The Stonecutter (38 page)

Martin took Kaj back to his cell, and Mellberg left right after that. Patrik remained where he was. He looked at the clock. He’d had enough. He intended to drive home and kiss Erica and bury his nose in Maja’s little neck and drink up the scent of her. That was probably the only thing that could get rid of the cloying feeling he had after sitting locked in a small room with Kaj. A pervasive sense of inadequacy, too, made him long for the security of home. He just couldn’t screw this case up. People like Kaj shouldn’t be allowed to go free. Especially not if he had a little girl’s death on his conscience.

He was just about to go out the front door when Annika stopped him. ‘You have visitors; a woman and her daughter. They’ve been waiting quite a while. And Gösta wants to talk to you ASAP. And I got a tip that you ought to take a look at right away.’

Patrik sighed and let the door glide shut. Instead of being home early, it looked like he’d have to tell Erica he needed to stay late. That was a conversation he wasn’t looking forward to.

Charlotte made up her mind, took a deep breath, and pressed the doorbell. For a second when she heard the ring she considered fleeing, but then she heard footsteps inside and forced herself to stand still.

She vaguely recognized the woman who opened the door. The town was small enough that they’d probably run into each other, and she saw that the other woman knew exactly who she was. After a brief moment of hesitation, Jeanette opened the door and stepped aside.

Charlotte was surprised at how young Jeanette looked. Twenty-five, Niclas had said when she pressed him. She didn’t know why she wanted to know such details. It was like a primitive need, an urge to know as much as possible. Maybe it was because she hoped somehow to understand what he was looking for that she couldn’t seem to give him. And maybe that was precisely why she’d been inexorably drawn here. She had never before confronted the women from any of his affairs. She had wanted to see them but never dared. But after Sara’s death, everything changed. It was as though she was invulnerable. All other terrors had vanished. She had already been struck by the worst possible thing that could happen to a person. So much of what had previously paralyzed and terrified her now seemed like insignificant obstacles. Not that it was easy to come here, she wouldn’t say that. But she had done it. Sara was dead, so she had done it.

‘What do you want?’ Jeanette looked at her warily.

Charlotte felt big in comparison with this other woman who was probably no more than five foot three. At five foot nine, Charlotte felt like a misshapen giant; Jeanette had also not had her figure altered by two pregnancies, and her breasts in the tight top didn’t need a bra to look perky. Charlotte tried to shake off a mental picture of Jeanette naked, in bed with Niclas, who was caressing her perfect breasts. She had already spent far too much time on that sort of self-torment over the years. But those images no longer bothered her as much. She had worse images than that in her head—images of Sara, floating in the water.

Charlotte forced herself back to reality. Calmly she said, ‘I just want to talk a little. Could we have a cup of coffee?’

She didn’t know whether Jeanette had expected her to show up or whether she found the situation so surreal that she couldn’t really take it in. At any rate, Jeanette’s face showed no surprise. She simply nodded and went into the kitchen, with Charlotte following.

Curious, she looked around the flat. It was close to what she’d imagined. A little two-room place with a lot of pine furniture, frilly curtains, and souvenirs of trips abroad. Jeanette apparently saved every öre she earned to be able to party in tropical resorts, and those trips were probably the high point of her life. Except when she was fucking married men, that is, Charlotte thought bitterly as she sat down at the kitchen table. She wasn’t feeling as self-assured as she hoped she looked. Her heart was pounding hard, making her very nervous. But then again, she was now seeing for the first time what sort of woman could make a roll in the hay seem more valuable than marriage vows, children, and decency.

To her surprise, Charlotte was disappointed. She had always imagined Niclas’s lovers would be in a whole different class. Jeanette was cute and curvy, but she was also so … she searched for the right word … so insipid. She radiated no warmth, no energy. From what Charlotte could see of her and her home, this woman didn’t seem to have either the capacity or ambition to do anything other than just go with the flow in life.

‘Here,’ said Jeanette peevishly, setting a coffee cup in front of Charlotte. She sat down across the table and began nervously sipping her coffee. Charlotte noticed her long, perfectly manicured nails: yet another thing that didn’t exist in the world of motherhood.

‘Are you surprised to see me here?’ said Charlotte, observing with ostensible calm the woman facing her.

Jeanette shrugged her shoulders. ‘Dunno. Maybe. I haven’t thought much about you.’

At least she’s honest, Charlotte thought, but whether it was from boldness or sheer stupidity, she couldn’t yet tell.

‘Did you know that Niclas told me about you?’

Once again the same nonchalant shrug. ‘I knew it would come out sooner or later.’

‘How did you know that?’

‘People talk so much in this town. There’s always somebody who’s seen someone somewhere, and then they feel compelled to pass it on.’

‘Sounds like this isn’t the first time you’ve played this game,’ said Charlotte.

A little smile tugged at the corners of Jeanette’s mouth. ‘I can’t help it if the best ones are already taken. Not that it usually bothers them much.’

Charlotte’s eyes narrowed. ‘So Niclas didn’t worry about it either? That he was married and had two kids?’ The word ‘had’ stuck in her throat and she felt her sorrow and fury well up and threaten to take over. With an effort she pushed them back.

Charlotte’s hesitation apparently reminded Jeanette that she had certain human obligations. Stiffly she said, ‘I’m really sorry about your daughter. About Sara.’

‘Don’t speak my daughter’s name, thank you,’ said Charlotte with an icy cold that made Jeanette shrink back. She lowered her eyes and stirred her coffee.

‘Instead answer my question: Did Niclas worry about sleeping with you when he had a family at home?’

‘He didn’t talk about you,’ said Jeanette evasively.

‘Never?’

‘We had other things to do than talk about you,’ Jeanette let slip, before she again realized that out of sheer decency she ought to watch what she said.

Charlotte looked at her with disgust. But she felt even more disgust and contempt for Niclas, who clearly had been ready to throw away everything they shared for this—a stupid, narrow-minded girl who thought that the world lay at her feet simply because she was young and attractive. Charlotte knew the type. Too much attention during her most impressionable years had swelled Jeanette’s ego to enormous proportions. Hurting other people, taking what didn’t belong to her, had no meaning for girls like her.

Charlotte stood up. She was sorry she’d come. She would have preferred to keep the image of Niclas’s lover as a beautiful, intelligent, passionate woman. Someone she could harbor some understanding for as a competitor. But this girl just seemed cheap. The thought of Niclas with Jeanette turned her stomach, and she could feel the little respect she still had for him slowly vanishing into nothingness.

‘I’ll find my way out,’ she said, and left Jeanette sitting at the kitchen table. On the way out she ‘happened’ to bump into the hall bureau, knocking off a ceramic donkey with ‘Lanzarote 1998’ painted on it. The donkey shattered on the floor. An ass for an ass, thought Charlotte, gleefully, crunching through the remains on her way out the door.

23

Fjällbacka 1928

The catastrophe struck on a Sunday. The boat to America was supposed to sail from Göteborg on the next Friday, and they had already done most of the packing. Anders had sent Agnes into town to buy some last items that he thought they would need ‘over there,’ and for once he had entrusted her with some money.

She was returning up the hill with her basket full of purchases when she suddenly heard people shouting in the distance, and she quickened her steps. The smoke reached her a few houses away from theirs, and she saw that it was thicker farther up the hill. Agnes dropped the basket and ran. The first thing she saw was the fire. Huge flames were shooting out of the windows of her house, and people were running back and forth in hysteria. The men and some of the women were carrying buckets of water. The rest of the women held their hands to their heads helplessly, screaming in panic. The fire had spread to a number of houses and seemed to be taking over the neighborhood. It spread with incredible speed. Agnes just watched, mouth agape, eyes wide with shock. Nothing could have prepared her for this sight.

A thick black smoke began to settle like a lid over the houses, turning the air at ground level grayish and hazy, like a fog. Agnes stood frozen to the spot until one of the neighbor women grabbed her arm.

‘Agnes, come with me, don’t just stand there staring at it.’ She tried to pull her along, but Agnes wouldn’t budge. Her eyes filled with tears from the smoke as she stared at the flaming ruin of their home. It seemed to be the one burning brightest of all.

‘Anders … the boys …’ she said tonelessly. The neighbor woman now tugged desperately at the sleeve of her blouse to get her to leave the scene.

‘We don’t know anything yet,’ said the woman, who Agnes vaguely recalled was named Britt, or maybe Britta. ‘Everybody was told to gather at the market square. Maybe your family are already down there,’ she said, but Agnes could hear the doubt in her voice. The woman knew as well as Agnes that she wouldn’t find any of them there.

Slowly she turned round and felt the heat from the fire warming her back. Listlessly she followed the woman down the hill, allowing herself to be led to the square, where the women’s wailing rose to the heavens. But they fell silent when Agnes appeared. The rumor had already spread; while they were crying over their lost homes and possessions, Agnes had lost her husband and her two little boys. All the mothers looked at her with aching hearts. Regardless of what they may have said or thought about her before, at this moment she was a mother who had lost her children, and they pressed their own little ones close.

Agnes kept her gaze fixed on the ground. She did not cry.

They stood up as Patrik came down the hall toward them. Veronika gripped her daughter’s hand and wouldn’t let go even when Patrik led them to his small office. He pointed to the two chairs, and they sat down.

‘So, how can I help you?’ asked Patrik, smiling reassuringly at Frida when he noticed her anxious expression. She looked up at her mother, who nodded.

‘Frida has something to tell you,’ said Veronika, nodding again to her daughter.

‘Actually it’s a secret,’ said Frida in a faint voice.

‘Oh, a secret,’ said Patrik. ‘How exciting.’ He could see that the girl was extremely uncertain about sharing this secret, so he went on, ‘But you know, the job of the police is to listen to everyone’s secrets, so it doesn’t really count if you tell a secret to the police.’

That made Frida’s face light up. ‘So you get to know all the secrets in the world, then?’

‘Well, maybe not all of them,’ said Patrik. ‘But almost all. So, what sort of secret do you have?’

‘There was a disgusting old man who scared Sara,’ she blurted, now talking fast to get the words out. ‘He was super-nasty and said that she was “double pawn” and Sara got really scared. But I wasn’t allowed to tell anybody, because she was afraid the old man would come back.’

She caught her breath. Patrik felt his eyebrows arch. Double pawn?

‘What did the old man look like, Frida? Can you remember?’

She nodded. ‘He was super-old. A hundred at least. Like Grandpa.’

‘Her Grandpa is sixty,’ said Veronika, and couldn’t help smiling.

Frida went on. ‘His hair was all gray and his clothes were all black.’ She seemed about to continue but then slumped down in her chair. ‘That’s all I remember,’ she said, downhearted, and Patrik winked at her.

‘That’s excellent. And it was a good secret to tell the police.’

‘So you don’t think that Sara will be mad when she comes back from heaven, because I told you?’

Veronika took a deep breath to explain again the realities of death to her daughter, but Patrik interrupted.

‘No, because you know what I think? I think that Sara is having much too good a time in heaven to want to come back, and I’m sure she doesn’t mind whether you told the secret or not.’

‘Are you sure?’ said Frida skeptically.

‘I’m sure,’ said Patrik.

Veronika got up. ‘Well, you know where we live if you need to ask anything else. But I really think Frida doesn’t know any more than that.’ She hesitated. ‘Do you think it might be …?’

Patrik just shook his head and said, ‘Impossible to say, but it was great that you came in and told me about this. All information is important.’

‘Could I ride in a police car?’ said Frida, giving Patrik a pleading look.