The Gallows Bird (42 page)

‘Elsa Forsell was the driver in a fatal car accident in 1969. Like the other victims, she was driving drunk, and was sentenced to prison for one year. The car she crashed into was driven by a woman in her thirties, who had two children with her in the car. The woman died instantly, but the children miraculously survived without a scratch.’ Here he paused for effect and then said, ‘The woman’s name was Sigrid Jansson.’

The others gasped. Gösta nodded in satisfaction. It had been a long time since he’d felt so pleased with his contribution to a case.

Martin raised his hand to say something, but Patrik stopped him. ‘Wait, there’s more. At first the police assumed that the children in the car were Sigrid’s. But the problem was, she didn’t have any children. She was a recluse who lived in the country outside of Uddevalla, in her childhood home which she had inherited after her parents died. She worked as a shop assistant in an elegant clothing boutique in town and was always polite and pleasant to customers. But when the police interviewed her co-workers they said that she always kept to herself. As far as they knew she had no relatives or friends. And definitely no children.’

‘But . . . whose were they then?’ said Mellberg, scratching his forehead.

‘Nobody knows. There were no missing persons reports for children of that age. No one called in to claim them. When the police drove out to Sigrid’s house to have a look, they could see that the two children had definitely been living with her. We talked with one of the officers who was there when the accident happened. He told us that the children shared a room that was full of toys. But Sigrid had never given birth, as the autopsy showed. They also took blood samples to determine whether she was related to the children, but their blood types didn’t match Sigrid’s.’

‘So Elsa Forsell was the cause of it all,’ said Martin. ‘Yes, that’s how it looks,’ said Patrik. ‘It seems as though her accident set in motion a whole chain of murders. Apparently the killer began with her.’

‘Where are the children now?’ Hanna asked, giving voice to what everyone was thinking.

‘We’re working on that,’ said Gösta. ‘Our colleagues in Uddevalla are trying to get the documents from the social welfare authorities, but that may take some time.’

‘We have to keep working on the investigation based on the information we have,’ Patrik said. ‘But the key to the case is Elsa Forsell, so we’ll focus on her.’

They all trooped out of the break room, but Patrik called Hanna back.

‘Yes?’ she said. When Patrik saw how pale she looked, he was even more determined to have a talk with her.

‘Sit down,’ he said, dropping onto one of the chairs himself. ‘How are you doing?’ he said, studying her intently.

‘So-so, to be honest,’ she said, looking down. ‘I’ve been feeling lousy for several days, and I think I’m getting a fever.’

‘Yes, I noticed that you haven’t been yourself lately. I think you should go home and get some rest. It won’t help anyone if you play the woman of steel and try to keep working when you’re sick. You need to take it easy, so you can come back with renewed strength.’

‘But the investigation . . .’

Patrik stood up. ‘That’s an order. Go home and rest,’ he said, feigning a gruff tone of voice.

‘Yes, boss,’ said Hanna and smiled as she gave him a mock salute. ‘I just have to finish up a few things first. They can’t wait until later.’

‘Okay, it’s up to you. But then go straight home, inspector!’ Hanna smiled wanly and left. Patrik watched her with concern. She really didn’t look well.

He turned to look out of the window and allowed himself to sit there for a moment. They’d made a lot of progress over the past few days, but if they were going to solve this case they needed to find the children fast. Those children who seemed to have appeared from nowhere. The important thing now was to find out what had happened to them.

‘It’s a perfect fit!’ Anna beamed, and Erica had to agree. The dress needed to be taken in here and there, but once the alterations were done it would fit like a dream. Some of the pregnancy kilos that had hung on so stubbornly had vanished, and Erica felt both slimmer and livelier as a result of the change in her diet.

‘You’re going to look so beautiful!’ said Anna as they drove home from the fitting.

Erica smiled at her sister, who was almost more enthusiastic about Saturday’s wedding than she was. She cast a glance at Maja, who was asleep in her push-chair.

‘I’m worried about Patrik,’ Erica said, and her smile faded. ‘He’s wound up so tight. Do you think he’ll be able to enjoy the wedding?’

Anna looked at her for a moment as she seemed to be weighing whether to say something. Finally she decided. ‘This was supposed to be a surprise,’ she said. ‘But we talked a bit with the guys and agreed to skip the hen party and bachelor party. Instead we booked you a room and made a dinner reservation for you at Stora Hotellet for Friday night. So you can unwind in peace and quiet before Saturday. I hope that’s okay with you.’

‘God, how sweet of you. And it’s a super idea. I don’t think Patrik would have been up for a bachelor party as things stand. It will be great to have a quiet evening on Friday. I don’t think there’ll be much peace and quiet on Saturday.’

‘No, I shouldn’t think so,’ Anna said with a laugh, relieved that her sister approved of her idea.

Erica then changed the subject. ‘Anna, I’ve decided to do a little investigating. About Mamma.’

‘Investigating? How do you mean?’

‘Well . . . do some genealogical research. Find out where she came from and things like that. Maybe find some answers.

‘Do you think it will do any good?’ said Anna sceptically. ‘Of course, you should do as you see fit, but Mamma wasn’t particularly sentimental by nature. That’s probably why she didn’t save anything from the past or tell us anything about her childhood. You know how uninterested she was in documenting ours.’

Anna’s laughter had a tinge of bitterness that surprised Erica. Her sister had always pretended that she wasn’t bothered for their mother’s coldness.

‘But aren’t you the least bit curious?’ Erica said, giving her sister a sidelong glance.

Anna looked out of the window on the passenger side. ‘No,’ she said after a brief but significant moment of hesitation.

‘I don’t believe you. But anyway, I’m going to start looking into it. If you want to hear what I find out, let me know. But it’s up to you.’

‘What if you don’t find any answers?’ said Anna, turning to look at Erica. ‘What if you find out that she had a normal childhood, an ordinary adolescence. And there’s no other explanation except that she simply wasn’t interested in us. What will you do then?’

‘Live with it,’ said Erica quietly. ‘Just the way I’ve always done.’

They sat in silence the rest of the way home. Both of them were immersed in their own thoughts.

Patrik went over the list a third time as he tried to stop himself from staring at the phone. Each time it rang he hoped it was Uddevalla with more information about the children. But he was disappointed every time.

He was also disappointed with the list of dog owners and their addresses. They were spread all over Sweden, and there were none in the immediate vicinity of Tanumshede. It had always been a long shot, but he had still harboured some hope. Just to be sure, he slowly scanned the list for the fourth time. A hundred and fifty-nine names. A hundred and fifty-nine addresses, but the closest one was outside Trollhättan. Patrik sighed. So much of his job consisted of boring and time-wasting tasks, but after the events of the past few days he had almost managed to forget that. He swivelled round and looked up at the map of Sweden on the wall. The pins seemed to be staring at him, challenging him to see the pattern, break the code they represented. Five pins, five locations, spread over the southern half of the oblong country of Sweden. What was it that made the murderer move from one place to the other? Was it work? Was it pleasure? Was it a tactic designed to confuse? Was the killer’s home base somewhere else? Patrik didn’t believe the last option. Something told him that the answer lay in the geographical pattern, that the murderer for some reason had followed that pattern. He also believed that the killer was still here in the area. It was more of a gut feeling, and it was so strong that he couldn’t help scrutinizing everyone he saw on the street. Was that person the killer? Or that one? Who was hiding behind the guise of an ordinary citizen?

Patrik sighed and looked up when Gösta came in, after knocking discreetly.

‘Well,’ Gösta said, taking a chair. ‘It’s like this: something has been working overtime up here,’ he tapped his temple, ‘since we heard about the children yesterday. It’s probably nothing. Might sound a bit far-fetched.’

He hemmed and hawed and Patrik had to suppress an urge to lean across the desk and shake Gösta to make him stop mumbling.

‘Well, I was thinking about a case that happened in 1967. In Fjällbacka. I was a rookie here back then.’

Patrik looked at him with increasing irritation. Talk about long-winded!

Gösta continued: ‘As I said, I hadn’t been on the job long when we got a call about two kids who had drowned. Twins, three years old. They lived with their mother out on the island of Kalvö. Their father had drowned a couple of months earlier when he fell through the ice, and the mother had apparently started drinking heavily. And on this day, it was in March if I remember rightly, she took their boat to Fjällbacka and then drove her car down to Uddevalla to do some errands. When they took the boat back out to the island, a storm was blowing up. According to the mother, the boat capsized just before they reached the island, and both children drowned. She had swum ashore and called for help on the radio.’

‘But what made you think of this in connection with our case? Those children drowned, so they couldn’t have been with Sigrid Jansson in the car two years later.’

Gösta hesitated. ‘But there was a witness . . .’ He paused but then went on, ‘A witness who claimed that the mother, Hedda Kjellander, didn’t have the children with her in the boat when she set off.’

Patrik sat in silence for a long moment. ‘Why didn’t anyone ever get to the bottom of this?’

Gösta looked dejected. ‘The witness was an elderly lady. A bit barmy, according to what people said. She used to sit at the window all day looking through her binoculars, and from time to time she claimed to see things . . . Sea monsters and things like that,’ said Gösta, but he still looked just as dejected.

He said he’d thought about the case occasionally. About the twins, whose bodies never washed up anywhere. But every time he had repressed the thought and convinced himself again that it was a tragic accident. Nothing more.

‘After meeting the mother, Hedda, I also had a hard time believing that she might be lying. She was in such despair. So upset. There was no reason to believe . . .’ The words died out and he didn’t dare look at Patrik.

‘What happened to her? The mother?’

‘Nothing. She still lives on the island. Seldom shows herself in town. She gets food and booze delivered out to her cabin. Although it’s mostly the booze she’s interested in.’

Patrik heard the penny drop. ‘Is it “Hedda on Kalvö” you’re talking about?’ He couldn’t believe it. But he’d never heard that Hedda had once had two kids. All the gossip he’d heard about her was that she had suffered two tragedies and since then had devoted herself to drinking herself senseless.

‘So you think . . .’

Gösta shrugged. ‘I don’t know what to think. But it’s a remarkable coincidence. And the ages match.’ He sat quietly and let Patrik consider what he’d said.

‘I think we need to go out there and talk to her.’

Gösta nodded.

‘We can take our boat,’ said Patrik, getting up. Gösta was still looking despondent as Patrik turned to him.

‘It was many years ago, Gösta. And I can’t say I would have done any different. I probably would have come to the same conclusion. And besides, you weren’t the one in charge.’

Gösta wasn’t so sure that Patrik would have dropped the matter so easily. And he probably could have leaned on his boss at the time a bit harder. But what’s done is done. It was no use brooding over it now.

*  *  *

‘Are you sick?’ Worried, Lars sat down on the edge of the bed and placed a cool hand on Hanna’s forehead. ‘You’re burning up,’ he said, pulling the covers up to her chin. She was shaking from a cold coming on and had that weird feeling of freezing even though she was sweating.

‘I just want to be alone,’ she said, turning on her side.

‘I was only trying to help,’ said Lars, hurt, and removed his hand that lay on top of the covers.

‘You’ve helped me enough,’ said Hanna bitterly with her teeth chattering.

‘Did you report in sick?’ He sat down with his back to her and looked out through the balcony door. There was such a distance between them that they might as well have been on separate continents. Something was tightening around Lars’s heart. It felt like fear, but it was a fear that was so deep, so penetrating that he couldn’t recall the last time he’d felt anything like it. He took a deep breath.

‘If I changed my mind about having kids, would that change anything?’

The chattering stopped for a second. Hanna sat up, propping herself against the pillows, but kept the covers drawn up to her chin. She was shaking so hard that the bed felt as if it was trembling too.

‘That would change everything,’ Hanna said, gazing at him with eyes shining with fever. ‘That would change everything,’ she repeated. But after a moment she added, ‘Or would it?’

He turned his back to her again and looked out at the roof of the house next door. ‘It probably would,’ he said, although he wasn’t sure whether he was telling the truth or not. ‘It would.’

He turned round. Hanna had fallen asleep. He looked at her for a long time. Then he tiptoed out of the bedroom.

‘Can you find it?’ Patrik turned to Gösta when they set out from the boat landing at Badholmen.

Gösta nodded. ‘Sure, I can find it.’

They sat in silence on the trip out to the island of Kalvö. When they docked at the worn and leaky pier, Gösta’s face had turned ashen grey. He had been out here several times since that day thirty-seven years ago, but it was always that first visit that popped up in his memory.