The Stonecutter: A Novel (Pegasus Crime)

  THE

  STONECUTTER

  CAMILLA LÄCKBERG

  Translated by Steven T. Murray

  PEGASUS CRIME

  NEW YORK

  To Ulle

  All possible happiness

  1

  Fjällbacka’s lobster fishery was no longer the proud institution it used to be. Back then hard-working professionals were the only ones trapping the lobsters, but now summertime visitors came to spend a week fishing purely for their own enjoyment. No one obeyed the regulations anymore. He had seen so much appalling behavior over the years. Sometimes he wondered whether there was any honor left among lobstermen. They would brush visible roe from the females to make the lobsters look legal, and poachers stole from other people’s catch. Some people even dove into the water themselves and plucked the lobsters right out of the pots. Once, he had found a bottle of cognac in the pot he pulled up, the lobsters themselves having been stolen. At least that thief had some honor, or maybe a sense of humor.

  Thinking about all of this, Frans Bengtsson sighed deeply as he stood hauling up his catch, but his face brightened when he saw the two marvelous lobsters in the first pot. He knew he had a good eye for where lobsters tended to congregate, and he had a number of favorite spots where the pots could be placed every year with the same luck.

  Three pots later, he had accumulated a passable heap of the valuable creatures. He didn’t really understand why lobsters commanded such scandalous prices. They were perfectly edible, but if he had to choose something for dinner, he’d rather have herring, which were tastier and a better buy. But the income from lobster fishing was a more than welcome addition to his pension at this time of the year.

  The last pot seemed to be stuck, and he braced his foot on the boat rail for more support as he tried to wrench it loose. He felt the pot slowly begin to give, and he hoped it wasn’t damaged. As it rose through the water, he peered over the rail of his old wooden snipa to see what sort of shape the pot was in. But it wasn’t the pot that came up first. A white hand broke the heaving surface of the water and looked for a moment like it was pointing at the sky.

  His first instinct was to release the line and let both the hand and the pot vanish into the depths. But then his expertise took over, and he resumed his pulling. He still had a good deal of strength in his aging body, and he needed it. He had to haul with all his might to maneuver his macabre find over the rail. He didn’t lose his composure until the pale, lifeless body fell to the deck with a thud. It was a child: he’d pulled a child up from the sea. A girl, with her long red hair plastered round her face, and lips just as blue as her eyes, which now stared unseeing at the sky.

  Bengtsson flung himself against the rail and vomited.

  Patrik was more exhausted than he’d ever thought possible. All his illusions that babies slept a lot had been thoroughly crushed in the past two months. He ran his hands through his short brown hair but managed only to make it look even more tousled. And if he thought he was tired, he couldn’t even imagine how Erica must feel. At least he didn’t have to keep getting up at night to nurse. He was really worried about her. He hadn’t seen her laugh since she came home from the maternity ward, and she had dark circles under her eyes. Every morning when he saw Erica’s look of despair as he prepared to head to the station, it was hard for him to leave her and Maja. Still, he had to admit that he was always relieved to be able to drive off to his familiar adult world. He loved Maja more than anything, but life with a baby was like a foreign world, with all sorts of unfamiliar worries lurking behind every corner. Why won’t she sleep? Why is she shrieking? Is she too hot? Too cold? What are those strange spots on her skin? Grown-up hooligans were at least something he knew about, something he knew how to handle.

  He stared vacantly at the papers in front of him and tried to clear the cobwebs out of his brain enough to keep working. When the telephone rang, he almost jumped out of his seat, and it was on its third ring before he collected himself enough to pick up the receiver.

  ‘Patrik Hedström.’

  Ten minutes later he grabbed his jacket from a hook by the door, dashed over to Martin Molin’s office and said, ‘Martin, some old guy out pulling up lobster pots, a Frans Bengtsson, has brought up a body.’

  ‘Whereabouts?’ Martin said, confused by the dramatic news. It had been a listless Monday morning at the Tanumshede police station.

  ‘Outside Fjällbacka. He’s moored at the wharf by Ingrid Bergman Square. We have to get moving. The ambulance is on its way.’

  Martin didn’t have to be told twice. Slipping on his jacket to face the bitter October weather, he followed Patrik out to the car. The trip to Fjällbacka went quickly, and Martin clung to the handle above the door as the car careered around the sharp curves.

  ‘Is it a drowning accident?’ Martin asked.

  ‘How the hell should I know?’ said Patrik, instantly regretting snapping at Martin. ‘Sorry, not enough sleep.’

  ‘That’s okay,’ said Martin. Thinking about how worn out Patrik had looked the past few weeks, he was more than willing to forgive him.

  ‘All I know is that she was found about an hour ago. According to the old man, it didn’t look like she’d been in the water very long. But we’ll see about that soon,’ Patrik said as they drove down Galärbacken toward the wharf, where a wooden snipa was moored.

  ‘Did you say “she”?’

  ‘Yes, it’s a girl, a kid.’

  ‘Oh, shit,’ said Martin, wishing he’d stayed in bed with Pia instead of coming in to work this morning.

  They parked at Café Bryggan and hurried over to the boat. Incredibly enough, no one had yet noticed what had happened, so there was no need to ward off the usual gawkers.

  ‘The girl’s lying there in the boat,’ said the old man who came to meet them on the wharf. ‘I didn’t want to touch her more than necessary.’

  Patrik had no trouble recognizing the pallor on the old man’s face. He looked the same himself every time he was faced with a dead body.

  ‘Where was it you pulled her up?’ asked Patrik, stalling a moment before having to confront the dead girl. He hadn’t even seen her yet, and already his stomach was turning over.

  ‘Out by Porsholmen. The south side of the island. She got tangled in the line of the fifth pot I pulled up. Otherwise it would have been a long time before anyone found her. Maybe never, if the currents had swept her out to sea.’

  It didn’t surprise Patrik that Bengtsson knew how a dead body would react to the effects of the sea. All the old-timers knew that a body first sank, then slowly came up to the surface as it filled with gases, until finally the gas dispersed and it sank back into the deep. In the old days, drowning had been a real risk for a fisherman, and Bengtsson had surely been out searching for unfortunate victims before.

  As if to confirm this, the lobsterman added, ‘She couldn’t have been down there long. She hadn’t begun to float yet.’

  Patrik nodded. ‘You’d mentioned that. Well, I suppose we’d better have a look.’

  Martin and Patrik walked very slowly out to the end of the wharf. They were almost at the boat before they had enough of a view over the rail to see the body. The girl had landed on her back when the old man pulled her into the boat, and her wet, tangled hair covered most of her face.

  ‘The ambulance is here,’ said Patrik, glancing over at Martin.

  Martin nodded feebly. His freckles and reddish-blond hair seemed several shades redder against his white face as he fought to keep his nausea in check.

  The grayness of the weather and the gusting wind created a ghastly backdrop. Patrik waved to the ambulance team, who seemed in no hurr
y to unload the gurney from their vehicle.

  ‘Drowning accident?’ The first of the two EMTs nodded inquiringly toward the boat.

  ‘Yes, it looks like it,’ replied Patrik. ‘But the medical examiner will have to make that call. There’s nothing you can do for her, in any case, besides transporting her.’

  ‘No, we heard that,’ said the man. ‘We’ll just get her up on the gurney.’

  Patrik nodded. He had always thought that tragedies involving child victims were the worst things a police officer could encounter on the job, and ever since Maja was born this feeling had multiplied a thousandfold. Now his heart ached at the thought of the task that lay before them. As soon as the girl had been identified, they would have to destroy her parents’ lives.

  The medics hopped down into the boat. They carefully picked the girl up and lifted her onto the wharf. Her hair fell away from her face and fanned out on the planking, and her glazed eyes seemed to be watching the scudding gray clouds.

  At first Patrik had turned away, but now he reluctantly looked down at the pale face. Then a cold hand gripped his heart.

  ‘Oh no, oh no, Jesus God.’

  Martin looked at him in dismay, until it dawned on him what Patrik meant. ‘You know who she is?’

  Patrik nodded mutely.

  2

  Strömstad 1923

  Agnes never would have dared to say it out loud, but sometimes she thought it was lucky that her mother had died when she was born. That way she’d had her father all to herself, and considering what she’d heard, her mother might have been harder to manipulate. But as it was, her father didn’t have the heart to deny his motherless daughter anything. Agnes was well aware of this fact and as she grew she exploited it to the utmost. Certain well-meaning relatives and friends had tried to point this out to her father, but even when he did make half-hearted attempts to tell her no, sooner or later her lovely face won out. Once those big eyes of hers welled up with tears, his heart would relent, and she usually got what she wanted.

  As a result she was now, at nineteen, an exceptionally spoiled girl. People who had known her over the years would quietly admit that she had quite a nasty side, though it was mostly the girls who dared say things like that. Boys, Agnes had discovered, seldom looked further than at her beautiful face, big eyes, and long, thick hair.

  Her father’s villa in Strömstad was one of the grandest in town. It stood high up on the hill, with a view over the water. It had been paid for partly with her mother’s inherited fortune and partly with the money her father had made in the granite business. He had been close to losing everything once, during the strike of 1914, when to a man the stonecutters rose up against the big companies. But order was eventually restored, and after the war, business had flourished again. The quarry in Krokstrand outside Strömstad, in particular, began pulling in big profits with deliveries primarily to France.

  Agnes didn’t care much about where the money came from. She was born rich and had always lived as rich people do. It made no difference whether the money was inherited or earned, as long as she could buy jewelry and fine clothes. She knew that not everyone felt this way. Her mother’s parents had been horrified when their daughter married Agnes’s father. His wealth was newly acquired, and his parents had been poor. They didn’t fit in at big dinner parties. They were only invited when no one outside the immediate family was present, and even these gatherings proved embarrassing. The pitiful things had no idea how to behave in the finer salons, and their contributions to the conversation were hopeless. Agnes’s maternal grandparents had never understood what their daughter could see in August Stjernkvist, or rather Persson, which was his surname at birth. He had changed his last name in an attempt to move up the social ladder, but he wasn’t fooling them. But none of that mattered once Agnes was born. They were enchanted with their granddaughter, and they competed with her father in spoiling Agnes after her mother died so suddenly after giving birth.

  ‘Sweetheart, I’m driving down to the office.’

  Agnes turned round when her father came into the room. She had been playing the grand piano that stood facing the window, mostly because she knew how lovely she looked sitting there. Certainly she looked better than she sounded. She didn’t have much natural musical talent. Despite years of expensive piano lessons, she could only struggle passably through the sheet music on the stand in front of her.

  ‘Father, have you thought about that dress I showed you the other day?’ She looked at him entreatingly and saw how he was torn, as usual, between his instinct to say no and his inability to do so.

  ‘My dear, I just bought you a new dress in Oslo …’

  ‘But it had a quilted lining, Father. You can’t expect me to wear a dress with a quilted lining to the party on Saturday, when it’s so warm outside, can you?’

  She gave him a vexed frown and waited for his reaction, ready with a quivering lip and a few tears if necessary. But today he looked tired, and she didn’t think it would take any more effort on her part. She was correct.

  ‘Yes, all right, run down to the shop tomorrow and order it, then. But you’re going to give your old father gray hair one day.’ He shook his head but couldn’t help smiling when she bounded over and kissed him on the cheek.

  ‘Now look,’ he said, ‘you’d better sit down and practice your scales. It’s possible that they might ask you to play a little on Saturday, so you’ll want to be prepared.’

  Satisfied, Agnes sat back down on the piano bench and obediently began practicing, imagining the scene on Saturday. Everyone’s eyes would be fixed on her as she sat at the piano in the flickering candlelight, resplendent in her new red dress.

  Finally, the migraine was beginning to subside. The iron band across her forehead was gradually releasing its grip, and she could cautiously open her eyes. It was quiet upstairs. Good. Charlotte turned over in bed and closed her eyes again, enjoying feeling the pain fade. Slowly relaxation crept through her limbs.

  After resting for a while, she gingerly sat up on the edge of the bed and massaged her temples. They were still tender after the attack, and she knew from experience that the soreness would linger for a couple of hours.

  Albin must be taking his afternoon nap upstairs. That meant that in good conscience she could wait a bit before going up to him. God knows that with an eight-month-old she needed all the rest she could get. The increased stress in recent months had made the migraines come on more often, sapping her of every last ounce of energy.

  She decided to give Erica a call and hear how her fellow sufferer was doing. For as stressed out as Charlotte was at the moment, she couldn’t help worrying about Erica’s state of mind. The two women hadn’t known each other long, but they had grown close quickly. They’d started talking because they kept running into each other when they were out walking with the baby strollers. Erica with two-month-old Maja, and Charlotte with little Albin. After they had discovered that they only lived a stone’s throw from each other, they began meeting almost every day. But Charlotte soon began to worry about her new friend, who was more apathetic and depressed than seemed natural. Charlotte had even carefully brought up the subject of post-partum depression with Patrik, but he had dismissed the idea, saying that having a new baby was a big adjustment and that everything would be fine as soon as they got into a routine.

  She reached for the phone on the nightstand and punched in Erica’s number.

  ‘Hi, it’s Charlotte.’

  Erica sounded groggy and subdued when she replied, and Charlotte felt even more uneasy. Something wasn’t right. Not right at all.

  But after they had talked for a while, Erica perked up a bit. Even Charlotte thought it felt good to be able to chat for a few extra minutes and postpone waking up Albin and facing her mother. But soon she would have to go upstairs and return to the exhausting reality of life in her mother’s house.

  As if sensing what Charlotte was thinking, Erica asked how the house-hunting was going.

  �
�Slow. Much too slow. Niclas is working all the time, it seems. He never has time to drive around and look at houses. And there isn’t much to choose from right now anyway, so I suppose we’re stuck here for a while longer.’ She gave a deep sigh.

  ‘It’ll all work out, you’ll see.’ Erica’s voice was comforting, but Charlotte wasn’t reassured. She, Niclas, and the children had already been living with her mother and Stig for six months. The way things looked now, they were going to have to stay for another half a year. That might be all right for Niclas, who was at the clinic from morning to night, but for Charlotte being cooped up with the kids was unbearable.

  In theory it had sounded so good when Niclas suggested the idea. A position for a district physician had opened up in Fjällbacka, and after five years in Uddevalla they had felt ready for a change of scene. Besides, Albin was on the way, conceived as a last attempt to save their marriage. So why not start their life over completely? The more Niclas had talked about the plan, the better it had sounded. And the thought of having close access to her parents for babysitting, now that they were going to have two kids, had also sounded tempting.

  But reality was an entirely different story. It took no more than a few days before Charlotte remembered exactly why she had been so eager to leave her parents’ house. On the other hand, a few things had definitely turned out the way they had hoped. But this wasn’t a topic she could discuss with Erica, no matter how much she would have liked to. It had to remain a secret, otherwise it might destroy their whole family.

  Erica’s voice interrupted her reverie. ‘So, how’s it going with your mom? Is she driving you nuts?’

  ‘To say the least. Everything I do is wrong. I’m too strict with the kids, I’m too lenient with the kids, I make them wear too many clothes, I make them wear too few clothes, they don’t get enough to eat, I stuff them with too much food, I’m too fat, I’m too sloppy … The list never ends,’ she said.