The Hidden Child (37 page)

‘Well, I think it was terribly brave of you,’ said Britta, blushing. ‘Most boys would never dare do things like that. Only people like Axel – and you – are brave enough to fight for what they believe.’

‘So we wouldn’t dare? Is that what you think?’ snapped Frans. He was even more annoyed by the fact that Britta kept casting admiring glances, usually reserved for him, at the Norwegian. ‘Erik and I are just as brave, and when we’re as old as Axel and . . . How old are you, by the way?’ he asked Hans.

‘I just turned seventeen,’ said Hans, who seemed uncomfortable with all the attention directed at him and his activities. He turned to look at Elsy. She hadn’t said a word as she listened to everybody else, but now she picked up on his signals.

‘I think we should let Hans rest. He’s been through a lot,’ she said gently, motioning to her friends. Reluctantly they all got up and thanked him before backing out of the room. Elsy was the last to leave, and she turned around just before she closed the door.

‘Thanks,’ said Hans, giving her a faint smile. ‘But it was nice to have company, so you’re all welcome to come back. It’s just that right now I’m a little . . .’

She smiled at him. ‘I understand perfectly. We’ll come back another time, and we’d be happy to show you around town too. But get some rest now.’

She closed the door. But strangely enough, she kept seeing his face in her mind, and it refused to go away.

Chapter 29

Erica was not at the library as Patrik thought. She’d been on her way over there, but just as she parked the car an idea had occurred to her. There was another person who’d been close to her mother. And who’d been her friend much more recently than sixty years ago. Actually, she was the only friend that Erica could remember her mother ever having when she and Anna were growing up. Strange that she hadn’t thought about her earlier. But Kristina had such a strong presence as her mother-in-law that Erica had forgotten she’d also been her mother’s friend.

Having made up her mind, she started up the car again and drove towards Tanumshede. This was the first time she’d ever decided on impulse to visit Kristina at home. She glanced at her mobile, considering whether she ought to ring first. No, to hell with it. If Kristina could barge in on them unannounced, she could do the same to her.

Erica was still feeling annoyed when she arrived, and out of sheer contrariness, she touched the doorbell only once before opening the door and stepping inside.

‘Hello?’ she called.

‘Who is it?’ Kristina’s voice came from the kitchen, and she sounded a bit alarmed. A moment later she appeared in the hall.

‘Erica?’ she said in surprise, staring at her daughter-in-law. ‘You’re here? Did you bring Maja with you?’ She glanced behind Erica but didn’t see her granddaughter anywhere.

‘No, she’s home with Patrik,’ said Erica. She took off her shoes and set them neatly on the shoe rack.

‘Well, come on in,’ said Kristina, still looking startled. ‘I’ll make us some coffee.’

Erica followed her out to the kitchen, regarding her mother-in-law with surprise. She hardly recognized her. She’d never seen Kristina look anything but well groomed, and she always wore a good deal of make-up. Whenever she came to their house, she was a bundle of energy, talking non-stop and in constant motion. Right now she was like an entirely different woman. Kristina had on an old, worn-out nightgown even though it was late in the morning, and she wasn’t wearing a trace of make-up. That made her look considerably older, with obvious lines and wrinkles on her face. She hadn’t done anything with her hair, either, and it looked flattened from lying in bed.

‘I must look a mess,’ said Kristina, as if she’d read Erica’s mind. She ran her hand through her hair. ‘It just doesn’t seem worth it to get all dressed up if I’m not doing anything special and don’t have to be anywhere.’

‘But it always sounds a though you have such a busy schedule,’ said Erica, sitting down at the table.

At first Kristina didn’t say anything, just set two cups on the table along with some Ballerina biscuits.

‘It’s not easy to be retired after working all your life,’ she said at last as she poured coffee into their cups. ‘Everyone is so busy with their own lives. I suppose there are things I could do, but I just haven’t felt like . . .’ She reached for a biscuit, avoiding Erica’s eye.

‘But why did you tell us that you have so much going on all the time?’

‘Oh, you young people have your own lives. I didn’t want you to feel that you had to be bothered with me. Lord knows I don’t want to be a burden to you. And I can tell that my visits aren’t always that welcome, so I thought it was best if . . .’ She fell silent, and Erica stared at her in astonishment. Kristina looked up and went on: ‘If you must know, I live for the hours that I spend with you and with Maja. Lotta has her own life in Göteborg, and it’s not always so easy for her to come here, or for me to go there, for that matter, since they don’t have much room in their house. And as I said, I know that my visits with you aren’t always so welcome.’ Again she looked away, and Erica felt ashamed.

‘That’s mostly my fault, I have to admit,’ she said gently. ‘But you are always welcome. And you and Maja have so much fun together. The only thing we ask is that you respect our privacy. It’s our home, and you’re welcome to come over as our guest. So we, I, would appreciate it if you’d phone ahead to check if it’s a good time to visit before you come over. Please don’t just walk into the house with no warning, and for God’s sake please don’t tell us how we should run our household or take care of our child. If you can respect those rules, then you’re welcome to come over. I’m sure Patrik would appreciate it if you could lend him a hand while he’s on paternity leave.’

‘Yes, I think he would,’ said Kristina with a laugh that now made her eyes sparkle. ‘How is he doing?’

‘It was a bit touch-and-go at first,’ said Erica. She told Kristina about Patrik taking Maja along to a crime scene and to the police station. ‘But I think we’re now in agreement as to what’s important.’

‘Men,’ said Kristina. ‘I remember when Lars was going to stay home alone with Lotta for the first time. She was about a year old, and I was going out to do the shopping on my own. It took only twenty minutes before the shop manager came to find me, saying that Lars had phoned. He had some sort of crisis and I had to go home. So I left all my groceries and rushed home. And it certainly was a crisis.’

‘Really? What happened?’ asked Erica, wide-eyed.

‘Well, just listen to this. He mistook my menstrual pads for Lotta’s nappies. And he couldn’t figure out any sensible way to fasten them, so when I got home he was trying to put them on with duct tape!’

‘You’re kidding!’ said Erica, and they both laughed.

‘He learned after a while. Lars was a good father to Patrik and Lotta when they were growing up. I can’t complain. But those were different times.’

‘Speaking of different times,’ said Erica, seizing the opportunity to turn the conversation to the reason for her visit. ‘I’m doing a little research into my mother’s life, her childhood, and so on. I found some old things in the attic, including several old diaries, and well, they got me to thinking.’

‘Diaries?’ said Kristina, staring at Erica. ‘What was in them?’ she asked in a sharp tone of voice. Erica looked at her mother-in-law in surprise.

‘Nothing especially interesting, unfortunately. Mostly teenage musings. But the funny thing is that there’s a lot about her friends from back then. Erik Frankel, Britta Johansson, and Frans Ringholm. And now two of them, Erik and Britta, have both been murdered within a few months of each other. It could just be a coincidence, but it seems strange.’

Kristina was still staring. ‘Britta’s dead?’ she asked, and it was obvious that she was having a hard time taking in the news.

‘Yes, didn’t you hear about it? I thought you would have heard it on the grapevine by now. Her daughter found her dead two days ago, and it seems that she died from suffocation. Her husband claims that he killed her.’

‘So both Erik and Britta are dead?’ said Kristina. Thoughts seemed to be churning in her head.

‘Did you know them?’ asked Erica.

‘No.’ Kristina shook her head. ‘I knew only what Elsy told me about them.’

‘What did she tell you?’ asked Erica, eagerly leaning forward. ‘That’s exactly why I’ve come over here. Because you were my mother’s friend for so many years, I thought that you, of all people, would know things about her. So what did she tell you about those years? And why did she stop writing in her diary so abruptly in 1944? Or are there more diaries somewhere? Did Mamma ever tell you about them? In the last diary she mentions a Norwegian who had come to stay with them, a Hans Olavsen. I found a newspaper clipping that seems to indicate that all four of them spent a lot of time with him. What happened to him?’ The questions came pouring out so fast that even Erica could barely keep up with them. Kristina sat across from her, not saying a word, with a shuttered expression on her face.

‘I can’t answer your questions, Erica,’ she said at last. ‘I can’t. The only thing I can tell you is what happened to Hans Olavsen. Elsy told me that he went back to Norway right after the war ended. After that, she never saw him again.’

‘Were they . . .’ Erica hesitated, not sure how to formulate her query. ‘Did she love him?’

Kristina didn’t speak for a long time. She plucked at the pattern of the oilcloth on the table, weighing what she wanted to say. Finally she looked at Erica.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘she loved him.’

It was a splendid day. Axel hadn’t thought about such things for a very long time. The fact that certain days could be nicer than others. But this one truly was. Right on the cusp between summer and autumn, with a warm, gentle breeze. The light had lost the glare of summer and started to assume the glow of autumn. A truly splendid day.

He went over to the bay window and looked out, his hands clasped behind his back. But he didn’t see the trees outside. Or the grass that had grown a bit too tall and was starting to wither as cooler weather approached. Instead he saw Britta. Lovely, lively Britta, whom he’d never regarded as anything but a little girl back then, during the war. One of Erik’s friends, a sweet but rather vain girl. She hadn’t interested him. She’d been too young. He’d been preoccupied with everything that needed to be done, with what he needed to do. She’d had only a peripheral place in his world.

But he was thinking about her now. The way she was when he saw her the other day. Sixty years later. Still beautiful. Still slightly vain. But the years had changed her. Turned her into a different person than she’d been back then. Axel wondered if he had changed just as much. Maybe. Maybe not. Perhaps the years he’d been imprisoned by the Germans had changed him enough for a whole lifetime, so that afterwards he hadn’t managed to change any more. All the things he’d seen, the horrors he’d witnessed – maybe that had changed something deep inside of him which could never be healed or redeemed.

Axel pictured other faces in his mind. Faces of the people he’d hunted and helped to capture. It didn’t happen the way they showed it in the movies, with thrilling high-speed chases. Just hours of laborious work, sitting in his office and indefatigably following up five decades of paper trails, calling into question identities, payments, passenger lists, and possible cities of refuge. And so they’d brought them in, one by one. Made sure that they were punished for their sins, which were receding further and further into the past.

They would never catch them all. He knew that. There were still so many of them out there, and more and more of them were now dying. But instead of dying in prison, in degradation, they were dying the peaceful death of old age, without having to confront their deeds. That was what drove him. That was what made him refuse to give up; he was constantly searching, hunting, going from one meeting to the next, combing through archive after archive. He refused to rest as long as there was a single one of them out there that he might help to catch.

Axel stared unseeing out the window. He knew that it had become an obsession with him. The work had consumed everything. It had become a lifeline that he could grab hold of whenever he doubted himself or his humanity. As long as he was engaged in the hunt, he didn’t need to question who he was. As long as he was working to serve the cause, he could slowly but surely chip away at his guilt. Only by refusing to stand still was he able to shake off everything that he didn’t want to think about.

He turned around. The doorbell was ringing. For a moment he couldn’t tear himself away from all those faces flickering before his eyes. Then he blinked them away and went to open the door.

‘Oh, so it’s you,’ Axel said when he caught sight of Paula and Martin. For a second he felt overwhelmed by fatigue. Sometimes it seemed this would never end.

‘Could we come in and talk to you for a few minutes?’ asked Martin in a kindly tone of voice.

‘Of course. Come in,’ said Axel, again leading the way to the veranda. ‘Is there any news? I heard about Britta, by the way. Dreadful business. I saw her and Herman just a couple of days ago, you know. It’s so hard for me to imagine that he would . . .’ Axel shook his head.