else. And why shouldn’t a person be allowed to act on his or her desires? We’ve got only one life, at least as far as we know. Why should you have to deny yourself a lot of pleasurable experiences? For whose sake? For what reason? Because of an unrealistic, romantic and naive notion that there’s only one love in your life? Neither of us believes in that sort of shit.’

  ‘So you thought it was OK for John to have sex with Stina?’

  ‘Yes. I would like to have been there, sitting in a corner of the room. I’ve often fantasized about making love to a woman.’

  Jacobsson took a sip of water. She knew that Wittberg, sitting at the back of the room in his role as witness to the interview, was thoroughly enjoying this unexpected turn in the questioning. He also probably found it terribly amusing that Jacobsson was the one conducting the interview. He’d always accused her of being a prude.

  ‘Let’s go back to that first evening. What happened?’

  ‘Well, after John said that about Stina, the mood changed. There was an unusual tension in the air. You could see by the way everyone was moving about that they weren’t averse to the idea of experimenting, so to speak. Then Stina did something incredibly surprising.’

  ‘What did she do?’

  ‘She asked John what he thought was so sexy about her.’

  Without being aware of what she was doing, Jacobsson leaned closer.

  ‘He told her that it was mainly her breasts. They were so different from mine. Small and pointed. Then Stina went a step further. She got up, went over to John, and unbuttoned her blouse. Everyone was so surprised that they didn’t say a word. Håkan sat there, stunned. John stroked her breasts and that’s when it really got started. New pairs formed, and little by little one couple after the other disappeared. I ended up with Sam in their bedroom upstairs.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Jacobsson, taking another sip of water.

  ‘We had great sex, Sam and I. I’ve always found him bloody attractive. When we were done, we joked about the whole thing. It was a wonderful feeling, very natural, at least between the two of us. Then I went home, but John wasn’t there. I fell asleep, and in the morning he was lying in bed next to me. We didn’t talk about it. As I said, we have an unwritten rule not to discuss our sexual adventures, so we didn’t in this case either, even though we both knew what had happened. I think we wanted to protect each other. No one wants to hear that his or her partner has had amazing sex with somebody else. Even we draw the line there.’

  ‘So what happened when you met the others again?’

  ‘It was still exciting. Everyone seemed a bit on edge, as if we were all just waiting for the next party.’

  ‘And what happened then? The next time you had a party?’

  ‘Everybody drank more than usual, as if to avoid taking responsibility. And since the boundaries had already been breached, things moved faster than before. We were at Sten and Monica’s house.’

  ‘Why did you stop having these parties?’

  ‘The third time we were again at Sten and Monica’s house, and it was very clear that Sten only wanted to be with Andrea. He was after her right from the start, as if he took it for granted that they would have sex later on. At the first two parties, everybody had gone through the motions in the beginning. We had aperitifs and dinner and carried on conversations, putting on a good show until everyone was sufficiently drunk to lose their inhibitions. But that night Sten showed an i
nterest in Andrea right from the start, kissing her and stroking her thigh and making sexual references throughout dinner. I could tell that Monica was getting really annoyed because he wasn’t following the rules of the game.’

  ‘What about Andrea? How did she react?’

  ‘She seemed flattered, laughing and flirting with him as if it were the most natural thing in the world.’

  ‘So they both went too far? Is that it?’

  ‘Yes, you could say that, even though I didn’t think Sam cared very much.’

  ‘What happened then?’

  ‘Well, after dinner everyone helped to clear the table, so there was a lot of commotion. A few people went outside to have a smoke; some stood around talking and drinking wine. And suddenly we noticed that Andrea and Sten had gone.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘The laundry room was right next to the kitchen, and I remember standing in the hallway between the kitchen and the living room, and suddenly I heard somebody screaming. It was Monica. She had opened the laundry-room door and found Andrea and Sten going at it.’

  ‘So they’d jumped the gun, so to speak?’

  ‘Yes, and Monica was furious. Obviously this was too much for her, and she really flipped out. She started punching both of them, hitting and biting and acting like a crazy woman. By that time she’d had a lot to drink. I remember noticing her guzzling down the wine all evening. She was probably cross about how Sten had been behaving ever since Andrea arrived, so when she caught them, she went out of her mind. I’ve never seen anybody get so hysterical.’

  ‘What did the rest of you do?’

  ‘At first everyone was totally shocked, and it took a few minutes before we fully grasped what was going on. Monica was a tall, stout woman, so it wasn’t easy to overpower her. I know that Håkan and John and Sam had to work hard to get her out of there. They were forced to wrestle her to the ground. The rest of us stayed out of their way. I don’t really know how it all ended.’