The Stonecutter (15 page)

Arne morosely turned the page in the regional paper,
Bohusläningen.
Asta was still moping about the house. He knew that she was sad about the little girl, and that it bothered her that their son now lived so close by. But he had explained that she had to be strong in her faith and true to their conviction. He could agree that it was a shame about the girl, but that just proved his point. Their son had not kept to the straight and narrow, and sooner or later he was bound to be punished. He paged back to look again at the blasted teddy bear in the obituary. It was a crying shame, it certainly was …

Mellberg didn’t feel the same sense of satisfaction that he usually did when he was the focus of media attention. He hadn’t even called a press conference, but had simply gathered some reporters from the local newspapers in his office. The thought of the letter he’d received overshadowed everything else right now, and he was having a hard time concentrating on anything else.

‘Do you have any solid leads to follow up on?’ A cub reporter was eagerly awaiting his reply.

‘Nothing that we can comment on in the present situation,’ the chief said.

‘Is anyone in the family a suspect?’ The question came from a reporter from the competing paper.

‘We’re keeping all our options open right now, but we have nothing concrete that points in a specific direction.’

‘Was it a sex crime?’ The same reporter again.

‘I can’t go into that,’ Mellberg said vaguely.

‘How did you confirm it was murder?’ the third journalist interjected. ‘Did she have external injuries that indicated it was homicide?’

‘For investigative reasons I can’t comment on that,’ said Mellberg, seeing how the frustration was growing on the reporters’ faces. It was always like walking a slack line where the press was concerned. Give them just enough so that they felt the police were doing their job, but not so much that it hurt the investigation. Usually he regarded himself as a master of this balancing act, but today he was having a hard time with it. He didn’t know what to do about the information he had received in the letter. Could it really be true?

One of the reporters was looking at him impatiently, and Mellberg realized he’d missed a question.

‘Pardon me, could you please repeat the question?’ he said in confusion, and the reporter’s expression registered his surprise. They had met at several of these types of meetings, and the superintendent usually acted grandiose and boastful, rather than low-key and absent-minded as he was today.

‘I asked whether there is any reason for parents in the area to worry about the safety of their children.’

‘We always recommend that parents keep a close eye on their children, but I want to emphasize that this shouldn’t lead to any sort of mass hysteria. I’m convinced that this is an isolated event and that we will soon have a suspect in custody.’

He stood up as a sign that the meeting was over. The reporters obediently put away their notebooks and pens and thanked him. They all felt that they might have questioned the superintendent a bit harder, but at the same time it was important for the local press to maintain a good relationship with the local police. They would leave the hard-hitting questions to their colleagues in the big cities. Here in Bohuslän they were often neighbors of the subjects of their interviews. They had children in the same sports leagues and schools, so they had to forgo any desire to get the big scoop, for the sake of harmony in the community.

Mellberg leaned back contentedly. Despite his lack of focus, the newspapers hadn’t received more information than he intended to give, and tomorrow the news would be plastered on the front pages of all the papers in the area. Hopefully that would make the general public wake up and start calling in tips. If the police were lucky, there might even be something they could use among all the gossip that usually came in.

He pulled out the letter and began reading it again. He still couldn’t believe his eyes.

11

Strömstad 1924

She lay in her room with a cold, damp washcloth on her forehead. The doctor had examined her carefully and then ordered bed rest. Now he was downstairs in the parlor talking with her father, and for a moment she worried that there might be something seriously wrong with her. An expression of alarm had appeared in his eyes, briefly, but it was gone the next instant. As he left the room he patted her hand and told her that everything would be all right. She just needed to rest for a while.

She couldn’t tell the good doctor the real reason for her malaise. All those late nights during the winter had affected her health. That was the diagnosis she had come up with herself, but she had to keep it a secret. Hopefully Dr. Fern would write a prescription for some restorative drops for her. Since she had now decided to terminate her escapades with Anders, she should soon be her old self again. In the meantime, it couldn’t hurt to stay in bed and be waited on for a week or two. Agnes pondered what she should ask to have for lunch. Now that she had lost yesterday’s dinner in the toilet, she could feel her stomach growling. Maybe pancakes, or those excellent meatballs the cook made, with boiled potatoes, cream gravy, and lingonberries.

Footsteps on the stairs made her shrink a little farther under the covers and moan a bit. She would ask for meatballs, she decided, the second before the door to her room opened.

The anger had been growing inside him since yesterday. The nerve! That damned woman really had no scruples at all, pointing him out to the police. Kaj wasn’t stupid; he knew that the rumors would soon start flying all over town, so it really didn’t make any difference what he said. The only thing people would remember was that the police had been to his house to ask questions about the girl’s death. He clenched his fists until his knuckles turned white. After hesitating a moment, he put on his jacket and went outside, his face set with determination. The plank fence he’d put up between the lots prevented him from cutting straight across, so he went out to the street and then up the drive toward the Florins’ house. He had checked that both Niclas and Charlotte had left the house before he approached. He was going to give her a piece of his mind, that bitch. Like everyone else in town, Lilian seldom locked her front door, so he walked right in without knocking and stormed into the kitchen. She jumped when he came in but quickly collected herself, and her face took on that snippy, holier-than-thou expression. She really thought she was somebody. As if she were a bloody queen and not just an ordinary old bag in a fucking small town.

‘What the hell’s the meaning of sending the police over to my house?’ he yelled, slamming his fist on the kitchen table.

She gave him a cold stare. ‘They asked if we knew of anyone who might wish our family harm, so I immediately thought of you. And if you don’t hurry up and get out of my house, I’m going to call them again. Then they can see for themselves what you’re capable of.’

He wanted to wrap his hands around her throat. Her apparent calm only intensified his rage, and spots began to dance before his eyes.

‘Just try it, you shitty fucking bitch!’

‘Don’t think I wouldn’t. Because you can bet I will. You’ve continually harassed me and my family and threatened and badgered us.’ Histrionically, she put her hand to her breast and assumed the martyr expression he hated.

Worse yet, he realized she had succeeded in pulling off the same trick, to portray him as the villain and herself as the victim, when it was actually just the opposite. At first he had tried to be the better person, he really had. Tried to remain above the fray, to refuse to sink to her level. But then a couple of years ago he’d decided that if it was war she wanted, it was war she was going to get.

He hissed at her through clenched teeth: ‘You didn’t succeed, at any rate. The police didn’t seem very inclined to believe your lies about me.’

‘Well, there are several other possibilities that the police can investigate,’ Lilian said nastily.

‘What do you mean?’ Kaj asked, before he realized what she was getting at. ‘You leave Morgan out of this, do you hear me?’

‘I hardly need to say a thing.’ Her tone was even more malevolent. ‘The police will no doubt soon discover for themselves that there’s a man living next door who isn’t quite right in the head. And everyone knows what someone like that might do. If not, all they have to do is look at the reports on file.’

‘Those complaints were pure bullshit, and you know it! Morgan has never even set foot on your property, much less run around looking in your windows.’

‘Well, I know what I saw,’ said Lilian. ‘And the police will work it out as well, as soon as they look through the reports.’

He didn’t answer her. There was no use trying.

Then the rage took over.

Deeply engrossed in the papers on his desk, Martin jumped when Patrik knocked on his office door.

‘I didn’t mean to give you a heart attack,’ said Patrik with a smile. ‘Are you busy?’

‘No, come on in,’ he said, waving Patrik in. ‘So, how’d it go? Did you find out anything about the family from the teacher? Did he tell you anything?’

‘She,’ Patrik clarified. ‘No, she didn’t have much to say,’ he said, drumming his hand impatiently on his leg. ‘She didn’t know of any problems in connection with Sara’s family. But we did find out a bit more about Sara. The girl apparently had DAMP and could be quite trying.’

‘In what way?’ said Martin, who had only a vague understanding of this diagnosis that had become so common in recent years.

‘She was excitable, restless, and aggressive if she didn’t get her way. She also had difficulty concentrating.’

‘Sounds like she must have been rather hard to deal with,’ said Martin.

Patrik nodded. ‘Yes, that’s how I interpret it too, even though the teacher didn’t come right out and say it, naturally.’

‘Did you notice anything like this when you saw Sara before?’

‘Erica was the one who saw her more often. I just saw her a few times, and all I remember is that I thought she seemed lively. But nothing that I reacted to.’

‘So what exactly is the difference between DAMP and ADHD?’ Martin asked. ‘It seems to me I’ve heard both used to describe pretty much the same conditions.’

‘No idea,’ said Patrik with a shrug. ‘And I don’t know whether her problem had anything to do with her murder, but we have to start somewhere, don’t we?’

Martin nodded and then pointed at the papers in front of him. ‘I’ve checked through the reports we’ve received about sex crimes in recent years, and there’s nothing that really matches. A few reports of offences committed against children by a close family member, but we had to drop the charges because of lack of evidence. We do have one conviction in such a case. You probably recall the father who assaulted his daughter, don’t you?’

Patrik nodded. There had been few cases that left such a horrid taste in his mouth. ‘Torbjörn Stiglund, yeah, but he’s probably still in prison, isn’t he?’

‘Yes, I called and checked. He hasn’t even been out on any furloughs. So we can cross him off the list. As to the rest, they’re mostly rapes, but against adults; and then there are a few cases of molestation, also against adults. By the way, a familiar name popped up there.’ Martin pointed at the binder that Patrik had last seen on his own desk, but which now lay before his colleague. ‘I hope you don’t mind that I took the Florin family binder from your office.’

Patrik shook his head. ‘No, of course, that’s quite all right. And I presume you’re alluding to Lilian’s complaints against Morgan Wiberg?’

‘Yes, she claims that he was sneaking about outside their house and tried to peep in on several occasions when she was changing her clothes.’

‘Yeah, I read that,’ Patrik said wearily. ‘But I honestly don’t know how to view all these reports. None of the claims seem to have any basis in reality. They’re mostly accusations coming from both sides and a particularly effective way to waste police time and resources.’

‘I’m inclined to agree with you. But we can’t close our eyes to the fact that there’s a potential peeping tom in the house next door. You know, sex crimes often start with just that sort of activity,’ Martin said.

‘I know, but it still seems pretty far-fetched. Suppose that what Lilian Florin says is true—which I strongly doubt. It
is
a grown woman that Morgan was trying to see naked, after all. There’s nothing to suggest that he would have any sexual interest in children. Besides, we don’t even know if Sara’s murder began with a sexual offence. Nothing from the postmortem indicates that. But it could be worthwhile to check out Morgan more closely. I’ll have a talk with him, at least.’

‘Do you think there’s any chance I could come with you?’ Martin said eagerly. ‘Or are you starting to prefer Ernst?’

Patrik grimaced. ‘No, that day will never come. As far as I’m concerned, you’re welcome to come along. The question is what Mellberg will say about it.’

‘Well, we can at least ask. I think he’s been a bit calmer the past few days. Who knows, maybe he’s mellowing out in his old age.’

‘I doubt it,’ Patrik said with a laugh. ‘But I’ll go find out if he’ll agree to the plan. We could head over there this afternoon. I’ve got some paperwork to catch up on first.’