The Stonecutter

‘May we come in for a moment?’ Patrik asked. Lilian nodded and led them into the kitchen, where Niclas was sitting at the table. He too had the flush of anger on his cheeks. Patrik looked around for Charlotte and Erica. Niclas noticed and said, ‘Erica is helping Charlotte take a shower.’

‘How is Charlotte doing?’ Patrik asked as Lilian poured coffee for him and Ernst and placed the cups in front of them on the kitchen table.

‘She’s been completely out of it. But it worked wonders for Erica to come over. It’s the first time Charlotte’s been able to get up and take a shower and change her clothes since …’ he hesitated, ‘it happened.’

Patrik was wrestling with himself. Should he speak to Niclas and Lilian in private and ask Erica to break the news to Charlotte, or was she strong enough to join them? He decided on the latter option. If she was on her feet now, and also had the support of the family, then it ought to go all right. And Niclas was a doctor, after all.

‘Why exactly are you here?’ said Niclas in confusion, giving first Ernst and then Patrik a puzzled look.

‘I think we should wait until Charlotte can join us.’

Both Lilian and Niclas seemed content to wait, but they exchanged a hasty, inscrutable glance. Five minutes passed in silence. Small talk would have felt out of place under the circumstances.

Patrik looked around the kitchen. It was pleasant enough, but obviously the domain of a world-class obsessive-compulsive. Everything was sparkling clean and arranged in straight lines. A bit different to his and Erica’s kitchen, he mused, where there was most often total chaos in the sink while the dustbin overflowed with packaging from frozen meals that could be heated in the microwave. Then he heard a door open, and there stood Erica holding Maja asleep in one arm. Beside her stood Charlotte, fresh from the shower. The astonished look on Erica’s face quickly changed to concern, and she slipped her other hand under Charlotte’s elbow to guide her friend to a kitchen chair. Patrik didn’t know how Charlotte had looked before, but now she had a little colour in her face and her eyes were clear and alert.

‘What are you doing here?’ Charlotte asked in a voice that was still hoarse from several days spent alternating between shrieks and silence. She looked at Niclas, who shrugged his shoulders to indicate that he didn’t know either.

‘We wanted to wait for you before we …’ Patrik’s words failed him as he searched for a good way to present what he had to say. Thankfully Ernst kept his mouth shut and let him handle the situation.

‘We’ve received some new information about Sara’s death.’

‘You’ve found out something else about the accident? What is it?’ said Lilian excitedly.

‘It looks as though it wasn’t an accident.’

‘What do you mean? Why wouldn’t it look like an accident?’ demanded Niclas in obvious frustration.

‘It wasn’t an accident at all. Sara was murdered.’

‘Murdered? What do you mean? She drowned, didn’t she?’ Charlotte looked confused, and Erica grabbed her hand. Maja was still asleep in Erica’s arms, unaware of what was playing out around her.

‘She was drowned, but not in the sea. The medical examiner didn’t find seawater in her lungs as he’d expected. It was fresh water, apparently from a bathtub.’

The silence around the table felt explosive. Patrik looked with concern at Charlotte, and Erica fixed her big eyes on her husband’s face, obviously alarmed.

Patrik understood that the family was in shock, and he began cautiously asking questions to bring them back to reality. Right now he thought that was the best approach. Or at least he hoped it was. In any case, that was his job, and for the sake of both Sara and her family he had to get on with the interview.

‘So now we need to go over in detail the chronology of everything Sara did that morning. Which of you saw her last?’

‘I did,’ said Lilian. ‘I saw her last. Charlotte was lying down in the basement resting, and Niclas had driven off to work, so I was taking care of Sara for a while. Just after nine she said she was going over to Frida’s house. She put on her coat and went out. She waved as she left,’ said Lilian in an empty, mechanical tone of voice.

‘Could you be more precise than just past nine o’clock? Was it twenty after? Five after? How close to nine was it? Every minute will have to be accounted for,’ said Patrik.

Lilian thought it over. ‘I suppose it was about ten after nine. But I can’t say for sure.’

‘Okay, we’ll check and see if any of the neighbours saw anything, so maybe we can get the time corroborated.’ He made a note in his book and went on: ‘And after that no one saw her?’

They shook their heads.

Ernst asked brusquely, ‘So what were the rest of you doing at that time?’

Patrik cringed inside and cursed his colleague’s less than sensitive interviewing technique.

‘What Ernst means is that procedural routine requires us to ask both you and Charlotte the same thing, Niclas. Purely routine, as I said, just to be able to rule you out as suspects as quickly as possible.’

His attempt to dilute the impact of his colleague’s question seemed to work. Both Niclas and Charlotte replied without showing great emotional distress, and they seemed to accept Patrik’s explanation for this uncomfortable question.

‘I was at the clinic,’ said Niclas. ‘I start work at eight.’

‘And you, Charlotte?’ Patrik asked.

‘As Mother said, I was lying down in the basement, resting. I had a migraine,’ she replied in a surprised voice. As if she were shocked that a couple of days earlier she could have viewed that as a big problem in her life.

‘Stig was at home too. He was upstairs resting. He’s been bedridden for a couple of weeks,’ Lilian explained. She seemed annoyed that Patrik and Ernst dared to ask about her family’s activities.

‘Ah yes, Stig, we’ll need to talk to him too eventually, but that can wait a bit,’ said Patrik, who had to admit that he had completely forgotten about Lilian’s husband.

A long silence followed. There was the shriek of a child from another room, and Lilian got up to go and fetch Albin. Like Maja he had slept through all the commotion. He still looked half asleep and wore his usual serious expression as Lilian carried him into the kitchen. She sat down on her chair again and let her grandson play with the gold chain she wore round her neck.

Ernst took a breath and seemed about to ask some more questions, but a warning glance from Patrik made him stop. Patrik continued instead, cautiously. ‘Can you think of anyone at all who you think might have wanted to harm Sara?’

Charlotte gave him an incredulous look and said in her hoarse voice, ‘Who would want to hurt Sara? She was only seven years old.’ Her voice broke, but she was making an obvious effort to control herself.

‘So none of you can think of any motive? Nobody who wanted to hurt you, nothing like that?’

That last question prompted Lilian to speak. The red patches of anger she’d had on her face when they arrived flared up again.

‘Somebody who wanted to hurt us? I should say so. There’s only one person who fits that description, and that’s our neighbour Kaj. He hates our family and has done everything to make our life a living hell for years!’

‘Don’t be stupid, Mamma,’ said Charlotte. ‘You and Kaj have been fighting with each other for years, and why would he want to hurt Sara?’

‘That man is capable of anything. He’s a psychopath, I have to tell you. And take a closer look at his son Morgan. He’s not right in the head, and people like that are capable of anything. Just look at all those psychos that have been let back out on the streets and what they’ve done. He’d be locked up if anyone had any sense!’

Niclas put his hand on her arm to calm her down, but it had no effect. Albin whimpered at the tone of their voices.

‘Kaj hates me, simply because he’s finally met somebody who dares to contradict him. He thinks he’s a big shot just because he was the manager of a company and has plenty of money. That’s why he and his wife can move here and everyone in town treats them like some sort of royalty. He’s totally inconsiderate, so I wouldn’t put anything past him.’

‘Stop it, Mamma!’ Charlotte’s voice now had a new sharpness to it, and she glared at her mother. ‘Don’t go making a scene.’

Her daughter’s outburst made Lilian stop talking. She clenched her jaws hard with anger, but she didn’t dare contradict her daughter.

‘So,’ Patrik hesitated, a bit shocked by Lilian’s vehement remarks, ‘besides your neighbour you can’t think of anyone who has anything against your family?’

They all shook their heads. He closed his notebook.

‘Well then, we have no more questions for the time being. Once again, I just want to say that I’m truly sorry for your loss.’

Niclas nodded and got up to show the policemen out. Patrik turned to Erica.