It’s almost impossible for her to understand yesterday’s events.
She slides her hand beneath the pillow. The wounds on her wrists ache. She remembers how the girls went on provoking Daniel when they found his weak spot.
Elin twists inside the sheets as she pictures Daniel’s face. He has a pleasant mouth and sympathetic eyes. It’s ridiculous how she’s been faithful to Jack except for that misadventure with the French photographer. She hadn’t intended to be faithful. She knows that they’re divorced and that he will never come back to her.
After she takes a shower, Elin rubs body lotion into her skin, using the no-name brand provided by the hotel. She rewinds the bandages around her wrist and, for the first time in more years than she can recall, she dresses in the clothes she wore the day before.
During the car ride back, they talked about Vicky’s key ring. Daniel did his best to recall Vicky mentioning someone named Dennis. He was frustrated that he couldn’t remember anything.
Her stomach has butterflies when she thinks about Daniel Grim. She feels as if she’s falling from a great height—and enjoying every minute.
She roots around in her purse and finds an eyeliner pencil and applies it lightly along her eyelids. Her movements are slow and her face shows her conflicting emotions.
It had been very late when they arrived at his house in Sundsvall. A gravel path led through an old garden, and the dark silhouettes of fruit trees waved in the wind before a small red house with a white veranda.
If he’d asked her to come inside, she would have done so. If he’d asked her to sleep with him, she’d have done that, too. But he hadn’t asked. He was careful and pleasant, and when she’d thanked him for his help, he’d said that taking this trip had been much better than any amount of therapy. She’d missed him as she watched him walk through the low gate and head toward his house. She’d stayed in her car for a while before she’d driven back to the center of the city and checked into First Hotel.
She can hear her cell phone purr in her purse, which is next to the fruit bowl in the living room. She hurries to answer it. It’s Joona Linna.
“Are you still in Sundsvall?” the detective inspector asks.
“I’m just about ready to check out of the hotel,” Elin says as a wave of fear rushes through her. “What’s happened?”
“Nothing, don’t worry,” he’s quick to say. “I just need some help with one thing if you have the time.”
“What’s it about?”
“If it’s not too much trouble, I want you to ask Daniel Grim about something.”
“I can do that,” she says in a low voice, a big smile crossing her face.
“Ask him if Vicky has ever mentioned someone named Tobias.”
“Dennis and Tobias,” she says, thoughtfully.
“Just Tobias. Tobias is the only lead to Vicky we have left.”
110
The sun is fairly high in the sky by the time Elin Frank pulls away from the hotel. A few minutes later, she drives along Bruksgatan, past its neat single-family homes, and parks beside a thick hedge. She leaves the car and walks up to the low gate.
Daniel Grim’s house is well cared for. Its black gabled roof appears new and the gingerbread trim on the veranda is covered in bright, fresh paint. This was the home Daniel and Elisabet Grim shared until just over a week ago. Elin shivers as she rings the doorbell. She waits for a long time, listening to the wind moving through the leaves of the birch trees.
A motorized lawn mower on one of the lawns nearby shuts off.
Elin rings the bell a second time. She waits a bit more, then decides to walk around the house.
Sparrows take flight from the lawn. A dark blue settee sways gently beside two large lilac bushes. Daniel is lying there, asleep. His face is pale and he’s curled up as if he’s freezing.
Elin keeps walking toward him and he wakes with a jerk. He sits up and looks at her with a question in his eyes.
“It’s too cold to be sleeping outside,” Elin says as she sits down on the settee beside him.
“I couldn’t go inside the house,” he says, and shifts so she has more room.
“The police called me this morning,” she says.
“What did they want?”
“Did Vicky ever mention someone named Tobias?”
Daniel wrinkles his forehead and Elin is about to ask his forgiveness for her intrusion when he stops her.
“Wait,” he says quickly. “He must be the guy with the loft apartment in Stockholm. Vicky lived with him for a while.” His tired face breaks into a large, warm smile. “Wollmar Yxkullsgatan 9.”
Elin is surprised. She takes her cell phone out of her purse as Daniel shakes his head.
“How the hell did I remember the address like that?” he asks. “I forget everything these days. I can’t even remember my parents’ middle names.”
Elin gets up from the settee and steps into the sunshine. She calls Joona to tell him what she found out. While she’s speaking to him she can hear him start to run, and before she says goodbye, she hears a car door slam.
111
Elin’s heart is skipping as she sits back down next to Daniel in the settee. She feels the warmth of his skin next to her leg. He’s found an old wine cork between the pillows and is peering at it nearsightedly.
“We took a course in wine and decided to start collecting. Nothing special, but some wines are very nice. I got them as Christmas presents … from Bordeaux. Two bottles of Château Haut-Brion, 1970. We were going to drink them when we retired, Elisabet and I. People make tons of plans like this. We even saved some marijuana. It was a joke. We often joked that we’d finally act like kids when we were old, kids who play loud music and sleep in.”
“I should head back to Stockholm,” Elin says.
“Yes, you should.”
They swing for a while and the ropes of the hammock creak against the hooks in the trees.
“You have a nice house,” Elin says softly.
She places her hand on his. He turns it over and their fingers intertwine. They sit in silence as they continue to swing. The hammock keeps creaking.
Her glossy hair falls into her face, and she sweeps it away and meets his gaze.
“Daniel,” she says.
“Yes,” he replies in a whisper.
Elin looks at him. She thinks she’s never needed the tenderness of another human being as much as now. Something about his gaze and his wrinkled forehead touches her deeply. She kisses his mouth softly, smiles, and kisses him again. She takes his face between her hands and kisses him deeply.
“Dear Lord,” he says.
Elin kisses him again and skims her lips over his beard stubble. She opens her blouse and pulls his hand to her breast. He touches her gently and caresses her nipple.
She kisses him again and slips her hand into his shirt. His stomach trembles at her touch.
Waves of desire go through her body and she feels weak. She wants either to lie in the grass with him or sit astride his hips.
She closes her eyes and pulls him to her. He says something that she doesn’t hear. Her blood pulses inside her. She feels his warm hands on her body but then he stops and pulls away.
“Elin, I can’t …”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean …” She tries to breathe more calmly.
“I just need some time,” he says. There are tears in his eyes. “It’s too much for me now, but I don’t want to scare you off.”
“You’re not scaring me off,” she says and tries to smile.
Elin gets up and adjusts her clothes as she leaves the garden. She gets into her car.
Her cheeks are flushed and her legs are still trembling as she drives away from Sundsvall. Five minutes later, she has to turn off onto a forest road. Her panties are soaking and her heart hasn’t stopped racing. Her blood throbs through every vein. She looks at her face in the rearview mirror. Her eyes are heavy and glistening and her lips are swollen.
She can’t remembe
r the last time she felt such sexual power stream through her body. Daniel seems unimpressed by her beauty. Instead, it feels as if he can look right into her heart.
She tries to breathe slowly and waits, but finally she looks around the small forest road. She shifts her dress and lifts her ass so she can pull her panties down over her hips. She touches herself quickly with both hands. Her orgasm comes violently, in quick bursts.
She’s panting and sweating with two fingers inside herself. She looks out the windshield at the magical rays of sunlight streaming through the branches of the Scotch pines.
112
Night is falling as Flora heads to the recycling bins behind the grocery store to look for cans and bottles. She can’t stop thinking about the murders in Sundsvall. She’s started to fantasize about Miranda and her life at Birgittagården.
She imagines Miranda wore suggestive clothing, smoked, and swore. She stops thinking about the girl as she passes the grocery store’s loading bay. She looks in the cardboard boxes stacked near the dock. Then she keeps going.
She starts to imagine Miranda as a child playing hide-and-seek with some friends outside of a church. She sees her cover her eyes and start to count to one hundred. A little girl is running among the gravestones and laughing in an exaggerated way, already a bit frightened. Flora’s heart is fluttering.
She stops beside the bin for old newspapers and cardboard boxes and puts down her plastic bag of empty bottles and cans. She goes up to the container for clear glass and shines her flashlight into it. The light leaps over both broken and whole bottles. In one corner, Flora spies a bottle that she can get some money for. She reaches in and gropes around, since she can’t look in at the same time. Something touches her. It feels like someone is stroking the top of her hand. A second later, she cuts her fingers on a shard of glass. She snatches her arm out and backs away.
She can hear a dog bark far away and then she hears the slow, prolonged crash of glass inside the large bin.
Flora runs away. Her chest hurts and she can’t catch her breath. Her wounded fingers are burning. She looks around. The ghost was hiding among the glass bottles, she thinks.
I see the dead girl as a child. Miranda haunts me because she wants to show me something. She hasn’t left me alone since I lured her to this side by my séance.
Flora sucks the blood from her fingertips and relives how the girl tried to catch and hold her hand. She thinks that the girl tried to hiss something. She can hear it now: Someone was there and witnessed the whole thing. There weren’t supposed to be witnesses, but there was one anyway. One witness.
Flora starts to walk again as quickly as she can. She’s looking back over her shoulder and screams when a man bumps into her. He smiles and mumbles an apology as she hurries away.
113
Joona walks briskly through the entrance to the building at Wollmar Yxkullsgatan 9. He runs up the stairs to the top floor and rings the bell beside the only door. His heart starts to calm down as he waits for an answer. The brass plaque screwed to the door bears the engraved name Horácková. There’s a piece of tape above it on which the name Lundhagen has been scrawled. He knocks as hard as he can, but he can’t hear a thing inside the apartment. He opens the mail slot and peeks inside. It’s dark but he can see the floor is covered with mail and flyers. He rings the doorbell again, waits, and then pulls out his cell phone to call Anja.
“Can you search for Tobias Horácková?”
“No such person,” she replies a moment later.
“Horácková at Wollmar Yxkullsgatan 9.”
“There’s a Viktoriya Horácková at that residence,” Anja says. She keeps typing.
“What about a Tobias Lundhagen?”
“Let me just tell you that Viktoriya Horácková is the daughter of a diplomat from the Czech Republic.”
“What about a Tobias Lundhagen?”
“Yes, he lives there. Either he rents it from her or he lives with her.”
“Thanks.”
“Joona, wait,” Anja says hurriedly.
“Yes?”
“Three small details. One: You can’t go into a diplomatic apartment without a warrant from the Justice Department—”
“Okay,” he says.
“Two: You have a meeting with the Internal Review Board in twenty-five minutes.”
“Can’t make it.”
“Three: At four thirty this afternoon, you have a meeting with Carlos.”
Joona is sitting straight-backed in a hard armchair at the office of the Public Prosecutor for Police Cases. The head of the Internal Review Board is reading the report from the first interview with Joona in a monotone. Then he hands it to Joona so he can approve and sign it.
Mikael Båge has a drop of snot hanging from his nostril. He sniffs it into his nose as he takes the report back and hands it to Helene Fiorine, the lead secretary. Then he starts to read the transcript of the testimony given by the witness Göran Stone from Säpo.
Three hours later, Joona is walking the short stretch from Kungsbro Bridge to the police station. He takes the elevator to the eighth floor, walks past Carlos Eliasson’s assistant, and knocks on the chief’s door. He takes his place at the table where his colleagues Petter Näslund, Benny Rubin, and Magdalena Ronander are already waiting.
“Joona, I am a reasonable person, but this is going too far,” Carlos says. He’s feeding his paradise fish.
“Bringing in the national SWAT team!” Petter says with a grin.
Magdalena is sitting silently looking at the table.
“Tell them you’re sorry,” Carlos says.
“Because I wanted to save the life of a little boy?” asks Joona.
“No, because you know you were wrong.”
“I’m sorry,” Joona says.
Petter giggles. His forehead is sweaty.
“I’m going to have to suspend you from active service,” Carlos says, “until the internal investigation is concluded.”
“Who is taking over?”
“The preliminary investigation is being shut down—”
“Vicky Bennet is alive,” Joona interrupts.
“—probably tomorrow afternoon, once the prosecutor has the chance to formally close it.”
“She’s alive!”
“Get a grip!” Benny says. “I’ve also taken a look at that security film—”
Carlos silences Benny with a wave of his hand.
“There’s no indication that it was Vicky and the boy on that security film at the gas station.”
“She left a message on her mother’s cell-phone voice mail two days ago,” Joona says.
“Vicky doesn’t have a phone and her mother is dead,” Magdalena says in a serious tone.
“You’re starting to get sloppy, Joona,” Petter says in a pitying voice.
Carlos clears his throat and hesitates before he takes a deep breath. “This isn’t easy for me,” he says slowly.
Petter looks expectantly at Carlos, while Magdalena stares at the table and Benny doodles on a piece of paper.
“I’ll go on leave for a month,” Joona says.
“That’s good,” Carlos says. “That will solve—”
“As long as I can enter a specific apartment first.”
“An apartment?”
Carlos’s face darkens and he sits down behind his desk as if all his strength has just left him.
“It was purchased seventeen years ago by the ambassador from the Czech Republic. He gave it to his twenty-year-old daughter.”
“Forget it,” says Carlos.
“The daughter hasn’t lived there for twelve years.”
“Doesn’t matter. As long as it’s owned by a person with diplomatic immunity, paragraph 21 doesn’t apply to it.”
Anja Larsson comes into the office without knocking. Her blond hair is arranged in a bun on the top of her head, and she’s wearing glittery lip gloss. She walks right up to Carlos, looks at him, and gestures toward his cheek.
“You have
a spot of dirt on your face,” she says.
“Is it my beard?” Carlos asks weakly.
“What?”
“Maybe I forgot to shave this morning,” Carlos says.
“It doesn’t look good at all.”
“I see,” he says as he looks down.
“I need to talk to Joona. Are you done here?”
“No,” Carlos says. “We’re—”
Anja leans over his desk. The red beads of her necklace jostle in her cleavage. Carlos is about to remind her that he’s married when his eyes fasten on the shadow that disappears into her low-cut blouse below the lowest bead.
“Are you about to have a nervous breakdown?” Anja asks.
“Yes, I am,” Carlos says weakly.
Their colleagues stare as Joona gets up from his chair and walks out of the office with Anja.
They head toward the elevators and Joona presses the call button.
“So what do you want, Anja?” he asks.
“Oh, here you are, all stressed again,” she says, and offers him a piece of candy in a red-and-white-striped wrapper. “I just wanted to tell you that Flora Hansen called back and—”
“I need a decision on a search warrant.”
Anja shakes her head. She peels the paper from the candy and pops it into Joona’s mouth.
“Flora wants to give you your money back.”
“She lied to me.”
“She just wants us to listen. She said that there is a witness. She really did sound frightened and she kept repeating that you have to believe her. She doesn’t want money. She just wants us to listen to her.”
“I must get into the apartment at Wollmar Yxkullsgatan 9.”
“Oh, Joona.” Anja sighs.
She takes the paper off another piece of candy and holds it to Joona’s mouth as she puckers her lips. Joona eats the candy. Anja laughs happily and unwraps a third piece and holds it up. It’s too late. Joona is already in the elevator.
114
There are balloons hanging from a door with a scratched window in the Wollmar Yxkullsgatan building. The high voices of children singing comes from the inner courtyard. Joona opens the door and looks in: It’s a small garden with a lawn and an apple tree. In the last light of the evening sun, he can see a table set with colorful paper napkins and cups, as well as streamers and balloons. A pregnant woman is sitting on a white plastic chair. She is made up to look like a cat. She’s calling something to the children. Joona is hit with a pang of longing.