The Ice Princess (38 page)

‘But dear God, did they really believe that?’

Anna gave Erica a crooked smile. ‘You know how charming Lucas can be. He completely turned the heads of the doctor and the nurses, and they felt almost as sorry for him as they did for Emma.’

‘But Anna, you have to report him to the police. Surely you can’t let him get away with this?’

She looked at her weeping sister. Sympathy was competing with fury. Anna was shrinking before her eyes.

‘It will never happen again, I intend to see to that. I pretended that I was listening to his excuses, and then I packed up the car and drove off as soon as he left for work. I never intend to go back to him; Lucas will never have a chance to hurt my children again. If I’d reported him to the police they would have brought in social services, and then maybe they might have taken the children from both of us.’

‘But Lucas is never going to sit still for you taking the children, Anna. Without a police report and an investigation, how are you going to prove that you should have sole custody of the children?’

‘I don’t know, I don’t know, Erica. I can’t think about it now, I just had to get away from him. The rest of it will have to be worked out later. Please don’t yell at me!’

Erica set down her cup on the table, got up from her chair and put her arms round her sister. She stroked her hair and murmured consoling words. She let Anna cry on her shoulder and felt her jumper getting wetter and wetter. At the same time her hatred towards Lucas grew. She really wanted to punch that fucker in the mouth.

Birgit looked out at the street, hidden behind her curtain. Karl-Erik could see from her hunched shoulders how tense she was. She had been pacing anxiously up and down ever since the police rang. For the first time in ages, he felt utterly calm inside. Karl-Erik intended to give the police officer all the answers - if he asked the right questions.

The secrets had been burning inside him for so many years. In a way it had been easier for Birgit. Her manner of handling the situation had been to deny that it ever occurred. She refused to talk about it and fluttered on in life as if nothing had happened. But it did happen. Not a day had passed when he hadn’t thought about it, and each time the burden had felt even heavier to bear. He knew that from the outside it looked as if Birgit were the stronger of them. At all social events she glittered like a star while he was the grey, invisible man at her side. She wore her beautiful clothes, her expensive jewellery and her make-up like a suit of armour.

Whenever they came home after yet another glittering, exhilarating evening, and she took off her armour, she seemed to collapse into nothingness. All that was left was a quivering, insecure child who clung to him for support. During their entire marriage he had been torn between conflicting feelings for his wife. Her beauty and fragility aroused tenderness and a protective instinct that made him feel like a man. But her unwillingness to face life’s more difficult aspects sometimes drove him to the brink of madness. What made him most furious was that he knew that she wasn’t stupid, but her upbringing had taught her that a woman must at all costs conceal the fact that she had any sort of intelligence. Instead, she should focus all her energy on being beautiful and helpless. And pleasing others. When they were newlyweds he hadn’t seen this as anything odd; that was the spirit of the times back then. But times had changed, placing whole different demands on both women and men. He had adapted, but his wife never did. So this day was going to be very hard on her. Karl-Erik believed that deep inside she knew what he was intending to do. That was why she had been pacing back and forth across the room for almost two hours. But he also knew that she didn’t intend to let him drag their family secrets out into the open without a fight.

‘Why does Henrik have to be here?’ Birgit turned towards him, anxiously wringing her hands.

‘The police want to talk with the family, and Henrik is part of the family, isn’t he?’

‘Yes, but I think it’s unnecessary to get him mixed up in this. The police will probably just ask some general questions. Do we really have to drag him all the way out here for that? No, I think it seems unnecessary.’

Her voice rose and fell with unspoken questions. He knew her so well.

‘Here he comes.’

Birgit quickly stepped away from the window. It took a moment before the doorbell rang. Karl-Erik took a deep breath and went to open the door, while Birgit retired to the living room where Henrik was already sitting on the sofa, deep in his own thoughts.

‘Hello, I’m Patrik Hedström.’

‘Karl-Erik Carlgren.’

They shook hands politely. Karl-Erik estimated that the police officer was about Alex’s age. He often did this these days: thought about other people in terms of Alex.

‘Come in. I thought we could sit in the living room and talk.’

Patrik looked a bit taken aback when he saw Henrik, but recovered quickly and greeted both Birgit and Henrik politely. They all sat down around the coffee table and there was a long moment of oppressive silence. Finally Patrik spoke.

‘Well, I realize this was a bit sudden, but I’m grateful you could see me on such short notice.’

‘We were just wondering if something has happened. Have you found out anything new? We haven’t heard from you in a while…’ The sentence petered out and Birgit looked hopefully at Patrik.

‘The investigation is progressing slowly but surely, and that’s about all I can say at this point. The murder of Anders Nilsson has also thrown a whole new light on the case.’

‘Yes, that’s obvious, but have you determined whether the person who murdered Anders is the same person who murdered our daughter?’

Birgit’s chatter had a frenetic tone to it that made Karl-Erik check an impulse to lean forward and place a soothing hand on hers. Today, he had to steel himself against assuming the protector role in which he was so well practised.

For a moment he allowed himself to drift away in his mind, away from the present to a past that now seemed so distant to him. He looked around the living room with something that resembled distaste. They had fallen so easily for the temptation, one could almost smell the blood money. The house in Kålltorp was more than they ever dared dream of when the children were small. It was big and airy, with the fine details from the Thirties preserved, even as they had indulged all the modern creature comforts. With the salary from his job in Göteborg, they could finally afford all of this.

The room they were sitting in was the largest room in the house. Much too over-furnished for his taste, but Birgit had a penchant for shiny, glittery objects and everything was as good as brand-new. About every three years, Birgit would begin to complain that everything looked so worn out. She would tell him how bored she was of everything in their house, and after a few weeks of her entreating looks he usually gave in and pulled out his wallet. It was as though she could keep re-inventing herself and her life over and over again, by replacing everything. At present she was into a Laura Ashley period, and the room was so full of rose patterns and flounces that it felt suffocatingly feminine. Karl-Erik knew that he wouldn’t have to tolerate it for more than a year, max. If he got lucky on the next redecoration Birgit would be partial to Chesterfield armchairs and the English hunting motif. On the other hand, if he was unlucky it would probably be tiger stripes next time.

Patrik cleared his throat. ‘I have a number of questions, and I’d appreciate your help in clarifying a few matters.’

Nobody said anything so he continued. ‘Do you know anything about how Alex and Anders Nilsson happened to know each other?’

Henrik looked shocked, and Karl-Erik said he had no idea. It pained him to say that, but it couldn’t be helped.

‘They were in the same class, but that was so many years ago.’

Birgit squirmed nervously as she sat on the sofa next to her son-in-law.

Henrik said, ‘I recognize the name. Didn’t Alex have some of his paintings for sale at the gallery?’

Patrik nodded. Henrik went on, ‘I don’t understand, was there supposed to be some further connection between them? What reason could there be for someone to murder both my wife and one of her artists?’

‘That’s precisely what I’m trying to work out.’ Patrik paused before he continued. ‘Unfortunately we were also able to confirm that they had an intimate relationship.’

In the silence that followed, Karl-Erik saw many emotions vying on the faces of the two people sitting across from him, Birgit and Henrik. He himself was only mildly surprised, but it quickly gave way to acceptance. What the police officer had said must be true. It was only natural if one considered the circumstances.

Birgit held her hand over her mouth in an expression of horror, and Henrik’s face slowly lost all its colour. Karl-Erik saw that Patrik Hedström was not enjoying his role as the harbinger of bad news.

‘That can’t be right.’ At a loss, Birgit looked at the others but found no support. ‘Why would Alex have a relationship with someone like that?’ She gave Karl-Erik an urgent look, but he refused to meet her eyes and instead stared down at his hands. Henrik said nothing; he looked as if he had collapsed.

‘You don’t know whether they continued to stay in contact after you moved away?’ asked Patrik.

‘No, I can’t imagine they would. Alex cut all her ties when we moved away from Fjällbacka.’ Again it was Birgit who spoke while Henrik and Karl-Erik sat in silence.

‘There’s another thing I’d like to ask about. You moved to Göteborg in the middle of the term when Alex was in the eighth grade. Why was that? The move seemed very sudden.’

‘There was nothing strange about it. Karl-Erik got a fantastic job offer that he simply couldn’t refuse. He had to decide quickly; they needed someone right away. So that’s why it all happened so fast.’ She wrung her hands incessantly as she talked.

‘But you didn’t register Alex in any school in Göteborg, did you? Instead she started at a boarding school in Switzerland. What was the reason for that?’

‘With Karl-Erik’s new job we found ourselves in much improved financial circumstances, and we simply wanted to give Alex the best opportunities we could,’ said Birgit.

‘But weren’t there any good schools in Göteborg?’ Patrik implacably hammered away with his questions. Karl-Erik couldn’t help admiring his commitment. Once he had also been that young and enthusiastic. Now he was just tired.

Birgit went on, ‘Of course there were, but just imagine what a social network she could acquire by going to a boarding school like that. There were even a couple of princes at the school. Just think what contacts like that could do for a girl.’

‘Did you go to Switzerland with Alex?’

‘Naturally we went down there to register her at school, if that’s what you mean.’

‘Well, that wasn’t quite what I meant.’ Patrik looked in his notebook to refresh his memory.

‘Alexandra left here in the middle of spring semester 1977. She was registered at the boarding school in the spring of 1978, and that was also when Karl-Erik began his job here in Göteborg. My question is therefore, where were you during that year?’

A furrow had formed between Henrik’s eyebrows, and he shifted his gaze back and forth between Birgit and Karl-Erik. Both were avoiding his eyes. Karl-Erik felt a grinding pain spreading outward from his heart area and slowly increasing in strength.

‘I don’t understand what you’re getting at with all these questions. What does it matter whether we moved in ’77 or ’78? Our daughter is dead and you come here asking us questions as if we’re the guilty ones. There must have been some mistake somewhere. Someone wrote it down wrong in some register, that’s what it must be. We moved here in the spring of ’77 and that’s when Alexandra began school in Switzerland.’

Patrik gave Birgit an apologetic look as she got more and more upset. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Carlgren, to be causing you any discomfort. I know you’re going through a difficult time, but I have to ask these questions. And my information is correct. The two of you didn’t move here until spring 1978, and for the whole year before that there is nothing to prove that you were even in Sweden. So I have to ask once again: where were you during the year between spring of ’77 and spring of ’78?’

With desperation in her eyes Birgit turned to Karl-Erik for help, but he knew that he could no longer give her the kind of help she wanted. In the long run, he believed that he was doing this for the good of the family; he also knew that, in the short run, it might crush her. But he had no choice. He gave his wife a sad look and then cleared his throat.

‘We were in Switzerland. Alex, my wife and I.’

‘Hush, Karl-Erik, don’t say any more!’

He ignored her. ‘We were in Switzerland because our ten-year-old daughter was pregnant.’

He wasn’t surprised to see Patrik drop his pen in his consternation over what he’d just said. Whatever the police officer had reckoned on, or suspected, it was something else entirely to hear it said out loud. How could anyone have imagined something so awful?

‘My daughter was exploited—raped. She was only a child.’

He felt his voice break and pressed his fist hard against his lips to try to collect himself. After a while he was able to go on. Birgit refused even to look at him, but now there was no turning back.

‘We could tell that something was wrong, but we didn’t know what it was. She had always seemed happy, secure. Sometime in the beginning of the eighth grade she began to change. She turned quiet and uncommunicative. None of her friends came over anymore, and she could be away for hours at a time. We didn’t know where she was. We didn’t take it that seriously, thinking it was only a phase she was going through. A preliminary stage to her teenage years maybe, I don’t know.’

He had to clear his throat again. The pain in his chest was increasing. ‘It wasn’t until she was in her fourth month that we discovered she was pregnant. We should have seen the signs earlier, but who could believe…We couldn’t even imagine…’

‘Karl-Erik, please.’ Birgit’s face was like a grey mask. Henrik looked numb, as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing, which he probably couldn’t. Even to his own ears Karl-Erik could hear how incredible it sounded when he spoke the words aloud. For twenty-five years the words had been gnawing at his guts. Out of consideration for Birgit he had stifled his need to speak out, but now the words came pouring forth and he couldn’t stop them.