The Gallows Bird Read online

  ‘She doesn’t like it,’ said Emma, shaking her head in concern.

  ‘No, she certainly doesn’t,’ said Erica, strapping Maja into the car seat.

  ‘I want to sit up front,’ Adrian announced, crossing his arms and preparing for battle. But now Erica’s patience was at an end.

  ‘Get in your chair,’ she yelled, feeling a certain satisfaction when she saw him practically fly into his car seat. Emma sat on her forward-facing cushion in the middle of the back seat and put on her seat belt herself. With great haste and still feeling annoyed Erica began belting Adrian in, but stopped when she felt a small hand on her cheek.

  ‘I lo-o-ove you, Ica,’ said Adrian, trying to look as sweet as he could. Undoubtedly an attempt to win her favour, but it worked every time. Erica felt her heart swell, and she leaned over and gave him a big kiss.

  The last thing she did before she backed out of the driveway was to cast an uneasy glance at the window of Anna’s bedroom. But the shade was still pulled down.

  Jonna pressed her forehead against the cool bus window and looked out at the countryside passing by. A tremendous apathy filled her. As always. She tugged at the sleeves of her jumper so they covered her hands. Over the years it had become a habit of hers. She wondered what she was doing here. How had she ended up in all this? Why was there such a fascination with following her everyday life? Jonna simply didn’t understand it. A broken and odd loner girl who fucking cut herself. But maybe that was precisely why she had been voted to stay on, week after week in the House. Because there were so many other girls like her all around the country. Girls who hungrily recognized themselves in her, when she constantly ended up in confrontation with the other participants, when she sat crying in the lavatory, slashing her forearms to shreds with razor blades, when she radiated so much helplessness and desperation that the others in the House avoided her as though she were infected with rabies. Maybe that was why.

  ‘Gawd, how exciting! Imagine if we were, like, given one more chance.’ Jonna heard the endless anticipation in Barbie’s voice but refused to respond. The girl’s name alone made her want to puke. But the tabloids loved it. BB-Barbie was doing great on the news placards. Her real name was Lillemor Persson. One of the evening newspapers had dug up that fact. They had also found old photos of her from the time when she was a skinny little brown-haired girl with oversized glasses. Nothing like the silicone-boobed blonde bombshell she was today. Jonna had a good laugh when she saw those pictures. They had got a copy of the paper for the House. But Barbie had cried. Then she’d burnt the newspaper.

  ‘Look what a crowd there is!’ Barbie pointed excitedly to a group of people at the square, where the bus seemed to be heading. ‘Don’t you understand, Jonna? They’re all here for us, don’t you get it?’ She could hardly sit still, and Jonna gave her a contemptuous look. Then she stuck in the earbuds of her MP3 player and closed her eyes.

  Patrik walked slowly around the car. It had driven off a steep slope and finally stopped when it hit a tree. The front was bashed in, but the rest of the car was intact. It hadn’t been able to take the curve at such speed.

  ‘The driver seems to have slammed into the steering wheel. I’d guess that’s the cause of death,’ said Hanna, squatting down by the driver’s side.

  ‘We’ll leave that to the medical examiner, I think,’ said Patrik, hearing himself sound more critical than he intended. ‘I just mean –’

  ‘That’s okay,’ said Hanna with a dismissive wave. ‘It was a stupid remark. I’ll stick to observing from now on, not drawing conclusions – yet,’ she added.

  Patrik finished his circuit round the car and was now squatting next to Hanna. The door on the driver’s side stood wide open, and the accident victim was still strapped into the seat, leaning forward against the steering wheel. Blood had run down from a head wound and collected on the floor.

  They heard one of the techs snapping photos behind them to document the accident scene.

  ‘Are we in your way?’ Patrik asked, turning round. ‘No, we’ve already taken most of the shots we need. Thought we’d just straighten up the victim now and take some pictures. Is that all right? Have you seen what you need to for the time being?’

  ‘Have we, Hanna?’ Patrik was scrupulous about including his colleague. It couldn’t be easy to be the new person, and he intended to do his best to make her feel welcome.

  ‘Yes, I think so.’ They both stood up and moved away to give the tech more room. Carefully he grasped the victim’s shoulder and pressed the body back against the seat. Only now could they see that the victim was a woman. Short hair and unisex clothing had made them think at first that it was a man, but one look at the face told them that the victim was a woman in her forties.

  ‘It’s Marit,’ said Patrik. ‘Marit?’ Hanna queried. ‘She has a shop on Affärsvägen. Sells tea, coffee, chocolate and things like that.’

  ‘Does she have a family?’ Hanna’s voice sounded a bit strange when she asked the question, and Patrik glanced at her. But she looked the same as usual, so maybe he was imagining things.

  ‘I don’t really know. We’ll have to check that out.’

  The technician was now done taking photos and stepped back. Patrik and Hanna moved in closer again.

  ‘Be careful not to touch anything,’ Patrik said out of reflex. Before Hanna could reply he went on, ‘Sorry, I keep forgetting that you may be new in our department, but you’re an experienced cop. You’ll have to cut me some slack,’ he said apologetically.

  ‘Don’t be so sensitive,’ his new colleague said with a laugh. ‘I don’t take offence that easily.’

  Patrik laughed too, with relief. He hadn’t realized how accustomed he’d become to working with people he knew well, people whose work habits were familiar. It would probably be a good thing to have some new blood on the force. Besides, compared to Ernst, anything was an improvement. The fact that he finally got the boot after taking the law into his own hands, so to speak, last autumn was – well, nothing short of a miracle.

  ‘So, what do you see?’ asked Patrik, leaning in close to look at Marit’s face.

  ‘It’s not so much what I see but what I smell.’ Hanna took a couple of deep sniffs. ‘She stinks of booze. She must have been dead drunk when she drove off the road.’

  ‘It certainly seems so,’ said Patrik. He sounded a bit distracted. With a concerned frown he peered inside the car. There was nothing out of the ordinary. A wrapper from a chocolate bar on the floor, an empty plastic Coke bottle, a page that seemed to have been torn out of a book, and in the far corner, on the floor by the passenger seat, an empty vodka bottle.

  ‘This doesn’t seem too complicated. A single-car accident with a drunk driver.’ Hanna took a couple of steps back and seemed to be preparing to leave. The ambulance was ready to take the body, and there wasn’t much more they could do.

  Patrik scrutinized the wounds on Marit’s face. Something didn’t add up.

  ‘Can I wipe off the blood?’ he asked one of the crime scene techs packing up his equipment.

  ‘That should be okay, we have plenty of documentation. Here, I’ve got a rag.’ The tech handed Patrik a piece of white cloth and Patrik nodded his thanks. Cautiously, almost tenderly, he wiped off the blood that had come primarily from a wound on her forehead. The victim’s eyes were open, and before he continued Patrik carefully closed them with his index fingers. Beneath the blood Marit’s face was a study of wounds and bruises. She had struck the steering wheel with great force; the car was an older model without an airbag.

  ‘Could you take some more pictures?’ he asked the man who had given him the rag. The tech nodded and grabbed his camera. He quickly took some more shots and then gave Patrik a quizzical look.

  ‘That’ll be fine,’ said Patrik, stepping over to Hanna, who looked puzzled.

  ‘What was it you saw?’ she asked. ‘I’m not sure. There’s just something that . . . I don’t know.’ He waved his hand dismissively. ‘It’s probab
ly nothing. Let’s go back to the station. The others can finish up the work here.’

  They got in the police car and headed towards Tanumshede. They drove the whole way back in silence. And in that silence something was tugging at Patrik’s mind. He simply didn’t know what it was.

  Bertil Mellberg felt strangely light-hearted. The way he usually felt only when he was spending time with Simon, the son whose existence he hadn’t known of for fifteen years. Unfortunately Simon didn’t come to see him very often, but at least he came, and they’d been able to form some sort of relationship. It wasn’t an exuberant sort of bond, nor was it visible from the outside; it lived a rather hidden existence. But it was there.

  The feeling, difficult to describe, came from something odd that had happened to him last Saturday. After months of nagging and pressure from Sten, his good friend – or rather his only friend, and even he might be characterized as an acquaintance – Mellberg had agreed to go along to a barn dance in Munkedal. Even though he considered himself a good dancer, it had been many years since he’d frequented a dancing establishment. And a barn dance conjured up images of hicks cavorting to fiddle music. But Sten was a regular participant and had finally managed to persuade him that barn dances were excellent hunting grounds. ‘They just sit there in a row, waiting to be picked,’ as Sten had said. Mellberg couldn’t deny it sounded good; he hadn’t met many women in recent years, so he was certainly feeling a need to air out that little guy. But his scepticism was based on his expectation of what sort of women went to barn dances. Desperate old crows who were more interested in sinking their talons into an old guy with a good pension than having a roll in the hay. But if there was one thing he knew, it was how to protect himself from birds with marriage on their minds; so he finally decided to accompany Sten and try his luck.

  Just in case, he had put on his best suit and splashed a little ‘smell-good’ here and there. And Sten had come over and they had fortified themselves with a few shots before they headed off. Sten had thought to call a cab, so they didn’t have to worry about how much they drank. Not that Mellberg often worried much about that, but it wouldn’t look good if he was caught driving under the influence. After the incident with Ernst, the higher-ups had their eye on him, so he had to be careful. Or at least make it look like he was being careful. What they didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them.

  Despite all the preparations it was not with great anticipation that Mellberg stepped into the big hall, where the dancing was already in full swing. And his prejudices were confirmed. Only old women his own age everywhere he looked. On that subject he and Uffe Lundell were in complete agreement – who the hell wanted a wrinkled, flabby, middle-aged body next to him in bed when there was so much fine, solid, young flesh out there? Though Mellberg had to admit that Uffe had a bit more success on that front than he did. It was that whole rock-star thing that did it. Bloody unfair.

  He was just about to go to the bar and fortify his courage when he heard someone speaking to him.

  ‘What a place. And here we stand feeling old.’

  ‘Well, I’m here under protest,’ Mellberg replied with a glance at the woman who had come up beside him.

  ‘Same here. It was Bodil that dragged me along,’ said the woman, pointing at one of the ladies already out on the dance floor working up a sweat.

  ‘Sten, in my case,’ said Mellberg, pointing him out on the dance floor.

  ‘My name is Rose-Marie,’ she said, holding out her hand. ‘Bertil,’ replied Mellberg.

  The instant his palm met hers, his life was changed. During his sixty-three years he had experienced desire, randiness, and a compulsion to possess certain women he had met. But never before had he fallen in love. And so it struck him with even greater force. He regarded her in wonderment. Mellberg’s objective self registered a woman around sixty, about 5’3”, a bit plump, with her short hair dyed a spirited red colour, and a happy smile. But his subjective self saw only her eyes. They were blue and looked at him with curiosity and intensity; he felt himself drowning in those eyes, as it might be described in trashy paperback novels.

  After that the evening passed much too rapidly. They danced and talked. He fetched drinks for her and pulled out her chair for her. Behaviour that was definitely not part of his normal repertoire. But nothing had been normal on that evening.

  When they parted he felt at once awkward and empty. He simply had to see her again. So now he sat here at the office on a Monday morning, feeling like a schoolboy. Before him on the desk lay a piece of paper with her name and phone number.

  He looked at the piece of paper, took a deep breath, and punched in the number.

  They had quarrelled again. For the umpteenth time in a row. Far too many times the quarrels had turned into verbal boxing matches between them. And as usual, each of them had defended her own position. Kerstin wanted them to come out of the closet. Marit still wanted to keep it all secret.

  ‘Are you ashamed of me – of us?’ Kerstin had yelled. And Marit, like so many times before, had turned away and refused to look her in the eye. Because that was precisely where the problem lay. They loved each other, and Marit was ashamed of it.

  At first Kerstin had persuaded herself that it didn’t matter. The important thing was that they had found each other. That the two of them, after being thoroughly knocked about by life and by people who inflicted injuries on their souls, had actually found each other. What did a lover’s gender matter? Who cared what other people said or thought? But Marit hadn’t viewed it that way. She wasn’t ready to subject herself to the opinions and prejudices of people around her, and she wanted everything to remain as it had been for the past four years. They would continue to live together as lovers but outwardly pretend that they were just two friends who for financial reasons and the sake of convenience shared the same apartment.

  ‘Why do you care so much what people say?’ Kerstin had said when they quarrelled the previous evening. Marit had cried as she always did whenever they had a falling out. And as usual, that made Kerstin madder than ever. The tears were like fuel for the anger that had accumulated behind the wall created by their secret. She hated making Marit cry. Hated that circumstances and other people made her hurt the one she loved most of all.

  ‘Imagine how it would be for Sofie if it came out.’

  ‘Sofie is much tougher than you think. Don’t use her as an excuse for your own cowardice.’

  ‘How tough do you think someone can be when she’s fifteen and kids are taunting her because her mother is a dyke? Do you have any idea how much shit she would get at school? I can’t do that to her!’ Marit’s tears had distorted her face into an ugly mask.

  ‘Do you honestly think that Sofie hasn’t figured it all out, that we’re fooling her when you move into the guest room during the weeks she visits us and we go about acting out some sort of charade at home? Look, Sofie worked it out long ago. And if I were her I’d be more ashamed of a mum who’s prepared to live a lie just so “people” won’t talk. That’s what I’d be ashamed of!’

  By this point Kerstin was yelling so loudly that she could hear her voice cracking. Marit had given her that wounded look that over the years Kerstin had learned to hate, and she also knew from experience what would come next. Sure enough, Marit had leapt up from the table and started putting on her jacket, sobbing.

  ‘Go ahead and run away. That’s what you always do. Go on! And this time don’t bother coming back!’

  When the door slammed behind Marit, Kerstin sat down at the kitchen table. She was breathing hard, and she felt as if she’d been running. And in a way she had been. Running after the life she wanted for the two of them, but which Marit’s fear prevented them from having. And for the first time she had meant what she had said. Something inside her told her that soon she wouldn’t be able to take it any longer.

  But now, the morning after, that feeling had been replaced by a deep, consuming worry. She had sat up all night. Waiting for the door to open, waiting to
hear the familiar footsteps across the parquet floor, waiting to hug Marit and console her and beg her forgiveness. But she hadn’t come home. And the car keys were gone; Kerstin had checked on that during the night. Where the hell was she? Had something happened? Had she driven to the house of her ex-husband, Sofie’s pappa? Or could she have fled all the way to her mother’s place in Oslo?

  With trembling fingers Kerstin picked up the phone to start calling around.

  ‘What do you think this is going to mean for the tourist trade in Tanum?’ The reporter from Bohusläningen stood ready with notepad and pen, waiting to jot down his reply.

  ‘Plenty. It’ll be huge. There will be a half-hour show broadcast from Tanumshede on television every day. This area has never seen such a gigantic marketing opportunity.’ Erling beamed. A big crowd had gathered outside the old community centre, waiting for the bus with the participants. It was mostly teenagers who had gathered and could hardly stand still in their eagerness to finally see their idols live.

  ‘But couldn’t it have the opposite effect? I mean, in previous seasons the show ended up dealing with quarrels, sex, and drunkenness, and that’s hardly what we’d want to present as a message to tourists, is it?’

  Erling gave the reporter an annoyed look. Why were people always so damned negative? He’d had enough of that from his own town council, and now the local press was starting to harp on the same thing.

  ‘Surely you’ve heard the saying, “There’s no such thing as bad publicity”? And let’s face it Tanumshede does have a rather invisible image – nationally, that is. Now that’s all going to change with Sodding Tanum.’

  ‘Obviously,’ the reporter began, but was cut off by Erling who had lost all patience.

  ‘Unfortunately I don’t have time to comment further at the moment, I’m here as the welcoming committee.’ He turned on his heel and strode off towards the bus, which had just pulled up. The young people crowded round the door of the bus in anticipation, waiting with excited expressions for the door to open. The sight of the youthful crowd was enough to confirm Erling’s view that this was just what the town needed. Now Tanumshede was going to be put on the map.