The Fire Dance (22 page)

“I’ve always hated that monkey. And that girl was the one who set fire to my cottage. I’m sure of it!”

Ingrid was so upset that she drew her hand back from the plate without taking anything.

As calmly as she could, Irene said encouragingly, “So you say Sophie set fire to the cottage on purpose. Are you absolutely sure about this?”

“Yes, I am!”

“How do you know? Did Sophie tell you anything?”

“No, but it was her!”

A stubborn look crept across the old woman’s face. Irene felt that she should change the subject, but she also knew she had to get as much information as possible about the fire in Björkil. She let her thoughts tumble about in her mind as she drank her coffee and ate her cream puff. Meanwhile, Ingrid had recovered enough to take a raspberry muffin. She bit into it with obvious pleasure, thrusting her tongue into the jelly. She smacked her lips contentedly as she pulled back her tongue into her mouth.

Irene decided to go for it. She stood up and asked, “Would you like some more coffee?”

“Yes.” Ingrid was busy eating the rest of the muffin. As Irene came to the table with the coffee pot, Ingrid already had another cream puff in her hand. Irene poured the refill. When she sat back down at the table, she asked in as neutral a tone as she could, “Why did Frej sleep so long that afternoon?”

Ingrid stopped in the middle of chewing. “Frej? Which afternoon? He never napped.”

Ingrid’s grouchy voice was back.

“The afternoon Magnus died. You said you couldn’t get to the fire right away because Frej was napping after dinner. He slept for three hours. You arrived on the scene at a quarter to nine in the evening. Why did he sleep for so long?”

“Kids sleep. He was tired. Now I want you to leave.”

She said this quite clearly. She stood up unsteadily and reached for her walker.

“Go right now!”

Ingrid’s entire body shook, and she glared at Irene.

“There’s the door,” she snapped, pointing determinedly with a trembling finger.

Irene realized there was nothing she could do but obey. She left the sweets on the table, and as she reached the door, she smiled at Ingrid and said, “I can stop by next week if that’s a better time. And I can bring something good to go with the coffee.”

At first it seemed that Ingrid had not heard her, but just as Irene was going to give up and shut the door behind her, she heard Ingrid say, “In that case, I want more raspberry muffins!”

A
S
I
RENE WAS
about to turn onto the road, a white Fiat swung into the parking lot so quickly Irene had to hit the brakes to avoid it. The driver of the other car didn’t even bother to look at her, and sped into the handicapped spot closest to the entrance, tires squealing. As the driver hopped out, Irene was surprised to see Angelika.

What is she doing here?
According to Ingrid, they never got together, but perhaps it was just as Frej said: the elevator didn’t stop at the top floor. Sometimes Ingrid sounded lucid. Other times, she was like a grouchy five-year-old.
Or is she just playing at being confused when it fits her purposes? Hard to tell
.

Irene decided to wait until Angelika came out again. She drove to a side street and parked behind a garbage truck so
that her car would not easily be seen. From there, she could keep her eye on the exit from the parking lot.

Just a few minutes later, Angelika came back outside. She was hurrying, and her shoulders were hunched. She opened her car door and jumped inside. She backed out of the parking spot and without pausing, hurtled onto the road. Irene followed, keeping a few car lengths between her and Angelika.

Thanks to the hilly roads, it was not difficult to keep an eye on Angelika’s car. They drove past the convenience store and to Ingrid’s driveway. The Fiat’s turn signal indicated it was going to make a left turn, and Irene passed it on the right.

Angelika was going to the place where Magnus Eriksson was buried. Why? There was nothing there but an empty lot.

Irene turned around in a school parking lot and headed back to the driveway. She turned in and drove her Volvo down the gravel road, now covered in weeds. The rain of the past few weeks made the road soft and muddy. The Fiat must have had some difficulty maneuvering over it.

Irene pulled in next to Angelika’s white car. It was so covered with mud it almost appeared camouflaged. Angelika was standing with her back to Irene. The withered tufts of grass reached to her knees. She did not move, and her hands were deep in her pockets as if she were freezing. From a distance, she looked like a lost little girl.

Irene got out of the car and inhaled the scent of wet earth and rotting plants.

“Why are you spying on me?” asked Angelika. Her voice was sharp and hostile. Perhaps she thought it would mask the fact that she’d been crying.

“I’m not spying on you. I was in the parking lot by Happy River when I saw you racing past like a car thief. I needed to talk to you anyway, so I followed you,” Irene said.

“You must have been spying on me. How else would you have found me here?” Angelika asked suspiciously.

Irene decided to tell it like it was. Ingrid would certainly mention that she’d been visited by a policewoman named Irene Huss who’d offered her coffee treats.

“I had gone to see Ingrid to talk about what happened here.” Irene gestured to indicate the whole empty lot.

When she glanced back at Angelika, she had a shock. Angelika looked positively terrified. Her dark brown eyes looked unnaturally small in her tiny face, which had lost all color. She sank down onto the ground, still staring at Irene and saying nothing. Her resemblance to Sophie was uncanny.

Irene wasn’t sure how to proceed. In order to break the silence, she asked, “Were you able to reach Ingrid?”

Angelika shook her head. She swallowed a few times before she rasped out, “No. She did not want to see me.”

“Did you speak over the house telephone?”

“Yes.”

“Ingrid said that she’d had no contact with you since the fire. Is that true?”

Angelika nodded and looked away.

“Why did you suddenly want to see her, then?”

Irene’s question came out more sharply than she’d intended, and it had the same effect as cracking a whip. Angelika jerked and gave Irene a quick, fearful glance. Then she looked away at the grass covering the empty lot. She said nothing for a long time. Finally, she replied.

“Two days from now it will be exactly fifteen years since Magnus died. He is buried here at Björlanda Cemetery. I was wondering if Ingrid wanted to come with me to visit the grave. Bring some flowers. Something. I don’t have time on Saturday, so it had to be today. But she didn’t even want to speak to me. We … we never did get along, exactly. I thought I’d try to mend our relationship now that she’s old and sick.”

She looked up at Irene with clear eyes and an open smile like a little girl who wanted to be believed. Irene might have gone along with her story if it weren’t for the act, but now she knew Angelika was lying. This was not the place to pressure her, but Irene made a mental note for the future.

“Couldn’t you have phoned ahead?” Irene asked innocently.

“No use in that. I’ve called her before, you know, just to see if Frej was there, but she always slams down the receiver.”

“Why are you and Ingrid on such bad terms?”

Angelika gave a short, raspy laugh. “She’s hated me from the first minute she saw me. It’s nothing personal. She would have hated any woman who got too close to her beloved little brother. He was her surrogate child. And now she’s moved her affection to Frej. Thank God he has a strong personality and can resist her. Magnus was too weak to handle her.”

She stopped talking and Irene could see the emotion drain from her eyes.

“Do you still miss him?” Irene asked impulsively.

Irene realized she’d asked the question before thinking how to phrase it. A long silence hung in the air until Angelika finally responded.

“It was such a long time ago. So much water under the bridge since then. And now all this with Sophie … it’s hard. But he was Frej’s pappa, and we were married for almost nine years. I can still feel the empty space he left behind. I felt so alone then, so … abandoned.”

Irene took a few more steps toward the huddled figure before she asked her next question. “What exactly happened fifteen years ago?”

Tears streamed down Angelika’s face. “No one really knows. Perhaps Sophie … but I don’t think even she knew for sure. Sophie was incapable of lying. She may not have
spoken about something … deliberately … but she never lied. She told me the truth when she said that she didn’t know Magnus was sleeping in the bedroom when she came home that afternoon. The house was not on fire when she rode off on her bike. She said she didn’t smell any smoke.”

“So what do you believe happened?”

“I’m convinced that Magnus fell asleep smoking. He had a habit of smoking in bed … especially when he’d been drinking.”

She said this last bit in a defiant tone. During previous questioning, she’d always denied that he’d had a drinking problem. Irene nodded as if she understood and left it at that.

“Why do you think Frej slept so long that afternoon at Ingrid’s house?” she asked in her most neutral tone.

Angelika stiffened. “What did she say when you talked to her?”

“She wasn’t clear …”

Angelika seemed to relax. The tense look in her face softened, and she even smiled slightly. She dried her tears with a tissue from one of her pockets and blew her nose. Then she cleared her throat before she answered.

“She always babied Frej. He had a cold that day, and he was tired. So she put him to bed and let him sleep. She didn’t know that you’re not supposed to let an eight-year-old sleep for so long.”

“Still, she saw all those fire trucks and the ambulance and the police cars. She’d even called in the alarm herself. It wasn’t exactly a normal afternoon.”

“No, it wasn’t, but Ingrid was a strange bird. I don’t believe she thought things through. Nowadays she’s really cuckoo. At least, that’s what Frej told me. You can’t trust anything she says.”

Irene could tell Angelika was fishing for something.
Angelika gave her a hasty glance.
Why is she so nervous about something Ingrid might have said?

Angelika got to her feet and brushed at the dampness on her pants. “Now I really need to get going. I have to teach all afternoon. It’s great that your daughter has started capoeira. You have to be in fantastic shape to be able to do it, and Frej says she is.”

Before Irene could think up another question, Angelika swept past her. Without a backward glance, she got in her Fiat and drove off. Irene watched her rear lights disappear behind a cascade of water kicked up by her tires.

I
RENE WOULD NEED
a search warrant. Otherwise it would not be possible to get into the basement of the Änggården mansion. It would also be a good idea to check into Frej’s darkroom. Not that she suspected Frej could hold his sister captive in that room without Marcelo noticing. She just wanted to take a closer look at what Frej was up to.

Did she really suspect Frej of killing his sister? Irene thought long and hard. He had no direct benefit if his sister was out of the picture. The reverse was true. Now his mother inherited the house, and she was making Frej’s life much more difficult than when he’d lived with Sophie. Frej seemed to be an open and uncomplicated kind of guy. He had many friends and a number of interests. Frej had no motive for killing his sister, or, to be more accurate, his half-sister. In fact, it seemed that they’d had a good relationship over the years. Extremely close, in fact, considering that they’d been raised in separate households.

Marcelo had even less of a motive. He’d be kicked out of an apartment that he felt comfortable in. There was no sexual motive, either, and it appeared that he and Sophie had been good friends, even if Sophie’s nightly appearances in his bedroom indicated she had hoped for something more.
Was
there anything more? Sophie appeared to have been an unusually asexual young woman. Where did she fit in on the sexual spectrum? Did she have a place? Irene’s experience told her that everyone has something that turns them on, but in all of Sophie’s twenty-six years, there was no indication that she’d ever been in love or in a relationship with either a man or a woman. Nor were there any indications of any other, more unusual, tendencies. All she had was dance: her life and her passion. It seemed that dance had replaced all human relationships in Sophie’s life. Perhaps that was indeed the case. It was through dance that Sophie could reach others even though it seemed she’d never gotten close to anyone, with the possible exception of her teacher Gisela Bagge. Gisela had called herself “something of a mentor” for Sophie, and she and Angelika had been dancing together when Angelika met Ernst Malmborg. Later on, Gisela had seen Sophie’s talent as well as the strained relationship between mother and daughter. She’d also said that she’d been Sophie’s closest friend.

Still, even to Gisela, Sophie had been a mystery. According to the psychologist at Child Protective Services, she’d had a genetic personality disorder that made it impossible for her to form attachments to other people. This made the entire speculation go in circles: Was there ever a person Sophie felt close to at all?

The only one Irene could think of was Ernst Malmborg. Still, could their relationship be described as “deep”? Perhaps they just got along because they were so similar. It didn’t mean that they were close—just that they’d let themselves be at peace in each other’s company.

Angelika had an economic interest in Sophie’s death, but no other motives. Why would she keep Sophie hidden for three weeks? If she’d had a hiding place, where would it have been? And how could she have dragged her daughter to the
shed and then set it on fire? It didn’t seem plausible. Angelika was a greedy liar, but it was hard to imagine her killing a family member in cold blood.

If Sophie had not been hidden in the mansion basement, where should she search? The answer was defeatist: anywhere at all. The killer might not be anyone in Sophie’s circle. Considering the abuse Sophie had suffered as well as the fact that she’d been drugged, it was more than likely that the killer was outside that circle. The only hope for the investigation was that there was a clue somewhere: a person, a contact, a coincidence, perhaps a secret relationship. There had to be a lead to the killer. She would just have to find it. Perhaps she’d already run into it without knowing it. Right now, she felt as if she were searching in the dark.