Preacher Read online

  Patrik wasn’t sure how he should proceed. There were two tasks that demanded action. First, he wanted someone to drive to the hospital in Uddevalla and talk with Solveig and Robert to find out whether they knew anything. Second, he needed to send somebody to the manor to talk with Jacob’s family. After a few moments of hesitation he decided to drive to Uddevalla himself and send Martin and Gösta to the manor. But just as he got up to leave, the phone rang again. This time it was Forensics.

  With trepidation he steeled himself to listen to what the lab had to say. Maybe they would finally have the piece of the puzzle they were looking for. But never in Patrik’s wildest imagination could he have predicted what he heard next.

  By the time Martin and Gösta reached the manor they had spent the whole drive discussing what Patrik had told them. It didn’t make sense to either of them. But more pressing matters prevented them from dwelling on the conundrum. The only thing they could do now was to put their heads down and plough stubbornly ahead.

  At the foot of the stairs leading to the front door they had to climb over a couple of big suitcases. Martin wondered who was going on a trip. It looked like more luggage than Gabriel would need for a business trip, and the bags also had a feminine touch that made him guess they belonged to Laine.

  This time they were not shown into the living room but led down a long hall to the kitchen at the other end of the house. It was a room that Martin liked immediately. The living room was beautiful, of course, but had a rather impersonal air about it. The kitchen overflowed with comfort, with a rustic simplicity that flouted the elegance that otherwise lay like a suffocating veil over the manor. In the living room Martin had felt like a yokel, but here he felt like rolling up his sleeves to start stirring the big pots with their steaming contents.

  Marita sat at an enormous, rustic kitchen table, squeezed in at the end against the wall. It looked as though she were seeking security in a situation that was frightening and unexpected. From a distance Martin could hear the sound of children yelling, and when he craned his neck and looked out of the windows facing the garden he saw Jacob and Marita’s two children running about and playing on the huge lawn.

  Gösta and Martin merely nodded to the people in kitchen. Then they sat down with Marita at the table. Martin thought astrange mood prevailed, but he couldn’t put his finger on what it was. Gabriel and Laine had sat down as far apart as they could get, and he noticed that they were both very careful not to look at each other. He thought about the luggage at the front door. Then he realized that Laine must have told Gabriel about her affair with Johannes, and what the result had been. No wonder the mood was so impenetrable. The only thing still keeping Laine at the manor was their shared concern over Jacob’s disappearance.

  ‘Let’s start from the beginning,’ said Martin. ‘Which of you saw Jacob last?’

  Laine gave a small wave of her hand. ‘I did.’

  ‘And when was that?’ Gösta took up the questioning.

  ‘Around eight o’clock. After I collected him from the station.’ She nodded at the officers facing her at the table.

  ‘And where did you drop him off?’ said Martin.

  ‘Just by the drive to Västergården. I offered to drive him all the way up, but he said that wouldn’t be necessary. It’s a little hard to turn round at the end of the drive, and it’s onlya couple of hundred metres to walk, so I didn’t insist.’

  ‘What was his mood like?’ Martin continued.

  She glanced furtively at Gabriel. They all knew what it was they were really talking about, but no one wanted to say it straight out. It struck Martin that Maritaprobably didn’t know vet about Jacob’s altered familial relationships. But unfortunately he couldn’t make allowances for that now. They had to get all the facts and couldn’t sit there worrying about niceties.

  ‘He was …’ Laine searched for the right word, ‘pensive. I would even say that he seemed in a state of shock.’

  Marita looked in bewilderment at Laine, and then at the police.

  ‘What are you talking about? Why would Jacob be in shock? What did you do to him yesterday? Gabriel said that he was no longer a suspect, so why should he be upset?’

  A slight twitch was visible on Laine’s face, the only sign of the emotional storms whirling round inside her, but she calmly put her hand on Marita’s.

  ‘Jacob got some upsetting news yesterday, dear. I did something many, many years ago that I’ve been carrying around inside for a long time. And thanks to the police,’ she cast a spiteful glance at Martin and Gösta, ‘Jacob was told about it last night. I’d always intended to tell him, but the years rolled by so quickly and I suppose I was waiting for the right moment.’

  ‘The right moment for what?’ asked Marita.

  ‘To tell Jacob that Johannes, not Gabriel, is his father.’

  At each word in the sentence Gabriel grimaced and flinched, as if each syllable were a stab at his heart. But his shocked expression was gone. His psyche had already begun to process the information, and it was no longer as difficult as hearing it for the first time.

  ‘What are you saying?’ Marita looked at Laine and Gabriel with eyes wide. Then she collapsed. ‘Oh good Lord, it must have crushed him.’

  Laine flinched as if she’d been slapped. ‘What’s done is done,’ she said. ‘The important thing now is to find Jacob, and then …’ she paused, ‘then we’ll have to work out all the rest.’

  ‘Laine is right. No matter what the blood test showed, in my heart Jacob remains my son,’ said Gabriel, putting his hand on his chest, ‘and we have to find him.’

  ‘We will find him,’ said Gösta. ‘It’s not really so odd that he might want to stay away and think things over for a while.’

  Martin was grateful for the reassuring tone that Gösta could turn on when he wished. Right now it was perfectly suited to calming everyone’s nerves, and Martin calmly resumed his questions.

  ‘So Jacob never came home?’

  ‘No,’ said Marita. ‘Laine rang me when they left the station, so I knew he was on the way. But later, when he didn’t show up, I thought he must have driven home with her and slept over there. That wasn’t like him, of course, but on the other hand he and the whole family have been under such stress lately, so I thought he might need to spend some time with his parents.’

  As she said the last word she cast a furtive glance at Gabriel, but he simply gave her a smile. It would take time before they could work out how to handle the new situation.

  ‘How did you hear what happened to Stefan?’ asked Martin.

  ‘Solveig rang early this morning.’

  ‘I thought that you’d … had a fallingout?’ Martin enquired cautiously.

  ‘Yes, you might call it that. But family is family, I suppose, and when the chips are down then …’ Gabriel let thewords die out. ‘Linda is at the hospital. She and Stefan were closer than anyone imagined, it turns out.’ Gabriel gave an odd, bitter little laugh.

  ‘Have you heard anything more?’ asked Laine.

  Gösta shook his head. ‘No, the last we heard was that his condition was unchanged. But Patrik Hedström is on his way to Uddevalla right now, so we’ll see what he says. If anything happens, one way or the other, you’ll hear about it as soon as we do. Linda will probably ring you direct, Imean.’

  Martin stood up. ‘Well, I think we have all the information we need.’

  ‘Do you think the person who tried to kill Stefan was the same one who murdered that German girl?’ Marita’s lower lip quivered slightly. She didn’t need to explain what she was really asking.

  ‘There’s no reason to believe that,’ said Martin gently. ‘I’m sure that we’ll soon find out what happened. I mean, Stefan and Robert have moved a good deal in rather dubious circles, so it’s more likely we’ll find the assailant there.’

  ‘What are you doing now to search for Jacob?’ Marita continued stubbornly. ‘Are you sending out search parties in the area, or what?’

  ‘
No, we probably won’t start with that. I honestly think that he’s sitting somewhere and thinking over the .. . situation. He’ll probably show up at home at any moment. So the best thing you can do is to stay home, and then ring us directly and let us know when he comes home. Okay?’

  No one said a word. Martin and Gösta took that to mean that they agreed. There was really not much the police could do as yet. But Martin had to admit that he didn’t feel as confident as he had let on to Jacob’s family. It was an odd coincidence that Jacob should vanish the same evening that his cousin, brother, or whatever they should call Stefan, was attacked.

  In the car on the way back to the station Martin told his colleague Gösta what he was thinking. Gösta nodded in agreement. He also had a gut feeling that not everything was as it should be. Strange coincidences happened very rarely in real life; they were not something that a policeman could rely on. They hoped that Patrik could find out something more.

  11

  SUMMER 2003

  SHE WOKE UP WITH a pounding headache and a cloying feeling in her mouth. Jenny didn’t know where she was. The last thing she remembered was sitting in a car that had stopped to offer her a lift, and now she had suddenly been flung into some sort of strange, dark reality. At first she wasn’t afraid at all. It felt like a dream, and at any moment she expected to wake up and discover that she was back in her family’s caravan.

  After a while the realization slowly sank in that this was not a dream she was going to wake up from. In panic she began to fumble about in the dark. At the far wall she felt wooden boards under her fingers.A staircase. She crawled up the stairs, feeling for each step. With a bang she hit her head. A ceiling stopped her from climbing more than a few steps. Her feeling of claustrophobia became acute. She estimated that she could stand up on the floor, although just barely because the ceiling was very low. Nor had it taken long to feel her way around the walls. The space couldn’t be more than two metres across. Panicking, she knelt at the top ofthe steps and pressed upwards, feeling the boards give a little. But they were not about to budge. She heard a metallic rattling and guessed that there was probably a padlock on the other side.

  After trying a couple more times to push up the hatch, she climbed back down in despair and sat on the earthen floor with her arms wrapped about her knees. The sound of footsteps above her head made her instinctively move as far away as possible.

  When the man came down the stairs she pictured his face, although there was no light in the room. She had seen him when he picked her up in the car, and that fact scared her. Jenny could identify him, and she knew what sort ofcar he drove. That meant he would never let her out of here alive.

  She started to scream, but he gently put his hand over her mouth and spoke soothingly. When he was convinced that she wouldn’t scream any more, he took his hand from her mouth and carefully began to undress her. He stroked her limbs with pleasure, almost with love. She heard his breathing grow heavier. She closed her eyes to shut out the thought of what was to come.

  Afterwards he apologized. Then the pain began.

  The summer traffic was murderous. Patrik’s irritation had grown as the kilometres piled up on the odometer, and when he turned into the car park at Uddevalla Hospital he forced himself to take a few deep breaths to calm down. He didn’t normally get so worked up about caravans taking up the whole road or tourists driving slowly and pointing to everything they saw without caring about the queue of cars forming behind them. But his disappointment over the results of the blood analysis had contributed considerably to lowering his tolerance level.

  He had hardly believed his ears. None of the samples matched the DNA in the semen taken from Tanja’s body. He had been so convinced that they would know the identity of the murderer when the results were in that he still hadn’t recovered from the shock. Someone related to Johannes Hult had murdered Tanja, that fact was inescapable. But it wasn’t any of his known relatives.

  Impatientlyhe dialled the number of the station. Annika had started work a little later than usual and he’d been waiting for her to arrive.

  ‘Hi, it’s Patrik. Pardon me for sounding stressed, but could you see if you can dig up some information ASAP on whether there are any other relatives of the Hult family in the area? I’m wondering mostly if there are any children of Johannes Hult born out of wedlock.’

  He heard her writing it down and kept his fingers crossed. It was the last straw he could grasp, and he sincerely hoped that she would find something. If not, all he could do was sit here and scratch his head.

  He had to admit that he liked the theory that popped into his head during the drive to Uddevalla. The idea that Johannes might have a son in the area that they didn’t know about. With what they had learned about him, it didn’t seem impossible. In fact it was quite likely, the more he thought about it. It might even be a motive for why Johannes’ was murdered, thought Patrik without really knowing how he was going to tie up all the loose ends. Jealousy was a superb motive for murder, and the way he’d been killed also fit in well with the theory. An impulsive, unpremeditated murder.An attack of rage and jealousy that ended up with Johannes dead.

  But what did that have to do with the murders of Siv and Mona? That was the piece of the puzzle that he couldn’t place yet, but maybe Annika’s findings would help them in that respect too.

  He slammed the car door and went towards the front entrance. After a little searching and help from friendly county council employees, he finally found the right department. In the waiting room he found the three people he was looking for. Like birds on a telephone line they were sitting next to each other, without speaking and looking straight ahead. But he saw a glint ignite in Solveig’s eye when she caught sight of him. Slowly she got up and waddled over to meet him. She looked as if she hadn’t slept a wink all night. Her clothes were wrinkled and rank with sweat. Her greasy hair was tangled, and there were dark circles under her eyes. Robert looked equally tired. Only Linda looked alert, with a clear gaze and neat appearance. She was still unaware that her family was breaking apart.

  ‘Have you caught him?’ Solveig pulled lightly on Patrik’s sleeve.

  ‘Unfortunately we don’t have any new information. Have you heard anything from the doctors yet?’

  Robert shook his head. ‘No, but they’re still in the operating room. There was something about pressure on the brain. I think they’re opening up his whole skull. I’d be surprised if they actually find a brain in there.’

  ‘Robert!’ Solveig turned angrily and glowered at her son, but Patrik understood what he was trying to do. He wanted to conceal his worry and the pressure by joking about it. It was a method that usually worked for him too.

  Patrik sat down in one of the empty chairs. Solveig also sat down.

  ‘Who would do this to my little boy?’ She rocked back and forth in her chair. ‘I saw how he looked when they carried him out. He looked like a stranger. There was nothing but blood everywhere.’

  Linda winced and grimaced. Robert didn’t react. When Patrik looked more closely at his black jeans and sweatshirt, he could see big splotches of Stefan’s blood still on them.

  ‘You didn’t hear anything last night, or see anything either?’

  ‘No,’ said Robert, annoyed. ‘We already told that to the other officers. How many times do we have to repeat it?’

  ‘I beg your pardon, but I have to ask these questions. Bear with me for a moment, please.’

  The sympathy in his voice was genuine. It was a hard job to be a cop sometimes, especially on occasions like this when he had to delve into the lives of people who had much more important things to think about. But he received unexpected help from Solveig.

  ‘Robert, please co-operate. We should do everything we can to help them catch whoever did this to our Stefan, you know that.’ She turned to Patrik.

  ‘I thought I heard a sound, and a minute later Robert called for me. But we didn’t see anyone, either before or after we found him.’
/>   Patrik nodded. Then he said to Linda, ‘Did you happen tosee your brother Jacob last night?’

  ‘No,’ said Linda in surprise. ‘I was staying over at the manor house. He was at home at Västergården, wasn’t he? Why do you ask?’

  ‘It seems he never came home last night, so I just thought you might have seen him.’

  ‘No, asI said, I didn’t. But check with Mamma and Pappa.’

  ‘We’ve done that. They haven’t seen him, either. Do you happen to know of somewhere elsehe might be?’

  Now Linda was beginning to look nervous. ‘No, where would that be?’ Then an idea seemed to occur to her. ‘Could he have driven to the farm at Bullaren and slept there? Of course he’s never done that before, but …’

  Patrik hit his thigh with his fist. It was crazy that they hadn’t thought of Bullaren. He excused himself and went to ring Martin. He would have to drive out there immediately and check it out.

  When he returned to the waiting room the mood had changed. While he was talking to Martin, Linda had called home on her mobile. Now she was looking at him with all the defiance of a teenager.

  ‘What’s going on, anyway? Pappa said that Marita called you and reported Jacob missing, and that those other two cops were out there asking a bunch of questions. Pappa sounded worried as hell.’ She was standing in front of Patrik with her hands on her hips.

  ‘There’s no reason to worry yet,’ he said, repeating the same mantra that Gösta and Martin had used at the manor. ‘Your brother has probably gone off to be alone for a while, but we have to take all such reports seriously.’

  Linda gave him a suspicious look, but seemed to be satisfied. Then she said in a low voice, ‘Pappa also told us about Johannes. When were you planning to tell them about it?’

  She tossed her head in the direction of Robert and Solveig. Patrik couldn’t help watching in fascination the arc that her long blonde hair made in the air. Then he reminded himself of her age. He was shocked at the thought that all the upheaval involved in starting a family may have triggered a tendency to lechery in him.