The Intruder (28 page)

Elisabet did not bat an eye.

“And when was that?” Sara asked.

“Just past five. Then she was home the whole evening.”

Sara turned toward Ove, who in turn looked out over the farmyard.

“You have a number of cars here,” he said. “Which one did Elisabet use yesterday?”

“It was the Volvo, the silver-colored one there,” said Ernst Vogler, pointing out the window. “The one between the pickup and the white one.”

53.

Stina Hansson had been worried about her cat, would absolutely not go anywhere before she was sure that someone would take care of the cat. It was a little strange, as if she expected to be gone a long time. Or was it simply a way to put up resistance?

Fredrik got hold of a neighbor who promised to feed the cat and then they could send Stina off with a patrol car that was on its way back to Visby.

They divided up the apartment between them. Gustav took the living room and bedroom while Fredrik took the bathroom, hall, and kitchen.

The cramped bathroom with mottled gray floor tiles and bright yellow glazed tile on the lower half of the walls truly reeked of cat. Stina ought to think about changing the litter a little more often if she was so concerned about her pet.

Fredrik put all the shampoo bottles in a bag, in case a shampoo analysis of the tuft of hair from Malin’s hand would be relevant. He went through the medicine cabinet, without finding anything more revealing than a tube of salve for fungus that had expired several years ago. He packed all the contents of the laundry basket in a paper bag and screwed out the filter on the small washing machine that was squeezed to the left of the door. It was just as well to do it thoroughly while they had the chance.

He continued by going through the pockets of the outerwear hanging in the hall and was scratching in the clutter in the top drawer of the hall bureau when Gustav called from the living room.

“What did you say?” he called back.

“Come and look at this,” Gustav shouted.

With a few quick steps Fredrik was in the living room. Gustav stood leaning over a thin white cardboard box with the cover in one gloved hand and a photograph in the other.

“Here,” he said, handing it over to Fredrik.

The black-and-white photograph depicted Stina Hansson. She was lying nude on the floor with her fingers wedged into her pubic hair. The picture was a few years old, it was apparent.

“Okay, that was daring, but…”

This was one side of the job he still sometimes felt uncomfortable about. Rooting in people’s most private hiding places. But he assumed that Gustav had not called him in so that they could drool over Stina Hansson’s naked body.

“Check the back side.”

Fredrik turned the picture over. It was stamped with Henrik Kjellander after a copyright symbol and an address in Stockholm.

“Okay,” said Fredrik.

“There are more here,” said Gustav, handing over two more pictures.

They also depicted Stina Hansson more or less without clothes. In one she was sitting in an armchair, in another in a car with her top pulled up over her breasts. There were also four faded Polaroids in the carton. In those she was dressed, and in one of them together with Henrik. His arm was stretched out toward the camera and ended in a black shadow along one edge. Fredrik presumed that Henrik himself had been holding the camera and aimed it at Stina and himself. Both of them were smiling broadly. Stina looked happy.

“We’ll take these along,” said Fredrik. “But most people probably save old pictures, especially if it’s a famous photographer who took them.”

“I’d like to know when they were taken,” said Gustav.

Fredrik looked for a date marking on the pictures, but did not find one.

“We might as well continue with this,” said Fredrik.

He pointed at the big shelf loaded with books, binders, and magazine holders.

They went through the shelf from either end. Fredrik browsed through grades, proof of employment, account statements, but also old class lists, a twenty-nine-year-old certificate from swimming school and a number of photographs that did not tell him anything. They worked intensively for almost an hour without making more than a few scattered comments.

“That took time,” said Gustav when they were finally done with the shelf without having found anything else worth confiscating.

“Yes, she seems to save everything,” said Fredrik.

“May indicate someone who has some difficulty letting go of the past,” said Gustav.

“Christmas Eve for the amateur psychologist.”

Gustav laughed curtly.

“In any case, there’s more in the bedroom. I’ll continue there.”

Fredrik went into the kitchen. Maybe there was something in what Gustav had said anyway, he thought, as he picked up a bundle of magazines from the far end of the kitchen table. There was a feeling he himself had the first time he met Stina Hansson. Under the seemingly healthy surface there seemed to be a person who sat at home watching over something. Perhaps old memories? Old love? What she said today did not exactly contradict that thought.

He picked up the magazine on top and shook it over the table, then continued with magazine after magazine. When he was halfway through the pile five or six loose pages suddenly fell down on the tabletop.

Fredrik immediately recognized the woman smiling toward him from a picture on the topmost sheet. Vegetables, fruit, and a can of Greek olive oil were beautifully arranged on the marble counter in front of her.

54.

Alma Vogler lived near the sea. You could sense the sea even if it was concealed by a few sparse rows of pine trees. It was there as a smell, something cool and fresh in the air and a quiet swelling against the stones of the shore. The house must have been built in recent years. It looked modern and deliberate with black wooden panels, large windows, and an unpainted metal roof. Both foreign and Fårö at the same time.

“I just can’t understand it,” said Alma. “Here on Fårö. It’s so awful.”

Sara did not need to convey any news of the deaths. Alma Vogler started talking about the murders even before Sara and Ove managed to say hello.

“I didn’t know Malin and Axel,” Alma continued. “I’ve only met Malin one time, at Mother’s funeral—”

She interrupted herself and lowered her eyes.

“But even if I didn’t know them, they are related in some way. And Henrik—”

She interrupted herself again and looked in the direction of the sea that was so present, but not visible.

Yes, thought Sara, how was it really with Henrik?

They asked to come in. Alma suggested the living room. The kitchen was one big mess, she said. Sara and Ove sat down on a firm black felt couch, and Alma sat across from them in an armchair. She sat far out on the cushion, attentively leaning forward with her forearms supported against her knees.

“Where were you between six and eight o’clock yesterday evening?” said Sara.

Alma looked up toward the wall, somewhere above Ove’s and Sara’s heads, while she answered.

“We had dinner at five thirty, all of us, that is, Krister and I and the kids. Then I mostly sat in front of the TV. Krister was out working on his car for a while.”

“So all of you were at home the whole evening?”

“The kids were over at the neighbors, right after dinner, but Krister and I were home.”

“But you were in here and he was outside?”

“Yes, but that was only for a short time and right outside,” she said with a gesture toward the window.

“How did you find out that Malin and Axel Andersson had been murdered?” asked Sara.

Alma’s eyes narrowed when she heard the word.

“It can’t be anyone from here who did it,” she said, squinting at Sara. “It must be some complete lunatic, right?”

Sara did not answer, but noted that “lunatic” and “stranger” were synonymous.

Alma looked at her in confusion for a while, but then remembered the question.

“Excuse me. It was Elisabet who called. Although then she didn’t know what had happened. Just that there was something going on with helicopters and police and that presumably someone had been killed.”

“What time was that?”

“Right after ten.”

“Do you know how Elisabet found out about it?” asked Sara.

“Someone phoned her. I don’t remember who.”

Sara turned over a new page in her notepad and looked out the high windows that reached almost all the way from floor to ceiling. You could actually see glimpses of blue between the trees.

“Was it you who built the house?” she asked.

“No.”

Alma looked toward the windows, too.

“But it was practically new when we bought it. The family that built it lived here less than a year. They weren’t from here. They probably didn’t feel at home.”

“It’s nice. Extremely modern.”

“Yes. The old stone houses have their charm, but I prefer this.”

Alma cleared her throat briefly. She was presumably starting to wonder what Sara was after with her questions. Sara changed track.

“When did you find out that Henrik was your half brother?”

The question did not appear to come as a surprise. Alma barely reacted. Possibly she shrank a little in the armchair.

“Mother told Elisabet when she was eighteen and Elisabet told me, of course. Mother didn’t want us to find out about it only after she died. Then that sort of thing comes out, with inheritance and such.”

“Yes, that’s the way it is, of course,” said Sara.

“I actually wrote to Henrik once when I was sixteen. It was maybe six months after Mother told. But I never got an answer. I don’t even know if he ever got the letter.”

“Did you talk about it later? I mean the whole arrangement that Henrik grew up with his grandmother. Well, your grandmother, too, of course.”

Alma slid backward in the armchair.

“No, that’s not something anyone talks with Dad about.”

“Not with your mother, either, when she was alive?”

“I asked a few times about what really happened, but Mother never really answered. Just something to the effect that it was different at that time, but I never really understood. That was in the seventies…”

Alma turned toward Ove Gahnström, as if she wanted to assure herself that he was listening, too, even though he had not said a thing since they sat down.

“I think it was extremely painful for her,” she said. “It must have been.”

“And Henrik?” asked Sara. “Didn’t he ever try to make contact with you and Elisabet, or your mother?”

“No, not with us anyway. And if he was in touch with Mother that wasn’t anything we heard about. I think he turned his back on everything, as if he wanted to show that he didn’t need this place. He lived in Los Angeles for a while. He talked about that at the funeral. As I said before, I probably would have done the same.”

Ove pointed toward the windows and the light that flooded in from the south.

“You practically have a waterfront lot here,” he said.

“Yes,” Alma admitted. “But the trees there aren’t on my lot, so there isn’t any sea view.”

“That can’t be cheap here on Fårö?” he continued.

“No,” said Alma with a perplexed crease between her eyebrows. “Actually it’s a depopulated area, but the summer visitors jack up the prices.”

“But you got help to buy the house in connection with your father turning over the farm to Elisabet, is that correct?”

“Yes?”

The crease between her eyebrows had deepened and was joined by several wrinkles on her forehead.

“Was it your mother’s inheritance from your grandmother that paid for the house?”

Alma’s smile froze a little.

“I don’t know exactly how they resolved that.”

55.

Maria was standing in front of Henrik wrapped in the hotel’s blue-and-white–striped cover, looking at him with half-closed eyes. She had slept a long time. She must have taken two of those tablets they got from the doctor.

He didn’t want to sleep. He never wanted to sleep again. He wanted to keep watch. Over Ellen, over himself, and over Malin and Axel. He would become a new person, a different person. A knight who never slept, who fed on air and lived for his daughter and the memory of his son, the memory of his woman. Malin and Axel. The ones who would never return.

He would be like the shores of Fårö. He would be sea, wind, and stone. He was already halfway there and the reasonable voice that whispered that he was going crazy was getting weaker and weaker.

“You have to tell me that this happened, otherwise I’ll think I’ve been dreaming,” said Maria hoarsely.

Her voice disturbed him in his almost euphoric sorrow. Maria was struggling to keep her eyes open. They were pulsing toward him, now narrow slits, now a black demanding gaze.

He kept silent.

“You have to tell me that this happened,” she said again, coming a few steps closer to him.

Henrik glanced over his shoulder. Ellen was sitting in front of the TV but he had no idea whether she was following the program or simply sitting and staring into the screen with her ears on full alert.

He took a step toward Maria so that they were standing very close to each other.

“It did—” he started, but then his voice got stuck in a rasping resistance.

He took a couple of deep breaths and tried again.

“It did happen.”

The blinking eyes became quiet.

“It did happen,” he repeated. “They’re gone.”

He couldn’t take any more. No more than that was needed.

He saw how Maria’s eyes became glassy. Then the tears ran over. Sobbing and struggling for air she raised her arms toward him. The cover she had held firmly with her hands fell to the floor. She looked like a helpless, confused child who had woken up from a nightmare. She threw her arms around him and pressed her head against his chest. He held her and felt how the crying made her skull hop against his chest.

It did not feel very knightly, standing there holding onto his half-naked sister-in-law in a medium-class hotel with a view of Visby harbor, but it would have been even less knightly not to do it.