Camilla Lackberg Crime Thrillers 4-6: The Stranger, The Hidden Child, The Drowning

Just then Günther came back. His face took on an even deeper shade of red than he had from the steam coming off the frying pans. ‘Are you smoking in here? It’s forbidden, totally forbidden, absolutely forbidden!’ He waved his arms excitedly, and Tina and Calle looked at each other and hooted. He was just a joke. Reluctantly they went back to their jobs. The cameras had caught it all.

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The best times were when they sat close, very close to each other. The times when she took out the book. The rustle of the pages as she carefully turned them, the scent of her perfume, the touch of the soft fabric of her blouse against his cheek. That was when the shadows kept their distance. Everything outside, both frightening and tempting, became unimportant. Her voice rose and fell in gentle waves. Sometimes, if they were tired, one of them, or sometimes both, would fall asleep with their heads in her lap. The last thing they remembered before sleep took them was the story, the voice, the rustle of paper, and her fingers caressing their hair.

They had heard the story so many times. They knew it by heart. And yet it felt new each time. Sometimes he watched his sister as she listened. Her mouth half open, her eyes fixed on the book pages, her hair cascading down the back of her nightgown. He used to brush her hair every night. That was his job.

When she read to them, all desire to go out of the locked door vanished. Then there was only a colourful world of adventure, full of dragons, princes and princesses. Not a locked door. Not two locked doors.

He vaguely recalled that he’d been scared at first. But not anymore. Not when she smelled so good and felt so soft and when her voice rose and fell so rhythmically. Not when he knew that she was protecting him. Not when he knew that he was a jinx.

Patrik and Martin had been busy with other tasks at the station for a couple of hours, waiting for Ola to come home from work. They had considered driving over and having the conversation with him there, but decided to wait until five o’clock when his workday at Inventing ended. There was no reason to subject him to a lot of questions from his co-workers. Not yet, anyway. Kerstin hadn’t believed that Ola had anything to do with the anonymous letters and phone calls. Patrik wasn’t so sure. The stack of letters had been sent off to the National Crime Lab that afternoon, and he had also included a request for access to the telephone records of callers to Kerstin and Marit during the period they had received the anonymous calls.

Ola looked like he’d just stepped out of the shower when he opened the door. He’d thrown on some clothes, but his hair was still wet. ‘Yes?’ he said impatiently, and now they saw no trace of the grief from Monday when they’d told him of his ex-wife’s death. At least the effect was not as obvious as it had been with Kerstin.

‘We have a few more questions we’d like to ask you.’

‘Oh, yeah?’ said Ola, still impatient.

‘Yes, there are a few things that have come to our attention with regard to Marit’s death,’ said Patrik, giving him an insistent look.

Ola obviously read the signals, for he stepped aside and motioned for them to come in.

‘Well, it’s just as well that you came, because I’ve been thinking of ringing you.’

‘Is that so?’ said Patrik, sitting down on the sofa. This time Ola had not shown them into the kitchen, but instead led the way to the sofa group in the living room.

‘Yes, I’d like to hear whether it’s possible to get a restraining order issued.’ Ola sat down in a big leather easy chair and crossed his legs.

‘A restraining order against whom?’ said Martin with a searching look at Patrik.

Ola’s eyes flashed. ‘Against Kerstin. For Sofie.’

Neither of the officers showed any surprise. ‘And why is that?’ Patrik’s tone was deceptively calm.

‘There’s no reason for Sofie to have to visit that … that … person now!’ he said so fiercely that he sprayed saliva. Ola leaned forward and went on, with his elbows on his thighs: ‘She went over there today. Her knapsack was gone when I got home for lunch, and I’ve phoned around her friends. She must have gone to see that … lesbo. Can’t you do something to stop it? I mean, naturally I’m going to have a serious talk with Sofie when she comes home, but there must be some way to prevent such things legally, isn’t there?’

‘Well, that might be difficult,’ said Patrik, whose suspicions were now being confirmed. What they wanted to talk to Ola about now seemed highly appropriate. ‘A restraining order is rather an extreme measure, and I don’t think it’s applicable in this case.’ He looked at Ola, who was clearly getting agitated.

‘But, but …’ he stammered. ‘What the hell am I supposed to do? Sofie’s fifteen, and I can’t lock her in the house if she refuses to obey, and that damned …’ he swallowed the words with difficulty, ‘she’s surely not going to cooperate. When Marit was alive I was forced to go along with … all that, but to continue to put up with this crap now, no, damn it!’ He pounded his fist on the glass coffee table so that both Patrik and Martin jumped.

‘So you don’t approve of your ex-wife’s choice of lifestyle?’

‘Choice? Lifestyle?’ Ola snorted. ‘If it hadn’t been for that slut putting all those ideas into Marit’s head, none of this would have happened. Then Marit and Sofie and I could have been together. But instead Marit not only destroyed her family, and betrayed both Sofie and me, but she made all of us laughing stocks!’ He shook his head as if he still couldn’t believe it.

‘Did you show your disapproval in any way?’ Patrik said slyly.

Ola gave him a suspicious look. ‘What are you getting at? It’s true, I never hid what I thought about Marit leaving us, but I made a point of not discussing her reasons. It’s not something you’d want to bandy about, that your wife has gone over to the other side. Left for a female, that’s nothing you’d want to brag about.’ He attempted a laugh, but the bitterness in his voice made it sound more ominous.

‘So you didn’t do anything to upset your ex-wife and Kerstin?’

‘I don’t understand what you’re getting at,’ said Ola, narrowing his eyes.

‘We’re talking about letters and phone calls,’ said Martin. ‘Threatening ones.’

‘You think I would do something like that?’ Ola’s eyes opened wide. It was hard to tell whether his surprise was genuine or just play-acting. ‘What sort of relevance does that have now? I mean, Marit’s death was an accident, after all.’

Patrik ignored the remark for the moment. He didn’t want to reveal everything they knew at once, preferring to do so bit by bit.

‘Somebody sent anonymous letters and made anonymous phone calls to Kerstin and Marit.’

‘Well, that’s not surprising, is it?’ said Ola with a smile. ‘Women like that tend to attract that sort of attention. It’s possible that such things are tolerated in the big cities, but not out here in the country.’

Patrik was almost suffocated by all the prejudice radiating from the man sitting in the easy chair. With difficulty he resisted the urge to grab him by the shirt and tell him a few home truths. The only consolation was that Ola was digging himself deeper and deeper into the muck with each sentence he uttered.

‘So you weren’t the one who wrote the letters and kept ringing them?’ said Martin with the same barely concealed expression of distaste.

‘No, I would never stoop to anything like that.’ Ola gave them a supercilious smile. He was so sure of himself, and his home was so spotless and tidy and well-kept. Patrik yearned to shake up his orderly world a little.

‘So you have no objection to letting us take your fingerprints? And compare them with the prints that the crime lab finds on the envelopes?’

‘Fingerprints?’ His smile was suddenly gone. ‘I don’t understand. Why stir up all this now?’ The anxiety was evident on his face. Patrik chuckled to himself; a glance at Martin showed him that his colleague felt the same way.

‘Answer the question first. Can I assume that you will gladly give us your fingerprints so that we can exclude you from the investigation?’

Now Ola was squirming in his leather chair. His eyes shifted from one spot to another and he started to fidget with the things on the glass table. To Patrik and Martin it looked as though the objects already stood in rows as straight as an arrow, but apparently Ola didn’t share their view; he kept moving them a few millimetres in different directions until they were sufficiently aligned to calm his nerves.

‘Well,’ he said. ‘Okay, I suppose I’m going to have to confess.’ His smile had returned. He leaned back and seemed to have regained his equilibrium, which for a moment seemed to have been lost. ‘I might as well tell the truth. I did send some letters and even rang Kerstin and Marit a few times. It was stupid, of course, but I hoped that Marit would realize that their relationship wasn’t going to last. I hoped that she would listen to reason. We had such a good life together. And we could again. If only she gave up those stupid ideas and stopped making a fool of herself. And me. It was even worse for Sofie. Imagine having something like that to carry around at her age. It would make her a real outcast at school. Marit had to realize that. It just wasn’t going to work.’

‘But it had been working for four years, so it didn’t seem that she was in a big hurry to come back to you.’ Patrik kept his expression deceptively neutral.

‘It was just a matter of time.’ Ola was fiddling with the things on the table again. Suddenly he turned to the police officers on the sofa. ‘But I don’t understand what importance all this has now! Marit is gone, and if Sofie and I can just get rid of that person, then we can move on. Why stir up all this now?’

‘Because there are several things indicating that Marit’s death was not an accident.’

A shocked silence descended on the small living room. Ola stared at them. ‘Not an accident?’ He looked from Patrik to Martin. ‘What do you mean? Did someone …?’ He let the sentence die out. If his astonishment was not genuine, he was a damn good actor. Patrik would have given a lot to know exactly what was going on inside Ola’s head at that moment.

‘Yes, we believe that someone else could have been involved in Marit’s death. We’ll know more in a while. But for the time being you … are our prime candidate.’

‘Me?’ said Ola incredulously. ‘But I would never do anything to hurt Marit! I loved her! I just wanted us to be a family again!’

‘So it was this great love that made you threaten her and her girlfriend?’ Patrik’s voice dripped with sarcasm.

Ola’s face twitched at the word ‘girlfriend’.

‘But she didn’t understand! She must have been having some sort of mid-life crisis when she turned forty, and her hormones changed and affected her brain somehow. That must be why she threw everything away. We’d been together for twenty years, can you comprehend that? We met in Norway when we were sixteen, and I thought we’d always be together. We went through a lot of …’ he paused, ‘shit together when we were young, but we finally had everything we wanted. And then …’ Ola had raised his voice. Now he threw out his hands in a gesture that told them he still hadn’t grasped what it was that had happened to his marriage four years earlier.

‘Where were you last Sunday evening?’ Patrik gave him a stern look and waited for an answer.