Unseen (13 page)

“Are you grumpy just because you’re hungover? Is that it?” Karin teased him, poking him in the ribs.

“Not at all,” said Thomas.

Knutas gave him an annoyed look. “Considering that we recently had the homicide of a woman on our hands, I think we need to give this our immediate attention. We’ll start by finding out what her girlfriends have to say. Karin, could you talk to the woman who lives on Bogegatan? The other two live on Tjelvarvägen. You can deal with them,” he said, turning to Wittberg and Norrby. “I’ll go see the husband. Then we’ll meet back here. Shall we say around eight o’clock?”

The chairs scraped the floor as they all got up from the table. Norrby and Wittberg muttered to each other. “Hell, this is stupid. Bringing us in on a weekend for something like this. A woman who’s cheating on her husband.” They both shook their heads and sighed.

Knutas pretended not to notice.

He was standing up to his waist in the cold water. It was numbingly cold; he was enjoying it. It reminded him of his childhood when he would go swimming with his father and sister near their summer cottage. The first plunge into the sea water that hadn’t yet warmed up. How they laughed and shrieked. It was one of the few happy childhood memories he had
.

His mother, of course, didn’t come along. She never went swimming. She was always busy with something else. Washing dishes, doing the laundry, cooking, making the beds, tidying up. He remembered wondering why all that always took such a long time. There were only four of them in the family, and his father did a lot of the chores at home, too. But somehow she always seemed to have her hands full. She never had any time to spend with them. To play
.

If she had any free time, she would do crossword puzzles. Always those damn crosswords. Occasionally he would try to help her. Sit down next to her and give her suggestions for solving the puzzle. Then she would snap that he was ruining all the fun of it. She didn’t want anyone to help. And he was pushed away. As usual
.

He looked out across the sea. It was gray and motionless. Exactly like the sky. He had an almost spiritual feeling. Everything was calm. As if time and space had stopped. And here he was. By now he was starting to get used to the coldness of the water. He gathered his courage and dove in
.

Afterward he sat naked on the lid of the old kitchen bench and spent a long time drying himself off. He felt cleansed. The space in the seat underneath him had been refilled. He exhaled everything that had weighed on him all these years. It seemed as if the more blood he spilled, the more purified he felt
.

Södervärn is located about three-quarters of a mile from the ring wall. That part of town consists mostly of single-family homes from the early twentieth century, but here and there are a few recently built houses. The Lindh family lived in one of them. It was a one-story structure with a white-brick facade, a neat driveway, and an American-style mailbox. On the street several little boys were playing with field hockey sticks. They were taking turns shooting the ball toward a goal that had been set up on the sidewalk. Knutas parked his old Mercedes outside the white-painted wooden fence. He noticed little decals in the windows indicating that the house had an alarm system installed by one of the largest security companies. That was quite unusual on Gotland.

He pushed the doorbell and heard it ring inside the house.

Stefan Lindh opened the door almost at once. His eyes were red rimmed and unhappy.

“Where could she be? Have you heard anything?” He asked the questions even before saying hello.

“I think the first thing we should do is sit down and have a talk,” said Knutas, and he walked right into the living room and sat down on the sofa with the floral upholstery without taking off either his shoes or his jacket. He pulled out his notebook.

“When did you discover that Frida hadn’t come home?”

“This morning around eight o’clock when Svante woke me up. He’s our two-year-old.”

He sat down on a wicker chair next to the superintendent.

“I took the kids over to my parents’ house. I didn’t want them to be here at home while I’m so worried. We have two more, a girl who’s five and a boy who’s four.”

“What did you do when you discovered that Frida wasn’t in the house?”

“I tried calling her cell phone but didn’t get an answer. Then I called around to her girlfriends. No one knew anything. So I alerted the police. A little later I drove over to the Monk’s Cellar, taking the same route that she should have taken home, but I didn’t see anything.”

“Have you talked to her parents or other family members?”

“She’s from Stockholm. Her parents and her brothers and sister all live there, but we hardly ever hear from them. They don’t have much contact with each other. Frida and her parents, I mean. That’s why I haven’t talked to them. I didn’t call her sister because I didn’t want to upset her for no reason.”

“Where do your parents live?”

“They live in Slite, on the east side of the island. They came over to pick up the children about an hour ago.”

“How long have you lived here?”

“Just about a year. We used to live in Stockholm. Last summer we moved to the island. I was born and raised here, and all of my family is here on Gotland.”

“How was Frida when she left home yesterday? I mean, what was her mood like?”

“Same as always. Cheerful, looking forward to the evening. She had really spiffed herself up. She’s so happy about making friends with those women. Well, I am, too, of course. It wasn’t easy for her to move here in the beginning.”

“I understand. You have to excuse me for asking, but how are things between you and Frida? What’s your relationship like, I mean?”

Stefan Lindh squirmed a bit. He had one leg crossed over the other. Now he switched legs and blushed slightly.

“Um, well, it’s fine. Of course there’s a lot of work to do. The three kids take up almost all our time. There isn’t much time left over for anything else. Things are about the same for us as for most people, I suppose. No real problems, but we’re not exactly floating on cloud nine, either.”

“Have you had a fight or any kind of crisis recently?”

“No, just the opposite. I think things have been unusually good between us lately. It was tough when we first moved here, but now Frida seems to be thriving. The kids are doing well. They think the daycare center is fun.”

“Has anything out of the ordinary happened lately? Have there been any strange phone conversations, or has your wife met anyone new that she’s told you about? Maybe at work?”

“I don’t think so,” Lindh replied hesitantly, with a frown. “Not that I can recall offhand.”

“What kind of work does she do?”

“She’s a hairdresser. She works at the salon across from the Obs supermarket at Östercentrum.”

“So she must meet lots of different people. Has she mentioned any particular customer lately? Anyone special?”

“No. Of course she talks about plenty of crazy customers, but there hasn’t been anyone in particular lately.”

“I noticed that you have a security system on your house. Why is that?”

“Frida wanted to have it installed when we moved in. She’s afraid of the dark and doesn’t feel safe without it. I travel quite a lot for my job, and sometimes I’m gone for several days at a time. Things are much better now that we have the security alarm.”

Knutas handed Stefan Lindh his card. “If Frida comes home or contacts you, call me on my direct line. You can also reach me on my cell phone. It’s always on.”

“What are you going to do now?” asked Lindh.

“We’ll start looking,” replied Knutas, and stood up.

Knutas took the direct route back to headquarters. The others gradually came in, one after the other. It was past 9:00 p.m. by the time everyone had gathered in Knutas’s office. They had all heard approximately the same story: that Frida had met a man and had talked to him for over an hour. None of the girlfriends had ever seen him before. They described him as tall and good-looking, with thick medium-blond hair, about thirty-five. One of the women noticed that he hadn’t shaved that day. Frida and the stranger had flirted quite openly, and for a while he had held her hand.

The girlfriends thought she was out of her mind. Married and the mother of three. What would people say? Visby was a small town, and they had seen plenty of familiar faces at the inn.

The others had walked home together because they lived in the same direction, but Frida had bicycled off alone. Even though Frida liked to flirt, they didn’t think she would go home with some strange man. They all agreed about that.

Knutas’s cell phone rang. During the conversation, which for Knutas’s part consisted of solemn grunts and uhhuhs, the superintendent’s face took on a grayish hue.

Everyone’s eyes were fixed on Knutas when he hung up. The silence in the room was palpable.

“A woman was found dead in the cemetery,” he said grimly, and reached for his jacket. “All indications point to murder.”

The young man who found the body had been taking his dog for a walk without a leash. When they passed the churchyard, the dog dashed into the cemetery, heading straight for some shrubbery.

When the investigative team arrived, a cluster of people had already gathered at the cemetery. Several police officers were in the process of putting up crime scene tape to prevent the curiosity seekers from coming closer.

One of the officers led the group to the murder scene. The woman’s body had been hidden under branches that were arranged to make it seem natural. Knutas looked with horror at the slender figure on the ground. She was naked, lying on her back. Her throat was covered with blood that had run down over her breasts. There were gashes, some several inches long, on her stomach, her thighs, and one of her shoulders. Her arms were at her sides, splotched with dirt. Scratch marks were clearly visible on her legs. Her face was horribly pale. She looked like a wax doll, Knutas thought. As if she had been emptied of blood. Her skin was a yellowish white with no luster at all, her eyes wide open and dull. When Knutas leaned down to look at her head, an ice-cold band began pressing into his forehead. He shut his eyes, then opened them again. A scrap of lacy black fabric was sticking out of the victim’s mouth.

“Do you see it?” he asked Jacobsson.

“Yes, I see it.” His colleague was holding one hand over her mouth.

Sohlman appeared behind them. “The ME is on his way. He happened to be in Visby for the weekend. Sometimes we’re in luck. We haven’t yet confirmed the identity of the victim. She has no purse, no wallet, or any kind of ID, but it’s most likely Frida Lindh. The age and description match, and a woman’s bicycle was found in some bushes across the road.”

“This is too awful,” said Knutas. “Just a few hundred yards from home.”

The huge corridor in TV headquarters in the Gärdet district of Stockholm was packed with people. It was the evening of Swedish TV’s annual summer party, and all the employees in Stockholm were invited. More than fifteen hundred guests had arrived, mingling in the enormous studios lining the corridor. They were normally used for taping entertainment shows and soap operas, but now they had been turned over to the dancing and partying. The corridor itself had been transformed into a gigantic cocktail lounge in which several different types of bars had been set up.

Over there the confident meteorologist was snickering with the most ruthless of the reporters. An anchorman was swaggering around with a bleary gaze, as if searching incessantly for a smooth-skinned, curvaceous intern to sink his teeth into. The cool crowd from the entertainment division was cavorting around on the dance floor, sticking close together and apparently oblivious to the rest of the people around them.

Johan and Peter were standing with their colleagues from Regional News at one of the bars, drinking Mexican screwdrivers: tequila with sparkling lemonade, lime juice, fresh squeezed limes and lemons, and plenty of ice.

Johan took a big gulp of his cold drink. He’d been busting his butt the past few days, working on the report about the gangster war in Stockholm. It had taken longer than he anticipated, and he’d put in many late nights all week long. He had finished the report fifteen minutes before it was broadcast.

The assignment had worn him out, so it was great to relax now and wash away all the hard work of the past week. Even though there had been a lot for him to do, he had still thought about Emma—and cursed himself for doing so. He had no right to approach her and maybe screw up her life, but she had provoked a sense of agitation inside him that wouldn’t go away.

Now that the case of the murdered woman had pretty much been solved, there wouldn’t be any more trips to Gotland for him. At least not in the near future. It would be just as well to forget about her. That’s what he had thought a hundred times over the past week. He knew her phone number by heart and several times had been on the verge of calling, but he stopped himself at the last second. He knew what a mistake that would be. The odds couldn’t be worse.

He took another drink and let his gaze slide over the sea of partygoers. A short distance away, he caught sight of Madeleine Haga. She was talking to several reporters from the central desk. Petite, dark, and sweet, wearing black jeans and a glittery lavender top. He decided to go over to her.