Camilla Lackberg Crime Thrillers 1 and 2: The Ice Princess, The Preacher

The bond between them still existed. Nothing had changed. Nothing was different. They were two of a kind.

It took some effort to open up her hand so he could place his palm against hers. He laced his fingers with hers. The blood was dry and stiff, and small flakes stuck to his skin.

Time had never had any meaning when he was with her. Years, days or weeks flowed together, becoming an amorphous entity in which the only thing that meant anything was this: her hand against his. That was why the betrayal had been so painful. She had made time meaningful again. That’s why the blood would never flow hot through her veins again.

Before he left, he prised her hand back to its original position.

He did not look back.

Awakened from a deep and dreamless sleep, (#u5716598e-564c-565c-adaa-8345ec5108ec) Erica at first could not identify the sound. By the time she realized that it was the shrill ring of the telephone that woke her, it had already rung many times. She jumped out of bed to answer it.

‘Erica Falck.’ Her voice was no more than a croak. She cleared her throat loudly with her hand over the mouthpiece to get rid of the worst of the hoarseness.

‘Oh, sorry, did I wake you? I beg your pardon.’

‘No, I was awake.’ The reply came automatically and Erica could hear how transparent it sounded. It was quite obvious that she was groggy, to say the least.

‘Well, I’m sorry in any case. This is Henrik Wijkner. I just had a call from Birgit, and she asked me to contact you. Apparently she got a call this morning from a particularly rude police superintendent from the Tanumshede station. He more or less ordered her, in not very polite terms, to come down to the station. Evidently my presence was also desired. He didn’t want to say what it was about, but we have an idea. Birgit is quite upset, and since neither Karl-Erik nor Julia is in Fjällbacka at the moment for various reasons, I wonder whether you could do me a big favour and go over to see her. Her sister and brother-in-law are at work, so she’s at home alone at their house. It will be a couple of hours before I can get back to Fjällbacka, and I don’t want her to be alone that long. I know it’s a lot to ask, and we don’t actually know each other that well, but I have no one else to turn to.’

‘Of course I’ll go over to see Birgit. It’s no problem. I just have to throw on some clothes. I can be over there in about fifteen minutes.’

‘That’s fine. I’m eternally grateful to you. Really. Birgit has never been particularly stable, and I’d like someone to be with her until I make it back to Fjällbacka. I’ll ring and tell her you’re on the way. I’ll be there sometime after noon, so we can talk more then. Once again – thank you.’

Still with sleep in her eyes, Erica hurried into the bathroom to wash her face. She put on the clothes she’d been wearing the day before, and after running a comb through her hair and applying a little mascara, she was sitting behind the wheel of her car less than ten minutes later. It didn’t take more than five minutes to drive to Tallgatan from Sälvik, so it was almost precisely a quarter hour after Henrik’s call that she rang the doorbell.

Birgit looked as if she’d lost several pounds in the few days since Erica last saw her, and her clothes hung loosely on her body. This time they didn’t go into the living room; instead, Birgit led her into the kitchen.

‘Thank you for taking the time to come over. I get so nervous, and I just couldn’t sit here worrying until Henrik arrived.’

‘He said you had a phone call from the police in Tanumshede?’

‘Yes, this morning at eight a Superintendent Mellberg rang and told me that Karl-Erik, Henrik and I were to come to his office at once. I explained that Karl-Erik had gone out of town on an urgent business matter, but that he would be back tomorrow. I asked if it was all right if we waited until then. That was not acceptable, as he expressed it, and so Henrik and I would have to do for the time being. The man was quite rude, and of course I rang Henrik at once. He said he’d come home as soon as he could. I probably sounded a bit upset, I’m afraid, and that’s when Henrik suggested he would ring you and ask whether you could come over for a couple of hours. I really hope you don’t think we’re asking too much. You probably don’t want to get even more involved in our family tragedy, but I didn’t know where to turn. Besides, you were almost like a daughter in our house once upon a time, so I thought that maybe—’

‘Think nothing of it. I’m happy to help. Did the police say what this was all about?’

‘No, the superintendent didn’t want to say a word. But I have an idea. Didn’t I tell you that Alex didn’t take her own life? Didn’t I?’

Erica impulsively placed her hand over Birgit’s.

‘Dear Birgit, let’s not draw any hasty conclusions. You may be right, but until we know for sure it’s better that we don’t speculate.’

They spent two long hours sitting at the kitchen table. The conversation died out after only a short while, and the only thing that could be heard in the silence was the ticking of the kitchen clock. Erica drew circles with her index finger around the pattern on the slick surface of the oilcloth. Birgit was dressed neatly and her make-up was as immaculate as the last time Erica saw her. But now there was something indefinably tired and worn-out about Birgit, like a photograph whose edges were missing their crispness. The weight she had lost didn’t suit her. Even last time she had bordered on skinny, and the weight loss had brought out new wrinkles around her eyes and mouth. Birgit was gripping her coffee cup so hard that her knuckles were white. If the long wait was tiresome for Erica, it had to be insufferable for her.

‘I don’t understand who would want to kill Alex.’ The words sounded like a pistol shot after the long silence. ‘She didn’t have any enemies. She just lived a completely ordinary life together with Henrik.’

‘We don’t know yet what this is about. It’s no use speculating before we know what the police want,’ Erica said again. She interpreted the lack of a reply from Birgit as tacit agreement.

Just after twelve noon Henrik pulled into the little parking space in front of the house. They saw him through the kitchen window and got up with relief to put on their coats. When he rang the bell they were already waiting in the entryway, ready to go. Birgit and Henrik kissed each other lightly on one cheek and then the other. After that it was Erica’s turn to receive the same greeting. She wasn’t used to such mannerisms and was a bit worried that she would cause embarrassment by starting from the wrong side. But she handled the moment with no problem, and for a second she enjoyed the masculine scent of Henrik’s aftershave.

‘You’re coming along, aren’t you?’

Erica was already halfway to her car.

‘Well, I don’t know …’

‘I’d really appreciate it.’

Erica met Henrik’s eyes over Birgit’s head and with a silent sigh she got into the back seat of his BMW. This was going to be a long day.

The ride to Tanumshede took no more than twenty minutes. They chatted about the weather and the gradual depopulation of the countryside. Anything other than the reason for their imminent visit to the police station.

Erica sat in the back seat and wondered what she was doing there. Didn’t she have enough of her own problems without getting involved in a murder, if that was what it turned out to be? That would also mean that her book idea was as good as worthless. She had already managed to outline a first draft, and now she might just as well toss the pages in the wastebasket. Oh well, at least it would force her to focus completely on the biography. Although with some small changes it might work out yet. In fact it might even be better. The murder angle could be a real plus.

She suddenly realized what she was sitting and doing. Alex was not some made-up character in a book that she could twist and turn however she wished. She was a real person who was loved by real people. Erica had loved Alex too. She looked at Henrik in the rear-view mirror. He looked just as unmoved as before, despite the fact that in a few minutes he might be informed that his wife had been murdered. Wasn’t it true that most murders were committed by someone within the victim’s own family? Once again she was ashamed by her thoughts. With an effort she pushed aside that train of thought and saw with gratitude that they were finally there. Now she just wanted to get this over with so that she could go back to her comparatively trivial concerns.

The stacks of paper had grown to imposing heights on his desk. It was astonishing how a small community like Tanum could generate so many crime reports. Mostly petty matters, to be sure, but each report had to be investigated, and that’s why he sat here with administrative duties worthy of an eastern European bureaucracy. It wouldn’t have been so bad if Mellberg helped out, instead of sitting on his fat arse all day long. But he had to do the boss’s work too. Patrik Hedström sighed. Without a certain gallows humour, he would never have survived this long. Lately he’d begun to wonder whether this was really all there was to life.

The big event of the day would be a welcome interruption in the daily routine. Mellberg had asked him to sit in on the interview with the mother and husband of the woman who was found murdered in Fjällbacka. It wasn’t that he didn’t see the tragedy in the whole thing, or didn’t feel for the victim’s family. It was just that nothing exciting ever really happened in his job, and he couldn’t help feeling a tingle of anticipation in his body.

At the police academy they had been trained in interview situations, but so far he’d only had a chance to try out his talents in that area in connection with stolen bicycles and domestic abuse. Patrik looked at the clock. Time to go over to Mellberg’s office where the conversation would take place. Technically it wasn’t a matter of an official interview yet, but today’s meeting was nonetheless important. He had heard through the grapevine that the mother kept claiming that the daughter couldn’t possibly have killed herself. He was curious to hear what lay behind this claim, which had now turned out to be correct.

He gathered up his notebook, a pen and a coffee cup and went down the corridor. With his hands full he had to use his elbows and feet to get the door open, so it wasn’t until he put down his things and turned to face the room that he caught sight of her. His heart skipped a beat. He was ten years old again and trying to pull her pigtails. A second later, he was fifteen and trying to talk her into hopping onto his moped and going for a ride. He was twenty and had given up hope when she moved to Göteborg. After a quick mental calculation, he reckoned that it was at least six years ago since he had last seen her. She looked just the same. Tall and curvy, with hair curling to her shoulders in several shades of blonde that blended to a warm shade. Even as a little girl Erica had been vain, and he could see that she still placed great emphasis on the details of her appearance. Her face lit up with surprise when she saw him. But Mellberg was giving him a stern look to sit down, so he merely mimed a silent hello.

It was a tense group of people sitting before him. Alexandra Wijkner’s mother was small and thin, with too much heavy gold jewellery for his taste. She was perfectly coiffed and extremely well-dressed but looked the worse for wear with dark circles under her eyes. Her son-in-law showed no such signs of grief. Patrik glanced through his background information. Henrik Wijkner, successful businessman in Göteborg and heir to a considerable fortune going back several generations. And it showed. Not because of the obviously expensive quality of his clothes or the scent of fancy aftershave that hovered in the room; it was something less definable. A self-confident assurance that he was entitled to a prominent place in the world, which came from never having lacked any advantages in life. Although Henrik looked tense, Patrik could tell that he always felt he had control of the situation.

Mellberg loomed behind his desk. He had actually managed to stuff his shirt into his trousers, but splotches of coffee stained the motley pattern of his shirt. As he observed each of the participants in deliberate silence, his right hand straightened his comb-over, which had slipped too far down on one side. Patrik was trying not to look at Erica. Instead he concentrated on one of Mellberg’s coffee stains.

‘So. You are probably aware of why I called you here.’ Mellberg made a long pause, for effect. ‘I am Superintendent Bertil Mellberg, chief of Tanumshede police station, and this is Patrik Hedström, who will be assisting me during this investigation.’

He nodded at Patrik, who was sitting a bit outside the semicircle formed by Erica, Henrik and Birgit in front of Mellberg’s desk.

‘Investigation? She was murdered, for God’s sake!’ Birgit leaned forward in her chair, and Henrik quickly put a protective arm round her shoulders.

‘Yes, we have confirmation that your daughter could not have taken her own life. Suicide can be definitively ruled out, according to the medical examiner’s report. Of course, I can’t go into the details of the investigation, but the main reason we know she was murdered is that, at the time her wrists were slashed, she could not have been conscious. We found a large amount of sedative in her blood. While she was unconscious, some person or persons apparently first put her in the bathtub, filled it with water, and then slashed her wrists with a razor blade to try and make it look like suicide.’

The curtains in the office were drawn against the sharp midday sun. The mood in the room was double-edged. Gloom was mixed with Birgit’s obvious relief that Alex had not committed suicide.

‘Do you know who did it?’ Birgit had taken out a small embroidered handkerchief from her handbag and carefully dried the corners of her eyes so as not to ruin her make-up.

Mellberg clasped his hands over his voluminous paunch and fixed his eyes on the people in front of him. He cleared his throat with authority.

‘Perhaps the two of you might tell me that.’

‘Us?’ Henrik’s surprise sounded genuine. ‘How would we know that? This must be the work of a madman. Alexandra didn’t have any enemies.’

‘So you say.’

Patrik thought for an instant that a shadow passed across the face of Alex’s husband. The next second it was gone, and Henrik was again his calm and controlled self.