Unseen (28 page)

“Now you’re really scared, aren’t you, little fatty,” hooted the worst of them, the leader. The others snickered spitefully as they held his hands in an iron grip
.

“You’re not thinking of pissing yourself this time, are you? No, we’ll see to it that you don’t wet your pants so that Mamma gets mad. Uh-uh, you don’t have to do that,” she taunted him. And to his surprise, she took hold of his belt and unfastened it
.

When she started unbuttoning his pants, he got hysterical. This was just about the worst thing that could happen. He tried to struggle as best he could, kicking and screaming. He didn’t have a chance. Triumphantly the leader pulled off his pants. He was ashamed when his stomach and legs were uncovered. He tried to bite the hands that were holding him
.

“Look, what a fat little pig. It’s about time you went on a diet, don’t you think?”

Then the leader seized hold of his underpants and took them off, too
.

“What a tiny dick!” she shouted, and the others laughed loudly. The humiliation burned like fire, and he was panic-stricken. He closed his eyes and screamed as loud as he could until he felt something soft being stuffed in his mouth and smelled his own underpants. The leader and one of the other hated demons were pressing the cloth into his mouth
.

“Now you’re going to shut your trap, goddamn it,” snarled the leader, and her hard hands clamped onto his mouth to keep the underpants inside
.

He thought he was going to suffocate. He couldn’t get any air, and he was struggling desperately under their hands. Everything went black before his eyes. From far away he could hear one of the voices
.

“Stop it. Let him go. He can’t breathe.”

The hands released him, and he heard them leave
.

He lay there for a while, keeping his eyes closed in case they changed their minds and came back. When he finally dared get up, he didn’t know how long he had been lying in that hollow. His underpants were on the ground next to him. Quickly he got dressed
.

When he stuck his hand in his pants pocket, he discovered that the ten-krona bill was gone
.

Helena Hillerström’s parents lived in the well-to-do neighborhood of Stocksund just north of Stockholm. Jacobsson and Knutas had decided to go out there themselves to talk to the parents. Hans and Agneta Hillerström were home, and the father had said on the phone that they were welcome to come over.

Neither of them had ever been out to Stocksund before, and they were impressed by the big houses with the generous yards. They passed Värtan, with its glittering water. The well-dressed inhabitants of Danderyd were out, strolling along the shoreline promenade. The turn-of-the-century house belonging to the Hillerströms stood on a hill with an enormous plot of land around it. They could glimpse parts of it through the huge lilac hedge.

Helena’s father opened the door. He was a tall, lanky man with thinning hair, a fresh complexion, and plenty of wrinkles on his suntanned but solemn face. “Good day,” he greeted them with a certain formality. “Please come in.”

They stepped inside the hallway, which had an impressively high ceiling. Round columns framed the grand wooden staircase that led up to the second floor.

Jacobsson sighed to herself. What a magnificent house.

From the hall they caught a glimpse of the living room and several sitting rooms with a row of big windows facing the yard. Agneta Hillerström appeared at once. She, too, was tall and slender, with steel gray hair cut in an attractive page-boy style.

They sat down on a soft, comfortable sofa group in the living room. Dainty coffee cups and a plate of cookies were on the table.
Coconut balls
, Knutas observed, and put one in his mouth. How strange. Somehow that type of cookie didn’t really fit in with the rest of the setting. That’s what he and the twins usually baked for their birthday. His kids loved them.

“We know that you’ve talked to the police several times before, but I wanted to meet you in person,” he said. “I’m in charge of the investigation on Gotland. At the present time, we do not have a suspect, but a good deal of information has come to light during the investigation, and I’d like to talk to you about some of it. Is that all right?”

“Of course,” they said in unison, giving him an inquisitive look.

Knutas cleared his throat. “To get right to the point. It has come to our attention that your daughter had a relationship with one of her high school teachers. A PE teacher by the name of Jan Hagman. Did you know about this?”

The husband was the one who answered. He spoke in a resigned tone of voice. “Yes, we knew about it. Helena told us after it had been going on for a while. She ended up getting pregnant by that scumbag. She was only seventeen.” Hans Hillerström’s expression grew tense, and he began wringing his hands.

“She was pregnant?” Knutas raised his eyebrows. They didn’t know about this.

“The whole thing was hushed up. She had an abortion, of course. We forbade her to see him ever again. We talked to the principal, and Hagman was asked to leave. He got a job at another school, someplace down south in Sudret. The man was married and had two children. That swine even had the nerve to call us here at home. He said that he loved Helena. What a fool. He was more than twice her age. He said he was ready to leave his family and take care of Helena and the child. I threatened to kill him if he ever tried to get in touch with her again.”

“How did Helena take all of this?” asked Jacobsson.

“She was deeply depressed at first. She had fallen in love with that idiot, and she was mad at us for not letting her see him anymore. She didn’t think we understood. The abortion wasn’t a nice experience, either. She was sad for a long time afterward. We took a trip to the West Indies so that she could get away from the whole thing. In the fall, she started her third year in school as planned. Things didn’t go well at first, but she recovered quite quickly. Helena has always had lots of friends, and I think that was really important,” he said thoughtfully.

A brief silence followed. Both Knutas and Jacobsson felt rather low-spirited. It was a sad story. On the wall hung a big portrait of Helena in a gold frame, a photograph from her graduation. She was smiling, and her long dark hair framed her face. Knutas felt a pang as he looked at it. It was terrible that her life should end the way it had.

He broke the silence. “How was your relationship with your daughter?”

“Not without its problems, I suppose,” replied Hans Hillerström. “As she got older she stopped talking to us about anything important. She became more reserved. Not with other people, just with us. We didn’t understand why.”

“Did you try to find out what the reason was?”

“Well, not directly. We thought that with time it would pass.”

“From what I understand, you continued to go out to the cabin in the summertime, and you still have family on Gotland. Do you know whether Helena ever saw Jan Hagman again?”

“Not as far as we know,” replied the father. “We never discussed the matter.”

Now the mother spoke for the first time. “I tried to talk to her about it a few times. Tried to find out how she felt and how she was doing. She said that she had gotten over it. She realized that it was impossible for them to continue the relationship. As for the baby, she said that she thought it was the right thing to do, to have an abortion. She couldn’t have taken care of a child on her own. She didn’t want to, either. She viewed it mostly as something bad that had to be gotten rid of. Like an illness.” She pressed her lips together.

“How were things between her and Per?” asked Jacobsson.

“Things were good. They were together for a long time, and in my view he seemed to be very much in love with her. The fact that he was at first suspected of committing the murder was really hard on us. I think she was everything to him. I’m sure they would have gotten married. If all this hadn’t happened,” said the mother, and her voice faded away.

“Do you know whether she ever met anyone else while she was with Per? Whether she had any kind of crisis for a period of time? They were together for many years, after all.”

“No, I don’t know about anything like that. Things always seemed so good when we asked. Weren’t they?” Agneta Hillerström gave her husband a questioning look.

“I never heard anything, either, about there being any problems,” he concurred.

“We’ve found some new connections between Helena and the second victim, Frida Lindh,” said Knutas. “For one thing, they both worked out at the Friskis & Svettis gym in Hornstull. Have you ever heard mention of anyone she might have met there?”

Both Hillerströms shook their heads.

“Why didn’t you say anything about the Jan Hagman story before?” asked Knutas.

“We didn’t think it was important,” said the father. “It happened so long ago. Do you think that Hagman murdered Helena?”

“We can’t rule out anything, and everything that has to do with Helena is of importance to the police. Is there anything else in Helena’s past that you haven’t told us?”

“No,” said Hans Hillerström. “I don’t think so.”

“Nothing that happened recently, either?”

“No.”

Knutas wondered how the previous interviews with the couple had proceeded. How could it be that none of this had come out right from the beginning? He decided to discuss it with Karin later on.
If all the interviews are equally incomplete, we’re going to have to do them over, every last one of them
, he thought grimly.

His stomach was growling. It was time to leave. “Well, I think we’re done for now. Did Helena still have her own room in the house?”

“Yes, upstairs.”

“Could we take a look at it?”

“Yes, sure. The police have already gone over the room, but of course you can look at it if you like.”

Hans Hillerström led the way up the impressive staircase. The second floor had ceilings just as high as the rooms downstairs. They walked along a big, bright hallway and then through a sitting room where Knutas caught sight of a balcony and a flash of water. There were fireplaces everywhere.

Helena’s room was quite large. High mullioned windows faced out on the yard. It looked as if the room had not been used in a long time. An old-fashioned wooden bed with tall bedposts stood in one corner. Next to it was a white nightstand. Near one of the windows stood a writing desk, an old easy chair, and several bookshelves filled with books.

Hans Hillerström left them alone, closing the door behind him. They searched through the drawers, the shelves, and the closet without finding anything of interest. Suddenly Jacobsson gave a whistle. Behind a photograph of the summer house on Gotland, a slit had been made in the wallpaper. A photo had been slipped inside the rip.

“Look at this,” she said.

It showed a man on a big boat, a passenger ferry—presumably the Gotland Ferry. He was standing on deck with the wind blowing through his hair and the blue sky behind him. He was smiling happily at the photographer, and he had one hand in his pants pocket. It was without a doubt Jan Hagman, almost twenty years younger and forty pounds lighter than when they last saw him.

“Look,” said Jacobsson. “He has that silly look of delight on his face that only someone newly in love ever has. It must be Helena who took the picture.”

“We’ll take this with us,” said Knutas. “Come on, let’s go.”

It was a relief to leave that melancholy house and get out into the green of summer. The flower beds were dazzling, children were playing on the street outside the house, and in a yard a short distance away the neighbors were having a barbecue.

“We need to look into this story with Hagman a lot more closely. We have to check out his alibi again. He didn’t say a word about the abortion. Why was he keeping that a secret? But why would he want to kill Helena? From what I can see, he loved her. And why so many years later? Could he have been jealous? Did he see her with her new boyfriend and become seized by madness?”

“That seems highly improbable,” Jacobsson said. “And it’s been twenty years since they had that affair. Why would he kill his wife now? Why didn’t he do it back
then
, in that case?”

“That’s a good question. And how does this all fit together with the death of Frida Lindh? And Gunilla Olsson?”

“It may not have anything at all to do with Hagman,” said Jacobsson. “Maybe we’re on the wrong track. All the victims have ties to Stockholm. The murderer could just as well be over here somewhere.”

“You could be right,” said Knutas. “But it’s past seven, and my stomach is screaming. We’ll go see Frida Lindh’s parents tomorrow, and then we’ll check out the shop in Gamla Stan where Gunilla Olsson’s pottery was sold. Right now I want a strong drink and a proper meal. What about you?”