The Ice Princess

‘What time did you say you talked to her?’ Mellberg directed his question at Birgit.

‘Well, I’m not quite sure.’ She thought for a moment. ‘Sometime after seven. About quarter past, or seven-thirty, I think. We spoke briefly because Alex said she had a visitor.’ Birgit blanched. ‘Could it have been …?’

Mellberg nodded solemnly. ‘Entirely possible, Mrs Carlgren. But it’s our job to find out, and I can assure you that we will put all our resources on the case. In our line of work the elimination of suspects is one of our primary tasks, so please write up an account of Friday evening.’

‘Do you want me to provide an alibi too?’ Erica asked.

‘I don’t think that will be necessary. But we would like you to tell us everything you saw when you were inside the house, the day you discovered her. You can leave your written accounts with Assistant Hedström.’

Everyone turned to look at Patrik, and he nodded in agreement. They began to get up.

‘A tragic event, this. Particularly in view of the child.’

They all turned their eyes to Mellberg.

‘The child?’ Quizzically, Birgit looked from Mellberg to Henrik and back.

‘Yes, she was in the third month of pregnancy according to the medical examiner. Surely this can’t have been a surprise to you, could it?’

Mellberg grinned and winked roguishly at Henrik. Patrik was utterly appalled by his boss’s tactless behaviour.

Henrik’s face slowly lost all colour until it looked like white marble. Birgit turned to stare at him in astonishment. Erica felt as if she were petrified.

‘Were you two going to have a child? Why didn’t you tell me? Oh, God.’

Birgit pressed her handkerchief to her mouth and sobbed uncontrollably, without a thought for the mascara that now ran in rivulets down her cheeks. Henrik again put a protective arm around her, but over Birgit’s head he met Patrik’s gaze. It was obvious that he hadn’t had a clue that Alexandra was pregnant. Judging by Erica’s hopeless expression, however, it was clear that she did know.

‘We’ll talk about this when we get home, Birgit,’ said Henrik. He turned to Patrik. ‘I’ll see to it that you receive written accounts about Friday evening. I suppose you’ll probably want to interview us in more detail once you have them.’

Patrik nodded affirmatively. He raised his eyebrows to give Erica a questioning look.

‘Henrik, I’ll be right there,’ she said. ‘I just have to speak with Patrik for a moment. We’re old friends.’

She lingered in the corridor as Henrik led Birgit out to the car.

‘Imagine running into you here. That was a surprise,’ said Patrik. He rocked nervously back and forth on his heels.

‘Yes, if I’d thought about it I would have remembered that you work here, of course.’

She was twisting the handle of her purse between her fingers and looking at him with her head cocked a little to one side. All her small gestures were so familiar to him.

‘It’s been a long time. I’m sorry I couldn’t come to the funeral. How are you coping, you and Anna?’

Despite her height she looked small all of a sudden, and he resisted the urge to caress her cheek.

‘We’re doing all right. Anna drove home right after the funeral, but I’ve been here a couple of weeks now, trying to clean up the house. It’s not easy.’

‘I heard that a woman in Fjällbacka had discovered the victim, but I had no idea it was you. That must have been horrible. The two of you were friends when you were kids, weren’t you?’

‘Yes. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to erase that sight from my mind. Well, I have to run now, they’re waiting for me in the car. Maybe we could get together sometime. I’m going to be here in Fjällbacka for a while yet.’

She was already on her way down the hall.

‘How about dinner, Saturday night?’ he said. ‘At my house, eight o’clock? I’m in the book.’

‘Sure, that sounds nice. See you at eight, then.’ She backed out through the door.

As soon as she was out of sight he did a little improvised dance in the corridor, to the great astonishment of his colleagues. But his joy was spoiled a bit when he realized how much work it would take to get his house in presentable shape. After Karin left him, he hadn’t really felt like dealing with the housework.

He and Erica had known each other since birth. Their mothers had been best friends since childhood and were as close as two sisters. Patrik and Erica played together a lot when they were small, and it was no exaggeration to say that Erica was his first love. In fact, he believed he was born in love with Erica. There had always been such a natural quality about his feelings for her. As far as Erica was concerned, she had merely taken his puppy-like admiration for granted. Not until she moved to Göteborg did he realize that it was time to put his dreams on the shelf. He had fallen in love with others since then, of course. And when he married Karin he was utterly convinced that they would grow old together, but Erica was always in the back of his mind. Sometimes months would pass without thinking about her; sometimes he thought about her several times a day.

The piles of paper had not been miraculously reduced while he was gone. With a deep sigh he sat down at his desk and picked up the page on top. The work was monotonous enough that he could ponder the menu for Saturday at the same time. Dessert, in any case, was already decided. Erica had always loved ice cream.

He awoke with a nasty taste in his mouth. It had been a real blow-out yesterday. His buddies had come over in the afternoon and together they had kept drinking until the small hours. A vague memory of the police stopping by at some point last night hovered just beyond his reach. He tried to sit up but the whole room spun around and he decided to stay where he was for a while.

His right hand was aching, and he raised it toward the ceiling to look at it. The knuckles were severely scraped and full of coagulated blood. Damn, there must have been a bit of a dust-up last night, that’s why the cops showed up. More and more of his memory began to return. It was the guys who had brought up the subject of the suicide. One of them had started talking a bunch of shit about Alex. ‘Upper-class bitch’, and ‘society cunt’ were words he had used about her. Anders had short-circuited, and after that he remembered only a red haze of rage as he started bashing the guy in a drunken fury. Sure, he had called her a few names himself when he was most furious at her betrayal. But that wasn’t the same thing. The others didn’t know her. He was the only one who had the right to judge her.

The telephone rang with a shrill sound. He tried to ignore it but decided it was less bothersome to get up and answer the phone than to let the noise keep slicing into his brain.

‘Yes, this is Anders.’ He was slurring his words.

‘Hi, it’s Mamma. How are you doing?’

‘I feel like shit.’ He slid down the wall to sit on the floor. ‘What the hell time is it?’

‘It’s almost four in the afternoon. Did I wake you?’

‘Nope.’ His head felt disproportionately large and kept threatening to fall down between his knees.

‘I was in town shopping earlier. There’s a lot of talk about something that I want you to know about. Are you listening?’

‘Yeah, damn it, I’m listening.’

‘Apparently Alex didn’t commit suicide. She was murdered. I just wanted you to know.’

Silence.

‘Anders, hello? Did you hear what I said?’

‘Yeah, sure, I heard you. What did you say? Was Alex … murdered?’

‘Yes, that’s what they’re saying in town, anyway. Apparently Birgit was down at Tanumshede police station and got the news today.’

‘Oh, shit. Look, Mamma, I’ve got a lot to do. We’ll talk later.’

‘Anders? Anders?’

He had already hung up.

With an enormous effort he showered and got dressed. After taking two Tylenols he felt more like a human being. The vodka bottle in the kitchen tried to tempt him, but he refused to give in. He had to be sober right now. Well, relatively sober, at least.

The phone rang again. He ignored it. Instead he took a phone book out of the cabinet in the hall and quickly found the number he was looking for. His hands were shaking as he punched in the number. It seemed to ring a hundred times.

‘Hi, it’s Anders,’ he said when the receiver on the other end was finally picked up. ‘No, don’t hang up, damn it. We have to talk … well, you don’t have that much of a fucking choice, I have to tell you … I’ll be at your place in fifteen minutes. And you’d better fucking be there … I don’t give a shit who else is there, fuck it! Don’t forget who has the most to lose here … That’s bullshit. I’m going now. See you in fifteen minutes.’

Anders slammed down the receiver. After taking a couple of deep breaths, he pulled on his jacket and went out. He didn’t bother to lock the door. The phone in the flat started ringing furiously again.

Erica was exhausted when she got back to the house. There was a strained silence in the car during the trip home, and Erica understood that Henrik was facing a difficult choice. Should he tell Birgit that he wasn’t the father of Alexandra’s child, or should he keep quiet and hope that it didn’t come out during the investigation? Erica didn’t envy him and couldn’t say how she would have acted in his situation. The truth wasn’t always the best solution.

It was already getting dark, and she was grateful that her father had put in outdoor lamps that turned on automatically when anyone approached the house. She had always been terribly afraid of the dark. When she was little, she thought it was something she would grow out of, because adults couldn’t be afraid of the dark, could they? But she was thirty-five years old, and she still looked under the bed to make sure that nothing was lurking there in the dark. How pathetic.

When she had turned on all the lights in the house, she poured herself a big glass of red wine and curled up on the wicker sofa on the veranda. The darkness was impenetrable, but she still stared straight ahead, though with unseeing eyes. She felt lonely. There were so many people grieving for Alex, people who had been affected by her death. But Erica had only Anna now. Sometimes she wondered whether even Anna would miss her.

She and Alex had been so close as girls. When Alex began to withdraw, and finally disappeared completely when she moved, it felt as though the world had ended for Erica. Alex was the only person she’d had to herself, and except for her father the only one who really cared about her.

Erica put her glass of red wine down on the table so forcefully that she almost broke the base off the glass. She felt altogether too restless to sit still. She had to do something. It was no use to pretend that Alex’s death had not affected her deeply. What bothered her most of all was that the image of Alex conveyed by family and friends did not jibe at all with the Alex she had known. Even if people change on the path from childhood to adulthood, there is still a core of personality that remains intact. The Alex they had described to her was a complete stranger.

She got up and put on her coat again. Her car keys were in her pocket, and at the last moment she took a pocket torch and stuffed it into the other pocket of her coat.

The house at the top of the hill looked deserted in the violet light from the street-lamp. Erica parked the car in the car park behind the school. She didn’t want anyone to see her going into the house.

The bushes on the property offered a welcome cover as she cautiously sneaked up to the veranda. She hoped their old habits persisted and raised the doormat. There was the spare key to the house, hidden in exactly the same place as twenty-five years ago. The door creaked a little when she opened it, but she hoped that none of the neighbours had heard anything.

It was eerie stepping into the shadowy house. Her fear of the dark made it hard for her to breathe, and she forced herself to take some deep breaths to calm her nerves. She thankfully remembered the torch in her coat pocket and said a silent prayer that the batteries were good. They were. The light from the torch made her feel a bit calmer.

She played the beam of light over the living room on the first floor. She didn’t know what she was looking for here in the house. She hoped that no neighbour or passer-by would see the light and call the police.

The room was lovely and airy, but Erica noticed that the brown and orange seventies furniture that she remembered from her childhood had been replaced by light pieces of clean-lined Scandinavian design, made of birch. She understood that Alex had set her mark on the house. Everything was in perfect order, which created a desolate impression. There wasn’t a single crease on the sofa or even a magazine laid out on the coffee table. She saw nothing that seemed worth examining more closely.

She recalled that the kitchen lay beyond the living room. It was big and roomy and immaculate, disturbed only by a lone coffee cup in the dish rack. Erica returned to the living room and went upstairs. She turned right at the top of the stairs and entered the master bedroom. Erica remembered it as Alex’s parents’ bedroom, but now it was obviously Alex and Henrik’s room. It, too, was tastefully decorated but with a more exotic flavour. The fabrics were chocolate-brown and magenta, and there were African wooden masks on the walls. The room was spacious with a high ceiling, which allowed a large chandelier to hang properly. Alexandra had apparently resisted the temptation to decorate her house from top to bottom with marine details, something that was common in the houses of summer residents. Everything from curtains adorned with shells to paintings of complicated knots sold like hotcakes in the small summertime shops in Fjällbacka.

Unlike the other rooms that Erica looked in, the bedroom seemed lived-in. Small personal items lay scattered here and there. On the night-stand lay a pair of glasses and a book of poems by Gustaf Fröding. A pair of stockings were flung on the floor and some jumpers were laid out on the bedspread. This was the first time Erica felt that Alex really had lived in this house.

Erica began cautiously looking through drawers and cabinets. She still didn’t know what she was searching for and felt like a voyeur as she rummaged among Alex’s lovely silk underwear. But just as she decided to move on to the next drawer she heard something rustle on the bottom.

All of a sudden she paused with her hand full of lace-trimmed panties and bras. She clearly heard a sound from downstairs through the stillness in the house. A door being carefully opened and closed. Erica looked all around her in panic. The only hiding places in the room were under the bed or in one of the wardrobes covering one wall. All at once she felt claustrophobic. She couldn’t move until she heard footsteps on the stairs; instinctively she crept over to the closest wardrobe. The door opened without a creak, thank God, and she quickly climbed in among the clothes and closed the door behind her. She had no chance to see who had entered the house, but she could clearly hear footsteps coming closer and closer. The person stopped for a moment outside the bedroom door before coming in. She suddenly realized that she was holding something in her hand. Without thinking she had grabbed whatever it was that rustled in the drawer. She cautiously put it in her jacket pocket.

She scarcely dared breathe. Her nose started to itch and she desperately tried to wiggle it to relieve the problem. She was in luck; it stopped.

The intruder was searching the bedroom. It sounded as if he or she were doing about the same thing Erica was doing before she was interrupted. Drawers were pulled out, and Erica knew that the wardrobes were next. Her panic rose. Beads of sweat formed on her brow. What could she do? The only solution she saw was to squeeze as far back behind the clothes as possible. She was lucky to have stepped into a wardrobe with several long coats in it, and she cautiously squeezed in amongst them and draped them in front of her. She hoped the two ankles sticking out of a pair of shoes on the floor wouldn’t be noticed.

It took a while for the person to go through the bureau. She inhaled a musty smell of mothballs, sincerely hoping they had done their job so that no bugs were creeping around here in the dark. She also hoped that it wasn’t Alex’s killer out there, only a few metres away. But who else would have reason to sneak around in Alex’s house, thought Erica, choosing to ignore the fact that she had no written invitation either.

All at once the door to the wardrobe was opened and Erica felt a gust of fresh air against the exposed skin of her ankles. She held her breath.

The wardrobe didn’t seem to be hiding any secrets or valuables – at least not for the person who was doing the searching – and the door was closed again almost at once. The other doors were opened and closed just as quickly, and the next moment she heard the footsteps going out the bedroom door and down the stairs. She didn’t dare step out of the wardrobe until a good while after she heard the front door carefully closing. It was wonderful to be able to breathe at last without being acutely conscious of each breath.

The room looked the same as when Erica came in. Whoever the visitor was, the search had been careful and had left no traces. Erica was fairly convinced that it wasn’t a burglar. She took a closer look at the wardrobe she had hidden inside. When she retreated to the far corner she had felt something hard pressing against the back of her calves. She swept aside the clothes and saw that what she had felt was a large canvas. It stood with the back facing her. She lifted it out carefully and turned it round. It was an incredibly beautiful painting. Even Erica could see that it had been done by a talented artist. The motif was a naked Alexandra, lying on her side with her head resting on one hand. The artist had chosen to use warm colours, which gave Alex’s face an impression of peace. She wondered why such a beautiful painting had been put in the back of a wardrobe. Judging from the picture, Alex had nothing to be ashamed of. Her body was just as perfect as the painting. Erica couldn’t shake off the feeling that there was something familiar about it. There was something obvious that she’d seen before. She knew that she had never seen this particular painting, so it had to be something else. The space in the lower right corner lacked a signature, and when she turned it over there was nothing there but ‘1999’, which must have been the year the painting was done. She carefully put the painting back in its place at the back of the wardrobe and closed the door.

She looked around the room one last time. There was something she couldn’t really put her finger on. Something was missing, but for the life of her she couldn’t think what it was. Oh well, it would probably come to her later. She didn’t dare stay in the house any longer. She put back the key where she had found it. She didn’t feel safe until she was back in her car with the motor running. That was enough excitement for one evening. A stiff cognac would soothe her soul and drive off some of her uneasiness. Why in the world had she decided to drive over there and snoop around? She felt like slapping her forehead at her own stupidity.

When she pulled into the driveway at home she saw that scarcely an hour had passed since she left. That surprised her. It had felt like an eternity.

Stockholm was putting on its best face. And yet Erica felt as though a gloomy cloud were hovering over her. Normally she would have been overjoyed at the sunshine that glittered on Riddarfjärden as she drove across Västerbron. Not today. The meeting was set for two o’clock. She had been mulling over things all the way from Fjällbacka, trying in vain to come up with a solution. Unfortunately Marianne had made her legal position very clear. If Anna and Lucas insisted on selling the house, she would have to go along with it. Her only alternative was to buy them out at half the market value of the house, and with the prices that houses in Fjällbacka were bringing, she didn’t have even a fraction of that amount. Of course she wouldn’t be left holding the baby if the house were sold. Her half could bring in as much as a couple of million kronor, but she didn’t care about the money. No money in the world could replace the loss of the house. She felt sick at the idea of some Stockholmer, who thought a brand-new sailor’s cap would transform him into a coastal dweller, ripping out the lovely veranda on the front and putting in a panoramic window. And nobody could say that she was exaggerating. She’d seen it happen time and time again.

Erica turned in at the attorney’s office in Runebergsgatan in Östermalm. The building was magnificent with its marble façade lined with columns. She checked herself in the mirror in the lift one last time. Her attire was carefully selected to fit in with the milieu. This was the first time she had been here, but she could easily picture what sort of attorneys Lucas would hire. In a gesture of feigned civility he had pointed out that, of course, she could bring along her own attorney. Erica had chosen to come alone. She simply could not afford an attorney.

Actually, she had wanted to meet Anna and the children before the meeting, maybe have a bite to eat with them. Despite her bitterness over Anna’s actions, Erica had decided to do her utmost to keep their relationship alive.

Anna didn’t seem to share her point of view, excusing herself by saying that it would be too stressful. It was better that they meet at the attorney’s office. Before Erica could suggest that they could see each other afterwards instead, Anna beat her to the punch and said that she had to rush off and meet a girlfriend after the meeting. Hardly a coincidence, Erica thought. It was obvious that Anna wanted to avoid her. The question was whether it was on her own initiative or whether Lucas refused to permit Anna to meet Erica while he was at work and had no chance to supervise.

Everyone was already there when she came in. They observed her solemnly as she put on a fake smile and offered her hand to greet Lucas’s two attorneys. Lucas merely nodded hello, while Anna ventured a weak wave behind his back. They all sat down and began the negotiations.

The whole thing didn’t take very long. The attorneys explained in a dry and business-like manner what Erica already knew. That Anna and Lucas were perfectly within their rights in demanding the sale of the house. If Erica could buy them out for half the market value, then she was en-titled to do so. If she could not or would not, then the house would be put up for sale as soon as a value was set by an independent appraiser.

Erica looked Anna straight in the eye.

‘Do you really want to do this? Doesn’t the house mean anything to you? Imagine what Mamma and Pappa would have thought if they knew you were going to sell it as soon as they were gone. Is this really what you want, Anna?’

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Lucas frown at her emphasis on you.

Anna looked down and picked some invisible flecks of dust off her elegant dress. Her blonde hair was tightly pulled back in a ponytail.

‘What are we going to use that house for? Old houses are just a lot of trouble, and think of all the money we could get out of it. I’m sure that Mamma and Pappa would have appreciated it if one of us took a practical view of the matter. I mean, when would we use the house? Lucas and I would rather buy a summer place in the Stockholm archipelago so we have something closer. What are you going to do with that house anyway?’

Lucas smiled scornfully at Erica as he patted Anna on the back with phoney concern. She still hadn’t dared meet Erica’s gaze.

Once again, Erica was struck by how tired her little sister looked. She was thinner than usual, and the black dress she wore was loose around the bust and waist. She had dark circles under her eyes, and Erica thought she saw a blue shadow under the powder on her right cheekbone. Her rage at the powerlessness of the situation hit her with full force and she fixed her eyes on Lucas. He returned her gaze with composure. Having come directly from work, he was wearing his professional uniform: a graphite-grey suit with a blinding white shirt and a shiny dark-grey tie. He looked elegant and sophisticated. Erica was sure that many women found him attractive. But she thought he had a cruel streak that acted like a filter over his facial features. His face was angular with sharp cheekbones and firm jawline. This was accentuated even more because he always combed his hair straight back from his high forehead. He didn’t look the typical ruddy Englishman; he was more like a Norwegian with light-blond hair and icy blue eyes. His upper lip was curved and full like a woman’s, giving him an indolent, almost decadent expression. Erica noticed that his eyes drifted down to her décolletage, and she instinctively pulled her jacket closed. He registered her reaction, which annoyed her. She didn’t want him to see that he had any sort of effect on her.