The Girl in the Woods (Patrik Hedstrom and Erica Falck, Book 10) Page 50

  ‘You stink to high heaven of alcohol,’ he said, even though he’d told himself to remain calm. ‘And sending a text in the middle of the night is not acceptable. You know you’re supposed to tell us in advance where you’re going.’

  Nils shrugged. ‘I’ve stayed over plenty of times before,’ he said. ‘And yes, we had a few beers yesterday, but I’m fifteen now. I’m not a kid any more!’

  Bill was so angry he didn’t trust himself to reply. He turned to Gun, who was leaning against the doorjamb. She pointed upstairs.

  ‘Go up and take a shower,’ she told Nils. ‘And while you’re up there, I want you to find yourself a better attitude. When you’ve done that, you can come back down and we’ll have a talk.’

  Nils opened his mouth to say something, but Gun merely pointed upstairs again. He shook his head and climbed the stairs. A few moments later they heard the sound of the shower.

  Bill went into the living room and stood staring out the window at the sea. It looked so inviting right now.

  ‘What are we going to do with him?’ he asked. ‘Alexander and Philip never acted like this.’

  ‘Oh, they had their defiant periods too, but you always had to hurry off to your boats whenever some incident occurred.’ She sighed. ‘But you’re right. They were never this bad. I know, I know. We were too old to have another child.’

  The look in her eyes made his chest ache with guilt. He knew Gun was doing her best. It was his fault things had gone wrong. His absences, his indifference. No wonder Nils hated him.

  He sank on to the big, floral-patterned sofa.

  ‘So what should we do?’ he asked.

  He turned to look out the window again. It was going to be a fine day for sailing, but he’d lost all interest. Besides, Khalil and Adnan were going to look for a new place to live today.

  ‘He’s so angry,’ said Bill, keeping his gaze fixed on the sea. ‘I don’t understand where all that anger comes from.’

  Gun sat down next to him and squeezed his hand.

  He’d been wrestling all night with a thought that kept nagging at him. He didn’t want to say it out loud, but he’d shared everything with Gun for forty years, and force of habit proved too strong to resist.

  ‘Do you think he was involved?’ he whispered. ‘With setting the fire, I mean?’

  Gun’s silence told him he was not the only one who’d had dark thoughts in the night.

  Sanna feverishly picked up one pot after another. She forced herself to breathe evenly, to stay calm. Roses were sensitive flowers no matter how thorny the bushes were, and she didn’t want to risk harming the plants. But she was so angry she hardly knew what to do with herself.

  How could she have believed Vendela when she said she would be staying at her father’s place after the party? Niklas and his family lived closer to Basse, so it would have been easier for her to stay with them. It had sounded so sensible that she hadn’t bothered to check with Niklas.

  But this morning Vendela hadn’t answered her phone, and when Sanna rang Niklas, she found out Vendela hadn’t spent the night there after all. Niklas said she hadn’t mentioned a word to him about coming over. ‘Should I be worried?’ he’d asked.

  ‘No, you should be furious,’ she’d told him before ending the call.

  Sanna left a dozen messages on Vendela’s voicemail, and if she didn’t turn up soon, she’d leave another dozen.

  The soil flew up when Sanna set down a rosebush. A thorn snagged her glove, which came off, and she got a long scratch on her hand.

  She swore so loudly that several customers turned to stare. Sanna smiled at them and forced herself to breathe. So much had happened lately, her whole world seemed off-kilter. Nea’s death. Marie’s return. And Marie’s daughter Jessie had been inside her home. She realized that what happened thirty years ago was not the girl’s fault. Her logical, rational adult mind knew that. Yet it was unsettling to see the girl in her house, with her daughter.

  Sanna hadn’t been able to sleep last night. Instead, she’d lain in bed staring up at the ceiling, haunted by images she hadn’t seen in decades. Stella talking about the green man, the friend she had in the woods. During the investigation, Sanna had talked to her parents about the green man and mentioned him to the police. But no one had listened. She realized now it must have sounded like a fairy tale. And it probably was. Something Stella had simply dreamed up. And why re-open old wounds? The case had been solved. Everybody knew who had killed her little sister. Nothing good would come from digging everything up all over again.

  ‘Why did I have to come over here? Why couldn’t we meet at home?’

  Sanna jumped. With her arms crossed, Vendela was standing right in front of her. She was wearing big sunglasses, and her clothes didn’t look clean. Even though she seemed to have taken a shower, she reeked of alcohol.

  ‘Don’t tell me you’re hungover.’

  ‘What? I haven’t been drinking. We were up late, and I’m tired, that’s all.’

  Vendela refused to look at her mother. Sanna clenched her fists.

  ‘It’s obvious you’re lying, just as you lied to me about staying at your father’s place.’

  ‘I did not!’

  Sanna could feel all the customers staring at them, and Cornelia was looking concerned as she worked at the cash register. But it couldn’t be helped.

  ‘You told me you were going to stay with your father, but he never heard a word about it!’

  ‘I have my own key, so why should I have to tell him anything? It was super late, and the others were worried about me. They didn’t want me to go out that late, so I slept on the sofa.’

  Her voice quavered: ‘I do everything right, and you still get mad at me. It’s so bloody unfair!’

  Vendela spun on her heel and dashed out. The customers were whispering all around Sanna. She took a deep breath and went back to tending the pots of roses. She knew she’d been defeated.

  ‘What did he say?’ asked Gösta, trying to keep up with Patrik as they headed for the film studio.

  ‘I think I’ve worn him down with all my requests for exhumations over the past few years,’ said Patrik with a crooked smile. ‘He just sighed and signed the papers when I presented all the forms regarding. He agreed this is a matter that should be further examined.’

  ‘So when will the exhumation take place?’

  ‘Permission has been granted, so as soon as the practical details are taken care of, it can go ahead. It could be as early as Tuesday.’

  ‘Wow,’ said Gösta, impressed.

  Things usually took significantly more time, but he could sense how restless Patrik was. He wanted to make some progress in the case and get closer to a resolution. Gösta could always tell when his colleague had shifted into high gear. At times like this he was unstoppable, so it came as no surprise that Patrik had managed to get the administrative and judicial wheels to turn faster.

  ‘How do you want to handle Marie? The usual interviewing procedures? Do we go on the attack?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ replied Patrik. ‘I have the impression she won’t be easily intimidated or sweet-talked. We’ll have to play it by ear.’

  Gösta pressed the buzzer on the intercom attached to the studio gate. After explaining they were police officers, they were allowed in. They walked over to the studio building and stepped through the open door. The place was teeming with people, spotlights, and props. A woman holding a notepad shushed them, so Gösta gathered they had arrived in the middle of filming. He turned to the right because he could hear voices, but the filming was happening behind stage sets, so he couldn’t see anything.

  Cautiously they moved closer and heard the actors speaking their lines more clearly, but they still couldn’t see anything. It sounded like a scene between two women – some sort of confrontation, with raised voices and emotional outbursts. Finally they heard a man shout: ‘Cut!’ Only then did they dare venture around the corner. Gösta gaped. Within the plywood walls a real room had
been created in all its detail. It was like travelling back in time to the 1970s. Everything about the room brought back memories.

  Two women were talking to the director. Gösta recognized Marie as the older of the two, made up to look haggard and ill. This scene must be towards the end of Ingrid Bergman’s life, when cancer had taken hold. He wondered who the younger woman was supposed to be; maybe one of Ingrid’s daughters.

  Marie caught sight of them and stopped in mid-sentence. Patrik motioned to her. She said a few words to the woman and the director before briskly striding over to join them.

  ‘You’ll have to excuse my appearance,’ she said, taking off the shawl covering her hair.

  Her complexion had been given a greyish tinge, and wrinkles and lines had been drawn on her face. Somehow this only made her even more beautiful.

  ‘So how can I be of service to you today?’ she asked tonelessly, pointing to a cluster of sofas a short distance away.

  After they were seated, Patrik looked at Marie.

  ‘We’ve been given new information relating to your alibi.’

  ‘My alibi?’ she said. The only reaction Gösta could see was that her eyes narrowed slightly.

  ‘Yes,’ said Patrik. ‘We’ve learned that you were not telling the truth. So we’re primarily interested in hearing where you really were at eight o’clock on Monday morning.’

  ‘I see,’ said Marie, delaying her answer by lighting a cigarette. She took a couple of drags and then said: ‘Who told you my alibi was a lie?’

  ‘That’s not something we’re going to reveal. And you haven’t answered the question. Do you still claim that you spent the night with Jörgen Holmlund, and that the two of you left his hotel room together at eight o’clock Monday morning?’

  Marie didn’t reply. She took a few more drags on her cigarette. Finally she sighed.

  ‘Okay, I confess.’ She held up her hands and laughed. ‘I took home some eye-candy from the party, and … I thought you might latch on to the story, so I decided to tell a white lie.’

  ‘A white lie?’ said Gösta. ‘Don’t you realize this is a murder investigation?’

  ‘Of course I do. But I also know that I’m innocent, and that my director would be furious if I got involved in something that might delay filming. So that’s why I asked him to give me an alibi when I heard about the little girl getting killed; I was afraid you’d start poking around in my personal life.’

  She gave them a smile.

  Gösta felt a surge of irritation. Treating this situation so lightly was not only arrogant, it was insensitive and cruel. Now they’d once again have to waste valuable time confirming her alibi. Time they could have spent on something else.

  ‘So this young man you spent the night with … does he have a name?’ asked Patrik.

  Marie shook her head.

  ‘That’s what’s so embarrassing. I have no clue what his name is. I called him darling, and that was good enough for me. To be perfectly honest, I was more interested in his body than his name.’

  She tapped the ash from her cigarette into an overflowing ashtray on the table.

  ‘Okay,’ said Patrik, fighting to remain patient. ‘You don’t know his name, but could you tell us what he looks like? Or do you know anything else that might help us identify him? Do you know the names of any of his friends?’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t. He was at the hotel with a bunch of young guys his age, but he was the only one who was good-looking enough to grab my attention, so I didn’t bother to talk to the others. Well, I didn’t bother to talk much to him either. I suggested he come home with me, which he willingly did, and that was that. Since I had a film shoot the next day, I kicked him out, and there’s really not much more to tell you.’

  ‘What did he look like?’ persisted Patrik.

  ‘Oh, good lord, he looked like most young men in their twenties who hang around here in the summertime. That blond, blue-eyed type, with slicked back hair, expensive brand-name clothes, and a slightly snobbish attitude. Probably living off his pappa’s money.’

  She waved her cigarette.

  ‘So you don’t think he was from around here?’ asked Gösta, coughing from the smoke.

  ‘No, he talked like someone from Gothenburg. Probably a tourist from Gothenburg on a sailing holiday. But that’s only a guess.’

  She leaned back and took one last drag on her cigarette.

  Gösta sighed. A nameless guy in his twenties from Gothenburg, here on a sailing holiday. It didn’t exactly narrow down the possibilities. The description fit thousands of young men who passed through Fjällbacka in the summer.

  ‘Did your daughter happen to see him?’ he asked.

  ‘No, she was in bed asleep,’ said Marie. ‘You know how teenagers are. They sleep half the day.’

  Patrik raised his eyebrows.

  ‘My wife tells me you mentioned seeing someone in the woods, right before Stella disappeared.’

  Marie smiled.

  ‘Your wife is a very intelligent woman. And I’ll tell you, just like I told her: the police never bothered to follow up on the lead. Because of that, the murderer has struck again.’

  Patrik stood up.

  ‘If you think of anything that might help us find the young man to confirm your alibi, be sure to give us a call,’ he said. ‘Otherwise we have only your word that you were with someone on Sunday night. And that is not good enough.’

  Gösta stood up too, giving Marie a surprised look. She was smiling and didn’t seem at all concerned about the serious situation in which she now found herself.

  ‘Of course,’ she said sarcastically. ‘Anything to help out the police.’

  Someone called her name from the stage set, and she got to her feet.

  ‘Time for another take. Are we finished here?’

  ‘For now,’ said Patrik.

  As they left the cool air of the studio and stepped outside into the summer heat, they paused for a moment at the gate.

  ‘Do you believe her story?’ asked Gösta.

  Patrik took his time before replying.

  ‘The part about her taking home some young guy and not even knowing his name rings true. But it seems implausible that she’d lie about it because she didn’t want us poking around in her personal life.’

  ‘I’m sceptical too,’ agreed Gösta. ‘So the next question is, what is she hiding? And why?’

  The Stella Case

  All of a sudden Marie was simply gone. They thought they’d be able to steer the situation, work it to their advantage, that they could still have an impact and make decisions. But gradually they realized they had no control over anything. And then Marie was sent away.

  Sometimes Helen envied Marie. Maybe things were better where she was now. Maybe she’d found a good home with nice people who liked her. That was her hope, at any rate, even though the thought filled her with jealousy.

  In the meantime, she had ended up in a prison far worse than any with bars on the windows. Her life was no longer her own. In the daytime her parents watched every move she made. At night her dreams haunted her, with the same scenes playing over and over. She was never free even for a second.

  She was thirteen years old, and her life was over before it had even started. There was nothing but lies. Sometimes she longed for the truth, but she knew she could never allow the truth to cross her lips. It was too big, too overwhelming. The truth would destroy everything.

  But she missed Marie. Every minute, every second. She missed her the way she would miss an arm or a leg, a part of herself. It had been the two of them against the world. Now she was all alone.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  It had felt so liberating to work out what had been bothering her about the painting. Now Patrik and his colleagues could take over. Even though Erica realized it was necessary to re-examine Leif’s body, she was doubtful they’d find anything after all these years. Bodies deteriorated so rapidly.

  Viola was shocked when Erica rang to tell h
er what they’d discovered and what had to be done. She said she needed to speak to her two brothers first, but after ten minutes she phoned back to say they supported the police decision to exhume their father’s body. They too wanted to know what really happened.

  ‘You’re not looking so hot,’ said Paula, refilling Erica’s coffee cup.

  The two of them were still sitting in the station kitchen, going through Leif’s diary. They were helping each other to decipher his scribblings. Of most interest was the mysterious ‘11’ from the day he died. Leif’s handwriting was typical of his generation: hopelessly elaborate, with sweeping loops and flourishes. He also had a fondness for odd abbreviations, which made the notes in his diary resemble coded entries.

  ‘Could it be a temperature?’ wondered Paula, squinting her eyes, as if that might make it easier to work out what was written.

  ‘Hmm …’ said Erica. ‘He wrote “55” the week before, so I don’t think he’s referring to the weather.’

  She groaned.

  ‘Maths and numbers have always been my Achilles’ heel, and I’m not exactly at my most alert today. I forgot how bad a hangover could be.’

  ‘I hope you at least had a good time.’

  ‘It was great! I’ve been trying to ring Kristina, but she must be in bed with her head under the covers.’

  ‘Maybe you should do the same.’

  ‘You’re probably right,’ muttered Erica as she continued to stare at the notes in the diary.

  Gösta came into the kitchen.

  ‘Hi, girls. Are you still here? Don’t you think you should go home to bed, Erica? You’re looking a bit peaky.’

  ‘I’d feel a lot better if everybody would quit reminding me how lousy I look.’

  ‘How did it go?’ Paula asked Gösta. ‘What did Marie say?’

  ‘She claims she took some young guy home with her that night, but she doesn’t know his name. And she got her director to lie for her because she wanted to come up with a quick alibi to stop us sniffing around her private life.’