Buried Angels (21 page)

‘Well, we have a few things to talk about, you and I.’ Dagmar yanked on Laura’s hand and stepped inside.

Carin moved away, doing nothing to stop her. She merely nodded at the child. ‘Shall I take your coat?’

Dagmar eyed her suspiciously. Then without waiting to be invited she barged into the room closest to the front hall, stopping abruptly on the threshold of the large parlour. The flat was as beautiful as she’d expected Hermann’s home to be – spacious, with tall windows, a high ceiling, and a gleaming parquet floor – but it was almost empty.

‘Why don’t they have any furniture, Mamma?’ asked Laura, her eyes big as she surveyed her surroundings.

Dagmar turned to Carin. ‘Yes, why don’t you have any furniture? Why would Hermann live like this?’

Carin frowned for a moment, indicating that she found the question impertinent, but then she replied in a friendly enough tone:

‘Things have been a bit difficult lately. But now you must tell me who you are.’

Dagmar pretended not to hear the request, merely giving Mrs Göring a disdainful glance. ‘Difficult? But Hermann is rich. He can’t possibly be living like this.’

‘Did you hear what I said? If you don’t tell me who you are and what you’re doing here, I’ll be forced to ring the police. For the child’s sake, I’d prefer not to do that.’ Carin nodded at Laura, who was once again hiding behind her mother.

Dagmar grabbed her arm and pushed her towards Carin.

‘This is my daughter. And Hermann’s. From now on, he’s going to live with us. You’ve had him long enough, and he doesn’t want you. Don’t you understand that?’

Carin Göring flinched but maintained a calm demeanour as she studied Dagmar and Laura in silence for a full minute.

‘I have no idea what you’re talking about. Hermann is my husband. I’m Mrs Göring.’

‘I’m the one he loves. I’m the great love of his life,’ said Dagmar, stomping her foot. ‘Laura is his daughter, but you took him away before I could tell him that. If he knew about Laura, he would never have married you, no matter what you did to force him into marriage.’ She was beside herself with rage. Laura had crept behind her again.

‘I think you should leave before I call the police.’ Carin’s voice remained calm, but Dagmar could see the fear in her eyes.

‘Where is Hermann?’ she insisted.

Carin pointed at the front door. ‘Get out!’ Still pointing, she moved resolutely towards the telephone. The clack of her heels echoed in the empty flat.

Dagmar seemed to calm down as she paused to think. She realized that Mrs Göring was not going to say where her husband was, but at least the woman knew the truth now, and that gave Dagmar a sense of satisfaction. Now she just had to find Hermann. Even if it meant sleeping in the doorway, she would wait here until he came home. Then they would be together for all eternity. Keeping a tight hold on Laura’s collar, Dagmar dragged the child towards the door. With a final triumphant glare at Carin Göring, she closed the door behind her.

‘Thank you, dear Anna.’ Erica kissed her sister on the cheek and then rushed out to the car after waving a quick goodbye to the children. She felt a pang of guilt at leaving them again, but judging by the happy shouts when their aunt Anna came in, there was really no need for her to feel bad.

She drove towards Hamburgsund, her mind filled with questions. She was annoyed that she hadn’t got any further in her search to find out what had happened to the Elvander family. She kept coming up against dead ends, and she was no closer than the police to solving their disappearance. But she wasn’t about to give up. The family’s history was fascinating, and the more she dug into the archives, the more interesting it got. It was as if the women in Ebba’s family had some sort of curse hanging over them.

But for the time being, Erica pushed aside all thoughts of the past. Thanks to Gösta, she finally had a lead worth following. He had mentioned a name, and after doing a bit of further research she was now sitting in her car, on her way to see a source she hoped would have valuable information. Researching old cases was often like putting together a gigantic puzzle which was missing a number of vital pieces. Experience had taught her that it was best to ignore those missing pieces and concentrate on slotting everything else into place; sooner or later the image would manifest itself. This case was a long way from becoming clear, but she was hoping that the puzzle would soon acquire more pieces so that she’d be able to form an idea of what the picture was meant to portray. Otherwise, all her efforts would be in vain.

When she came to Hansson’s petrol station, she pulled in to ask for directions. She had a vague idea where she was going, but there was no point driving around aimlessly. Behind the counter stood Magnus, who owned the station along with his wife. Aside from his brother Frank and his sister-in-law Anette, who ran the sausage stand on the square, no one knew more about the people of Hamburgsund than Magnus.

He gave Erica a rather strange look but didn’t say a word as he drew her a detailed map on a piece of scrap paper. She drove off, keeping one eye on the road and the other on the map, until she finally came to what had to be the right building. Only then did she realize that it was possible there’d be no one at home on such a nice day. Most people who had the day off would be at the beach or out on some island in the archipelago. But now that she was here, she might as well ring the bell. When she got out of the car and heard music, she was more hopeful.

As she waited for someone to come to the door, she hummed the melody: ‘
Non, je ne regrette rien
,’ sung by Édith Piaf. She knew only the words of the refrain, in her faulty French, but she was drawn in by the music and barely registered the door opening.

‘Ah, I sense a Piaf admirer!’ said a short man in a dark purple silk gown with gold trim. He was wearing stage make-up.

Erica couldn’t hide her surprise.

The man smiled. ‘All right, sweetheart. Are you selling something, or are you here for some other reason? If you’re selling, I already have everything I want, but otherwise you’re welcome to come in and keep me company on the veranda. Walter doesn’t like the sun, so I’m sitting there all by my lonesome. And there’s nothing sadder than drinking a good rosé wine all alone.’

‘Oh, yes, well … There
is
a reason why I’m here,’ Erica managed to say.

‘Excellent!’ The man clapped his hands with pleasure and backed up to allow her to come in.

Erica looked around the front hall. Everywhere she saw gold and tassels and velvet. To say the decor was ‘ostentatious’ didn’t begin to do it justice.

‘I furnished this floor, while Walter was allowed to do whatever he liked with the upstairs. If you want a marriage to last as long as ours has, you have to be willing to compromise. We’re about to celebrate our fifteenth anniversary, and we lived in sin for ten years before that.’ He turned to the stairs and shouted: ‘Darling, we have a visitor! Come down and have a drink with us in the sunshine instead of sitting up there sulking!’

He moved on through the hall, gesturing upstairs.

‘You should see what it’s like up there. It reminds me of a hospital. Totally sterile. Walter says it’s stylistically pure. He’s so enamoured of the so-called Nordic design, and there’s nothing cosy about that. And it’s not exactly hard to accomplish either. All you have to do is paint everything white, bring in a few of those disgusting IKEA pieces of furniture made out of birch, and
voilà
– you’ve created a Swedish home.’

He walked around a huge armchair upholstered in red brocade and headed for the open French doors leading on to the balcony. A bottle of rosé was sitting in an ice bucket on the table, with a half-empty wine glass next to it.

‘May I offer you a glass?’ He was already reaching for the bottle. His silk gown fluttered around his thin, pale legs.

‘That would be lovely, but I’m driving,’ said Erica, thinking how good it would be to have a glass of wine on this sunny veranda with its view of the sound and Hamburg Island.

‘Oh, but that sounds so boring. You sure I can’t tempt you to have even a teeny drop?’ He waved the bottle enticingly as he lifted it out of the ice bucket.

Erica couldn’t help laughing. ‘My husband is a police officer, so I’m afraid I daren’t, no matter how much I’d like to.’

‘I’ll bet he’s terribly handsome! I’ve always loved men in uniform.’

‘Me too,’ said Erica, sitting down on one of the patio chairs.

The man moved away to turn down the volume on the CD player. He poured Erica a glass of water and handed it to her with a smile.

‘So, why is a lovely girl like you paying me a visit?’

‘My name is Erica Falck, and I’m a writer. At the moment I’m doing research for my next book. You’re Ove Linder, right? And you were a teacher at Rune Elvander’s boarding school for boys in the early seventies.’

His smile faded. ‘Ove. That was a long time ago …’

‘Have I come to the wrong place?’ said Erica, realizing that she might have misread Magnus’s convoluted directions.

‘No, no, but it’s been a while since I was Ove Linder.’ Pensively he twirled the glass in his hands. ‘I haven’t officially changed my name. If I had, you wouldn’t have been able to find me, but nowadays I’m called Liza. No one says Ove, except Walter, and that’s only if he’s cross with me. I chose the name Liza after Liza Minelli, of course, although I’m only a pale imitation.’ He cocked his head, apparently waiting for Erica to protest.

‘Stop fishing for compliments, Liza.’

Erica turned her head. She assumed that the person in the doorway had to be Walter, the husband.

‘There you are. Come here and say hello to Erica,’ said Liza.

Walter came outside, standing behind Liza and tenderly placing his hands on her shoulders. Liza put her free hand over her husband’s and squeezed it. Erica found herself hoping that she and Patrik would be as loving towards each other after they’d been together for twenty-five years.

‘What’s this all about?’ asked Walter as he sat down. Unlike his partner, he would have passed unnoticed in a crowd: average height and build, with a receding hairline and discreet attire. The kind of person witnesses would find it impossible to remember if asked to identify him in a criminal case, Erica thought. But he had intelligent eyes, and he seemed nice. In a strange way, she had the feeling that this odd pair was perfectly matched.

She cleared her throat. ‘As I said, I’m trying to find out more about the boarding school on Valö. You were one of the teachers, right?’

‘Yes, unfortunately,’ said Liza with a sigh. ‘That was an awful time. I hadn’t yet come out, and back then it wasn’t as acceptable to be gay as it is today. Plus Rune Elvander was a terrible bigot, and he wasn’t afraid to air his prejudices. Before I decided to accept my true self, I tried desperately to fit in with everyone else. I’ve never been the lumberjack type, of course, but I made an effort to appear to be heterosexual and so-called normal. I got plenty of practice while I was growing up.’

He gazed down at the table, and Walter stroked his arm sympathetically.

‘I think I managed to fool Rune. But I had to put up with a lot of taunting from the students. That school was full of nonentities who got a kick out of finding other people’s weak spots. I was only there six months, and I probably wouldn’t have lasted much longer. In fact, I wasn’t planning to go back after the Easter holiday, but I was saved the trouble of handing in my resignation.’

‘What was your reaction to the disappearance? Do you have any theories?’ asked Erica.

‘Of course it was dreadful, no matter what I thought of the family. I assume that something horrible happened to them.’

‘But do you have any clue what that might be?’

‘No, it’s as much a mystery to me as it is to everybody else,’ said Liza.

‘What was the atmosphere like at the school? Were there people who didn’t get along?’

‘That’s putting it mildly. That place was an absolute pressure cooker.’

‘How do you mean?’ Erica felt her pulse quicken. For the first time she had the chance to find out what had gone on behind the scenes. Why hadn’t she thought of this earlier?

‘According to the teacher whose place I took, the pupils were at each other’s throats right from the start. They were accustomed to having their own way, but they were also under a lot of pressure from home to succeed. Which inevitably resulted in cock-fights. By the time I started at the school, Rune had cracked the whip and the boys were toeing the line, but I could sense the tension simmering below the surface.’

‘What was the boys’ relationship with Rune?’

‘They hated him. He was a sadistic psychopath.’ Liza’s voice was coldly matter-of-fact.

‘You don’t paint a very nice picture of Rune Elvander.’ Erica regretted not bringing along her tape recorder. She was going to have to try to remember as much as possible from this conversation.

Liza shuddered. ‘Rune Elvander was one of the most despicable people I’ve ever met. And believe me …’ Liza cast a glance at Walter, ‘if you live a life like ours, you run into plenty of unpleasant types.’