The Preacher

The door to Gabriel’s office flew open with a bang. Solveig stormed in, and behind her he saw Laine come running, her hands fluttering helplessly.

‘You shit! You fucking dick!’

He grimaced automatically at the choice of words. He had always found it extremely embarrassing when people showed strong feelings around him, and he had no patience for such language.

‘What’s going on? Solveig, I really think you should calm down and not speak to me that way.’

Too late he realized that the critical tone of voice, which came so naturally to him, only made things worse. She seemed about to fly at his throat, and for safety’s sake he retreated behind his desk.

‘Calm down? Are you telling me to calm down, you fucking prick? You limp dick!’

He could see that she was enjoying seeing him flinch at each sexual epithet. Behind her Laine was turning more and more pale.

Solveig lowered her voice a bit, but the tone was even more venomous. ‘What is it, Gabriel? Why do you look so dejected? You used to like it when I whispered dirty words in your ear. It used to turn you on. Do you remember, Gabriel?’ Now Solveig was hissing the words as she approached his desk.

‘There’s no reason to rehash the past. Do you have something to tell me, or are you just drunk and disagreeable as always?’

‘Do I have something to tell you? Yes, you can bet your arse I do. I was down in Fjällbacka and you know what? They’ve found Mona and Siv.’

Gabriel gave a start. Shock was written all over his face.

‘They’ve found the girls? Where?’

Solveig leaned over the desk, supporting her weight on her hands so that her face was only a couple of inches from Gabriel’s.

‘In the King’s Cleft. Along with a young German girl who was murdered. And they think it’s the same killer. So for shame, Gabriel Hult. Shame on you, accusing your brother, your own flesh and blood. And he had to bear the blame in people’s eyes, despite the fact there was never a shred of evidence against him. It was all the pointing and whispering behind his back that broke him. But maybe you knew that was how things would go. You knew that he was weak. That he was sensitive. He couldn’t deal with the shame and hanged himself. I wouldn’t be surprised if that was exactly what you had counted on when you called the police. You never could stand the fact that Ephraim loved him more.’

Solveig jabbed him so hard in the chest that he lurched backwards with each blow. By now he was standing with his back to the window seat and couldn’t get any farther away from her. He was trapped. With his eyes he tried to signal Laine to do something about this unpleasant situation, but as usual she just stood there and stared, completely at a loss.

‘My Johannes was always more loved than you, by everyone. And you couldn’t stand it, could you?’ She didn’t wait for an answer to her assertions masked as questions. She just continued her diatribe. ‘Even when Ephraim cut Johannes out of his will, he still loved him more. You got the estate and the money, but you could never win your father’s love. Despite the fact that you were the one who worked the farm while Johannes lived a carefree life. And then when he stole your fiancée, that was the last straw, wasn’t it? Was that when you began to hate him, Gabriel? Was that when you started to hate your brother? Sure, it may have been unfair, but you still had no right to do what you did. You destroyed Johannes’s life, and mine and the children’s too, for that matter. Don’t you think I know what the boys are up to? And it’s all your fault, Gabriel Hult. Finally people are going to see that Johannes didn’t do what they’ve been whispering about all these years. Finally the boys and I will be able to walk with our heads held high again.’

Her anger seemed to be ebbing away, and in its place came tears. Gabriel didn’t know which was worse. For a moment he had seen in her wrath a brief glimpse of the old Solveig. The lovely beauty queen that he had been proud to have as his fiancée, before his brother came and took her, precisely the way he had taken everything else he wanted. When her anger was replaced by tears, Solveig deflated like a punctured balloon, and he once again saw the fat, slovenly wreck who spent her days wallowing in self-pity.

‘May you burn in hell, Gabriel Hult, along with your father.’ She whispered the words and left as abruptly as she’d come. Then Gabriel and Laine were alone. Gabriel felt shell-shocked. He sat down heavily on his desk chair and stared mutely at his wife. They exchanged a complicit look. They both knew what it meant that old bones had resurfaced.

With great zeal and confidence Martin took on the task of finding out all about Tanja Schmidt, which was the full name in her passport. Liese had turned in all of Tanja’s things at their request, and he had gone through her backpack with a fine-toothed comb. At the very bottom he had found her passport looking practically unused. There was actually only one stamp from when she entered Sweden from Germany. Either she had never been outside Germany before, or the passport was new.

The photo was surprisingly good, and he decided that she had been nice-looking though a bit plain. Brown eyes and brown hair, a little longer than to her shoulders. Height five foot five, normal build, whatever that meant.

Otherwise her backpack had produced nothing of interest. Changes of clothes, some worn paperbacks, toiletries, and some wrappers from sweets. Nothing personal, which he found rather odd. Wouldn’t she at least have a photo of her family or boyfriend with her, or an address book? Although they had found a handbag near the body. Liese had confirmed that Tanja owned a red handbag. Apparently that’s where she had kept her personal belongings. Now they were gone, in any case. Could it have been a robbery? Or had the killer taken her personal items as souvenirs? Martin had seen a programme on the Discovery Channel about serial killers, that apparently it was common for them to save things from their victims, as part of the ritual.

Martin checked himself. There was nothing to indicate that they were looking for a serial killer, not yet. He did his best not to get stuck in that line of thinking.

He began writing down notes about how he was going to handle the investigation into the Tanja case. First, contact the German police authorities, which he had been about to do when he was interrupted by the call from Tord Pedersen. Then he had to talk with Liese again, and finally he thought he’d get Gösta to drive out to the campground with him and ask around. See whether Tanja might have spoken to anyone there. Or perhaps it would be better to ask Patrik to assign that task to Gösta. In this investigation Patrik, not Martin, had the authority to give orders to Gösta. And things had a tendency to go much more smoothly if protocol was followed to the letter.

Once again he began to dial the number of the German police, and this time he got through. It would have been an exaggeration to say that the conversation flowed smoothly, but by the time he hung up he was relatively sure he had succeeded in laying out the relevant details correctly. They promised to get back to him as soon as they had more information. At least that’s what he thought the person on the other end had said. If there was going to be a lot of contact with their German colleagues they would have to bring in an interpreter.

Considering the time it might take to get information from abroad, he sincerely wished that he had an internet connection in front of him that was as good as the one he had at home. But because of the risk of being hacked, the police station didn’t even have a lousy dial-up modem. He made a mental note to do a search for Tanja Schmidt in the German telephone directory, if it was accessible on the Net. Although if he remembered correctly, Schmidt was one of the most common German surnames, so there was little chance that it would produce anything.

Since he couldn’t do much else than wait for information from Germany, he decided to get started on the next task. He had got hold of Liese’s mobile number, and he rang her first to make sure that she was still in town. Actually she had no obligation to stay, but she had promised not to leave for another couple of days so that they would have a chance to talk to her again.

Her trip must have lost all of its charm by now. According to her testimony to Patrik, the two girls had grown very close in a short time. Now she sat alone in a tent at the Sälvik campground in Fjällbacka knowing her travelling companion had been murdered. Maybe she was in danger too. That was a scenario that Martin hadn’t thought of earlier. Maybe it would be best to talk to Patrik about it as soon as he came back to the station. It could be that the murderer had seen the girls at the campground together and had then focused on the two of them for some reason. But how did Mona and Siv’s bones fit into the picture? Mona and possibly Siv, he corrected himself at once. One should never regard anything as certain if it was merely almost certain, as an instructor at the police academy had once said. It was a maxim that Martin tried to live by in his police work.

On closer reflection he did not believe that Liese was in any danger. Once again they were dealing with probabilities, and the odds were that she had been drawn into something simply because of an unfortunate choice of travelling companion.

Despite his previous misgivings, Martin decided to do some fast talking to rope Gösta into a little concrete police work. He walked down the hall to his office.

‘Gösta, may I interrupt?’

Still waxing poetic about his hole-in-one, Gösta was talking on the phone. He hung up guiltily when Martin stuck his head in the door.

‘Yes?’

‘Patrik has asked us to drive down to Sälvik campground. I have to meet with the victim’s travelling companion, and you’re supposed to ask questions around the campground.’

Gösta uttered a grunt but didn’t question the validity of Martin’s statement as to how Patrik had assigned the tasks. He grabbed his jacket and followed Martin out to the car. The downpour had changed to a light drizzle, but the air was clear and fresh to breathe. It felt as though weeks of dust and heat had been flushed away, and everything looked cleaner than usual.

‘Let’s hope that this rain isn’t here to stay, or else my golf game is going to go to hell,’ Gösta muttered crossly as they sat in the car. Martin thought that he was the only person who didn’t think it was good to have a little break from the summer heat.

‘Well, I think it’s quite nice. That sweltering heat was about to kill me. And just imagine Patrik’s wife. It must be rough to be eight months pregnant in the middle of summer. I could never handle it, that’s for sure.’

Martin chattered on, well aware that Gösta had a tendency to be a bit taciturn when there was talk of anything other than golf. And since Martin’s knowledge of golf was limited to the fact that the ball was round and white and that golfers were usually identified by checked clown trousers, he decided to carry on the conversation all by himself. That’s why he hardly heard Gösta’s muttered comment.

‘Our boy was born in early August, one hot summer like this.’

‘Do you have a son, Gösta? I didn’t know that.’

Martin searched his memory for comments about Gösta’s family. He knew that his wife had died a couple of years ago, but he couldn’t recall hearing anything about a child. In surprise he turned to look at Gösta seated next to him.

His colleague did not meet his gaze, but kept staring at his hands in his lap. Without seeming to be aware of it, he was twisting the gold wedding band that he still wore. He didn’t seem to have heard Martin’s question. Instead he went on in a monotone: ‘Majbritt put on sixty-five pounds. She was as big as a house. She could hardly move in the heat either. Towards the end she just sat in the shade, panting. I brought her one pitcher of water after another, but it was like watering a camel. Her thirst never seemed to quit.’

He laughed, a strange, introspective, slightly tender laugh. Martin realized that Gösta was so far down memory lane that he was no longer talking to anyone else.

‘The boy was perfect when he arrived,’ Gösta went on. ‘Plump and splendid he was. The spitting image of me, everyone said. But then it all happened so fast.’ Gösta turned his wedding ring faster and faster. ‘I was visiting their hospital room when he suddenly stopped breathing. There was a terrific commotion. People came running from every direction, and they took him away from us. We never saw him again until he lay in his coffin. But it was a fine funeral. After that we just didn’t feel like trying to have any more kids. What if things went wrong again? Majbritt wouldn’t have been able to stand it, and neither would I. So we had to make do with each other.’

Gösta gave a start as if waking from a trance. He gave Martin a reproachful look, as if it were his fault that all those words had poured out.

‘It’s not something I talk about any more, of course. And it’s not something any of you need to sit and babble about during coffee breaks, for that matter. It’s forty years ago now, and nobody else needs to know.’

Martin nodded. But he couldn’t stop himself from giving Gösta a light pat on the shoulder. The old man grunted, but Martin still felt that at that moment a fragile bond had formed between them, whereas before there had been only a mutual lack of respect. Gösta still might not be the finest example of a police officer that the corps could produce, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have experience and knowledge, and Martin could learn something from him.

They were both relieved when they reached the campground. The silence that followed the sharing of confidences could be oppressive, as the last five minutes had been.

Gösta slouched off with his hands in his pockets and a downhearted expression on his face, in search of campers who might answer his questions. Martin asked for directions to Liese’s tent and was surprised to find that it was scarcely bigger than a handkerchief. It was jammed between two larger tents, which made it look even smaller in comparison. In the tent to the right of hers some children were playing noisy games; in the tent to the left a beefy bloke about twenty-five years old was drinking beer beneath an awning that stuck out from the tent. All of them gave Martin inquisitive looks as he approached Liese’s tent.

Knocking was not an option, so he called her name a bit hesitantly. The tent zipper opened and Liese’s blonde head appeared in the opening.

Two hours later the two police officers drove off without having found out anything new. Liese had nothing more to contribute than what she had already told Patrik at the station, and none of the other campers had noticed anything of interest regarding Tanja or Liese.

But something else had caught Martin’s attention and was hovering at the back of his mind. He feverishly searched through the sensory impressions from his visit to the campground but remained puzzled. There was something he’d seen that should have registered. Annoyed, he drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, but he finally had to give up trying to pin down the elusive memory.

They rode home in silence.

Patrik hoped that he would be like Albert Thernblad when he got old. Not as alone, of course, but just as stylish. Albert hadn’t let himself go after his wife’s death, as so many older men did who ended up living alone. Instead he was well-dressed in both shirt and vest, and his white hair and beard were well-groomed. Despite his difficulties walking, he moved with dignity, with his head held high, and from the little Patrik got to see of the house it seemed that it was kept neat and tidy. He was also impressed by the way Albert handled the news that his daughter had been found. He seemed to have made peace with his fate and was living his life as best he could under the circumstances.

Patrik had been deeply moved by the photographs of Mona that Albert had shown him. Like so many times before, he had realized that it was all too easy to view the crime victims as just another statistic, or to label them ‘the plaintiff’ or ‘the victim’. It didn’t matter whether the person had been robbed or, as in this case, murdered. Albert had done the right thing by showing him the photographs. He’d seen Mona progress from the maternity ward to chubby baby, from schoolgirl to student. Then he’d seen her as the happy, healthy girl she was just before she disappeared.

But there was another girl that he needed to find out more about. Besides, he knew the town well enough to realize that rumours were already flying with the speed of lightning through the community. It would be best to head them off and have a talk with Siv Lantin’s mother, even though they had no confirmation of Siv’s identity as yet. For safety’s sake he had checked on her address before he left the station. It had been a little harder to locate Siv’s mother, since Gun was no longer called Lantin. She must have married, or remarried, as the case may be. After a little detective work he had discovered that her surname was now Struwer and that there was a summer house registered to Gun and Lars Struwer in Norra Hamngatan in Fjällbacka. The name Struwer sounded familiar, but he couldn’t quite place it.

He was in luck and found a parking place on Planarna down from the Badrestaurant, and he walked the last hundred metres. There was one-way traffic along Norra Hamngatan in the summertime, but in the short stretch he walked he saw three idiot drivers fail to read the road signs. He had to press himself up against the stone wall as they tried to squeeze past the oncoming traffic. The terrain was apparently so rugged where they lived that they felt the need to drive a big four-wheel-drive Jeep. That type of vehicle was far too common among the summer visitors. Patrik surmised that in this case the Stockholm region was considered rugged terrain.

He had a good mind to whip out his badge and read them the riot act but refrained. If the police spent their time trying to teach all beachgoers common sense they wouldn’t get much else done.

Patrik finally reached the right residence, a white house with blue trim on the left side of the street, across from the red boat-houses that gave Fjällbacka its characteristic silhouette. The owners of the house were busy unloading a couple of huge suitcases from a gold-coloured Volvo V70. To be more precise, an older gentleman in a double-breasted suit was lifting the suitcases out with a groan, while a short, heavily made-up woman stood by and gesticulated. They were both tanned, verging on sunburned, and if the Swedish summer hadn’t been so sunny Patrik would have guessed that they’d been on holiday abroad. This year the rocky skerries of Fjällbacka could have served as a tanning parlour.

He walked up to the couple and hesitated a second before he cleared his throat to attract their attention. Both of them stopped what they were doing and turned.

‘Yes?’ Gun Struwer’s voice was a touch too shrill, and Patrik noticed a peevish expression on her face.

‘My name is Patrik Hedström and I’m with the police. Could I have a few words with you?’

‘At last!’ She raised her hands with the red-manicured nails and rolled her eyes. ‘To think that it would take so long. I don’t understand what our tax money is going for. All summer we’ve been reporting that people have been parking illegally in our parking spot, but we haven’t heard a peep from the police. Are you finally going to do something about this nuisance? We paid a lot of money for this house, and think we have the right to use our own parking place. But maybe that’s too much to ask!’

She put her hands on her hips and squinted at Patrik. Behind her stood her husband, looking as though he’d like to sink into the ground. Apparently he didn’t think the matter was quite so important.

‘Actually, I’m not here about a parking infraction,’ said Patrik. ‘But first I have to ask you: was your maiden name Gun Lantin? And do you have a daughter named Siv?’

Gun fell silent instantly and put her hand to her mouth. No other reply was necessary. Her husband was the first to gather his wits and accompanied Patrik to the front door, which was standing open. It seemed a bit risky to leave the bags out on the street, so Patrik grabbed two of them and helped Lars Struwer carry the luggage inside. Gun hurried into the house ahead of them.

They sat down in the living room, Gun and Lars next to each other on the sofa, while Patrik chose the easy chair. Gun was clinging to Lars, but his comforting pats seemed almost mechanical, something that he knew the situation required of him.

‘What’s happened? What have you found out? It’s been over twenty years. How can anything have come out so long afterwards?’ she babbled on nervously.

‘I have to emphasize that we don’t have a positive identification yet, but it’s possible that we may have found Siv.’

Gun’s hand flew up to her throat and for once she seemed speechless.

Patrik went on, ‘We’re still waiting for the medical examiner to make a positive identification, but it seems most likely that it’s Siv.’

‘But how, where …?’ she stammered. The questions were the same ones that Mona’s father had asked.

‘A young woman was found dead in the King’s Cleft. The remains of two other victims were found with her. Mona Thernblad, and probably Siv.’

Just as he had explained to Albert Thernblad, Patrik told Gun that the girls had been transported to the site and that the police were now doing all they could to find out who could have committed the murders.

Gun leaned her face against her husband’s chest, but Patrik noticed that she was sobbing with dry eyes. He got the impression that her expressions of grief were largely play-acting, but it was just a hunch.

When Gun had pulled herself together she took a little hand mirror out of her purse and checked her make-up. Then she asked Patrik, ‘What happens now? When can we claim our poor little Siv’s remains?’ Without waiting for his reply she turned to her husband. ‘We have to have a proper funeral for my poor darling, Lars. We could have coffee and refreshments for the guests afterwards in the ballroom at the Grand Hotel. Perhaps even a three-course sit-down dinner. Do you think we should invite …’ She mentioned the name of one of the bigwigs in the business community. Patrik happened to know that he owned a house down the street.

Gun went on, ‘I ran into his wife at Eva’s early this summer, and she said we should really get together sometime. I know that they would appreciate being invited.’

An excited tone had crept into her voice, while a disapproving frown had appeared on her husband’s face. All at once Patrik recalled where he had heard their surname before. Lars Struwer was the founder of one of the biggest grocery chains in Sweden, but he’d been retired for many years, and the chain had been sold to a foreign company. No wonder that they could afford a house in this location. The guy was good for many, many millions. Siv’s mother had certainly moved up in the world since the late Seventies when she lived in a little summer cabin year-round with her daughter and granddaughter.

‘Dear, shouldn’t we worry about the practical matters later? You need some time to let the news sink in first.’

He gave her a reproachful glance and Gun lowered her eyes, remembering her role as grieving mother.

Patrik looked round the room. Despite the sad nature of his visit he had to stop himself from laughing. The place was a parody of the tourist homes that Erica liked to ridicule. The whole room was decorated like a sailboat cabin in a marine colour scheme, with navigational charts on the walls, lighthouse lamps, curtains with seashell patterns, and even an old rudder as a coffee table. A good example of the fact that a lot of money and good taste didn’t necessarily go hand in hand.

‘I wonder whether you could tell me a little about Siv. I’ve just been to visit Albert Thernblad, Mona’s father, and he showed me some photos from her childhood. Would it be possible to see a few pictures of your daughter?’