Finally she had given in. Just a short ride. A little expedition out into the big, unknown world. Then they would come back home. And he would stop asking.
He had nodded eagerly. Could hardly contain himself. And a glance at sister showed that she was just as excited.
He wondered what he would get to see. How it looked out there. Beyond the forest. One thought left him no peace. Would the other one be out there? The woman with the harsh voice? Would he smell that smell that was like a memory in his nostrils, salty and fresh? And the feeling of the boat rocking, and the sun over the sea, and the birds circling, and… He could hardly sift through all the expectations and impressions. A single thought was buzzing round in his head. They would get to take a ride with her. Out to the world beyond. It was no problem for him to promise in turn never to ask again. One time would be enough. He was quite convinced of that. One time, just so he could see what was there, so that he and sister would know. That was the only thing he wanted. Just once.
With a stern expression she had opened the car door for them and watched them scramble into the back seat. She carefully fastened their seat belts and shook her head as she got behind the wheel. He remembered that he had laughed. A shrill, hysterical laugh, when all the pent-up tension was finally allowed to come out.
When they turned onto the road he had glanced briefl y at sister. Then he had taken her hand. They were on their way.
Patrik sat with the list of dog owners on the screen and went through it carefully one more time. He had informed Martin and Mellberg about what he and Gösta had learned out on the island, and he asked Martin to ring Uddevalla again and try to get more information on the twins. There wasn’t much they could do. He had been given access to all the documents regarding the accident in which Elsa Forsell killed Sigrid Jansson, but nothing seemed to lead any further.
‘How’s it going?’ said Gösta as he looked in the doorway.
‘It’s not,’ said Patrik, flinging down the pen he had in his hand. ‘We’re in a holding pattern until we know more about the children.’ He sighed, ran his hands through his hair, and then clasped them behind his neck.
‘Is there anything I can do?’ said Gösta tactfully.
Gobsmacked, Patrik gave him a look. It wasn’t like Gösta to come in and ask for work. Patrik thought for a moment.
‘I’ve gone over this list of dog owners a hundred times, it seems. But I can’t find any connections to our case. Could you check through it again?’ Patrik tossed him the disk, and Gösta caught it in mid-air.
‘Of course,’ he said.
Five minutes later Gösta came back with an astonished look on his face.
‘Did you delete a line by any chance?’ he said.
‘Delete? No, what do you mean?’
‘Because when I put together the list there were a hundred and sixty names. Now there are only a hundred and fifty-nine.’
‘Ask Annika; she was the one who matched up the names with the addresses. Maybe she deleted one by mistake.’
‘Hmm,’ Gösta said sceptically and went to see Annika. Patrik got up and followed him.
‘I’ll check,’ said Annika, searching for the Excel chart on her computer. ‘But I remember that there were a hundred and sixty rows. It was such a nice round number.’ She looked through her folders until she found the file she was looking for.
‘Aha, a hundred and sixty,’ she said, turning to Patrik and Gösta.
‘I don’t get it,’ said Gösta, looking at the disk in his hand. Annika took it and put it into her disk drive, opened the same document and put the two windows next to each other so they could compare them. When the name that was missing on the disk turned up, Patrik felt something click in his head. He turned on his heel, ran down the corridor to his office, and stood staring at the map of Sweden. One by one he looked at the pins marking the home towns of the victims. What had previously been an indecipherable pattern now became clearer. Gösta and Annika had followed him to his office and now looked utterly perplexed as Patrik began pulling out papers from his desk drawer.
‘What are you looking for?’ said Gösta, but Patrik didn’t answer. Paper after paper was pulled out and tossed to the floor. In the last drawer he found what he was looking for. He stood up with an excited expression and began reading the document carefully, sometimes sticking new pins into the map. Slowly but surely each marked location got a new pin placed close to the old one. When he was done he turned round.
‘Now I know.’
Dan had finally taken the plunge. There was a firm of estate agents right across the street, and finally he decided to ring the number he saw from his kitchen window every day. Once the wheels were set in motion everything had gone surprisingly fast. The young man who answered had said he could come over immediately and take a look, and for Dan that was perfect. He didn’t want to drag things out unnecessarily.
And yet selling the house didn’t feel like such a big deal anymore. All the conversations he’d had with Anna, everything he’d heard about the hell that Lucas had put her through, all of it had made his attempt to hang on to a house seem so… ridiculous, to put it bluntly. What did it matter where he lived? The main thing was that the girls came to visit. That he could hug them, nuzzle their necks, and hear them tell him about their day. Nothing else mattered. And as for his marriage to Pernilla, it was definitely over. He’d realized it long before, but hadn’t been ready to accept the consequences. Now it was time to make sweeping changes. Pernilla had her own life, and he had his. He only hoped that one day they could patch up the friendship that had formed the whole basis for their marriage.
His thoughts wandered further to Erica. There were only two days left until she would be married. That also felt so right. She was taking a step forward just as he was doing. He was sincerely happy for her. It was so long since they’d been a couple; they were young then, completely different people. But their friendship had endured through the years, and he had always wished for something like this for her. Children, togetherness, a church wedding, which he knew she’d always dreamed of – although she never would have admitted it. And Patrik was perfect for her. Earth and air. That’s how he thought of them. Patrik was so solidly anchored to the ground he stood on, stable, smart, calm. And Erica was a dreamer, with her head always in the clouds, yet still with a courage and an intelligence that stopped her from floating too far away. They really suited each other.
And Anna. He had thought a lot about her lately. The sister that Erica had always overprotected, whom she had regarded as weak. The funny thing was that Erica saw herself as the practical one and Anna as the dreamer. During the past few weeks he had got to know Anna well and realized that just the reverse was true. Anna was the practical one, the one who saw reality as it was. If nothing else, she had learned that much during her years with Lucas. But Dan realized that Anna let Erica maintain the illusion. Maybe she understood Erica’s need to feel like the responsible one.
Dan got up to fetch the phone and the telephone book. It was time to start looking for a flat.
The mood was sombre at the station. Patrik had called a meeting in the chief’s office. Everyone sat quietly staring at the floor, unable to take in the incomprehensible. Patrik and Martin had dragged in the video trolley. As soon as Martin was informed, he realized what it was that had eluded him when he watched the videotapes from Lillemor’s last evening alive.
‘We’re going to have to go through these step by step. Before we do anything,’ Patrik said when he finally broke the silence. ‘There is no room for mistakes.’ Everyone nodded in agreement.
‘The first penny dropped when we discovered that a name had been deleted from the list of dog owners. There were originally a hundred and sixty names, both when Gösta put together the list and when Annika matched them up with current addresses. By the time I got the list there were only a hundred and fifty-nine. The name that was missing was Tore Sjöqvist, with an address in Tollarp.’
Nobody reacted, so Patrik continued. ‘I’ll come back to that. But it caused one piece of the puzzle to fall into place.’
Everyone knew what was coming, and Martin buried his face in his hands and closed his eyes, with his elbows resting on his knees.
‘I had thought that the places where the victims were murdered seemed familiar. And when I finally understood, it didn’t take long to confirm the connection.’ He paused and cleared his throat. ‘The sites of the victims correspond one hundred per cent with places where Hanna has worked,’ he said quietly. ‘I had seen them in her application documents before we hired her, but…’ He threw out his hands and let Martin take over.
‘Something that I saw on the video from the evening Lillemor died kept bothering me. And when Patrik told me about Hanna… Well, we might as well just show you.’ He nodded to Patrik, who pressed ‘play’. They had already advanced to the right spot, and it took only seconds before the scene of the violent argument appeared on the screen, followed by the arrival of Martin and Hanna. They could see Martin talking with Mehmet and the others. The camera then followed Lillemor who ran off towards town, confused and unwittingly running towards her own death. Then the camera zoomed in on Hanna, who was talking on her mobile. Patrik froze the picture there and looked at Martin.
‘That was what bothered me, although I didn’t realize it until now,’ Martin said. ‘Who was she calling? It was almost three in the morning and we were the only ones working, so she couldn’t be ringing any of you.’
‘We got a list of her calls from her operator, and it was an outgoing call. To her own home. To her husband Lars.’
‘But why?’ said Annika, and the bewilderment on her face was shared by all the others.
‘I asked Gösta to check the personal register of citizens. Hanna and Lars Kruse do have the same surname. But they aren’t married. They’re siblings. Twins.’
Annika gasped. There was a ghastly silence in the room after Patrik dropped that bomb.
‘Hanna and Lars are Hedda’s vanished twins,’ said Gösta in explanation.
‘Yes, and we still haven’t received the information from Uddevalla,’ said Patrik. ‘But I’ll bet anything that we’ll find that the children’s names were Lars and Hanna, and that they picked up the surname Kruse somewhere along the way, most likely through adoption.’
‘So she rang Lars?’ said Mellberg, who seemed to be having some difficulty following all the sudden revelations.
‘We think that she rang Lars, who picked up Lillemor. She may even have told him to pick her up. Lars knew all the cast members and wouldn’t have appeared to be a threat.’
‘And don’t forget the fact that Lillemor had written in her diary that she thought she recognized someone, a person she thought of as unpleasant. In all likelihood that someone was Lars. What she remembered was the encounter with the man she thought was her father’s killer.’ Martin frowned.
‘But apparently she couldn’t place Lars; she didn’t associate him with that memory. And she wasn’t even sure that she really recognized him. In the state she was in, she probably would have accepted help from anyone gratefully, as long as she could get away from the TV crew and the cast members who had argued with her.’ Patrik hesitated but then continued. ‘I have no proof of this, but I also believe that Lars may have been the one who started the quarrel that evening.’
‘How do you mean?’ asked Annika. ‘He wasn’t even there.’
‘No, but there was something in the interviews with the cast that didn’t seem right. I looked over the transcripts before this meeting, and all the cast members who argued with Lillemor reported that someone told them that Barbie was “talking trash about them” or words to that effect. I have no concrete evidence, but my feeling is that Lars used the individual conversations he had with the cast members earlier that day to sow discord between them and Lillemor. Considering all the intimate, private information they must have given him, he would be able to cause a lot of damage and direct everyone’s wrath towards Lillemor.’
‘But why?’ said Martin. ‘He couldn’t predict that the evening would proceed as it did, and that Lillemor would run away like that.’
Patrik shook his head. ‘No doubt it was pure luck. An opportunity opened up, and he and Hanna exploited it. No, I think that the basic idea was to create a distraction for Lillemor. He worked out early who she was, knew that she had seen him that time eight years earlier, and was afraid that she’d remember. So he was going to give her something else to think about. But when the opportunity arose, then… he decided to solve it in a more permanent way.’
‘Did Lars and Hanna kill their victims together? And why?’
‘We don’t know that yet. In all likelihood it was Hanna who tracked down the victims’ names and addresses, since she had access to that sort of information at the police stations where she’d worked.’
‘But she hadn’t even started working here when Marit was murdered.’
‘No, but information like that can also be found by searching newspaper archives. That’s probably how she found Marit. I have no idea why. But everything is probably connected to the original accident, when Elsa Forsell killed Sigrid Jansson. Hanna and Lars were in the car; they had been kidnapped by Sigrid Jansson when they were three, and had been living in isolation in her house for over two years. Who knows what sort of trauma they’d been subjected to?’
‘But what about the name on the address list? Why did it make you think of Hanna?’ Annika gave him an inquiring look.
‘First I got the disk from Hanna, since you’d asked her to drop it by. You had a hundred and sixty names on your list; what I found on the disk was one less. The only person who could have deleted a name was Hanna. She knew there was a chance that I might recognize the name. When she started working here at the station, she told me that she and Lars had rented their house from a Tore Sjöqvist, who was moving to Skåne for a year. So when that name popped up, along with an address in Tollarp, it wasn’t hard to put two and two together.’ Patrik paused. ‘I felt it was necessary to go over everything one more time. What do the rest of you think? Are there any holes in my reasoning? Is there any doubt that we have enough to proceed?’
They all shook their heads. No matter how unbelievable it all sounded, there was a frightening logic to Patrik’s account.
‘Good,’ said Patrik. ‘The most important thing now is that we act before Hanna and Lars realize we’ve worked it out. And it’s also extremely important that they don’t hear about anything concerning their mother and how they vanished, because I think it could be dangerous for -’
He broke off when Annika gasped.
‘Annika?’ Patrik saw with rising uneasiness how the colour had disappeared from her cheeks.
‘I told her,’ she said in a tense voice. ‘Hanna rang just after you returned from Kalvö. She sounded pretty bad. She said that she’d got some sleep and was feeling better, and that she probably wouldn’t have to stay home for more than a day or two. And I… I…’ Annika stammered but then pulled herself together and looked at Patrik. ‘I said I wanted to keep her updated, so I told her what you’d found out. About Hedda.’
For a second Patrik sat utterly still. Then he said, ‘You couldn’t have known. But we’d better go out to the island. Now!’
All at once there was a frenzy of activity at the Tanumshede police station.
Patrik felt alarm settle like a hard knot in his stomach as he stood in the bow of the Sea Rescue Society’s boat Minlouis, racing towards Kalvö. In his mind he urged the boat to go faster, but it was already running at top speed. He was afraid they were already too late. When they’d jumped into the police cars and put on the blue lights to drive as fast as possible to Fjällbacka, they’d got a call from a boat owner. He told them excitedly that his boat had been confiscated by a policewoman in the company of an unknown man. He had kicked up a row about gangster behaviour and how they’d be sent straight to hell if there was the slightest scratch on his boat. Patrik had simply hung up on the man. He didn’t have time for complaints right now. The important thing was that they now knew that Lars and Hanna had got hold of a boat. And that they were on their way to Kalvö. To their mother.
The rescue boat dove into a trough between swells, and a shower of salt water rained down on Patrik. A storm was blowing up, and the placid surface that Gösta and Patrik had sailed over earlier in the day had been replaced by a restless slapping of the waves and greyish water. In their minds new scenarios kept playing out, new images of what they would see when they arrived. Gösta and Martin sat huddled inside the boat, but Patrik felt that he needed the fresh air to be able to focus on what lay before them. He knew it wouldn’t have a happy ending, whatever happened.
They arrived at the island after what felt like an endless boat trip even though it had only taken five minutes. There they saw the stolen boat haphazardly moored at Hedda’s pier. Peter, who was the skipper of the rescue boat, lay to skilfully, even though the vessel was bigger than the little pier. Without hesitating Patrik hopped ashore and Martin followed. They both had to help Gösta disembark.
Patrik had tried to persuade their older colleague to stay at the station, but Gösta Flygare had demonstrated surprising obstinacy and insisted on coming along. Patrik had relented. Now he was regretting his decision, but it was too late for such speculations.
He gestured up towards the cabin, which looked treacherously empty and uninhabited. Not a sound was heard from there. When they flicked the safeties off their pistols, Patrik thought the sound seemed to echo over the whole island. They crept towards the cabin and crouched outside the windows. Then Patrik heard voices inside and cautiously peered in through the filthy, salt-encrusted pane. First he saw only the shadow of someone moving, but as his eyes adjusted to the dim light he thought he could distinguish two figures walking about in the kitchen. The voices rose and fell, but it was impossible to make out what they were saying. All at once Patrik felt at a loss about what to do next, but then he made up his mind. He nodded in the direction of the door. They carefully moved over there, and Martin and Patrik took up position on either side of it while Gösta waited a bit further off.
‘Hanna? It’s me, Patrik. And some of the others are here too. Is everything okay?’
No answer.
‘Lars? We know you’re in there with your sister. Don’t do anything stupid. Nobody else needs to die.’
Still no answer. Patrik began to get nervous, and his grip on the pistol had grown sweaty.
‘Hedda? Are you all right? We’re here to help you! Lars and Hanna, don’t hurt Hedda. She did something terrible, but believe me, she’s already been punished. Look around, see how she’s been living. She’s lived in hell because of what she did to you.’
Silence was the only reply he got, and he swore to himself. Then the door opened a crack and Patrik took a firmer grip on his pistol. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Martin and Gösta do the same.
‘We’re coming out,’ said Lars. ‘Don’t shoot, or I’ll shoot her.’
‘Okay, okay,’ said Patrik, trying to sound as calm as he could.
‘Put your weapons down. I want to see them on the ground,’ said Lars. They still couldn’t see him through the gap in the door.
Martin glanced at Patrik, who nodded and slowly put down his pistol. Gösta and Martin followed his example.
‘Kick them away,’ said Lars dully, and Patrik took a step forward and kicked the three guns so they flew out of reach.
‘Step aside.’
Once again they obeyed and then waited tensely for something to happen. Slowly, very slowly, only an inch at a time, the door opened. Patrik had expected to see Hedda but instead he saw Hanna. She still looked sick, with a sweaty brow and eyes shining with fever. Her gaze met his, and Patrik couldn’t help wondering how he could have been so duped. How was it possible that she’d been able to conceal for so long all that evil behind such a normal façade? For a second he thought that she looked as though she wanted to explain, but then Lars shoved her forward, and the pistol he was holding against her temple came into view. Patrik recognized the gun. It was Hanna’s service weapon.
‘Move away, further,’ Lars hissed, and in his eyes Patrik saw nothing but blackness and hate. His eyes flicked from side to side, and something in his gaze told Patrik that Lars had finally let the mask fall, that he could no longer handle living a double life. The madness – or the evil, or whatever else it might be called – had finally won. The struggle was over against that part of his personality that wished nothing more than to be allowed to live a normal life with a job and a family.
The police officers moved a bit further away, and Lars passed them, holding Hanna as a shield in front of him. The door to the cabin stood wide open, and when Patrik glanced inside, he understood why Hedda couldn’t be used as a shield. In horror he saw that she was tied to a chair. The same kind of tape that had left traces of adhesive on some of the other victims was stretched across her mouth, and there was a hole in the middle of the tape, big enough to stick a bottle into. Hedda had died the same way she lived her life. Full of alcohol.
‘I can understand why you wanted Hedda to die. But why the others?’ Patrik couldn’t resist asking the question that had dominated his life for weeks now.
‘She took everything. Everything we had. Hanna caught sight of her by chance, and we both knew what had to be done. So she died of the same thing that ruined our lives. Booze.’
‘Are you talking about Elsa Forsell? We know that the two of you were in the car when Elsa Forsell caused the accident that killed Sigrid, the woman you lived with.’
‘We had a good life,’ said Lars in a shrill voice. He was backing slowly towards the pier. ‘She took good care of us. She swore she’d protect us.’
‘Sigrid?’ Patrik said, moving cautiously in the same direction as Lars and Hanna.
‘Yes, but we didn’t know that was her name. We called her Mamma. She told us that’s who she was. Our new mamma. And we had a good life. She played with us. Hugged us. Read stories to us.’
‘From the book about Hansel and Gretel?’ Patrik continued moving towards the pier, and out of the corner of his eye he saw Gösta and Martin following him.
‘Yes,’ said Lars, bending down close to Hanna’s ear. ‘She read to us. From the book. Do you remember, Hanna, how wonderful it was? How beautiful she was? How good she smelled? Do you remember?’
‘I remember,’ said Hanna and closed her eyes. When she opened them again they were filled with tears.
‘That was the only thing we were allowed to keep after she died. The book. We wanted to show them how little was left. That’s all there is when you destroy somebody else’s life.’
‘But Elsa wasn’t enough,’ said Patrik, keeping his eyes fixed on Lars.
‘There were so many others who had done the same thing she did. So many…’ said Lars, letting the words die out. ‘Every new place we came to. Every place had to be… cleansed.’
‘By murdering a person who had killed someone while driving drunk?’
‘Yes,’ said Lars with a smile. ‘Only then could we have any peace. We had to show that we wouldn’t tolerate that sort of crime, which we would never forget. You can’t just destroy someone’s life like that… and then walk away.’
‘The way Elsa did after she killed Sigrid?’
‘Yes,’ said Lars, and the blackness in his eyes deepened. ‘Like Elsa.’
‘And Lillemor?’
Now they were almost down to the pier and Patrik wondered what they should do if Hanna and Lars took the rescue boat, which was much faster than the other one. They’d never be able to catch them. But the skipper seemed to have had the same thought, because he was already backing away from the dock so that only the smaller boat was left.
‘Lillemor.’ Lars scoffed. ‘A stupid, worthless human being. Exactly like that other riff-raff I was forced to work with. I never would have recognized her, but I remembered her name when I saw where she was from. I knew that we had to do something.’
‘So you told the others that she had bad-mouthed them, in order to create chaos and distract her.’
‘You’re brighter than I gave you credit for,’ Lars said with a smile, taking the first step backwards out onto the pier. For a second Patrik considered trying to overpower him. But even though he sensed that Lars was only bluffing in holding his sister hostage – they had done everything together, after all – Patrik still didn’t dare. He had no weapon; it was up on the hill with Martin’s and Gösta’s, so in this situation Lars and Hanna had the upper hand.
‘I was the one who rang Lars,’ Hanna said in a harsh voice.
‘We know,’ said Patrik. ‘We have it on videotape. Martin watched it, but we didn’t understand…’
‘No, how could you?’ she said with a sad smile.
‘So Lars picked her up after you called him.’
‘Yes,’ said Hanna, climbing cautiously into the boat. She sank down on the thwart in the middle of the boat, while Lars sat down by the outboard motor and turned the key in the ignition. Nothing happened. Lars frowned and tried again. The motor emitted a whine but still wouldn’t start. Patrik watched in astonishment, but he realized what was happening when he glanced over at the rescue boat that sat bobbing a safe distance from the island. The skipper held up a petrol tank, and Patrik realized that he had confiscated it. An enterprising fellow, that Peter.
‘There’s no petrol,’ said Patrik, sounding calmer than he was. ‘So there’s nowhere for you to run now. Backup is on the way, so the best you can do is surrender and see to it that nobody else gets hurt.’ Patrik could hear how lame this sounded, but he couldn’t think of the right words. If there were any.
Without replying Lars undid the painter and kicked the boat away from the dock. The current caught it at once and they started slowly drifting away from shore.
‘You won’t get anywhere,’ said Patrik as he tried to see what options he had. But there were none. The only alternative was to make sure that Lars and Hanna were picked up. Without a motor they wouldn’t get far; they would probably run aground on one of the nearby islands. Patrik made a last attempt.
‘Hanna, it’s obvious that you weren’t the mastermind behind all of these events. You still have a chance to save yourself.’
Hanna didn’t answer. She simply stared back at Patrik. Then she reached for Lars’s hand that was still holding the pistol. He was no longer pointing it at her head, but was bracing his hand on the thwart she was sitting on. With the same uncanny calm she took Lars’s hand and lifted it so that he was again pointing the gun at her temple. Patrik saw the puzzled look on Lars’s face. Then, for a brief second, his expression was full of horror. The next instant an eerie calm fell over him. Hanna said something to Lars that no one standing on the island could hear. He said something in reply, then pulled her closer to him, so that she was resting against his chest. Hanna put her finger on top of his. And squeezed the trigger. Patrik felt himself jump; behind him Martin and Gösta gasped. Unable to move, unable to say a word, they watched as Lars carefully sat down on the boat’s gunwale, still holding Hanna’s now dead and bloody body in a tender embrace. Blood had sprayed up into his face, so that it looked as though he was wearing war paint. With the same calm expression he looked at them one last time. Then he put the pistol to his own temple. And pulled the trigger.
When he fell back, over the edge, Hanna fell with him. Hedda’s twins disappeared beneath the surface of the water. Down into the depths just as Hedda had once consigned them to die.
After a few seconds the rings on the surface vanished, and there was no trace of where they had gone down. The bloody boat bobbed on the waves and far off, as in a dream, Patrik saw more boats approaching. Backup was on the way.