The Preacher

Great, the only thing Ernst had got out of two hours of knocking on doors was that the murderer had probably driven the body here around three o’clock and that he may have been driving an older model car. Not much to cheer about.

But his mood rose a few notches when he drove past the square again on his way back to the station and noticed that new scofflaws had parked in the spots vacated by the previous drivers. Now he’d have them blowing into the breathalyser till their lungs popped.

An insistent ringing of her doorbell interrupted Erica as she was laboriously running the vacuum cleaner over the carpets. Sweat was copiously pouring out of her, and she pushed back a couple of wet strands of hair from her face before she opened the door. They must have driven like joyriders to arrive that fast.

‘Hey, fatty!’

A bear hug caught her in a firm grip, and she noticed that she wasn’t the only one sweating. But with her nose deeply buried in Conny’s armpit she realized that she smelled like roses and lilies of the valley in comparison.

After extracting herself from his embrace she said hello to Conny’s wife Britta, politely shaking hands since they had only met a few times. Britta’s handshake was damp and limp and felt like a dead fish. Erica shuddered and fought back an impulse to wipe her hand on her slacks.

‘What a belly on you! Have you got twins in there or what?’

She really hated hearing people comment on her body that way, but she’d already begun to realize that pregnancy seemed to give everyone a free pass to make comments on your shape and touch your belly – it was altogether too familiar. Complete strangers had even come up and started pawing at her stomach. Erica was just waiting for the obligatory patting to begin, and within seconds Conny was running his hands over her swollen stomach.

‘Oh, what a little football star you have in there. Obviously a boy, with all that kicking. Come here, kids, feel this!’

Erica didn’t have the strength to object, and she was attacked by two pairs of little hands sticky with ice cream that left handprints on her white maternity blouse. Luckily Lisa and Victor, six and eight years old, soon lost interest.

‘So what does the proud father have to say? Is he counting the days or what?’ Conny didn’t wait for an answer, and Erica recalled that dialogues were not his strong suit.

‘Yes, damn it, I can remember when these two little rascals came into the world. A hell of an intense experience. But tell him to forget about watching it down there. It’ll make him lose the urge for a long time to come.’

He chuckled and elbowed Britta in the side. She just gave him a surly look. Erica realized that this was going to be a long day. If only Patrik would come home on time.

Patrik knocked cautiously on Martin’s door. He was a bit jealous of how neat things were in there. The desk was so clean that it could have been used as an operating table.

‘How’s it going? Have you found anything?’

Martin’s dejected expression told him the answer was negative even before he shook his head. Damn. The most important thing in the investigation right now was to be able to identify the woman. Somewhere people were worried about her. Surely somebody must be missing her.

‘What about you?’ Martin nodded towards the folder Patrik was holding in his hand. ‘Did you find what you were looking for?’

‘I think so.’

Patrik pulled up a chair so he could sit next to Martin.

‘Take a look at this. Two women disappeared in the late Seventies from Fjällbacka. I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me at once, it was front-page news back then. Anyway, here’s what’s left of the investigative material.’

The file he placed on the desk was very dusty, and he saw that Martin’s fingers were itching to wipe it off. A stern look from his colleague made him refrain. Patrik opened the folder and showed him the photographs lying on top.

‘This is Siv Lantin. She disappeared on Midsummer’s Day in 1979. She was nineteen.’ Patrik pulled out the next photo. ‘This is Mona Thernblad. She disappeared two weeks later and was eighteen years old. Neither of them has been seen since, despite an enormous effort with search parties, dragging the waterways, and everything you can think of. Siv’s bicycle was found in a ditch, but that was the only thing that was found. And they found no trace of Mona except for a running shoe.’

‘Yes, now that you mention it, I do remember those cases. There was a suspect, wasn’t there?’

Patrik leafed through the yellowing pages of the report and pointed to a typed name.

‘Johannes Hult. It was his brother, Gabriel Hult, of all people, who called the police and reported that he’d seen his brother with Siv Lantin on the way to his farm in Bräcke the night she vanished.’

‘How seriously was the tip taken? I mean, there must be something behind it if you turn in your own brother as a suspect in a murder case.’

‘The feud in the Hult family had been going on for years, and everyone knew about it. So the information was received with some scepticism, I think. It still had to be investigated, and Johannes was brought in for questioning a couple of times. But there was never any evidence besides his brother’s testimony. It was one brother’s word against the other’s, so Johannes was released.’

‘Where is Gabriel today?’

‘I’m not sure, but I seem to recall that Johannes committed suicide shortly after. Damn … if Annika were here she could have put together a more updated account of this in no time. As I mentioned, the material in the folder is meagre to say the least.’

‘It sounds like you’re quite sure that the skeletons we found are these two women.’

‘I wouldn’t say that. I’m just basing my guess on the law of probability. We have two women who disappeared in the Seventies, and now two skeletons turn up that seem to have a few years on them. What are the odds that it’s only a coincidence? Although I’m not positive, of course – we won’t be until the ME submits his report. But I intend to see to it that he has access to this information right away.’

Patrik glanced at the clock. ‘Damn, I’d probably better get going. I promised to be home early today. Erica’s cousin is visiting, and I have to fix some shrimp and things for supper. Could you make sure that the ME gets this information? And check with Ernst when he comes in, in case he’s turned up anything useful.’

The heat struck Patrik like a wall when he left the police station, and he hurried to his car so he could get back into an air-conditioned environment. If this heat was sapping his energy, he could only imagine what it was doing to Erica, the poor dear.

It was unfortunate that they were having visitors just now, but he understood that it was hard for her to say no. And since the Flood family were leaving tomorrow, it was only one evening wasted. He turned up the cool to max and headed for Fjällbacka.

‘Did you talk to Linda?’

Laine was nervously rubbing her hands together. It was a habit that Gabriel had learned to detest.

‘There isn’t that much to talk about,’ he said. ‘She’ll do as she’s told.’

Gabriel did not even look up but calmly continued what he was doing. His tone was dismissive, but Laine wasn’t about to shut up so easily. Unfortunately. For years he had wished that his wife would choose to be silent more often. It would do wonders for her personality.

Gabriel Hult himself had the personality of an accountant to his very core. He loved to match credits against debits and figure the balance on the bottom line; he loathed with all his heart everything that had to do with emotions and not logic. Neatness was his motto, and despite the summer heat he was wearing a suit and tie, of a more lightweight fabric of course, but nonetheless very proper-looking. His dark hair had thinned over the years, but he still combed it back and made no attempt to hide the bald patch in the middle. The pièce de résistance was the pair of round spectacles that rested on the tip of his nose so that he could look over the rims with disdain at whoever he was talking to. What’s right is right – that was the motto he lived by, and he only wished that other people would do the same. Instead it seemed as if they spent all their energy upsetting his perfect equilibrium and making life hard for him. Everything would be so much easier if they just did as he said rather than thinking up a bunch of foolishness on their own.

The big disturbance in his life at the moment was Linda. Jacob had never been as difficult in his teenage years. In Gabriel’s ideal world, girls were calmer and more compliant than boys. Instead they had a teenage monster on their hands who contradicted them at every turn and in general was doing her best to ruin their lives in the shortest time possible. He didn’t put much store in her idiotic plans to become a model. There was no doubt that the girl was cute, but unfortunately she’d inherited her mother’s brain and wouldn’t last an hour in the harsh world of professional modelling.

‘We’ve had this discussion before, Laine, and I haven’t changed my opinion. It’s out of the question. I won’t allow Linda to traipse off and have her picture taken by some sleazy photographer who just wants to get her naked. Linda has to get an education, and that’s all there is to it.’

‘Yes, but she’ll be eighteen in a year, and then she’ll do whatever she wants anyway. Isn’t it better for us to support her now instead of running the risk of losing her for good a year from now?’

‘Linda knows what side her bread’s buttered on, so I’d be very surprised if she ran off without securing some financial support. And if she keeps studying that’s exactly what she’ll get. I promised to send her money every month if she keeps on with her studies, and I intend to honour that promise. Now I really don’t want to hear any more about this matter.’

Laine kept on rubbing her hands, but she knew when she was beaten, and she left his office with her shoulders slumped. She carefully closed the sliding doors after her and Gabriel heaved a sigh of relief. This nagging was getting on his nerves. She ought to know him well enough after all these years together to see that he wasn’t one to change his mind once it was made up.

His sense of satisfaction and calm returned as he went back to writing in the book he had before him. The modern computer accounting programs had never won him over, because he loved the feeling of having a big ledger in front of him, with neatly written rows of figures that were summed up on each page. When he was finished he leaned back contentedly in his chair. This was a world he could control.

For a moment Patrik wondered whether he was in the right house. This couldn’t be the calm, peaceful home that he’d left this morning. The noise level was far above what was permissible in most workplaces, and the house looked like someone had tossed a grenade into it. Belongings he didn’t recognize were strewn everywhere, and things that should have been in a certain place were missing. Judging by Erica’s expression, he should have come home an hour or two earlier.

In amazement he counted two kids and two extra adults, and he wondered how in the world they could sound like a whole day-care centre. The Disney channel was blaring full blast on the TV, and a little boy was running about chasing an even smaller girl with a toy pistol. The parents of the two little devils were sitting peacefully on the veranda. The big lug of a man waved happily to Patrik but didn’t bother getting up from the sofa or tear himself away from the tray of pastries.

Patrik went out to the kitchen to find Erica, and she collapsed in his arms.

‘Take me away from here, please. I must have committed some unpardonable sin in a former life to be saddled with all this. The kids are little demons in human form, and Conny is … Conny. His wife has hardly said a peep and looks surly enough to curdle milk. Help, they’ve got to be on their way!’

Patrik patted his wife sympathetically on the back and felt that her blouse was sopping wet with sweat.

‘You go and take a shower in peace and quiet, and I’ll take care of the guests for a while. You’re soaked through.’

‘Thanks, you’re an angel. There’s a pot of coffee ready. They’re into their third cup already, but Conny has started to drop little hints that he wants something stronger, so you might want to check what we have available along that line.’

‘I’ll fix it. Now get going, dear, before I change my mind.’

Erica gave him a grateful kiss and then waddled up the stairs to the bathroom.

‘I want some ice cream.’ Victor had sneaked up behind Patrik and was aiming his pistol at him.

‘Sorry, we don’t have any ice cream in the house.’

‘Then you’ll have to go and buy some.’

The boy’s contrary expression drove Patrik crazy, but he tried to look friendly and said as gently as he could, ‘No, I’m not going to do that. There are biscuits on the table outside, you can have some of those.’

‘I want ice creeeeeeam!!!’ The boy whined and jumped up and down, and now his face was bright red.

‘We don’t have any, I tell you!’ Patrik’s patience was starting to wear thin.

‘ICE CREAM, ICE CREAM, ICE CREAM, ICE CREAM …’

Victor wasn’t going to give up easily. But he must have seen from Patrik’s eyes that a limit had been reached, because he quieted down and slowly backed out of the kitchen. Then he ran crying to his parents who were sitting out on the veranda, ignoring the tumult in the kitchen.

‘PAPPAAA, Uncle Patrik is mean! I want some ICE CREEEAM!’

With the coffee pot in his hand Patrik tried to turn a deaf ear and went out to greet his guests. Conny stood up and held out his hand. When Patrik greeted Britta he too experienced her cold-fish handshake.

‘Victor’s going through a phase right now,’ she said. ‘He’s testing the limits of his own will. We don’t want to hamper his personal development, so we’re letting him find out where the dividing line runs between his own wishes and those of other people.’

Britta gave her son a tender look, and Patrik remembered Erica telling him that she was a psychologist. But if this was her idea of raising children, then psychology was a profession that little Victor would be in close contact with when he grew up. Conny hardly seemed to notice what was going on, and he shut his son up by stuffing a good-sized piece of cake in the boy’s mouth. Judging by Victor’s rotundity, this was a frequent tactic. But Patrik had to admit that it was effective and appealing in all its simplicity.

By the time Erica came downstairs, freshly showered and with a much more alert expression on her face, Patrik had set the shrimp and other dishes on the table. He’d also managed to fix the children each a pizza after realizing that it was the only way to avoid a total catastrophe at dinner.

They all sat down and Erica was just about to open her mouth to say ‘bon appetit’ when Conny dug into the bowl of shrimp with both hands. One, two, three big fistfuls of shrimp landed on his plate, leaving barely half of the original amount in the bowl.

‘Mmm, delicious. Now I’m a guy who knows how to eat shrimp.’ Conny proudly patted his stomach and dug into his mountain of shrimp.

Patrik, who had put in the serving bowl fully two kilos of ruinously expensive shrimp, merely sighed and took a small handful that hardly took up any space on his plate. Erica without a word did the same and then passed the bowl to Britta, who morosely took the rest.

After the unsuccessful dinner they made the beds for their visitors in the guest room and excused themselves early, on the pretext that Erica needed to rest. Patrik showed Conny where the whisky was and escaped in relief upstairs to peace and quiet.

When they finally got into bed, Patrik told Erica what he’d been doing all day. He had long since given up trying to keep his police activities a secret from Erica, but he also knew that she kept her mouth shut about what he told her. When he got to the episode with the two missing women, he could see that she pricked up her ears.

‘I remember reading about that. So you think they might be the ones you found?’

‘I’m fairly sure of it. It would be too big a coincidence otherwise. But as soon as we get the report from the ME we can start investigating the matter properly, but for the time being we have to keep as many options open as possible.’

‘You don’t need any help digging up background material, do you?’ She turned eagerly towards him and he could see the gleam in her eyes.

‘No, no, no. You have to take it easy. Don’t forget that you’re actually on sick leave.’

‘Sure, but my blood pressure was back down at the last check-up. And I’m going stir crazy being at home all the time. I haven’t even been able to start writing a new book.’

The book about Alexandra Wijkner and her tragic death had been a big seller, and in turn had brought Erica a contract for another true crime book. The writing had demanded enormous effort on her part, both in research and emotion, and after sending it off to the publisher in May she hadn’t felt like starting a new project. High blood pressure followed by sick leave had tipped the scales against her, so she had reluctantly postponed all work on a new book until after the baby arrived. But it wasn’t in her nature just to sit at home and twiddle her thumbs.

‘Annika is on holiday, so she can’t do it. And it isn’t as easy as you might think to do research. You have to know where to look, and I do. Can’t I just take a quick peek –’

‘No, out of the question. Hopefully Conny and his wild bunch will leave early in the morning, and then you can take it easy. Now be quiet so I can talk to the baby a minute. We have to get started planning his football career –’

‘Or hers.’

‘Or hers. Although then it would probably be golf instead. There isn’t any money in women’s football yet.’

Erica just sighed, but obediently lay down on her back to facilitate the conversation.

‘Don’t they notice when you sneak out?’ Stefan was lying on his side next to Linda and tickling her face with a straw.

‘No, because Jacob “trusts” me.’ She frowned, mimicking her brother’s serious tone of voice. ‘It’s something he picked up from all those courses on how to create good contact with young people. The worst thing is that most of the kids seem to lap it up; for some of them Jacob is like God. Although if you’ve grown up without a father you probably take whatever you can get.’ Annoyed, she slapped away the straw Stefan was tickling her with. ‘Cut that out.’

‘What’s the matter, can’t I tease you a little?’

She could see that he was offended, and she leaned over and kissed him, as if putting a plaster on a cut. It just wasn’t a good day today. She’d got her period that morning, so she wouldn’t be able to make love with Stefan for a week. And then it was getting on her nerves to be living in the same house with her splendid brother and his equally splendid wife.

‘Oh, if only the year would be over fast so I could leave this fucking hole!’

They had to whisper so they wouldn’t be discovered in their hiding place in the hayloft, but she slapped her hand on the boards to punctuate her words.

‘Do you wish you could leave me too? Is that what you want?’

The hurt expression on Stefan’s face deepened, and she bit her tongue. If she ever got out in the wide world, she would never look at someone like Stefan. As long as she was stuck here at home he was amusing enough, but that was all. But he didn’t need to know that. So she curled up like a cuddly little kitten and snuggled closer. When she got no response, she took his arm and put it around her. As if of their own accord his fingers began to wander over her body, and she smiled to herself. Men were so easy to manipulate.

‘You could come with me, couldn’t you?’ She said this knowing full well that he would never be able to tear himself away from Fjällbacka, or rather from his brother. Sometimes she wondered whether he even went to the toilet without asking Robert’s permission.

He didn’t answer the question. Instead he said, ‘Have you talked to your father? What does he say about your idea of leaving town?’

‘What can he say? In a year he won’t be able to tell me what to do. As soon as I turn eighteen he’ll have fuck-all to do about it. And that will drive him crazy. Sometimes I think he wishes that he could enter us in one of his fucking account books. Jacob debit, Linda credit.’

‘What do you mean, debit?’

Linda laughed. ‘Those are financial terms, nothing you need to worry about.’

‘I just wonder how things would have been if …’ Stefan fixed his gaze somewhere behind her as he continued to chew on a straw.

‘How things would have been if what?’

‘If Pappa hadn’t lost all the money. Then maybe we would have been the ones living in the manor house, and you’d be in the cabin with Uncle Gabriel and Aunt Laine.’

‘Oh yeah, that would have been a sight. Mamma living in a shabby cabin. Poor as a churchmouse.’

Linda tilted her head back and laughed so loud that Stefan had to shush her so she wouldn’t be heard over in Jacob and Marita’s house, only a stone’s throw from the barn.

‘Maybe Pappa would have still been alive today, in that case. And then Mamma wouldn’t spend her days poring over those sodding photo albums,’ said Stefan.

‘But it wasn’t because of the money that he –’

‘You don’t know that. What the hell do you know about why he did it?’ His voice rose an octave and turned shrill.

‘Everybody knows.’

Linda didn’t like the turn the conversation had taken, and she didn’t dare look Stefan in the eye. The family feud and everything connected with it had always been off limits, by tacit agreement.

‘Everybody thinks they know, but nobody knows fucking shit,’ Stefan went on. ‘And there’s your brother, living on our farm – that’s too fucking much!’

‘It’s not Jacob’s fault things turned out the way they did,’ said Linda. It felt odd to defend the brother she usually showered with abuse, but blood was thicker than water. ‘He got the farm from Grandpa, and besides, he’s always been the first to defend Johannes.’

Stefan knew that she was right, and his anger drained out of him. It was just that sometimes it hurt so damn much when Linda talked about her family, because it reminded him of what he himself had lost. He didn’t dare say it to her face, but he often thought that she was pretty ungrateful. She and her family had everything, and his family had nothing. Where was the justice in that?

At the same time he could forgive her for everything. He had never loved anyone so intensely, and the mere sight of her slim body next to his made him burn inside. Sometimes he couldn’t believe it was true. That an angel like Linda would waste her time on him. But he knew better than to question his good fortune. Instead he tried to ignore the future and enjoy the present. Now he pulled her closer and shut his eyes as he inhaled the scent of her hair. He unbuttoned the top button of her jeans, but she stopped him.

‘I can’t, I’ve got my period. Let me instead.’

She unbuttoned his jeans and he lay back in the hay. Behind his closed eyelids heaven flickered past.

Only a day had passed since the dead woman was found, but impatience was already plaguing Patrik. Somewhere somebody was wondering where she was. Pondering, worrying, letting their thoughts run along ever more anxious paths. And the terrible thing was that in this case the worst misgivings had come true. He wanted more than anything else to find out who the woman was so he could inform her loved ones. Nothing was worse than uncertainty, not even death. The work of grieving could not commence until they knew the reason for their grief. It wasn’t going to be easy to be the one who delivered the news – a responsibility that Patrik had already shouldered in his mind – but he knew that it was an important part of his job. To facilitate and offer support. But above all, to find out what had happened to the loved one.