Buried Angels (17 page)

‘I suppose you’re right,’ said Holm, but he couldn’t rid himself of an uneasy feeling. He had to carry out the plan he’d set for himself. The monster had to be rooted out, and it was his job to do that. He only wished he had more time.

The bathroom tiles felt wonderful against her forehead. Ebba closed her eyes and let the cool sensation wash over her.

‘Aren’t you coming to bed soon?’

She heard Tobias’s voice from the bedroom but didn’t answer. She didn’t want to go to bed. Every time she lay down next to Tobias, she felt as if she were betraying Vincent. The first month she couldn’t bear to be in the same house with him. She couldn’t even look at Tobias, and if she happened to catch his eye in the mirror, she would turn her face away. She felt nothing but guilt.

Her parents had taken care of her around the clock, watching over her as if she were a baby. They had talked to her, pleaded with her, telling her that she and Tobias needed each other. Finally she had started to believe them, and then she decided to relent because it was easier.

Slowly and reluctantly she had drawn closer to him. She moved home. They had spent those first weeks in silence, afraid of what would happen if they began talking to each other and said something that could never be taken back. Then they’d started to say ordinary things.

‘Please pass the butter.’

‘Have you done the laundry?’

Harmless, innocent subjects that couldn’t provoke any accusations. Over time their sentences got longer, and they found more safe topics for conversation. They had started talking about Valö. Tobias was the one who’d suggested that they should move there. But she too had viewed it as an opportunity to leave behind everything that would remind them of a different life. A life that may not have been perfect, but at least it was happy.

As she sat there with her eyes closed and her forehead pressed against the bathroom tiles, for the first time she began to question whether they’d done the right thing. The house was sold, the house where Vincent had lived his whole, brief life. The place where they had changed his nappies; spent nights walking about, holding him in their arms; where he had learned to crawl, walk, and talk. The house was no longer theirs, and she wondered whether they’d actually made a decision or had simply moved away.

And now they were here. In a house where they might not even be safe, and where the entire dining-room floor had been broken apart because her family had been obliterated in there. It was affecting her more than she was willing to admit. When she was growing up she hadn’t devoted much time to speculating about her roots. But she couldn’t go on pushing her past aside. Seeing that dark stain that had been hidden under the floorboards, she had experienced a terrible clarity. This was not some vague enigma, it was all too real. Her mother and father had presumably died on that very spot, and for some strange reason, that seemed more real than the discovery that someone may have been trying to kill her and Tobias. She didn’t know how she was going to handle this reality, living right in the midst of it, but there was nowhere else to go.

‘Ebba?’

She could hear in his voice that if she didn’t answer he would come looking for her. So she lifted her head and called towards the door:

‘I’m almost done!’

She took her time brushing her teeth as she studied herself in the mirror. Tonight she didn’t look away. She stared at this woman with the dead expression, at the mother who had no child. Then she spat into the sink and wiped her mouth on a towel.

‘That took you long enough.’ Tobias was holding a book open, but she noticed that he was on the same page as last night.

She didn’t reply, just lifted the covers and crawled into bed. Tobias put his book down on the bedside table and turned off the lamp. The blinds that they’d put up when they moved in made the room pitch-black, even though it never got completely dark outside.

Ebba lay there motionless, staring up at the ceiling. She felt Tobias’s hand fumbling for hers. She pretended not to notice, but he didn’t withdraw his hand, as he usually did. Instead, it inched towards her thigh, gently moved under her T-shirt to stroke her stomach. She felt the nausea rise in her throat as his hand purposefully continued upward, grazing her breast. The same breast that had given Vincent milk, the same nipples that his tiny mouth had so hungrily suckled.

Bile filled her mouth, and she leaped out of bed, rushing for the bathroom. She barely managed to lift the lid of the toilet before her stomach turned inside out. When she was done, she collapsed weakly on the floor. From the bedroom she could hear that Tobias was crying.

Dagmar stared at the newspaper lying on the ground. Laura was tugging at her sleeve, saying over and over ‘Mamma, Mamma,’ but Dagmar paid her no mind. She was so tired of hearing that demanding, whining voice, and the word was repeated so often that she thought it would drive her mad. Slowly she leaned down and picked up the paper. It was late in the afternoon, and she was having trouble seeing clearly, but there was absolutely no doubt. In black type it said: ‘German ace pilot Göring returns to Sweden.’

‘Mamma, Mamma!’ Laura was pulling at her even harder, and Dagmar gave her such a swat that the girl tumbled off the bench and started to cry.

‘Stop your whining!’ snapped Dagmar. She hated that phoney sobbing. The child lacked for nothing. She had a roof over her head, clothes to wear, and she wasn’t starving, although they had little enough at times.

Dagmar returned to the article, haltingly spelling her way through it. Her heart started pounding very fast. He’d come back, he was in Sweden, and now he would be coming to fetch her. Then her eyes fell on a sentence further down: ‘Göring is moving to Sweden with his Swedish wife Carin.’ Dagmar felt her mouth go dry. He’d married somebody else. He’d betrayed her! Fury rushed through her, made worse by Laura’s shrill cries that were causing passers-by to turn and look at them.

‘Shut up!’ She slapped Laura with such force it made her hand sting.

The child fell silent, clutching her fiery red cheek and gazing at her mother, wide-eyed. Then she started sobbing again, louder than ever, as Dagmar felt despair slicing right through her. She fixed her eyes on the newspaper, re-reading the article until the name Carin Göring echoed over and over in her mind. The article didn’t say how long they’d been married, but since she was Swedish, they must have met here in Sweden. Somehow this woman must have tricked Hermann into marrying her. It must be Carin’s fault that Hermann hadn’t come back to get Dagmar, that he couldn’t be with her and their daughter, with his family.

She nodded as she crumpled up the paper and reached for the bottle on the bench beside her. Only a few dregs remained, which surprised her, since the bottle had been full that morning. But she didn’t think anything more about it. She drank what was left, savouring the lovely burning sensation in her throat from the blessed liquor.

The child had stopped howling. She was sitting on the ground, sniffling, with her legs drawn up and her arms wrapped around her knees. No doubt feeling sorry for herself, as usual. Only five years old and already the girl was cunning as a fox. But Dagmar knew what had to be done. It was still possible to put everything right. Once Hermann was reunited with them, he’d soon teach Laura to behave. A father who could rule with a firm hand was exactly what that child needed, because nothing seemed to work, no matter how much Dagmar tried to beat some sense into her.

Dagmar smiled as she sat there on the bench in Brandparken. She’d worked out what was at the root of all their troubles, and now she was going to fix things for herself and for Laura.

Gösta’s car pulled into the driveway, and Erica sighed with relief. There had been a risk that Patrik might see him as he left for work.

She opened the door before Gösta could ring the bell. Behind her the children were making so much noise that he probably felt like he was stepping into a wall of sound.

‘Sorry about all the commotion. This place is going to be condemned as a workplace any day now.’ She turned around to stop Noel from chasing a sobbing Anton.

‘Don’t worry. I’m used to Mellberg shouting at us,’ said Gösta, squatting down. ‘Hi, you guys. You certainly look like a couple of rascals.’

Anton and Noel stopped in their tracks, suddenly turning shy, but Maja stepped forward boldly.

‘Hi, old man. My name is Maja.’

‘Maja! We don’t say things like that,’ Erica told her daughter, giving her a stern look.

‘It’s okay.’ Gösta laughed loudly and stood up. ‘Out of the mouths of babes and idiots – that’s how we hear the truth. And I’m definitely an old man. What do you think, Maja?’

She nodded, then glared at her mother triumphantly before heading off. The twins still didn’t dare come forward. Instead, they slowly backed away towards the living room without taking their eyes off Gösta.

‘Those two don’t exactly warm to strangers, do they?’ he said as he followed Erica into the kitchen.

‘Anton has always been shy. Noel, on the other hand, is usually quite outgoing, but he seems to be in a phase where he’s scared of anyone he doesn’t know.’

‘Not a bad attitude to have, in my opinion,’ said Gösta as he sat down on a kitchen chair, glancing around nervously. ‘Are you certain Patrik won’t be coming back for anything?’

‘He left for work half an hour ago, so he’s probably already over at the station.’

‘I’m not sure this is such a good idea.’ He traced his finger over the pattern on the tablecloth.

‘I think it’s a great idea,’ said Erica. ‘There’s no need to get Patrik involved. He doesn’t always appreciate my help.’

‘And with good reason. Sometimes you have a tendency to get yourself mixed up in things.’

‘But everything turns out well in the end.’

Erica refused to be deterred. She thought the idea she’d had last night was a stroke of genius, and she’d quickly slipped away to ring Gösta. And now here he was, although it had taken some persuasion to get him to come over without mentioning it to Patrik.

‘We share a common interest, you and I,’ she said, sitting down across from him. ‘We’re both desperate to find out what happened out on Valö during that Easter holiday.’

‘Yes, but now the police are working on the case.’

‘And that’s good. But you know how investigations can get bogged down by all the rules and procedures police officers have to follow. I, on the other hand, am at liberty to pursue alternative methods.’

Gösta was still sceptical. ‘That’s as may be, but Patrik won’t be pleased if he finds out about this, and I’m not sure that I want to—’

‘That’s precisely why Patrik is not going to find out,’ Erica interrupted him. ‘All you have to do is see to it that I get to study the case files in secret, and I’ll let you in on anything that I manage to dig up. As soon as I find something, I’ll pass it on to you. You present it to Patrik, and you’ll be the hero of the day. After the case is closed, I use the information in one of my books. Everybody wins, especially Patrik. He wants to solve this case and catch the arsonist. He’s not going to ask awkward questions. He’ll just be grateful for whatever information is offered. Besides, you’re short-staffed at the station, what with Martin out sick and Paula on holiday. So it won’t hurt if you have an extra person working on the case.’

‘I suppose.’ Gösta’s expression relaxed, and Erica surmised that he liked the idea of being the hero of the day. ‘And you really don’t think that Patrik will get suspicious?’

‘Not at all. He knows how involved you are in this case; trust me, he won’t suspect a thing.’

It sounded as if a riot had started up in the living room, so Erica got up and dashed out to see what was going on. After directing a few words of warning to Noel to leave Anton alone, and then switching on a Pippi Longstocking movie, things calmed down and Erica was able to return to the kitchen.

‘So now the question is: Where do we start? Have you heard any more about the blood?’

Gösta shook his head. ‘No, not yet. But Torbjörn and his team are still out there working, trying to see if they can find anything else. And sometime later today he’s hoping to receive a report that will tell us whether we’re dealing with human blood. All we have at the moment is a preliminary report about the fire, which Patrik received before I left the office yesterday.’

‘Have you started interviewing people?’ Erica was so eager that she could hardly sit still. She didn’t intend to give up until she’d done everything she could to help solve the mystery. The fact that it might provide material for an amazing book was an added bonus.

‘Yesterday I compiled a list, prioritizing which individuals I think we should talk to first, and then I started trying to find contact information for them. But it’s not exactly an easy task, given the amount of time that’s passed. It can be difficult to track people down, and what they remember could be pretty vague by now. We can only wait to see what emerges from the interviews.’