Patrik Hedstrom 01 - The Ice Princess Read online

  He systematically rang one number after another on the list. He soon saw that Anders only called very few numbers. But one number stood out. It didn’t appear at all near the top of the list, but after it popped up the first time, it was the most frequently occurring number. Patrik dialled the number and let it ring.

  He was just about to hang up after eight rings when he heard an answering machine switch on. The name at the other end made him sit bolt upright in his chair, which made his thigh muscles stretch painfully because he had propped his legs on his desk. He swung his legs to the floor and massaged a tight muscle on the inside of his right thigh.

  Patrik replaced the receiver before the beep ended, indicating that one could leave a message. He drew a circle round one of the notes on his notepad, and after thinking for a moment he placed another call. One task he wanted to deal with himself, but the other he could leave for Annika. With his notes in hand he went into her office. She was typing intently on her keyboard, with her computer glasses perched on the end of her nose. She gave him a questioning look.

  ‘You’re coming to offer your help, to lighten my unreasonably heavy workload, right?’

  ‘Well, that wasn’t quite what I had in mind.’ Patrik grinned.

  ‘No, I didn’t think so.’ Annika gave Patrik a feigned look of exasperation. ‘So, what does this have to do with my incipient ulcer?’

  ‘Just one very tiny request.’ Patrik indicated how small it was by measuring a millimetre between his thumb and forefinger.

  ‘All right, let’s hear it.’

  Patrik pulled up a chair and sat down at Annika’s desk. Her office, despite being extremely small, was without exception the most pleasant at the station. She had brought in lots of plants that seemed to be healthy and thriving. That ought to qualify as a minor miracle, since the only light in the room came through the window facing the foyer. The cold concrete walls were covered with pictures of Annika and her husband Lennart’s two grand passions, their dogs and drag racing. They had two black Labradors that were allowed to go along when Annika and Lennart drove around Sweden on weekends to wherever there happened to be drag races. Lennart was the one who actually competed, but Annika was always there to cheer him on and provide a bag lunch and a thermos of coffee. Basically, it was always the same people they met at the races, and over the years they had formed a tightly knit group. They all considered each other the closest of friends. At least two weekends each month there were races, and persuading Annika to work on those days was hopeless.

  He looked down at his notes.

  ‘Well, I was wondering if you could help me do a little inventory of Alexandra Wijkner’s life. Starting with her death and double-checking the chronology backwards in all the data we received. How long she was married to Henrik. How long she had lived in Sweden. Check her information about the schools in France and Switzerland, et cetera, et cetera. Do you understand what I’m looking for?’

  Annika had taken notes on a pad as he talked and now looked up with an affirmative glance. He felt quite sure that she would find out everything worth knowing. Above all, she would find out if some of the information he had received wasn’t worth the paper it was written on. Because there had to be something that didn’t add up, he was absolutely sure of that.

  ‘Thanks for the help, Annika. You’re a gem.’

  Patrik began to get up from the chair, but a brusque ‘Sit!’ from Annika made him freeze and sink back onto the chair cushion. He understood at once why her Labradors were so well trained.

  She leaned back with a pleased smile and he understood that his first mistake had been to go into her office in person instead of simply leaving her a note. He should have known that she always saw right through him. Besides, her nose for romances was utterly preternatural. He might as well raise the white flag and capitulate, so he leaned back and waited for the barrage of questions that was undoubtedly in the offing. She began softly and insidiously.

  ‘You certainly were exhausted today.’

  ‘Mmm…’

  Not that he wasn’t going to make her work a little for the information.

  ‘Was there a party last night?’ Annika kept fishing as she probed with Machiavellian guile for cracks in his armour.

  ‘Well, I suppose you could call it a party. It probably depends on one’s point of view. How would you define “party” anyway?’ He threw out his arms and opened his eyes wide in innocence.

  ‘Oh, skip the bullshit, Patrik. Just tell me. Who is she?’

  He said nothing, tormenting her with his silence. After a few seconds he saw a light go on in Annika’s eyes.

  ‘Aha!’ Her exclamation resounded triumphantly as Annika waved her finger in the air, certain of victory.

  ‘It’s that woman, what’s her name, what’s her name…’ She snapped her fingers as she feverishly searched her memory. ‘Erica! Erica Falck!’

  Relieved, she leaned back in her chair again. ‘So-o-o, Patrik…how long has this been going on…?’

  He never ceased to be amazed at the unerring precision with which she always hit the target. It was no good denying it, either. He could feel a blush spreading all the way from his head to his toes, and it spoke more clearly than anything he might say. Then he couldn’t help the broad smile that spread across his face, and that was the last nail in the coffin as far as Annika was concerned.

  After a five-minute interrogation Patrik finally managed to drag himself out of Annika’s office. He felt as if he’d been run through the wringer. But it hadn’t been unpleasant to talk about Erica, and it was with difficulty that he returned to the task he had given himself to deal with immediately. He put on his coat, told Annika he was off and headed out into the winter weather, where big snowflakes had begun falling lightly to the ground.

  Outside the window Erica saw the snow fluttering down. She was sitting at her computer but had turned it off and was now staring at a black screen. Despite a pounding headache she had forced herself to write ten pages about Selma Lagerlof. She no longer felt any enthusiasm for the biography, but she was bound by her contract, and in a few months it had to be done. The conversation with Dan had put a dampener on her good mood, and she wondered whether he was telling Pernilla everything at this very moment. She decided to make use of her worry about Dan for something creative and rebooted her computer.

  The draft of the book about Alex was on the computer desktop, and she opened the file, which now held a good hundred pages. Methodically she read through the pages from beginning to end. It was good. It was even very good. What worried her was how all the people in Alex’s circle of friends and family would react if the book were published. Naturally Erica had disguised the story a bit, changing the names of people and places, and allowing herself some flights of imagination. But the core of the book was unmistakably based on Alex’s life, as seen through Erica’s eyes. The section about Dan in particular was giving Erica a real headache. How could she leave out him and his family? At the same time she felt that she had to write this story. For the first time an idea for a book had really filled her with enthusiasm. There were so many other ideas that hadn’t panned out and that she’d rejected over the years; she couldn’t afford to lose this one. First she intended to concentrate on finishing the book, then she would deal with the problem of how to handle the feelings of those involved.

  Almost an hour of energetic writing had passed when the doorbell rang. At first she was annoyed at being disturbed now that she had finally got going, but then she thought maybe it was Patrik and leapt out of her chair. She did a quick check of her appearance in the mirror before she bounded down the stairs to the front door. The smile on her lips faded instantly when she saw who was standing outside. Pernilla looked terrible. She appeared to have aged ten years since Erica saw her last. Her eyes were swollen and red from crying, her hair was uncombed, and she seemed to have forgotten her coat in her haste; she was shivering in a thin cardigan. Erica let her into the warm house. With an impulsive gesture s
he put her arms round Pernilla and hugged her as she stroked her back the same way she’d stroked Dan’s only a couple of hours before. It robbed Pernilla of what little self-control she had left, and she wept with long wrenching sobs on Erica’s shoulder. After a while she raised her head. Her mascara had smeared even more, giving her an almost comical, clown-like look.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Pernilla looked through her haze of tears at Erica’s shoulder, where the white jumper she was wearing had been coloured black by the mascara.

  ‘It doesn’t matter. Don’t worry about it. Come in.’

  Erica put one arm round Pernilla’s shoulders and led her into the living room. She could feel Pernilla shaking all over, and she didn’t think it was only because of the cold. For a second, she wondered why Pernilla had chosen her to go to. Erica had always been Dan’s friend much more than Pernilla’s. She thought it was a little odd that Pernilla hadn’t gone to one of her own girlfriends, or her sister. But now she was here, at any rate, and Erica had to do everything she could to help her.

  ‘I’ve got a pot of coffee on. Would you like a cup? It’s been on for about an hour, but it’s probably fairly drinkable.’

  ‘Yes, thanks.’

  Pernilla sat down on the sofa and hugged her arms to her chest, as if she were afraid of falling apart and wanted to hold herself together. In a way this was probably true.

  Erica came back with two cups of coffee. She placed one on the coffee table in front of Pernilla and the other in front of herself, sitting down in the big wing chair so that she was facing Pernilla on the sofa. She waited for Pernilla to begin.

  ‘Did you know?’

  Erica hesitated. ‘Yes, but not until very recently.’ She hesitated again. ‘I urged Dan to tell you.’

  Pernilla nodded. ‘What should I do?’

  The question was rhetorical, so Erica let it go unanswered.

  Pernilla went on. ‘I knew that from the start I was just a way for Dan to get over you.’

  Erica began to protest, but Pernilla stopped her with a wave of her hand.

  ‘I knew that was true, but I thought things changed with time and that we really loved each other. We get on well and I trusted him completely.’

  ‘Dan loves you, Pernilla. I know he does.’

  Pernilla didn’t seem to be listening to her; she kept talking while she gazed into her coffee cup. Erica saw that she was gripping the cup so hard that her knuckles were white.

  ‘I could live with it if he was having an affair and blame it on an early mid-life crisis or something. But I can never forgive him for getting that woman pregnant.’

  The fury in Pernilla’s voice was so strong that Erica had to fight an impulse to move back. When Pernilla raised her head and looked at Erica, the hatred in her eyes was so fierce that Erica felt an icy premonition. She had never before seen such a white-hot, intense fury. For a brief moment she wondered how long Pernilla had actually known about Dan’s relationship with Alex. And how far she would be prepared to go to exact revenge. Then she rejected the idea as quickly as it had appeared. This was Pernilla, a housewife with three children, married to Dan for many years, not a raging fury-acting as an avenging angel against her husband’s lover. But there was still a cold ferocity in Pernilla’s eyes that scared Erica.

  ‘What are you going to do now?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t know anything right now. I just had to get out of the house. That was the only thought I had in my head. I couldn’t even look at him.’

  Erica sent a sympathetic thought to Dan. He was surely in his own private hell right now. It would have felt more natural if it were Dan who had come to her for comfort. Then she would have known what to say, which words would reassure him. She didn’t know Pernilla well enough to know how to help. Perhaps it was enough just to listen.

  ‘Why do you think he did it? What wasn’t he getting from me that he got from her?’

  Now Erica understood why Pernilla had to come to her instead of going to one of her many close friends. She believed that Erica possessed answers about Dan. That she would be able to give Pernilla the key to why he’d acted the way he had. Unfortunately, Erica would have to disappoint her. She had always known Dan as honesty incarnate; it had never even occurred to her that he might be unfaithful. She was never as shocked as when she rang the last number called on Alex’s telephone and heard Dan’s voice on his voicemail. If she were really honest, she would admit to feeling a great disappointment at that moment—the disappointment of discovering that someone she was close to was not the person she had always thought he was. That’s why she understood that Pernilla, besides feeling betrayed and deceived, had also begun asking questions about who Dan really was—this man she had lived with all these years.

  ‘I don’t know, Pernilla. I was actually terribly shocked. It wasn’t like the Dan I know.’

  Pernilla nodded. It seemed to console her a bit that she wasn’t the only one who’d been fooled. She nervously picked at invisible threads on her baggy cardigan. Her long, dark-brown hair with traces of a permanent had been hastily pulled back in a knot, giving her an unkempt look. Erica had always been a bit scornful about the way Pernilla looked; she should have been able to do a lot more with her appearance. She kept getting her hair permed even though permanents went out of fashion at about the same time mid-length men’s jackets did. And she always bought her clothes from cheap mail-order department stores, with low prices and a fashion sense to match. But Erica had never seen her look this shabby.

  ‘Pernilla, I know it’s incredibly hard just now, but you’re a family, you and Dan. You have three wonderful girls and you’ve had fifteen good years together. You shouldn’t do anything hasty. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t condone anything he’s done. Perhaps you can’t stay together after this. Maybe it’s impossible to forgive him. But wait to make any decisions until it’s sunk in a little. Think carefully before you do anything. I know that Dan loves you; he told me that as recently as today. I also know that he deeply regrets what he did. He told me that he wanted to break it off with her and I believe him.’

  ‘I don’t know what to believe anymore, Erica. Nothing of what I believed before was true, so what should I believe now?’

  There was no answer to that, and the silence settled heavily between them.

  ‘What was she like?’

  Once again Erica saw a cold fire burning far back in Pernilla’s eyes. She didn’t have to ask who she meant.

  ‘It was so long ago. I didn’t know her anymore.’

  ‘She was beautiful. I saw her here in the summertime. She was just like I wanted to be. Beautiful, elegant, sophisticated. She made me feel like a peasant. I would have given anything to be like her. In a way I can understand Dan. Put me and Alex next to each other and it’s obvious who would win.’

  Pernilla tugged in frustration at her practical but unfashionable clothes as if to demonstrate what she meant.

  ‘I’ve always been envious of you too. The great love of his youth who moved to the big city and left him behind to pine away. The author from Stockholm who really made something of her life and who came back here and boasted to us normal mortals once in a while. Dan always looked forward to your visits for weeks beforehand.’

  The bitterness in Pernilla’s voice dismayed Erica. For the first time she really felt ashamed of her patronizing attitude towards Pernilla. How little she had understood. On closer examination, she had to admit that she’d found a certain satisfaction in noticing the difference between herself and Pernilla. Between her 500-kronor visits to a hair salon on Stureplan and Pernilla’s home perms. Between her designer clothes purchased on Biblioteksgatan and Pernilla’s off-the-rack blouses and long skirts. But what difference had it made? Why had she in her weaker moments been happy about that difference? She was the one who had left Dan. Was it only to satisfy her own ego, or had she actually been envious that Pernilla and Dan had so much more than she did? Deep inside had she envied them their family life and perhaps
even regretted that she hadn’t stayed in Fjällbacka? That she wasn’t the one who had the family that Pernilla now had? Had she consciously tried to make Pernilla feel small because she was actually jealous of her? The thought was disgusting, but she couldn’t push it away. It made her feel ashamed to the bottom of her soul. At the same time she wondered how far she would have gone to protect what Pernilla had. How far had Pernilla been prepared to go? Erica gave her a thoughtful look.

  ‘What are the children going to say?’ It looked as though this was the first time it had occurred to Pernilla that she and Dan weren’t the only ones who would be affected. ‘It has to come out, don’t you think? That she was pregnant, I mean? What will the girls say?’

  The thought seemed to panic Pernilla, and Erica did her best to calm her.

  ‘The police will have to be told that it was Dan who was seeing Alex, but it doesn’t mean that everyone will find out. The two of you can choose what you want to tell the girls. You’re still in control, Pernilla.’

  This seemed to reassure Pernilla, and she took a couple of gulps of coffee. It must have been cold by then, but that didn’t seem to bother her. For the first time Erica felt truly angry with Dan. It surprised her that she hadn’t felt that way earlier, but now she could feel the fury building up inside her. Was he crazy? How could he throw away everything he had, attraction or no attraction? Didn’t he realize how good his life was? She clasped her hands in her lap and tried to convey her sympathy to Pernilla, sitting across the table. Whether Pernilla could take it in or not, she had no idea.

  ‘Thanks for listening. I really appreciate it.’

  Their eyes met. Less than an hour had passed since Pernilla rang the doorbell, but Erica felt that she had learned a lot in that time, especially about herself.

  ‘Can you manage? Do you have anywhere to go?’

  ‘I’m going home.’ Pernilla’s voice was clear and firm. ‘She’s not going to drive me away from my home and my family. I won’t give her that satisfaction. I’m going home to my husband, and we’re going to work this out. But not without demands. Things will have to be done differently from now on.’