The Girl in the Woods (Patrik Hedstrom and Erica Falck, Book 10) Read online

‘Refills for everyone,’ said Vendela, setting glasses and bottles on the table.

  She looked at Jessie.

  ‘Taste it and see if it’s as good as the first one. I made you a different cocktail this time.’

  Jessie took a sip. Again it burned her throat, but this time it tasted of Fanta soda, and she liked it better. She gave it a thumbs up.

  ‘I hardly put any alcohol in it, so you don’t have to worry about getting drunk.’

  Jessie gave Vendela a grateful smile and took another sip. She wondered what a drink with lots of alcohol would taste like, considering how this one was burning her stomach. But it was nice of Vendela to think of her. Happiness spread through her. Were they going to be her friends? That would be amazing. Along with Sam. Wonderful, awesome, lovely Sam.

  She raised her glass to the trio sitting on the sofa and took another big sip. What a marvellous burning sensation in her chest.

  Marie carefully wiped off her make-up. Film make-up was the worst kind for her skin because of the thick layers required. She would never dream of going to bed without taking it off so her skin could breathe. She leaned forward and studied her face in the mirror. Tiny crow’s feet at her eyes and a few fine lines around her mouth. Sometimes she felt as if she were a passenger on a train racing towards a precipice. Her career was all she had.

  At least it looked as if this film was going well, and if it turned out to be a commercial success she would have bought herself a few more years. In Sweden, at any rate. Her days in Hollywood were coming to an end. She was no longer the box office draw she’d once been. The roles were getting worse, and they were now few and far between. These days she was reduced to playing someone’s mother, not the hot female lead. She was being pushed aside by young starlets with hungry eyes who were willing to sleep with directors and producers to get a role.

  Marie picked up the jar of expensive face cream and began smoothing it on her face. Then the jar with cream for her eyes. She smeared it on her neck too. Many women paid attention only to their face, but the wrinkles on their neck gave away their age.

  She glanced at the clock. Eleven forty-five. Should she wait up for Jessie? No, she’d probably come home in the wee hours of the morning, or else she’d stay overnight. And Marie needed her beauty sleep before another long day of filming.

  Marie met her own eyes in the mirror. Her face was now devoid of all make-up. Her outward appearance had been her armour ever since she was a child. It prevented everybody from having access to what was inside. No one had ever seen her, really seen her. Not since Helen. She’d managed to keep away all thoughts of her during most of the years that had passed. She had never looked back. Never cast even a glance over her shoulder. What good would that have done? They had been forced apart. And ever since … Helen had refused to see her.

  She had been waiting for the day they would both be eighteen. She had reached that age a year before Helen, and it wasn’t until four months later, in October, that they had finally talked to each other again. Marie expected they would make new plans. They no longer had to suffer that awful sense of longing every second.

  Marie had phoned her in the morning. She had wondered what she would say if Helen’s parents answered, but she needn’t have worried. Helen’s voice filled her with such happiness. Marie wanted to banish the intervening years, erase them, and start fresh. Together with Helen.

  But Helen had sounded like a stranger. Cold. Distant. She explained that she didn’t want to have any contact with Marie. That she would soon be marrying James, and Marie belonged to the past she was trying to forget. Marie had sat silently holding the phone in her hand. Her longing was mixed with disappointment. She hadn’t asked any questions. She merely hung up the phone and decided that no one would ever be allowed into her heart again. And she had kept that promise. From then on she made a point of thinking about only one person. Herself. And she had achieved everything she wanted.

  But now, in the darkness of this house by the sea, she looked into her own eyes and wondered whether it had been worth it. She was empty. Everything she had acquired was nothing but show.

  The only thing that had ever had any value in her life was Helen.

  For the first time Marie allowed herself to think about how things might have been. And she saw with surprise that the woman in the mirror was crying. Thirty-year-old tears.

  The Stella Case

  His conversation with her had steered his thoughts in a whole new direction. Leif’s gut instinct told him he was on the right track. Yet it meant he was forced to acknowledge to himself, and eventually to others, that he’d made a mistake. A mistake that had destroyed the lives of many people. And it wasn’t good enough to defend himself by saying he had believed in the decisions he’d made. Back then he could have discovered the same answer if he’d only kept looking; instead he’d succumbed to what was easiest and most obvious. It was only later in life that he’d learned things often were not as simple as they seemed. He’d also learned that life could change in a second. Kate’s death had given him a humility that he’d lacked back then, when it was truly needed.

  He’d found it difficult to look her in the eye. Because when he did, he saw only loneliness and pain. And he didn’t know whether he was doing her a disservice by stirring up the past. Yet he had an obligation to put things right, as best he could. There was so much that could not be repaired. So much that could not be given back.

  Leif parked in front of his house but didn’t get out of the car. The house was so empty. So filled with memories. He knew he should sell it and buy a flat instead. But he couldn’t bring himself to do that. He missed Kate. He’d missed her for so many years now, and it was a torment to keep living without her. Especially when he no longer had a job to keep him busy. He’d tried to fill the emptiness with his children and grandchildren, and it did help keep the loneliness at bay. But Kate had been so imprinted in every cell of his body – she’d been the reason he lived and breathed. Life without her had no meaning.

  Reluctantly he got out of the car. The silence in the house was deafening. The only sound was the ticking of the kitchen clock. The clock from Kate’s childhood home. Yet another reminder of her.

  Leif went into this home office. Only there did he feel any sense of peace. He made up the sofa every evening so he could sleep in his office. He’d done that ever since he retired.

  His desk was neat and tidy, as usual. He took pride in having an orderly desk, just as he had all the years of his working life. He’d kept his desk at the police station equally neat. It helped him to sort his thoughts. To create structure and order from seemingly random facts.

  He got out the file folder with the documents from the case. For the umpteenth time he went over everything. But this time he was seeing it all from a new perspective. And yes. It fit. Far too much of it fit. Leif slowly put down the papers. He’d been wrong. So terribly wrong.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Vendela swayed on her high heels as she stood in the doorway to Basse’s parents’ bedroom. The wine had created a lovely buzzing inside her head, and everything seemed so pleasantly hazy. She pointed at Jessie, who was lying on the bed.

  ‘How the hell did you get her up here?’

  Nils grinned.

  ‘Basse and I had to carry her together.’

  ‘That girl really can’t hold her alcohol,’ said Basse, nodding at Jessie.

  He was already slurring his words, but he took another swig of beer.

  Vendela looked at Jessie. She was completely out of it, sleeping so heavily she almost seemed dead. But her chest rose intermittently. Looking at her, Vendela was filled with anger, as always. Jessie’s mother had killed someone, and yet nothing bad had happened to her. She’d become a Hollywood star while her own mother drank away the pain every night. And Jessie had lived all over the world while Vendela had been rotting away here in Fjällbacka.

  Someone knocked on the door, and Vendela turned to open it. From downstairs she heard Flo R
ida’s ‘My House’, along with laughing and shouting as people at the party tried to make themselves heard.

  ‘What are you guys doing?’

  Three of the boys from the Strömstad school stood in the hall, their eyes glazed.

  ‘We’re having a private party here,’ said Nils with a sweeping gesture. ‘Come on in.’

  ‘Who’s that?’ asked the tallest of the boys.

  Vendela thought his name was Mathias.

  ‘A sick bitch who tried to put the move on me and Basse,’ said Nils, shaking his head. ‘She’s been trying to get some cock all night, so we carried her up here.’

  ‘What a whore,’ muttered Mathias, standing in the middle of the room and staring at Jessie.

  ‘Look, here’s the kind of pictures she posts,’ said Nils, taking out his mobile.

  He scrolled to the picture of Jessie showing her breasts, and the boys tried to focus their drunken gazes on the image.

  ‘God, they’re big,’ one of them said, grinning.

  ‘She’s fucked everybody,’ said Nils, downing the rest of his beer.

  He waved the empty bottle.

  ‘Who wants more to drink? It’s not a party if we’re not drinking.’

  They mumbled a reply, and Nils looked at Vendela.

  ‘Go get us some more, okay?’

  She nodded and tottered out of the room.

  She managed to make it down to the kitchen, where Basse had hidden more bottles, some of which now stood on the big worktop. She picked up a box of white wine in one hand and a big bottle of vodka in the other. She also grabbed a couple of extra plastic cups, which she carried in her teeth.

  On her way upstairs, Vendela stumbled several times. Eventually she made it and managed to use her elbow to knock on the bedroom door. Basse let her in.

  Basse sank down on the bed next to Nils, who was sitting beside Jessie, still passed out. Mathias and the other boys sat on the floor. Vendela handed out the cups and began filling them with a mixture of wine and vodka. Nobody even noticed the taste any more.

  ‘Somebody should teach a bitch like that a lesson,’ said Mathias, taking a couple of big swigs of his drink.

  He swayed a bit as he sat there.

  Vendela met Nils’s eyes. Should they go through with it? She thought about her mother and all the dreams she hadn’t been allowed to realize. About how her life had been destroyed on that day thirty years ago.

  She and Nils nodded to each other.

  ‘Maybe we ought to mark her in some way,’ said Nils.

  ‘I have a pen,’ said Vendela, taking it out of her purse. ‘It’s a permanent marker.’

  The boys from Strömstad sniggered. The shortest boy nodded enthusiastically.

  ‘Fucking great idea. Let’s mark the whore.’

  Vendela went over to the bed. She pointed at Jessie.

  ‘First we have to undress her.’

  She began unbuttoning Jessie’s blouse, but the buttons were tiny and she was so drunk that her fingers fumbled, and she couldn’t manage to undo even one. Frustrated, she grabbed hold of the fabric and ripped it open.

  Nils laughed.

  ‘That’s my girl!’

  ‘Here, take off her skirt,’ Vendela told Mathias, who sniggered as he came over and began pulling it off Jessie.

  She had on ugly white cotton knickers, and Vendela grimaced. Why wasn’t she surprised?

  ‘Help me roll her on to her side so I can undo her bra,’ she said.

  A whole bunch of willing hands reached out to help.

  ‘Wow!’

  Basse was staring at Jessie’s breasts. She stirred a little when they placed her on her back again. She murmured something incomprehensible.

  ‘Here! Have a refill!’

  Nils handed Mathias the vodka bottle, which was then passed around. Vendela sat down next to Jessie.

  ‘Here, give me the bottle.’

  Nils handed her the vodka bottle. She put her hand under Jessie’s head and raised it off the bed. With the other hand she poured vodka into her open mouth.

  ‘She has to be part of the party!’ she said.

  Jessie coughed without waking.

  ‘Wait, I have to take a picture of this!’ said Nils. ‘Pose with her.’

  He fumbled for his phone and began snapping photos. Vendela leaned over Jessie. Finally it was her family that had the power. The four other boys also got out their phones to take pictures.

  ‘What should we write?’ asked Basse, who couldn’t take his eyes off Jessie’s breasts.

  ‘Let’s take turns,’ said Vendela, taking the cap off the pen. ‘I’ll go first.’

  She wrote ‘SLUT’ across Jessie’s stomach. The boys cheered. Jessie squirmed a bit but didn’t wake up. Vendela handed the pen to Nils, who paused to think. Then he pulled off Jessie’s knickers and drew an arrow pointing to her pubic hair with the words ‘Glory Hole’. Mathias hooted and Nils did a triumphant fist pump and then handed the pen to Basse, who looked uncertain. But then he took a big swig of vodka, moved to the head of the bed, and wrote ‘WHORE’ on Jessie’s forehead.

  She was soon covered with words. Everyone was frantically taking pictures on their mobiles. Basse still couldn’t stop staring at her.

  Nils grinned at him.

  ‘Hey, everybody, I think Basse would like some alone time with Jessie.’

  He ushered everybody out of the room and then gave Basse a thumbs up. Vendela pulled the door closed, but before she did, she saw Basse starting to unbutton his trousers.

  Patrik checked the clock. He was surprised that Erica wasn’t home yet, but he was happy to think they must be having a fun time. He knew her well enough to realize that she would have otherwise have thought up some excuse to leave early.

  He went into the kitchen to clear up after dinner. The children had been tired after another play date with friends, so they’d fallen asleep earlier than usual. The house was nice and quiet. He hadn’t even switched on the TV. He needed peace and quiet to mull over the day. At the moment it felt as if thoughts were tumbling through his mind without any pattern or structure. They had made an important discovery today – he only wished he knew what it meant. The fact that Nea had died on the family farm meant they would have to give serious consideration to the possibility that someone in the family was the killer. And for that reason they had told Eva and Peter they could not return to the farm, since the police now needed to inspect the whole property and the shed.

  Patrik turned on the dishwasher and took a bottle of red wine from the cupboard. He poured himself a glass and went out to the deck. He sat down on one of the wicker chairs and gazed out at the sea. It was still not completely dark, even though it was close to midnight. Instead, the sky was purple with streaks of pink, and he could vaguely hear the waves rolling on to the shore below. He and Erica both considered this their favourite place in the house, but he realized how little time they’d spent out here the past few years. Before the children were born, they’d spent many evenings on the deck, talking, laughing, sharing dreams and hopes, making plans for their future together. That was all so long ago. These days, after they put the kids to bed, they were too tired make plans, let alone dream. Instead they often ended up sitting in front of the TV watching some insipid show. And then Erica would give him a poke as he sat on the sofa snoring, and she’d say maybe it would be better if he went up to bed to sleep.

  He wouldn’t trade the life they had with the children for anything, but he wished there was more time for … well, for their love. It was always there, but it was frequently limited to a loving glance while they each tied the shoelaces of one of the twins, or to a hasty kiss at the worktop as Erica made sandwiches for Maja and he heated up the boys’ oatmeal. They were a fine-tuned machine, a train confidently chugging along the rails they had laid during those earlier evenings they’d spent on the deck. But he wished there was time to stop the train occasionally and enjoy the view.

  He knew he ought to get some sleep, but he d
idn’t like going to bed without Erica. It felt so sad to crawl into his side of the bed when her side was empty. And for many years they’d had the same routine when they went to bed. Provided it wasn’t one of their rare intimate nights, they would always kiss each other good night and then hold hands under the covers as they fell asleep. So he preferred to wait up for her, even though he knew he’d have to get up early in the morning. He would only toss and turn if he went to bed now.

  It was almost one in the morning when he heard someone at the front door. Someone was cursing and fumbling with a key in the lock. He pricked up his ears. Was it possible his dear wife was slightly tipsy? He hadn’t seen Erica drunk since their wedding night, but judging by the trouble she was having unlocking the door, she seemed to be drunk again. He set down his wine glass and went through the living room, almost falling over the painting Erica had brought home from the gallery. Then he went into the front hall. She still hadn’t managed to get the door open, and the curses he could hear on the other side of the door were worthy of a sailor. He turned the lock and pulled on the handle. Erica stood there, holding the key in her hand and peering with surprise, first at him, then at the open door. After a moment her face lit up.

  ‘Hi, sweeeeeetheart!’

  She threw her arms around his neck and he had to brace himself not to fall over. He shushed her as she started laughing.

  ‘Not so loud. The kids are asleep.’

  Erica nodded solemnly and pressed a finger to her lips as she struggled to stay on her feet.

  ‘I’ll be sooooo quiet … The kids are sleeeeeeping …’

  ‘Exactly, the little tykes are asleep,’ he said, putting a supportive arm around his wife.

  He led Erica to the kitchen and sat her down on a chair. Then he filled a carafe with water and set it in front of her, along with a glass and two ibuprofen.

  ‘Drink the water, and take the ibuprofen. Otherwise you’re going to feel terrible in the morning.’

  ‘You’re so nice,’ said Erica, trying to focus her gaze on him.