The Intruder (39 page)

“Yes. I checked her address. She lives a little outside the city, but not that far outside.”

“It’s just those two that stuck out?”

“There are more names that recur on the same hotel nights as Henrik, but no one I can connect with him. I hope he can help us with that.”

*   *   *

A young woman with blazing red hair occupied the faux mahogany reception booth. Her name was Jenny, according to the oval nameplate. Sara asked for Henrik Kjellander. Jenny smiled and picked up a receiver. At first she seemed to have someone else on the line, then apparently Henrik after she had waited briefly.

“Yes, I’ll tell them that,” she said into the receiver and hung up. “He’s coming down,” she said to Sara with a broad smile.

Fredrik thought that he could never handle a job where you were forced to smile all the time, but perhaps that was something you could learn.

He looked around the hotel lobby.

“Should we take him up to the station anyway? We can’t really sit here.”

“Wait,” said Sara.

She showed her police badge to the receptionist and explained why they were there.

“There doesn’t happen to be a conference room available where we can sit for half an hour?”

“I’ll see.”

Jenny quickly turned on her computer and returned with a smiling reply.

“Yes, there is a room that you can use. You’ll get a key, it’s simplest that way.”

She tinkered with something behind the counter and handed over a white key card.

“Thanks, that was nice,” said Sara.

Just then Fredrik caught sight of Henrik. He came into the lobby from the illuminated corridor that led over to the elevators.

*   *   *

The conference room could hold about twelve people, so they sat down around the short end of the white-painted table. The walls were pastel green and the lighting gave a strong but almost shadowless light, just like in the police station conference room.

Sara set the guest lists out on the table.

“Can you look through these names and say if there are any you recognize?”

Henrik pulled the pile of papers to him.

“St. Petri,” he mumbled. “Okay, sure.”

He put his index finger on the top line, let it run downward. He stopped almost at once.

“Marte Astrup, she was at the shoot.”

He looked up at Sara and Fredrik.

“You can probably tell us more,” said Sara.

“Of course. She’s the fashion editor for Danish
Elle.
She’s the client for these jobs, and she was there at all the shoots along with Susanne, the magazine’s art director. I have plenty of leeway, but they have certain basic ideas they want to look after. Different magazines have different ways of presenting fashion.”

“Marte Astrup lives in Copenhagen, right?” said Sara.

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t she go home, instead of spending the night at the hotel?”

Henrik looked at them as if he thought the question was strange.

“I don’t really know. I think the magazines do that sometimes as a little bonus. Usually you gather at the hotel or somewhere else and have dinner after the day’s work, the ones from out of town, that is, and then one of the clients is often there.”

“But the AD didn’t spend the night. Wasn’t she there at the hotel?”

“Yes, but I think she was not far from home. Or else she wanted to go home. I don’t know.”

“Okay, let’s continue,” said Sara.

Henrik read on and turned pages.

“This guy I know. David Pilgren. He’s a photographer, too. I actually didn’t know that he was there. Never saw him. Do you want to know something about him, too?”

“We can skip him for the time being,” said Sara, but made note of the name.

Henrik continued scanning the lists. As expected, he also pointed out Agnes Lind, but that was it. That was everyone he recognized.

“None of these women you mentioned, Marte, Susanne, and Agnes, may have had reason to want to injure you or your family?”

“No,” he answered at once. “No, why is that?”

He looked at them dumbfounded.

“Not at all?” asked Sara.

“No. Do you suspect something like that?”

Henrik suddenly looked worried, as if he had missed something.

“None of these women are anything more to you than customers and colleagues?”

It took awhile before he understood the drift of the question.

“What? Do you think I’ve been together with any of them? Good Lord, then I think I would have said so. I mean, you have asked me to tell about old girlfriends. Didn’t you?”

“We thought that perhaps you had made an exception for new girlfriends,” said Fredrik.

Henrik stared at him.

“What?”

“You never told about Maria.”

It was as if Henrik froze to ice behind the table. He did not move so much as a little finger, was not even capable of turning his eyes away.

“We know about your relationship with Maria. We know that you haven’t told everything.” Sara developed Fredrik’s assertion.

Henrik slowly opened his mouth.

“Uh…” he began.

He clenched his hands and slowly the paralysis was broken.

“Did Maria tell you?”

Sara did not answer. Henrik looked at them, one at a time.

“That’s not something I want to talk about. And that’s been over for almost two years. Maria … you know that she can’t have anything to do with this. You do know that.”

“Now we know that,” said Sara.

Henrik sank back in the chair with a deep sigh.

“You have to help us, Henrik. If it is the case that you’ve had a relationship with any of these women, or any other woman, is there anyone you can imagine who wants to get revenge for having been rejected, or because of jealousy, or…? You’re the only one who can know.”

Sara nailed him with her gaze. He shook his head.

“Is that completely certain? This is important. It may be what we need to solve this.”

“There is no one,” he said.

They thanked Henrik for taking the time and watched him disappear toward the elevators. Somewhere in a room in the hotel his daughter was waiting along with Maria and the rest of Malin Andersson’s family.

How did you go on after having suffered what Henrik had? Fredrik was surprised that he was even able to stand up, that he was able to answer questions. It surely helped that he had his daughter. To be forced to go on, in some way. But still. A relationship with Malin’s sister. And now Malin was dead.

*   *   *

“I don’t understand this guy,” said Sara when they had come up onto Söderväg. “Why hasn’t he said anything? Because he thought it was awkward? His wife and son have been murdered.”

“Exactly,” said Fredrik.

“Yes, the guy seems to be a total pile of shit.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

Sara glanced at him inquisitively while they drove through the roundabout.

“His wife and son were murdered less than a week ago,” said Fredrik. “Presumably he may not even be thinking clearly. He’s taking sleeping pills but can’t sleep.”

“But he does want us to solve this anyway? If it was me…”

“If it was you, you would think like a cop because you are a cop. We can’t expect him to do that.”

“Whatever,” said Sara. “If it was me I wouldn’t have slept with my brother-in-law anyway, so the comparison is meaningless.”

Fredrik did not answer. They drove on in silence the rest of the way.

“We’ll have to check them anyway, the assistant and that Danish woman,” said Sara as they got out of the car in the garage.

74.

Fredrik looked out the living room window toward the light on the neighbor’s farmyard, the one that was never turned off, and the bluish shimmer from the fly catcher in the barn. He wondered why they left the farmyard light on all night. Was it so that the darkness would not be as dense around them when the day was over and they had crept down into their beds? Would it keep burglars away? Murderers? It was hardly so that they could rush out to the animals at three o’clock in the morning without having to turn on a switch. He saw them everywhere out in the country, lighting up the farmyards when no one was awake.

“How is it going?” said Ninni, turning off the TV.

“Oh, it’s fine,” he said.

“You’ve hardly said a word since you came home.”

He looked at her with surprise.

“I haven’t?” He must have. He had asked Simon about school, he had …

“How is it going really?”

“The investigation?”

“Yes.”

“Right now it’s at a standstill. But don’t say that.”

Ninni smiled. “They’re asking about it a lot at school.”

“The children or the teachers?”

“Both the children and my colleagues. It’s really funny. The children ask flat out, but in the teachers’ lounge it’s more like they bring up the subject and hope I’ll chime in.”

“So what do you say?”

“That I don’t know any more than they do.”

“Are they satisfied with that?”

“Most are.”

Ninni was perhaps right that he had not said much that evening. His thoughts were constantly making their way back to Malin and Axel Andersson in the house on Fårö. Stina Hansson, who they had been forced to release. Who probably had nothing to do with the case, but who still had something to do with the case. A woman who Henrik Kjellander had left behind many years ago, but who could not really forget him. In some way he was still in her, as a defeat, as a hope that would never be fulfilled.

Was the murderer still on the island, or had she gone home already over the weekend, with a new hairdo and in a car that they weren’t searching for? On the Sunday afternoon ferry with more than a thousand passengers and a sold-out car deck?

“Hello!” Ninni called. “Now you’re doing it again.”

“Sorry.”

He moved next to her.

“Are you trying to compensate now?” she said.

“Thanks for the encouragement.”

“Sorry.” Ninni put her hand in front of her mouth.

“I’m starting to doubt that we’ll find her. Maybe this doesn’t hang together at all the way we think it does.”

He furtively stroked his hand across her leg.

“A week has passed. We have almost nothing. This doesn’t add up. A murder like this should more or less solve itself. That’s why I’m starting to think that maybe this isn’t even that kind of murder.”

“What if it is that Stina Hansson after all, the woman who was in the newspaper?” said Ninni.

Fredrik shook his head.

It could not possibly be Stina Hansson. Provided that they hadn’t been led astray by the traces in the cabin. If it was some common thief who broke in and thought it was a good idea to dye her hair and burn up a few clothes … No, that was far too unlikely. And if it had been an ordinary thief Eva should have gotten a hit on the fingerprints she found on the window.

“Shall we go to bed?” asked Ninni.

He looked at her. Had he held out the prospect of something by stroking her leg? Or was she just tired?

75.

The plane left at eight thirty. Henrik imagined that he could have seen it lift off if he stuck his head out the window and looked northward. But that was probably not true.

Only he and Ellen were left now. The air in their little hotel apartment was suddenly easier to breathe. But in the lightness there was also absence and loss.

As long as Maria had been there a kind of impossible possibility was in the air. A tension, however nauseating, shitty, and forbidden it was, nonetheless said that there was something there that meant something. That there was at least a distant echo of love.

Disgusting, Maria had said when he told her that the police knew. Was that true? He could not bear to think about it. He only knew that no one would forgive them if they found out.

It was just him and Ellen. It was easier to breathe, but he had never felt so alone in his entire life. It was easy and heavy at the same time. It was as if it blew right through him and nothing mattered. But in the light transparency there were also threatening dark gray eddies of something quite different. Perhaps that was just what loneliness was. The lightest and the heaviest we have to bear. Or else he was simply going crazy from sorrow and shame and the side effects of the sleeping pills.

He looked at Ellen and tried to convince himself that he had a daughter he had to do everything for. He had to live for her. He had to be there for Ellen, he had to, even if he felt completely incapable.

This morning he had been able to think for the first time about Malin and Axel like they were when they were alive. Before he had only been able to see their dead bodies, their unseeing eyes, just as they waited for him when he came home to Kalbjerga a week ago. Now he had managed to think past that, could see Axel’s little head with shining eyes and glistening white teeth when he raised him up toward the ceiling and quickly lowered him toward the floor again so that he was choking with delight mixed with terror. He could see Malin in the garden, in the car, in the kitchen, in front of the TV, in bed in the morning, always the first one up, everywhere, always there.

Always.

Ellen came up to him and mutely dried his tears with her hand. It almost hurt more to see them living than dead. He’d had so much. More than he was worth.

He put his arms around Ellen and hugged her carefully.

“Ellen,” he said.

She hummed in response. He took hold of her arms and looked at her seriously.

“Shall we go home?”

She nodded with lips squeezed together.

“Do you want that?”

She nodded again.

“Then that’s what we’ll do,” he said, hugging her again.

76.

Summer was back. Not just the sun, like yesterday. Now the heat had returned, too. Sara was sitting with the phone between her shoulder and her ear as Fredrik came into the office. She made a gesture with her hand that he interpreted to mean that she would be done soon.

Sara had settled into her office in a completely different way than he had. Pictures of friends and relatives on the bulletin board. In a vase on the table was a fabric rose that she got from her colleagues on her last birthday. On the wall was a poster depicting Jodie Foster with pistol drawn in her role as FBI agent Clarice Starling. It had caused Lennart Svensson to crack a joke about dykes, although out of earshot of Sara. On the bulletin board Sara had also pinned up a picture of herself. It was a clipping from
GA
: Visby’s first half-marathon, where Sara placed high up, right after the elite.