The Stonecutter (47 page)

But as the years passed, her irritation with Åke had congealed into hatred, and she had begun to search for a suitable weapon to use against him. When she noticed that he was becoming attached to the girl, she found the greatest enjoyment in slowly but surely turning her against him. She knew that he was strongly opposed to her punishments, but also that he was too afraid of conflict and too weak to stand up in Mary’s defense.

Knowing how badly Mary longed for a little attention and tenderness, Agnes gave it to her at the same time as she offered her poisonous lies about Åke. She could practically see the venom spreading.

Poor Åke had no idea what he was doing wrong. The girl was growing distant, and her eyes were full of contempt. He probably suspected that Agnes was to blame, but he could never figure out exactly what she did to make the girl detest him so. He spoke with Mary as often as he could and even tried to buy her forgiveness by bribing her with the sweets he knew that she craved. But nothing seemed to help. Inexorably she slipped farther and farther away from him, and as the distance grew, his bitterness toward his wife kept pace. Eight years after they married, Åke knew that he’d made a huge mistake, but he couldn’t get out of it. And even though Mary now refused to have anything to do with him, he knew he was her last chance at security. If he disappeared from her life, he couldn’t imagine what his wife might do to the girl. He no longer had any illusions about her.

Agnes understood all this. Sometimes her intuition was uncanny, and she could read people like an open book.

She was sitting at her dressing table, doing her makeup. Unbeknownst to Åke, she’d been having a passionate affair for the past six months with one of his closest friends. She pinned up her black hair, which had still not a trace of gray in it, and dabbed a little perfume behind her ears, on her wrists, and down her cleavage. She was dressed in black silk undergarments trimmed with lace; she still had a figure that would make many young girls envious.

She was looking forward to the rendezvous, which as usual would take place at Hotel Eggers. Per-Erik was a real man, unlike Åke, and she was pleased that he’d begun to talk more and more about leaving his wife. She wasn’t so naïve as to believe such promises from a married man, but she knew that he appreciated her skills in bed more than was healthy. His chubby little wife simply couldn’t compete.

But there was still the problem of Åke. Agnes’s brain kept circling around. In the mirror she saw her daughter’s fat face and the big eyes hungrily watching her.

Despite having taken a long shower and changed his clothes, Martin thought he could still smell the vomit from the day before. The suicide and then the call from Patrik telling him that someone had attacked Maja had shaken him, and he felt utterly helpless. There were so many threads in this case, so many odd things happening all at once, that for the life of him he couldn’t understand how they would ever make any sense of the mess.

Outside Patrik’s door, he hesitated. In view of what had happened, he wasn’t sure that Patrik would be working today. But sounds from inside his office meant he was already here. He knocked cautiously.

‘Come in,’ Patrik called out.

‘I wasn’t sure you’d be here today,’ Martin said. ‘I thought you might be at home with Erica and Maja.’

‘I wanted to stay home,’ said Patrik. ‘But more than that, I want to catch the psycho who’s doing this.’

‘But did Erica really want to be at home alone?’ Martin said tentatively, unsure whether that was the right thing to say.

‘I wanted somebody to come over and stay with them, but she insisted everything was fine. But I did phone and talk to her friend Dan, the guy who was at our house yesterday when it happened, and he promised to drop by and look in on them.’

‘Did they get any prints?’ Martin asked.

‘Unfortunately, no. It was raining, so all the tracks had been washed away. But I sent Maja’s overalls with the ashes to the lab, so we’ll see what that turns up. In my view, it’s merely a formality; it would be much too big a coincidence if the ashes didn’t match the other sample.’

‘But why Maja?’

‘Who knows?’ said Patrik. ‘Presumably it was a warning directed at me. Something I did, or didn’t do, during the course of the case. Oh, I don’t know,’ he said in frustration. ‘But the best we can do now is to keep working full speed ahead, so that we get this solved as soon as possible. Until then, none of us can relax.’

‘What do we do first, interrogate Kaj?’

‘Yes,’ Patrik said grimly, ‘we interrogate Kaj.’

‘You do realize that Kaj was in custody yesterday when—’

‘Yeah, of course I do,’ Patrik said, sounding annoyed. ‘But it doesn’t mean that he isn’t mixed up in this somehow. Or that he won’t have to answer to other things.’

‘Okay, I was just checking,’ said Martin, holding up his hands defensively. ‘I’ll just hang up my jacket and meet you there.’ He headed for his office.

Patrik was gathering up his things to go to the interrogation room when the phone rang. It was Annika, so he picked up, hoping that it wasn’t anything important. He was really looking forward to confronting the shithead they had in custody. Now more than ever.

‘Yes?’ He could hear that his tone was curt, but Annika had a thick skin and wouldn’t be offended. At least he hoped not.

Moments later he dashed over to Martin’s office. ‘Charlotte and Niclas are here, looking for me. We’ll have to wait a bit with the interrogation until I hear what they want.’

Without waiting for a reply, he ran back to his office. A few seconds later, he heard footsteps and a low murmur in the corridor. When Sara’s parents stepped into the room, Patrik was shocked to see how Charlotte had changed. In the short time since he’d seen her last, she had aged considerably, and her clothes hung loosely on her body. Niclas too looked tired and worn out, but not as bad as his wife. They sat down in the visitors’ chairs, and, during the silence that followed, Patrik had time to wonder what was so important that they would come here unannounced.

It was Niclas who spoke first. ‘We … we lied to you. Or rather, there are some things we didn’t tell you, and that’s probably almost as bad as lying.’ Patrik felt his interest rising, but decided to wait Niclas out. After a moment he went on. ‘Albin’s injuries. The ones you thought, or believed, that I gave him. It was, it was …’ He seemed to be searching for words, and Charlotte took over for him.

‘It was Sara.’ Her voice sounded mechanical and empty of all emotion. Patrik recoiled in his chair. That wasn’t what he was expecting to hear.

‘Sara?’ he said, baffled.

‘Yes,’ said Charlotte. ‘You know that Sara had problems. She had a hard time controlling her impulses and would get the most terrible attacks of rage. Before Albin was born, she turned her anger on us, but we could defend ourselves and make sure she didn’t hurt herself or us. But when Albin arrived …’ Her voice broke and she looked down at her hands, which lay trembling in her lap.

‘Everything escalated out of our control after Albin was born,’ Niclas said. ‘We thought in our foolishness that maybe it would be a positive influence on Sara to have a little brother. Someone she could feel responsible for and protect. But in hindsight that was probably naïve of us. She hated him and the time he demanded from us. She took all the opportunities she could to do him harm, and even if we tried to be there and watch them every second, it was impossible. She was fast …’ He looked at Charlotte, who nodded feebly.

Niclas went on. ‘We tried everything. A social worker, a psychologist, aggression management, medication. There was nothing we didn’t try. We experimented with changing her diet, took away all sugar and all fast carbohydrates because some findings suggested that might have a positive effect. But nothing, absolutely nothing, seemed to work. Finally we were at the end of our rope. Sooner or later she was going to do serious harm to someone. We just didn’t want to have to send her away. And where would we send her? So when this position at the clinic in Fjällbacka was advertised, we thought that might be the solution. A complete change of scene, with Charlotte’s mother and Stig close by to help relieve some of the pressure. It sounded perfect.’

Now it was Niclas’s voice that broke. Charlotte put her hand on his and squeezed it. Together they had been to hell and back, and in a way they were still there.

‘I’m truly sorry,’ said Patrik. ‘But I also have to ask: Do you have any proof of what you’re telling me?’

Niclas nodded. ‘I understand that you have to ask. We brought a list of everyone we consulted about Sara. We also contacted them and told them that the police might call them and ask questions. And we told them they didn’t need to preserve patient confidentiality, but to tell the police everything.’

Niclas handed the list to Patrik, who didn’t doubt for a moment they were telling him the truth. But it still had to be corroborated.

‘Have you made any progress? With Kaj, I mean?’ Charlotte asked hesitantly.

‘We’re in the process of interrogating him on various points. Unfortunately that’s all I can tell you.’

Charlotte merely nodded.

Patrik saw that Niclas wanted to say something else, but that he was having a hard time. He waited him out.

‘With regard to the alibi …’ He glanced at Charlotte, who again nodded almost imperceptibly. ‘I recommend that you have a talk with Jeanette. She lied when she said I wasn’t there, to get back at me for ending our relationship. I’m sure that if you press her a bit, the truth will come out.’

Patrik was not surprised. He’d thought that something sounded phony in Jeanette’s account. Well, they could deal with her when the time came. If necessary. Hopefully the question of whether Niclas had an alibi or not would be superfluous after this afternoon’s interrogation.

They got up and shook hands. Then Niclas’s mobile rang. He took the call out in the corridor and a perplexed expression soon appeared on his face.

‘The hospital? Now? Stay calm, we’ll be right over.’

He turned to Charlotte, who was standing next to Patrik in the doorway.

‘Stig has taken a turn for the worse. He’s on his way to the hospital.’

Patrik shook his head as he watched them hurry off down the corridor. Hadn’t they suffered enough?

Arne had taken refuge in the church. Asta’s words were still whirling round in his head like an angry swarm of hornets. His whole world was falling apart, and the answers he’d hoped to find in the church had not yet materialized. Instead, it was as if the stone walls were slowly closing in around him as he sat in the front pew, looking up at the crucifix, where Jesus now seemed to be sneering at him.

A sound behind him made him turn round. Some German tourists came in the door talking loudly and began frenetically taking photographs. He had always been annoyed by tourists, and this was the last straw.

Arne stood up and screamed, with spittle spraying from his lips, ‘Get out of here! At once! Out!’

Although they didn’t understand a word of what he was saying, his tone left no room for doubt, and they slunk timidly out the door.

Pleased at having finally put his foot down, Arne sat back down on the pew, only to be confronted again by Jesus’s scornful smile.

Then a glance at the pulpit infused him with new courage. It was time to do what he should have done long, long ago.

Life was so unfair. Hadn’t he been forced to fight an uphill battle ever since he was born? He’d never got something for nothing. Nobody saw his true qualities. Ernst simply didn’t understand what was wrong with everybody. Why were they always whispering behind his back, stealing the opportunities that should have been his? That’s how it had always been. Even in grade school the other kids had ganged up on him. The girls had giggled and the boys had given him thrashings on the way home from school. Not even when his father fell and landed on a pitchfork did he get any sympathy. Instead, he knew what the townspeople were saying, that his poor mother probably had something to do with it. They simply had no shame.

He’d always believed that things would be better as soon as he left school. When he got out in the real world. He had wanted to become a policeman because it would give him a chance to show himself as the powerful man he was. But after twenty-five years on the force he had to admit that things hadn’t quite gone the way he’d planned, and now he was in really deep shit. He just couldn’t have imagined that Kaj would have had anything to do with such things. They played cards together, after all. Kaj was a great pal and one of the few people who actually wanted to hang out with him. And they’d heard stories about how unfounded accusations had destroyed the lives of innocent men. So when Ernst got a chance to do a friend a favor, of course he had done it. That was nothing to hold against him, was it? He’d had the best of intentions when he neglected to report that call from Göteborg, but nobody seemed to understand. And now everything had blown up in his face. Why did he always have such fucking bad luck? He was smart enough to realize that the boy’s suicide yesterday was going to make things a lot worse.

But as he sat there in his office, banished to solitude like a prisoner in Siberia, Ernst had a flash of genius. He knew precisely how he could turn the situation to his own advantage. He intended to become the hero of the day, and once and for all show that whippersnapper Hedström who was the most experienced cop on the force. Hedström had probably noticed how he’d rolled his eyes at the meeting, when Mellberg had pointed out that they probably ought to take a closer look at the village idiot. But one man’s meat is another man’s poison. If Hedström couldn’t put two and two together to solve the murder, then Ernst would just have to jump in himself. It was obvious to anyone that Morgan was the guilty party, and the fact that the girl’s jacket had been found at his home removed any remaining doubt.