The Preacher

Martin’s fruitless phone calls the day before had demonstrated the task of identification would be more difficult. She had not been reported missing anywhere in the local area, so the search field had to be expanded to all of Sweden, perhaps even to other countries. At the moment the task seemed impossible, but he quickly dismissed that thought. Right now they were the unknown woman’s only advocates.

Martin knocked discreetly on the door.

‘How would you like me to proceed? Widen the search radius, or start with the big-city districts, or …?’ He raised his eyebrows in an enquiring gesture.

At once Patrik felt the weight of the responsibility for the investigation. Actually there was nothing pointing in any direction, but they had to start somewhere.

‘Check with the big-city districts. Göteborg has been taken care of, so start with Stockholm and Malmö. We should be getting the preliminary report from Forensics soon, and if we’re lucky they might be able to come up with something useful.’

‘Okay.’ Martin slapped the door on his way out and headed for his office. A shrill signal from the front hall made him turn on his heel, and he went to let in the visitor. That was usually Annika’s job, but while she was gone they just had to help each other out.

The young woman looked upset. She was thin, with two long blonde braids and an enormous pack on her back.

‘I want to speak to someone in charge,’ she said in English.

She spoke with a thick accent, and he guessed that she was German. Martin opened the door and motioned her to come in. He called down the hall, ‘Patrik, you have a visitor.’

Too late it occurred to him that maybe he should have asked what her business was first, but Patrik had already stuck his head out of his office and the young woman was headed in his direction.

‘Are you the man in charge?’

For a moment Patrik was tempted to send her on to Mellberg, who was technically the chief, but he changed his mind when he saw her desperate expression and decided to spare her that experience. Sending a good-looking girl into Mellberg’s office was like sending a lamb to the slaughter, and Patrik’s natural protective instincts won out.

‘Yes, how can I help you?’

He motioned for her to come in and sit down in the chair in front of his desk. With surprising ease she slipped off the enormous backpack and carefully leaned it against the wall by the door.

‘My English is very bad. You speak German?’

Patrik ransacked his ancient knowledge of school German. His answer depended on how she defined ‘speak German’. He could order a beer and ask for the check, but he suspected that she wasn’t here in the capacity of waitress.

‘Little German,’ he replied haltingly in her mother tongue, wobbling his hand in a ‘so-so’ gesture.

She seemed pleased to hear this and spoke slowly and clearly to give him a chance to understand what she was saying. To Patrik’s surprise he found that he knew more than he’d thought at first, and even though he didn’t understand every word, he got the gist of it.

She introduced herself as Liese Forster. Apparently she had been in a week earlier to report her friend Tanja missing. She had spoken with an officer here at the station, who told her that he would contact her when he knew more. Now she’d been waiting a whole week and still hadn’t heard a peep. Anxiety was writ large across her face, and Patrik took her story seriously.

Tanja and Liese had met on the train on the way to Sweden. They were both from northern Germany but hadn’t known each other before. They got along well at once, and Liese said that they became like sisters. Liese had no fixed plans about where to go in Sweden, so Tanja had suggested that she come along with her to a little town on the west coast called Fjällbacka.

‘Why Fjällbacka exactly?’ asked Patrik with his clumsy German grammar.

The answer came with hesitation. Liese admitted that she didn’t really know why. It was the one topic that Tanja had not discussed cheerfully and openly with her. All Tanja had told her was that she had some business to take care of there. When it was done, they could continue their trip through Sweden. But first there was something Tanja needed to find. The subject seemed sensitive and Liese had not pursued it. She was just glad to have a companion on her travels and she happily tagged along. It didn’t really matter to her why Tanja had to go there.

They had been staying at the Sälvik campground for three days when Tanja disappeared. She had set off in the morning, saying that she had something to take care of during the day and that she would come back towards afternoon. Afternoon passed and then it was evening, and Liese’s anxiety had increased as the hours had ticked away. The next morning she went to the tourist bureau on Ingrid Bergman’s Square and asked for directions to the nearest police station. The report was taken and now she wondered what had been done.

Patrik was shocked. As far as he knew, they hadn’t received any missing-persons report. He felt a heaviness gathering in his gut. When he asked what Tanja looked like, his fears were confirmed. Everything Liese had told him about her friend matched the dead woman in the King’s Cleft. With a heavy heart he showed Liese a photograph of the body, and her sobs told him what he already suspected. Martin could stop making phone calls, and someone would have to be called to answer for not reporting Tanja’s disappearance correctly. They had wasted many precious hours for nothing, and Patrik had little doubt where to find the guilty party.

Patrik had already driven off to work when Erica awoke from a sleep that for a change had been deep and dreamless. She looked at the clock. It was nine, and there was not a sound from downstairs.

Soon she had the coffee on, and she started setting the breakfast table for herself and her guests. They trickled into the kitchen one by one, each more bleary than the last, but they came round quickly when they began helping themselves to the breakfast she had prepared.

‘Weren’t you all heading for Koster next?’ Erica’s question was polite, but she was anticipating getting rid of them.

Conny exchanged a swift glance with his wife and said, ‘Well, Britta and I talked it over a bit last night, and we thought that since we’re here, and the weather’s so fine, we might run out to one of the islands here today. You do have a boat, don’t you?’

‘Well, yes, we do,’ Erica admitted reluctantly. ‘Although I’m not sure Patrik is terribly anxious to lend it out. Considering the insurance and all that …’ The thought that they would stay even a few more hours than planned made her bones tingle with frustration.

‘We thought that you might be able to give us a lift to some nice spot, then we can ring you when we want to come back.’

Conny took the fact that Erica was speechless at this suggestion as tacit agreement on her part. She called on higher powers for patience and persuaded herself that it wasn’t worth a confrontation with the family just to spare herself a few more hours of their company. Besides, she would get out of being with them during the day, and maybe they would decide to drive on before Patrik came home from work. She had already decided to fix something special for dinner and have a cosy evening at home. After all, Patrik was supposed to be on holiday. And who knew how much time they would have for each other once the baby arrived – it was best to take advantage of their time together.

After much shilly-shallying the whole Flood family finally packed up their sun gear, and they set off for the boat dock. The little blue wooden boat was low and hard to step into from the dock at Badholmen. It took a good deal of effort to squeeze her pregnant body down into the boat. After cruising about for an hour searching for a ‘deserted rock, or preferably a beach’ for the guests, she finally found a tiny cove that other tourists miraculously had seemed to miss. Then she headed for home. Getting up onto the dock without help proved impossible. Feeling humiliated, she had to ask some passing beachgoers for assistance.

Sweaty, hot, exhausted, and furious she drove home but changed her mind just as she was passing the sailing society’s clubhouse. She made a sharp left turn instead of driving straight ahead towards Sälvik. She took the right-hand curve around the hill, past the sports field and the Kullen apartment complex, and parked outside the library. She would go completely insane if she had to sit at home all day with nothing to do. Patrik could protest all he wanted later, but he was going to get help with the investigation whether he wanted it or not!

When Ernst entered the police station he headed reluctantly towards Hedström’s office. As soon as Patrik rang him on his mobile and with granite in his voice ordered him to come to the station at once, Ernst knew that he was in trouble. He ransacked his memory to try and work out what he might have been caught doing, but he had to admit that there were too many possibilities to make an educated guess. He was the de facto master of short cuts, and he had made fiddling about an art form.

‘Sit.’

He docilely obeyed Patrik’s command, then put on a defiant expression to meet the approaching storm.

‘So what’s the big hurry? I was in the middle of something. Just because you happened to be put in charge of an investigation, you can’t just boss me about …’

A good offence was usually the best defence, but judging from Patrik’s ever-darkening expression it was absolutely the wrong way to go.

‘Did you take a report about a missing German tourist a week ago?’

Damn. He had totally forgotten about that. The little blonde girl had come in right before lunch, and he got rid of her in a hurry so he could be on his way and go eat. Most of those reports about missing friends never amounted to anything. Usually the person was dead drunk in some ditch, or else she’d gone home with some guy. Shit. He knew now that he was going to pay for this. He couldn’t imagine why he hadn’t connected it with the girl they found yesterday, but hindsight was 20-20. The important thing was to minimize the damage.

‘Yes, well, I suppose I did.’

‘You suppose you did?’ Patrik’s usually calm voice resounded like thunder in the little room. ‘Either you took the report or you didn’t. There’s nothing in between. And if you did take it, where in the … where is it?’ Patrik was so furious that he was stumbling over his words. ‘Do you realize how much time this has cost the investigation?’

‘Well, it’s obviously unfortunate, but how was I supposed to know –’

‘You aren’t supposed to know, you’re supposed to do what you’re assigned to do! I hope I never hear about something like this again. Right now we have precious hours to make up.’

‘Is there anything I can …’ Ernst made his voice as submissive as he could and tried to look contrite. Inside, he was cursing at being addressed like a whippersnapper, but since Hedström now seemed to have Mellberg’s ear it would be stupid to aggravate the situation any further.

‘You’ve done enough. Martin and I will continue with the investigation. You’ll take care of any other incoming reports. We received one about a burglary in Skeppstad. I talked to Mellberg and got the go-ahead for you to handle that on your own.’

As a sign that the conversation was over, Patrik turned his back on Ernst and began typing so frenetically that the keyboard jumped.

Ernst left the room grumbling. How serious could it be to forget to write up a single little report? At the proper time he would have a talk with Mellberg about the suitability of having someone with such an unstable personality in charge of a homicide investigation. Yes, damn it, that’s what he would do.

The pimply-faced youth sitting before him was a study in lethargy. Hopelessness was written all over his face; the meaninglessness of life had been pounded into him long ago. Jacob recognized all the signs, and he couldn’t help looking on it as a challenge. He knew that he had the power to turn the boy’s life in a completely different direction. How well he succeeded depended only on whether the boy had any desire to be steered onto the right path.

Within the religious community Jacob’s work with young people was well-known and respected. So many broken souls had entered the farm only to leave as productive members of society. The religious aspect was toned down for the rest of the town, since the state subsidies were rather precarious. There were always people with no faith in God who cried ‘sect’ as soon as anything diverged from their conventional view of what religion involved.

It was on his own merits that he had won the greater part of the respect he enjoyed, but he could not deny that some of it could also be attributed to the fact that his grandfather was Ephraim Hult, ‘the Preacher’. Of course his grandfather had not belonged to this same congregation, but his reputation was so widespread along the coast of Bohuslän that it resonated within all the free-church groups. The Lutheran state church in Sweden naturally viewed the Preacher as a charlatan. On the other hand, all the pastors who chose to settle for preaching to empty pews on Sundays did the same, so the freer Christian groups took little notice.

The work with the outsiders and addicts had filled Jacob’s life for almost a decade, but it no longer satisfied him the same way it had done before. He had been involved in planning programmes at the rehabilitation centre in Bullaren, but the work no longer filled the vacuum he had lived with all his life. Something was missing inside him, and the search for this unknown something frightened him. For so long, he had believed that he stood on solid ground but now he felt it trembling precariously beneath his feet. He dreaded the abyss that might open and swallow him whole, both body and soul. So many times, secure in his faith, he had sententiously observed that doubt is the primary tool of the Devil, not knowing that one day he would find himself in that same predicament.

Jacob got up and stood with his back to the boy. He looked out of the window facing the lake, but saw only his own reflection in the glass. A strong, healthy man, he reflected sardonically. His dark hair was cut short, and Marita, who cut his hair at home, actually did a very good job. His face was finely chiselled, with sensitive features without being unmasculine. He was neither delicate nor particularly powerfully built; he was the very definition of a man with a normal physique. Jacob’s biggest asset were his eyes. They were a piercing blue and had the unique ability to seem both gentle and penetrating at the same time. Those eyes had helped him convince many people to take the right path. He knew it, and he exploited it.

But not today. His own demons were making it hard for him to concentrate on anyone else’s problems. It was easier to take in what the boy was saying if he didn’t have to look at him. Jacob looked away from his reflection and instead peered out across Bullar Lake and the forest that spread out for miles and miles before him. It was so hot that he could see the air shimmering above the water. They had purchased the big farm cheaply because it had been so dilapidated after years of mismanagement. After countless hours of toil they had renovated it to the condition it was in now. The place was not luxurious, but it was neat, clean and comfortable. The district’s representatives were always impressed by the house and the lovely surroundings. They enthused about what a positive influence this would have on the poor maladjusted boys and girls. Previously the farm had never had any problems in getting subsidies, and their work had progressed well during the ten years they had been in operation. So the problem was all in his head … or was it in his soul?

Perhaps the temptation of daily life was what had pushed him in the wrong direction at a decisive fork in the road. He had not hesitated to take his sister into his home. Who else would be able to soothe her inner turmoil and calm her rebellious temperament? But she had proven to be his superior in the psychological battle, and as her ego grew stronger day after day, he felt the constant irritation undermining his whole foundation. Sometimes he would catch himself clenching his fists and thinking that she was a stupid, simple girl who deserved it if her family washed their hands of her. But that was not the Christian way of thinking, and such thoughts always led to hours of soul-searching and devout Bible study in the hope of finding renewed strength.

Outwardly Jacob was still a rock of security and confidence. He knew that the people around him needed him; he was the one they could always lean on. And he was still not prepared to give up that image of himself. Ever since he vanquished the illness that for a time had ravaged him so fiercely, he struggled not to lose control over his life. But the mere exertion of maintaining the façade taxed his last resources, and the abyss was inexorably drawing nearer. Once again he reflected over how ironic it was that after so many years things had come full circle. The news had made him for a second do the impossible – he had succumbed to doubt. The doubt lasted only a moment, but it had created a tiny little crack in the strong fabric that held his life together, and that crack was expanding.

Jacob banished those thoughts and forced himself to focus on the young man in the room and his pitiful existence. The questions he asked came automatically, like the smile of empathy that he always had ready for a new black sheep in the flock.

Another day. Another broken soul to mend. It never ended. But even God had a chance to rest on the seventh day.

After going to collect her relatives, now as pink as pigs, out on the skerry, Erica was eagerly waiting for Patrik to come home. She was also searching for signs that Conny and his family would start packing their things, but it was already half past five and they had made no move to leave. She decided to wait a while before thinking up some subtle way to ask whether they were going soon. The kids’ shrieking had given her a splitting headache, so she wouldn’t wait long. With relief she heard Patrik coming up the steps and went to meet him.

‘Hi, honey,’ she said, standing on tiptoe to kiss him.

‘Hi. Haven’t they left yet?’ Patrik spoke in a low voice as he glanced towards the living room.

‘No, and they don’t seem to be making any moves in that direction, either. What on earth are we going to do?’ Erica replied in an equally low voice, rolling her eyes to show her displeasure at the situation.

‘They can’t expect to stay another night without asking, can they? Or can they?’ said Patrik, looking nervous.

Erica snorted. ‘If you only knew how many guests my parents used to have during the summer over the years. People who were just going to be here a night or two and then stayed for a week, expecting to be waited on, expecting free meals. People are crazy. And relatives are always the worst.’

Patrik looked horror-stricken. ‘They can’t stay for a week! We have to do something. Can’t you tell them they have to leave?’

‘Me? Why should I have to tell them?’

‘They’re your relatives, after all.’

Erica had to admit that he had a point. She was just going to have to bite the bullet. She went into the living room to hear about their plans, but never got a chance to ask.

‘What’s for dinner?’ Four pairs of eyes turned expectantly towards her.

‘Well …’ Erica was speechless at their sheer audacity. She quickly went over the contents of the fridge in her mind. ‘It’s spaghetti with meat sauce. In an hour.’

Erica felt like kicking herself when she went back to Patrik in the kitchen.

‘So, what did they say? Are they leaving?’

Erica couldn’t look Patrik in the eye. She said, ‘I don’t really know. But we’re having spaghetti with meat sauce in an hour.’

‘Didn’t you say anything?’ Now it was Patrik’s turn to roll his eyes.

‘It’s not that easy. Try it yourself, you’ll see.’ Annoyed, Erica turned away and started banging pots and pans as she took them from the cupboard. ‘We’re going to have to grit our teeth for another night. I’ll tell them tomorrow. Start chopping some onions, will you? I can’t make dinner for six all by myself.’

In oppressive silence they worked together in the kitchen until Erica couldn’t keep quiet any longer.

‘I was at the library today,’ she said. ‘I copied some material that you might be able to use. It’s on the kitchen table.’ There was a neat stack of photocopies lying there.

‘I told you that you shouldn’t –’

‘No, no, I know. But now it’s done, and it was really fun for a change instead of sitting at home staring at the walls. So don’t complain.’

By this time Patrik had learned when he should shut up, and he sat down at the kitchen table and began going through the material. They were newspaper articles about the disappearance of the two young women, and he read them with great interest.

‘Damn, this is great! I’m going to take this stuff to the office tomorrow and go through it more carefully, but it looks fantastic.’

He went over to stand behind her at the stove and put his arms around her swollen belly.

‘I didn’t mean to complain. I’m just concerned about you and the baby.’

‘I know.’ Erica turned to face him and put her arms round his neck. ‘But I’m not made of porcelain, and if women in the old days could work in the fields until they pretty much gave birth on the spot, I can certainly sit in a library and turn pages with no ill effects.’

‘Okay, I know.’ He sighed. ‘As soon as we get rid of our lodgers, we can pay more attention to each other. And promise me that you’ll tell me if you want me to stay home. The station knows that I’ve volunteered to work during my holiday and that you take precedence.’

‘I promise. But now help me get the dinner ready and maybe the kids will calm down.’

‘I doubt it. Maybe we should give them each a shot of whisky before dinner, so they’ll fall asleep.’ He gave her a wink and then laughed.

‘Ooh, you’re terrible. Give one to Conny and Britta instead, then we’ll at least have them in a good mood.’

Patrik did as she suggested, casting a mournful glance at the hastily dropping level in the bottle of his best single-malt. If Erica’s relatives stayed another couple of days, his whisky supply would never be the same.

3

SUMMER 1979

She opened her eyes with great caution. The reason was a splitting headache that produced shooting pains to the very roots of her hair. But the strange thing was that there was no difference in what she saw when she opened her eyes. It was still the same dense darkness. In a moment of panic she thought that she had gone blind. Maybe there was something wrong with that homebrew she had drunk yesterday. She’d heard stories about that stuff – young people who went blind drinking home-made rotgut. But after a few seconds her surroundings hazily began to emerge, and she understood that there was nothing wrong with her eyesight; she was somewhere with very little light. She looked up to check whether she could see a starry sky, or maybe some moonlight if she were lying outdoors somewhere, but she realized immediately that it never got this dark in the summertime. She should have been able to see the ethereal light of a Nordic summer night.

She touched the surface she was lying on and picked up a fistful of sandy soil, which she let run between her fingers. There was a strong odour of humus, a sickly sweet smell, and she had a sense of being underground. Panic set in. Along with claustrophobia. Without knowing how big the space was she had an image of walls slowly closing in on her. She clutched at her throat when it felt like the air was running out, but then forced herself to take some calm, deep breaths to keep the panic at bay.

It was cold, and she understood all at once that she was naked except for her knickers. Her body ached, and she shivered, wrapping her arms round herself and drawing her knees up to her chin. The first wave of panic now gave way to a terror so strong that she could feel it gnawing at her bones. How had she got here? And why? Who had undressed her? The only thing her mind told her was that she probably didn’t want to know the answers to those questions. Something evil had happened to her but she didn’t know what – that in itself multiplied the terror that was paralysing her.