The Hidden Child Page 22

  ‘I-I know . . .’ she stammered as she tried to stop crying. ‘I know that . . . and I don’t understand . . . why I’m reacting . . . this way.’ Dan stroked her back and the sobs began to subside. ‘I’m just a little . . . oversensitive . . . I don’t understand. I usually only act this way when I’m . . .’ Anna stopped in mid-sentence and stared at Dan, open-mouthed.

  ‘What?’ he said, looking puzzled. ‘You usually only act this way when what?’

  Anna couldn’t bring herself to reply, and after a moment she saw a light go on in his eyes.

  Then she nodded. ‘I usually only act this way when I’m . . . pregnant.’

  There was utter silence in the bedroom. Then they heard a little voice from the doorway.

  ‘I’m dressed now. I did it all by myself. I’m a big boy. Can we go to the toy shop now?’

  Dan and Anna looked at Adrian standing in the doorway, beaming with pride. His trousers were on backwards, and his shirt was inside out, but it was true: he had put on his clothes. All by himself.

  Even out in the hallway it smelled good. Filled with anticipation, Mellberg went into the kitchen. Rita had phoned just before eleven o’clock to ask whether he’d like to come over for lunch since Señorita had expressed a desire to play with Ernst. He hadn’t asked how her dog had communicated this desire. Certain things should just be accepted like manna from heaven.

  ‘Hi there.’ Johanna was standing next to Rita, helping her chop vegetables. Clearly it was a bit of an effort, for her stomach forced her to keep some distance from the counter.

  ‘Hi. It smells so good in here,’ said Mellberg, sniffing at the air.

  ‘We’re making chilli con carne,’ said Rita, coming over to give him a kiss on the cheek. Mellberg resisted an impulse to raise his hand and touch the spot where her lips had been. Instead, he sat down at the table, which was set for four.

  ‘Is someone else joining us?’ he asked, looking at Rita.

  ‘My partner is coming home for lunch,’ said Johanna, rubbing her back.

  ‘Shouldn’t you sit down?’ said Mellberg, pulling out a chair. ‘It must be hard to carry all that weight around.’

  Johanna complied and sat down next to him, breathing heavily. ‘Oh, you have no idea. Hopefully it won’t be long now. It’s going to feel great to get rid of this.’ She ran her hand over her belly. ‘Would you like to feel?’ she asked Mellberg when she saw his expression.

  ‘Could I?’ he asked sheepishly. He hadn’t discovered his own son’s existence until Simon was a teenager, so this part of parenthood was a mystery to him.

  ‘Here, the baby’s kicking.’ Johanna took his hand and placed it on the left side of her belly.

  Mellberg gave a start as he felt a strong kick against his hand. ‘Good heavens! That’s amazing. Doesn’t it hurt?’ He stared at her abdomen as he kept feeling solid kicks against the palm of his hand.

  ‘Not really. Sometimes it’s a little uncomfortable when I’m trying to sleep. My partner thinks the baby is going to be a football player.’

  ‘I’m inclined to agree with him,’ said Mellberg, not wanting to take his hand away. The experience stirred strange feelings inside him that he could hardly define. Longing, fascination, regret . . . He wasn’t really sure. ‘Does his father have a talent for football that the baby might inherit?’ he said with a laugh. To his great surprise, his question was greeted with silence. He looked up to meet Rita’s astonished expression.

  ‘But Bertil, don’t you know that . . .’

  At that moment the front door opened.

  ‘How good it smells, Mamma,’ they heard from the hall. ‘What are you making? Your special chilli?’

  Paula came into the kitchen, and her look of surprise was even greater than Mellberg’s.

  ‘Paula?’

  ‘Boss?’

  Thoughts whirled through Mellberg’s mind until the pieces fell into place. Paula, who had moved here with her mother. Rita, who had recently moved here. And the dark eyes. To think he hadn’t noticed earlier. They had exactly the same eyes. There was just one thing that he didn’t really . . .

  ‘So, I see that you’ve met my partner,’ said Paula, putting her arm around Johanna’s shoulders. She stared at Mellberg, waiting to see his reaction. Challenging him to say the wrong thing, do the wrong thing.

  Out of the corner of her eye Rita was watching him tensely. She held a wooden spoon in one hand, but she’d stopped stirring as she too waited for his reaction. A thousand thoughts raced through Mellberg’s head. A thousand prejudices. A thousand things that he’d said over the years that might have been better not said. But suddenly he realized that this was the moment in his life when he had to say the right thing, do the right thing. Too much was at stake, and with Rita’s dark eyes fixed on him, he said calmly:

  ‘I didn’t know you were about to become a mother. And so soon. I see that congratulations are in order. Johanna was kind enough to let me feel that wildcat inside there, so I tend to agree with your theory that she’s going to give birth to a future football player.’

  Paula didn’t move for a few more seconds, her arm around Johanna and her eyes riveted on his, trying to determine if there was any veiled sarcasm in what he’d said. Then she relaxed and smiled. ‘It’s amazing to feel all that kicking, isn’t it?’ The whole room seemed to implode with relief.

  Rita went back to stirring the chilli as she said with a laugh: ‘That’s nothing compare to how you kicked, Paula. I remember that your father used to joke about it, saying it felt like you were looking to find a different way out than the usual exit.’

  Paula kissed Johanna on the cheek and sat down at the table. She couldn’t hide the fact that she was staring at Mellberg with astonishment. He, in turn, was feeling enormously pleased with himself. He still thought it was strange that two women would live together, and the fact that one of them was pregnant seemed especially bewildering. Sooner or later he’d be forced to satisfy his curiosity about that. And yet, he’d said the right thing. To his great surprise, he’d also meant what he’d said.

  Rita set the pot of chilli on the table and urged them to help themselves. The look she gave Mellberg was the final proof that he’d done well.

  He could still feel Johanna’s bulging skin under his hand, and the child’s foot kicking against his palm.

  ‘You’re just in time for lunch. I was about to give you a call.’ Patrik tasted a spoonful of the tomato soup and then set the saucepan on the table.

  ‘Now that’s what I call service. What’s the occasion?’ Erica came into the kitchen and kissed him on the back of the neck.

  ‘You think this is all? Do you mean that I could have impressed you just by making you lunch? Jeez, that means that I’ve done the laundry, cleaned up the living room, and changed the light bulb in the bathroom all for nothing.’ Patrik turned around and kissed her on the lips.

  ‘Whatever drug you’re on, I’d like some too,’ said Erica, looking at him in surprise. ‘Where’s Maja?’

  ‘She fell asleep about fifteen minutes ago. So we’ll be able to eat lunch in peace and quiet, just you and me. And after that, you can zip back upstairs to work while I wash the dishes.’

  ‘Okay . . . Now it’s getting to be a little too much,’ said Erica. ‘Either you’ve embezzled all our money, or you’re about to tell me that you have a mistress, or that you’ve been accepted into NASA’s space programme and you’ll be spending the next year circling the planet in a spaceship . . . Or has my husband been kidnapped by aliens, and you’re some sort of android, half human and half robot?’

  ‘How did you know about NASA?’ said Patrik with wink. He put a few slices of bread in a basket and sat down at the kitchen table across from Erica. ‘No, the truth is I had a little epiphany when I was out walking with Karin today, and . . . well, I just thought I should help you out more. But don’t think you’ll get this sort of treatment every day. I can’t guarantee that I won’t have a relapse.’

  ‘So the onl
y thing I need to do to get my husband to help out more around the house is to send him on a date with his ex-wife? I’ll have to tell my women friends about this.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know about that,’ said Patrik, blowing on a spoonful of hot soup. ‘It wasn’t really a date, you know. And she’s not having a very easy time of it.’ He briefly recounted what Karin had told him, and Erica nodded. Even though Karin seemed to be getting considerably less support at home than she’d had, it still sounded very familiar.

  ‘So how was your morning?’ asked Patrik, slurping a bit as he ate his soup.

  Erica’s face lit up. ‘I found a lot of good stuff. You wouldn’t believe the things that happened in Fjällbacka during the Second World War. All kinds of smuggling went on, both to and from Norway – food, news, weapons, and people. Both German defectors and Norwegian resistance fighters came here. And later there were the mines to contend with. A number of fishing boats and cargo ships were lost, along with their crews and everything on board, when they ran into mines. And did you know that in 1940 a German fighter plane was shot down by the Swedish air force just outside of Dingle? All three crewmen were killed. I’ve never heard anyone mention any of this. I always had the impression the war had hardly any impact in these parts, aside from the food and petrol rationing.’

  ‘It sounds as though you’re getting really interested in the subject,’ said Patrik as he served Erica some more soup.

  ‘I haven’t told you the half of it. I asked Christian to dig out anything that might mention my mother and her friends, never thinking he’d get anywhere with it, given that they were so young back then. But wait until you see this –’ Erica’s voice shook with excitement as she got up to fetch her briefcase. She set it on the kitchen table and took out a thick wad of papers.

  ‘Wow, that’s quite a stack you’ve got there.’

  ‘I’ve spent three hours reading it all,’ said Erica, leafing through the documents, her fingers trembling. Finally she found what she was looking for. ‘Here! Look at this!’ She pointed to an article with a big black-and-white photograph.

  Patrik studied the article she handed him. The picture was the first thing that drew his attention. Five people, standing next to each other. He squinted to make out the caption, recognizing four of the names: Elsy Moström, Frans Ringholm, Erik Frankel, and Britta Johansson. But the fifth person he’d never heard of before. A boy, about the same age as the others, by the name of Hans Olavsen. Patrik silently read the article as Erica fixed her eyes on his face.

  ‘So? What do you think? I don’t know what it means, but it can’t be a coincidence. Look at the date. He came to Fjällbacka on almost the same day that my mother seems to have ended her diary. That can’t be a coincidence! It must mean something!’ Erica paced back and forth in the kitchen.

  Patrik bent his head to examine the photo again. He studied the images of the five young people. Elsy had died in a car crash four years ago. Now one more of them was dead, murdered sixty years after this picture was taken. He had a gut feeling that Erica was right. It must mean something.

  Paula’s thoughts were in turmoil as she walked back to the station. Her mother had mentioned that she’d met a nice man who had been keeping her company on her walks, and that she’d then persuaded him to take her salsa class. But Paula never would have dreamed that the man would be her new boss. And it was no exaggeration to say that she wasn’t exactly pleased. Mellberg was just about the last man on earth that she would have chosen for her mother. Mind you, she had to admit that he had handled the news about her and Johanna rather well. Surprisingly. Narrow-mindedness had been her foremost argument for not moving to Tanumshede. It had been hard enough for her and Johanna to be accepted as a family in Stockholm. And in a little town like this . . . Well, it could be disastrous. But she’d talked over everything with Johanna and her mother, and they had all agreed that if things didn’t work out they could simply move back to Stockholm.

  So far, everything had gone much better than expected. She liked her job at the station, her mother had settled in with her salsa classes and a part-time job at the Konsum supermarket, and even though Johanna was on sick leave at the moment and would then have a lengthy maternity leave, she’d talked to a number of local businesses who’d shown interest in enlisting her help with their finances. Yet the minute Paula saw Mellberg’s expression when she put her arm around Johanna, it had felt as though everything might fall apart like a house of cards. At that moment, their whole life could have collapsed. But Mellberg had surprised her. Maybe he wasn’t as hopeless as she’d assumed.

  Paula exchanged a few words with Annika in the reception area. Then she knocked on Martin’s door and went in.

  ‘How are things going?’ she asked when he looked up from his paperwork.

  ‘With the assault case? Well, the boy admitted to doing it – not that he had much choice in the matter. His mother took him home, but Gösta has informed social services. It doesn’t appear to be a very stable home situation.’

  ‘That’s often the case,’ said Paula, sitting down.

  ‘But what was really interesting was the reason for the assault in the first place. It turns out that Per broke into Erik Frankel’s house in early June.’

  Paula raised an eyebrow but let Martin continue without commenting. After he’d told her the whole story, they were both quiet for a moment.

  ‘I wonder what Erik had that would have interested Kjell,’ said Paula. ‘Could it have it been something about Frans ?’

  Martin shrugged. ‘That’s what the boy said. I thought it might be worth asking Kjell. We still have to go to Uddevalla to interview some of the members of Sweden’s Friends, and Bohusläningen has its main editorial office there. And we can call in on Axel on the way.’

  ‘No sooner said than done,’ said Paula, getting up.

  Twenty minutes later they were again standing outside the front door of the Frankel brothers’ house.

  Axel looks older than last time, Paula thought. Thinner, almost transparent in some way. He gave them a friendly smile as he let them in. He didn’t ask why they had come, just led the way to the veranda.

  ‘Have you made any progress?’ he asked as they sat down. ‘With the investigation, that is,’ he clarified unnecessarily.

  Martin glanced at Paula but then said, ‘We have several leads that we’re following. Most importantly, we’ve managed to pinpoint the probable time when your brother died.’

  ‘Well, that’s a major development,’ said Axel, smiling, although the smile didn’t dislodge any of the grief or fatigue from his eyes. ‘So when do you think it was?’

  ‘He went to see his . . . woman friend, Viola Ellmander, on the fifteenth of June; that seems to be the last time he was seen alive. On the seventeenth of June, the cleaning woman . . .’

  ‘Laila,’ said Axel, seeing that Martin was struggling to recall the name.

  ‘Laila, right. She came here on the seventeenth to clean the house, as usual, but no one came to the door when she rang, and no one had left her a key, as the two of you were in the habit of doing if you weren’t going to be at home.’

  ‘Yes, Erik was very meticulous about leaving a key for Laila. As far as I know, he never forgot to do that. So if he didn’t open the door, and there was no key, then . . .’ Axel fell silent and rubbed his eyes, as if he were seeing visions of his brother that he’d prefer to dismiss at once.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ said Paula gently, ‘but we have to ask you where you were between the fifteenth and seventeenth of June. I assure you, it’s just a formality.’

  Axel waved away her attempt to reassure him. ‘No need to apologize. I know you’re only doing your job. And besides, don’t the statistics say that most murders are committed by someone in the family?’

  Martin nodded. ‘True. But we need to gather information for the investigation and it will help if we can rule you out as a suspect.’

  ‘Of course. I’ll get my calendar.’

  A
xel was gone a few minutes. He returned carrying a thick diary. ‘Let’s see now . . .’ He sat down again and began leafing through it. ‘I left Sweden and went directly to Paris on the third of June, and I didn’t come back here until you . . . were kind enough to collect me at the airport. But from the fifteenth to the seventeenth . . . ah, here we are: I had a meeting in Brussels on the fifteenth, went to Frankfurt on the sixteenth, and then returned to the head office in Paris on the seventeenth. I can get you photocopies of my tickets if you like.’ He handed the diary to Paula.

  She studied it closely, but after casting an enquiring glance at Martin, who shook his head, she pushed the diary back across the table.

  ‘No, I don’t think that will be necessary. Do you remember anything about these dates that might have significance with regard to Erik? Anything specific? A phone conversation? Something he may have mentioned?’

  Axel shook his head. ‘No, I’m sorry. As I said, my brother and I weren’t in the habit of phoning each other very often when I was abroad. Erik would only have called me if the house was on fire.’ He laughed but then abruptly fell silent and again rubbed his eyes. ‘So, was that all? Is there anything else I can help you with?’ he asked, carefully closing the diary.

  ‘Actually, there is one other thing . . .’ said Martin, fixing his eyes on Axel. ‘We’ve interviewed a young man named Per Ringholm in connection with an assault case today. He told us that he broke into your house a few months ago. And that Erik caught him, locked him up in the library, and rang his father, Kjell Ringholm.’

  ‘Frans’s son,’ said Axel.

  Martin nodded. ‘Exactly. And Per overheard Erik and Kjell making arrangements to meet later. It seems Erik had some information that he thought would interest Kjell. Does any of this ring a bell?’

  ‘No, it doesn’t,’ said Axel, vigorously shaking his head.

  ‘What about the information that Erik wanted to pass on? Do you have any idea what that might have been?’

  Axel was silent for a while, as if considering the question. Then he shook his head again. ‘No, I can’t imagine what it could have been. Erik spent a lot of time studying the period leading up to the Second World War, and of course he’d personally experienced what Nazism was like during that period. Kjell, on the other hand, has devoted himself to writing about the resurgence of Nazism in Sweden today. So maybe Erik had found some kind of connection, something of historical interest that would give Kjell background material. But why don’t you just ask Kjell?’