The Stonecutter (22 page)

‘Is there somewhere we could sit down?’ he asked, looking about the room.

‘On the bed,’ replied Morgan, nodding to the narrow bed standing against the far wall. Cautiously Gösta and Martin made their way between the stacks of magazines and sat down carefully on the edge of the bed. Gösta spoke first.

‘We assume you know what happened on Monday at the Florins’. Did you see anything peculiar that morning?’

Morgan did not reply, but looked at them blankly. Martin realized that ‘anything peculiar’ might be too abstract, so he tried to reformulate the question in a more concrete way. He couldn’t even imagine how difficult it would be to function in society without being able to interpret all the implied messages in human communication.

‘Did you notice when the girl left the house?’ he said tentatively, hoping that was precise enough for Morgan to answer.

‘Yes, I saw when the girl left the house,’ said Morgan and then fell silent, unsure whether there was anything more to the question.

Martin was starting to get the hang of things and said more precisely, ‘What time did you see her leave?’

‘She went out at ten after nine,’ said Morgan, still in the same high, shrill voice.

‘Did you see anyone else that morning?’ Gösta asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Who did you see that morning, and at what time?’ said Martin in an attempt to anticipate Gösta. He sensed rather than saw that his colleague was starting to get impatient with their odd interviewee.

‘At a quarter to eight I saw Niclas,’ Morgan replied.

Martin was taking notes of everything he said. He didn’t doubt for a second that the times were exact.

‘Did you know Sara?’

‘Yes.’

Gösta now began to squirm, and Martin hurried to place a warning hand on his arm. Something told him that an emotional outburst would not help, if they wanted to get as much information as possible out of Morgan.

‘How did you know her?’

The question elicited nothing but an empty stare from Morgan, and Martin rephrased it. He had never realized before how difficult it was to be precise when speaking, or how much he normally relied on the other person to understand the essence of what he was saying.

‘Did she come here sometimes?’

Morgan nodded. ‘She interrupted my routines. Knocked on the door when I was working and wanted to come in. Touched my things. Once she got angry when I told her to leave, and she knocked over some of my stacks.’

‘You didn’t like her?’ said Martin.

‘She interrupted my routines. And knocked over my stacks,’ said Morgan, and that was about as close as he could come to showing any emotion about the girl.

‘What do you think of her grandmother?’

‘Lilian is a nasty person. That’s what Pappa says.’

‘She says that you sneaked about outside their house and looked in the windows. Did you do that?’

Morgan nodded without hesitation. ‘Yes, I did. Just wanted to have a look. But Mamma got mad when I said that. She told me that I mustn’t do that.’

‘So you stopped doing it?’ said Gösta.

‘Yes.’

‘Because your mamma said that you mustn’t?’ Gösta’s tone was sarcastic, but Morgan didn’t notice.

‘Yes, Mamma always talks about what one should and shouldn’t do. We practice things to say and things to do. She teaches me that even if somebody says one thing, it can mean something completely different. Otherwise I might say or do the wrong thing.’ Morgan looked at his watch. ‘It’s ten thirty. I should get back to work now.’

‘We won’t bother you any longer,’ said Martin, getting to his feet. ‘Please excuse us for disturbing your routine, but as police officers we can’t always take such things into account.’

Morgan seemed content with that explanation and had already turned round to the computer screen. ‘Pull the door closed behind you,’ he said, ‘or it will blow open.’

‘What an odd duck,’ said Gösta as they slipped through the garden to the car they had parked a block away.

‘I thought it was fascinating, I really did,’ said Martin. ‘I’ve never heard of Asperger’s before, have you?’

Gösta snorted. ‘No, that’s not something we had back in my day. There are so many weird diagnoses nowadays. Personally I think the term “idiot” goes a long way.’

Martin sighed and got into the driver’s seat. Gösta was certainly short on empathy, that’s for sure.

Something was tugging at Martin’s subconscious, making him wonder whether they had asked the right questions. He struggled with his intractable memory but finally had to give up. Maybe he was just imagining things.

The clinic lay shrouded in a gray mist, and there was a single car in the car park. Ernst was still sulking about being admonished by Patrik for arriving late. He climbed out of the car and strode over to the main entrance. In annoyance, Patrik slammed the car door a bit too hard and trotted after him. It was like dealing with a little kid!

They passed the pharmacy counter and turned left into the reception area. There was no one in sight, and their footsteps echoed in the deserted corridor. Finally they located a nurse and asked for Niclas. She informed them that he was with a patient, but he would be free in ten minutes, and she asked them to sit down and wait. Patrik was always fascinated by how similar all clinic waiting rooms seemed. The same dismal wooden furniture with ugly upholstery, the same meaningless art on the walls, and always the same boring magazines. He leafed absentmindedly through something called
Care Guide
and was surprised at how many ailments he’d never heard of. Ernst had sat down as far away as he could, nervously tapping his foot on the floor. Occasionally Patrik caught him shooting dirty looks his way, but that didn’t bother him. Ernst could think whatever he liked, as long as he did his job.

‘The doctor is free now,’ said the nurse. She showed them into an office where Niclas sat behind a desk cluttered with papers. He looked exhausted. He stood up and shook hands with them, even attempting a welcoming smile. But the smile hardened into an anxious grimace before it reached his eyes.

‘Are there any developments in the investigation?’ he asked.

Patrik shook his head. ‘We’re working full tilt, but so far without much progress. But we’re bound to have a breakthrough,’ he added. He hoped to sound reassuring, but in truth his doubts were getting worse. They had absolutely nothing to go on this time.

‘What can I do for you?’ said Niclas wearily as he ran his hand over his blond hair.

Patrik couldn’t help reflecting that the man before him looked like he belonged on the cover of one of those romance novels about beautiful nurses and handsome doctors. Even now, with all that he was going through, his charm was palpable, and Patrik could only imagine how attractive he must be to women. According to what he’d heard from Erica, over the years that had presented problems in his marriage to Charlotte.

‘We have a few questions regarding your activities last Monday morning,’ Patrik began. Ernst was still sulking, and he ignored Patrik’s glances attempting to get him to participate.

‘Oh, yes?’ said Niclas, apparently unmoved, but Patrik thought he noticed his gaze shift slightly.

‘You told us that you were at work.’

‘Yes, I drove here at quarter to eight, as usual,’ said Niclas, but his nervousness was unmistakable.

‘That’s what we don’t quite understand,’ said Patrik, gesturing in a last attempt to involve Ernst. But his colleague just stared obstinately out of the window facing the car park, so Patrik continued.

‘We did try to get hold of you for a couple of hours that morning. And you weren’t in. Of course, if you can’t remember we could ask the nurse,’ said Patrik, nodding toward the door. ‘I presume she keeps track of your office hours and can check to see whether you were here that morning.’

Now Niclas was squirming uneasily in his chair, and beads of sweat had appeared at his temples. But he was still struggling to look unmoved, and Patrik had to admit that he was doing a fairly good job of it. In a calm voice Niclas said, ‘Oh, I remember now. I’d taken time off to drive out and look at some houses that were for sale. I didn’t mention it to Charlotte because I wanted to surprise her.’

The explanation would have seemed plausible if it weren’t for the tension that Patrik sensed beneath the calm tone of voice. He didn’t believe this explanation for a moment.

‘Could you be a little more precise? Which houses did you go to look at?’

Niclas gave a nervous laugh and seemed to be trying to think of a way to gain time. ‘I’d have to check on that, I don’t really recall,’ he said hesitatingly.

‘There aren’t that many houses for sale here right now. You must at least remember what neighborhoods you were in.’ Patrik pressed him harder with his questions, and he saw Niclas growing more and more nervous. Whatever he had been doing that morning, he hadn’t been looking at houses.

A moment of silence followed, as Niclas struggled visibly for another excuse. But then Patrik saw him give up and his whole body slumped. Now maybe they were getting somewhere.

‘I don’t …’ Niclas’s voice broke and he started over. ‘I don’t want Charlotte to hear about this.’

‘We can’t promise anything. Things have a tendency to come out sooner or later, but we’re giving you an opportunity to present your version before we hear anyone else’s.’

‘You don’t understand. It would destroy Charlotte completely if …’ His voice broke again, and Patrik couldn’t keep from feeling a certain sympathy for the man.

‘As I said, I can’t promise anything.’ He waited for Niclas to conquer his anxiety and continue. Images of sweet, gentle Charlotte came to him, and suddenly his sympathy was mixed with repugnance. Sometimes he was ashamed to have to listen to the males of the species.

‘I …’ Niclas cleared his throat, ‘I was with someone.’

‘And who might that be?’ asked Patrik. By now he had completely given up hope of bringing Ernst into the conversation, so he was surprised when his colleague suddenly turned from the window and regarded their interviewee with great interest.

‘Jeanette Lind.’

‘The woman who owns the gift shop on Galärbacken?’ Patrik asked. He could vaguely recall a petite, curvaceous, dark-haired woman.

Niclas nodded. ‘Yes, that’s Jeanette. We …’ once again the same hesitation, ‘we’ve been seeing each other for a while.’

‘How long is a while?’

‘A couple of months. Three, maybe.’

‘How did the two of you manage that?’ Patrik’s curiosity was genuine. He had never understood how people who had an affair could make time to meet. Or how they dared. Especially in a town as small as Fjällbacka, where a car parked for five minutes outside someone’s house was enough to start the rumors flying.

‘Sometimes at lunch, sometimes I said I was working late. Once I pretended I had an urgent house call.’

Patrik was tempted to punch this guy. But his personal feelings were irrelevant. They were here only to investigate the matter of his alibi.

‘And last Monday morning you simply took a couple of hours off to drive over and see … Jeanette.’

‘That’s right,’ said Niclas in a gruff voice. ‘I said I had to make some house calls that I’d been putting off for a while, but that I’d be available on my mobile if anything urgent came up.’

‘But you weren’t. We tried to get hold of you through your nurse on repeated occasions, and you didn’t answer your mobile.’

‘I forgot to recharge it. It died just after I left the clinic, but I didn’t even notice.’

‘And what time did you leave the clinic to go meet your lover?’

That last word seemed to affect Niclas like a slap in the face, but he didn’t object. Instead he ran his hands through his hair again and said wearily, ‘Just after nine thirty, I think. I had telephone consultations between eight and nine, and then I did some paperwork for about half an hour. So between nine thirty and twenty till, I would think.’

‘And we got hold of you just before one. Was that when you came back to the clinic?’ Patrik was struggling to keep his voice neutral, but he couldn’t help imagining Niclas in bed with his lover at the same time as his daughter lay dead in the sea. However one looked at it, Niclas Klinga was not presenting an attractive picture of himself.

‘Yes, that’s correct. I had to start seeing patients at one, so I got back around ten till.’

‘We’re going to have to talk to Jeanette to verify your story. You realize that, don’t you?’ Patrik said.

Niclas nodded dejectedly. He repeated his entreaty once again: ‘Try to keep Charlotte out of this; it would break her completely.’

You should have thought of that earlier, Patrik thought, but he didn’t say it out loud. Niclas had probably had the same thought many times over the past few days.

15

Fjällbacka 1924

It had been so long since he had felt any joy in his work that those days seemed like a distant, pleasant dream. Day-to-day toil had crushed his enthusiasm, and he now worked mechanically on whatever task was at hand. Agnes’s demands never seemed to end. Nor could she make the money last, as the other stonecutter families managed to do, even though they often had a large brood of children to feed. Everything he brought home seemed to run through her fingers. He often had to leave for the quarry without breakfast or lunch because there was no money for food, even though for the first time he was bringing home every öre he earned. Poker was the biggest amusement among the stonecutters. The games laid claim to both evenings and weekends, often ending only when the men went home looking foolish and with empty pockets. The bitterness had long since carved furrows in their wives’ faces.

Indeed, bitterness was a feeling that was beginning to take its toll on Anders, too. Life with Agnes, which had seemed a beautiful dream less than a year ago, had turned out to be pure punishment. The only thing he had done wrong was to love her and plant a child inside her, and yet he was suffering as if he’d committed the ultimate mortal sin. He couldn’t even feel happy about the child in her belly anymore. Her pregnancy had not progressed free of pain, and now that she was in the last stage, things were worse than ever. During her entire pregnancy she had complained of aches and pains of one sort or another, and refused to take care of everyday chores. This meant that he not only worked from early morning to late evening in the quarry, but he also had to handle all the chores that a housewife should do. Worse, he knew that the other cutters both mocked and pitied him for having to carry out a woman’s duties. Most often, though, he was simply too exhausted to even care what others said behind his back.