The Glass Devil (22 page)

He was interrupted by Katarina, who exclaimed, “But you were supposed to have the weekend off!”

She looked at Irene accusingly. Irene knew full well that she worked too much, but with the occupation she had, there wasn’t much she could do about it. When there was a lot of work to do, there was also a lot of overtime.

“Had you planned on being home?” Irene asked Katarina.

Katarina didn’t answer, but merely shrugged. Recently she had turned eighteen, giving her the right to vote, the right to marry without parental permission, and the right to drive a car, but still sometimes she was just a child. At least she couldn’t buy alcohol at the State Liquor Store yet, thought Irene.

“Katarina probably planned on driving practice. Just like me,” said Jenny.

“We’ll arrange it. When are you going to take the test?” Irene asked.

“In three months. There’s a waiting list,” Katarina said sulkily.

Both girls had had their learner’s permit and had driven, accompanied by their parents, for more than a year. They were very good. The driver’s test would certainly go well. But it would be difficult financially, since both of them were going to obtain their much-desired licenses at the same time.

Krister cleared his throat. “If I may return to what I was saying earlier, we’re going to have Easter dinner on Good Friday. It’s the only day both myself and Mamma are free at the same time. And I start work at five o’clock on Easter Eve. But I should have time for a smaller Easter lunch before I start.”

Jenny stopped in the middle of chopping onions and said hesitantly, “Is it okay if I invite Martin?”

“Of course, sweetheart,” Krister said, smiling wide.

Irene was pleasantly surprised. Katarina had dragged home various boyfriends over the years, but Jenny had never brought anyone home. There had been romances in Jenny’s life, but nothing more serious ever seemed to develop. They had died and gone to glory at an early stage and quietly disappeared without leaving any noticeable marks on their daughter. Martin must be special.

“How long have you been together?” she ventured to ask, curious.

Jenny answered, “A few months.”

A few months! Irene had heard about him for the first time last week.

“Grandma is coming, right?” Katarina asked.

“Oh, good thing you said that! I need to call and change the day. Otherwise she’ll think it’s Easter Sunday,” Irene exclaimed, hurrying out of the kitchen to the telephone in the hall.

GOOD FRIDAY dawned with sunshine and a clear blue sky, even if it was cool. Irene and Krister devoted the morning to their sorely neglected garden. What did it matter if last year’s leaves were raked up only at the beginning of April? Irene used to convince herself that it was healthy for the lawn to have a protective cover of leaves in case it was a cold winter. And some nutrients went into the ground when leaves decomposed. On the other hand, those were the only nutrients the lawn ever got. If you thought about it, their little garden plot was actually ecologically managed, completely without artificial fertilizer.

Krister started fixing the Easter buffet around lunchtime. He had started preparing the herring at the beginning of the week. He had finished the coriander-preserved salmon and the shellfish paté then as well. Now he was baking the chicken filets, which he was going to serve cold with various sauces. Irene had greedily circled him like a barracuda and noted a delicious mango chutney sauce and a crème fraiche sauce with fresh basil and garlic.

The seductive smell of Jansson’s Temptation—with its spicy anchovies—came from the oven. It was Irene’s favorite dish at both the Christmas and Easter buffets. As usual, a rootstock casserole stood simmering next to it. Jenny had told them that Martin was a lacto-vegetarian. He wasn’t orthodox in Jenny’s vegan eyes, but apparently she could put up with this. She had also promised to make a large tomato and onion salad and chick-pea pilaf—red peppers filled with rice and chick peas, her specialty. The rest of the family also thought the chick-pea-filled peppers were delicious, and therefore the dish was included on the Easter buffet table. The obligatory hard-boiled eggs were cooling in cold water. Later they would be peeled and halved. The egg halves were decorated with mayonnaise, caviar, and shrimp.

The dessert had even been ready for a few days; Krister’s punch parfait was in the freezer. He served it with his chocolate sauce made according to a secret recipe. Irene had managed to work out that it contained coffee, and she knew that he made it with dark chocolate of the finest quality. This was Glady’s Corner’s signature dessert, and if it wasn’t on the menu, the regulars would grumble.

Irene’s mother, Gerd, and her significant other, Sture, arrived at about five o’clock. The air was still warm enough that they could drink a glass of sparkling wine in the garden. They had to wear sweaters and over-shirts, but the air felt pleasant and spring-like. They were standing and chatting on the patio when Jenny and her Martin appeared in the doorway.

Irene quickly looked down at her right hand in order to make sure that her grip on her wineglass was firm. She understood why Jenny had looked hesitant when she spoke about Martin the day before. Conversation stopped completely, and everyone looked at the lanky figure in the doorway.

Martin was a few years over twenty. His shoulder-length hair was dyed black. His T-shirt was also black with a bright pink legend across his chest: “Fuck me, I’m famous!” He wore black jeans with large rips through which his pale knobby knees stuck out. A thick metal stud pierced his lower lip, and there was another in one eyebrow. He had used black eyeliner to draw heavy outlines around his eyes. A wide tattooed pattern encircled his neck in blue and red. He had taken off his shoes and stood uncertainly on the threshold in tattered black socks that his big toes stuck out of.

Irene’s mother was the first to pull herself together. She smiled happily and walked up to the young man. “Hello! I’m Jenny’s grandmother, Gerd.”

Martin took her outstretched hand and said politely, “Martin.”

Irene also went over to him to introduce herself and the rest of the family. Katarina didn’t have her new find, Johan, with her. According to what Irene had discovered, he was in Norway with some friends, skiing. Despite this, Katarina looked beamingly happy. She introduced herself to Martin, who looked confused.

“Didn’t you say you were twins?” he asked Jenny.

“Yes, but she’s adopted,” Jenny replied quickly.

The girls were used to this reaction. They smiled at each other in understanding.

“We have to leave by seven at the latest,” Jenny told Irene.

“Why?” Krister asked before his wife had time.

As a craftsman in the culinary arts, he loved long enjoyable dinners and detested stress and haste during mealtimes.

“Martin’s band is playing tonight.”

Gerd opened her eyes wide in surprise.

“Do you have school dances on Good Friday these days?”

Then Martin smiled, and Irene saw why her daughter had fallen for this rocker. His blue eyes were mischievous but friendly. “It’s been several years since we played at school dances. Tonight is bigger. More like a concert.”

“Concert? Do you play classical music?” Sture wondered.

“Nah. It’s got more of a beat to it, and it’s really popular,” Martin replied, still polite.

“But, hello! Don’t you recognize Mackie in Black Thunder?” Katarina exclaimed and rolled her eyes.

A quick look at the gathered group of older relatives revealed their ignorance.

“They’re huge! How many records have you made? Four?” she asked Martin, alias Mackie.

“Five,” Martin answered and looked almost embarrassed.

“And it’s going really well in Germany. They have a hit there now. Top of the charts with ‘The Eagle Said,’” Katarina continued.

“Even if one is a rock star, might he want to have a glass of bubbly before dinner?” Krister asked, filling an empty glass that was standing on the tray. He didn’t pour anything for Jenny, because she was absolutely drug-free and didn’t even drink light beer.

“No, thank you. I don’t drink alcohol,” Martin declined.

Yet something else that united them, in addition to music, thought Irene.

“Okay. But you need food in your stomach. Especially if you’re going to give a concert tonight. I suggest that we start eating,” Krister said, gesturing toward the house.

Irene noted during the dinner that Katarina ate relatively little. Hadn’t she also become much thinner in the face? The wide neck of her black cotton top showed considerably sharper collarbones than Irene could remember. It still seemed as though she was dieting, despite the new boyfriend and her decision not to participate in the beauty contest. She had to talk with Katarina about this. What was wrong?

EASTER WEEKEND was busy. The two biggest motorcycle gangs’ feud about the division of prime drug and sex districts exploded into violence. On Easter morning, one of the gang leaders, and his girlfriend, were shot when they left a night club at about four o’clock. The gang had celebrated quite a bit on Easter Eve and, in their drunken state, their security precautions had slipped. A man from a passing car had loosed a rain of bullets from an automatic weapon at their leader. The driver pulled away before any of the drunken bodyguards had time to get their weapons out. Both the gang leader and the girlfriend had suffered life-threatening injuries.

Two hours later, a call came in about a car burning in a wooded area outside Gunnared. The car turned out to be stolen, and the police were pretty sure that it was the car the shooter and his driver had used. They had disappeared without a trace, having most likely had another car parked in the area.

At eleven o’clock in the evening of Easter Sunday, a heavy truck plowed through the tall wooden fence around the other motorcycle gang’s headquarters outside Alingsås. The tarp was pulled off of the rear, and a grenade launcher began to toss its containers of death through the windows of the building. The man handling the weapon was right on target. The explosions laid waste to the old farmhouse. The whole thing was over in about a minute. The heavy vehicle backed out through the hole it had made in the fence and disappeared without having been fired upon.

Left in the ruins of the house were one dead man and three who were critically injured.

IRENE SPENT a difficult Easter as a result of the first attack. The investigation was one big mess; several units within the police department were involved. The toll increased from one to two as the gang leader died of his wounds around midnight, shortly after the grenade attack.

On Monday morning, Fredrik Stridh was to begin his weekend shift. He and Irene had been detailed to go to the scene of the grenade attack outside Alingsås. Irene wanted to fill him in before they drove out there.

She found him in his office, sitting in his visitor’s chair with the back of his head resting against the wall. It looked like he was sleeping, and in fact he was. Irene had to punch him hard on his upper arm in order to get him to wake up. With an inarticulate groan, he straightened in the chair. He immediately grabbed his head and sank back against the wall for support. He closed his eyes again but to Irene’s surprise, a smile tugged at his lips. It shouldn’t have, if he was as hung over as he seemed.

“Hello! Time to start work! We’re up to here in shit! The motorcycle war has broken out!” Irene yelled.

“Okay, okay,” Fredrik mumbled and nodded. The satisfied smile still played on his lips, but his eyes started opening. Suspiciously, Irene leaned over in front of him and sniffed. No smell of alcohol. He was dead sober. She detected a contented gleam in what she could see of his eyes. Irene said with feigned harshness, “Young man, what kind of trouble have you gotten yourself into that has so completely sucked the life out of you?”

“How do you know it’s something bad?” he asked, looking up at her teasingly.

“You look too damn satisfied.”

Fredrick chuckled before he replied, “You’re a good judge of character. But bad was the last thing it was. I’ve celebrated a late Ostara. They don’t celebrate Easter.”

“Ostara? What’s that?”

“The vernal equinox.”

He closed his eyes again. Celebrated the vernal equinox? Who does that instead of Easter? Suddenly the light bulb came on. “Well, I’ll be damned! Have you been celebrating the Witch’s Sabbath with Eva Möller?”

A delighted smile spread across Fredrik’s face. It wasn’t necessary for him to respond.

“THIS FEELS surreal. This is what it looks like in Bosnia or Chechnya, not in Sweden,” said Fredrik.

Both he and Irene were unpleasantly affected when they walked around the remains of the farmhouse that had been one gang’s headquarters. The technicians had worked the whole night and were far from being done.

“Where the hell did those bastards get a Carl-Gustaf?” Andersson’s voice could be heard asking behind their backs.

He came zigzagging through the debris from the fire, his overcoat flapping. He couldn’t stay away from the job when big things were happening.

“I have a feeling that it’s only a matter of placing an order. These boys have big money. Everybody and everything can be bought. Even the military,” Irene said in response to Andersson’s question.

“You’ve met Hell’s Angels before. Do you recognize any of the boys? They haven’t been identified yet, neither the corpse nor those injured,” Andersson continued, breathlessly.

Irene had met certain members of the Hell’s Angels before, but she preferred to forget their confrontation.

IRENE DIDN’T get home until the wee hours of the morning. Krister had arrived before her and was asleep, snoring, on his half of the bed. Pictures from the scene of the fire flickered inside her eyelids as soon as she closed her eyes. It was impossible to fall asleep with them on her mind. She eventually got back up with a sigh, wrapped herself in her terry-cloth bathrobe, and pattered down to the kitchen. Sammie immediately took the opportunity to jump up and snuggle into the still-warm bed.

She lit a candle and set it on the table before pouring a glass of milk and spreading some Brie on a piece of hard bread. It felt really cozy to sit down in the flickering candlelight and chew on such a fancy late-night sandwich. In fact, it was so late at night that it was nearly a breakfast sandwich. As she looked into the flame, she reflected. Something she had pushed to the back of her consciousness during the drama of the last few days started working its way forward. It was something Glen Thompson had said during their latest conversation. Then she remembered what he had said and realized how important it could be.