Camilla Lackberg Crime Thrillers 4-6: The Stranger, The Hidden Child, The Drowning

‘Now you sound like Sofie,’ said Kerstin, smiling again. ‘But I know you’re right. Maybe I’ll take a walk this afternoon.’

‘Good,’ said Gösta and closed the door. Hanna didn’t look at him. She was already headed for the station.

Patrik carefully set down the plastic bag containing the knapsack on his desk. He didn’t know whether it was necessary, since the Borås police had already gone through the contents three and a half years earlier, but for safety’s sake he put on rubber gloves, and not only for forensic reasons. He didn’t like the idea of touching the dried blood on the knapsack.

‘What a lonely life. So tragic,’ said Martin, who stood next to him, watching.

‘Yes, it seems as though her son was the only person she had in the world,’ said Patrik with a sigh as he unzipped the knapsack.

‘Couldn’t have been easy. Having a kid and raising him all by herself. And then the accident …’ Martin paused, ‘and the murder.’

‘And then no one believed her,’ Patrik added as he took an object out of the knapsack. It was a music player with built-in headphones. He doubted that it still worked. It seemed to have been damaged in the fall from the bridge, and it rattled ominously when Patrik picked it up.

‘How far did he fall?’ asked Martin, pulling up a chair and sitting down next to Patrik’s desk.

‘Ten metres,’ said Patrik, still concentrating on emptying the knapsack.

‘Ugh,’ said Martin with a grimace. ‘Couldn’t have been a pretty sight.’

‘No,’ said Patrik. The photos from the scene flashed before his eyes. He changed the subject.

‘I’m worried about having to divide up our resources now that we have to work on two investigations at once.’

‘I know,’ said Martin. ‘And I can guess what you’re thinking. That we made a mistake letting the media force us into a situation where we dropped the investigation of Marit’s death. But what’s done is done, and we can’t change anything now. Except distribute our favours more wisely.’

‘Yeah, I know you’re right,’ said Patrik, taking out a wallet which he laid on the desk. ‘But I’m still having a hard time forgetting about all the things we should have done differently. And I have no idea how to proceed with the Lillemor Persson investigation.’

Martin thought for a moment. ‘All we have to go on are the dog hairs and the videos we got from the production company.’

Patrik opened the wallet and began going through it. ‘Yeah, that’s about what I was thinking. The dog hairs present a very interesting lead that we have to keep working on. According to Pedersen it’s a rather unusual breed of dog; maybe there’s a list of owners, clubs, something we can use to trace the owner. I mean, with only two hundred dogs like that in all of Sweden, it should be relatively easy to trace an owner in this area.’

‘Let’s hope so,’ said Martin. ‘Do you want me to do it?’

‘No, I was thinking Mellberg should do it. Then it’ll be done properly.’ Martin gave him a dirty look, and Patrik laughed. ‘It was a joke! Of course I want you to do it!’

‘Ha ha, that’s hilarious.’ Martin turned serious and leaned over the desk. ‘What have you got there?’

‘Nothing particularly exciting. Two twenties, a ten-krona, an ID card, and a piece of paper with his home address and his mother’s phone numbers, both home and mobile.’

‘Is that all?’

‘No, here’s a picture of him and Eva.’ He held it up for Martin. A young Rasmus had his arm around his mother’s shoulders, and they were both smiling at the camera. Rasmus towered over his mother, and there was something protective about his pose. It must have been taken before the accident. After that their roles had been reversed. Patrik carefully put the photo back in the wallet.

‘There are so many lonely people,’ said Martin, staring into the middle distance.

‘Yes, there certainly are. Are you thinking of anyone in particular?’

‘Well … I was thinking of Eva Olsson. But also of Lillemor. Imagine not having anyone to mourn you. Both of her parents dead. No other relatives. Nobody to notify. The only thing she leaves behind are a couple of hundred hours of recorded reality shows that’ll gather dust in some archive.’

‘If she’d lived closer I would have gone to her funeral,’ Patrik said quietly. ‘No one deserves to be buried without someone mourning her. But I hear the funeral is in Eskilstuna, so I won’t be able to attend.’

They sat in silence for a while. They could both envision a coffin being lowered into the ground, with no family and no friends present. So inexpressibly sad.

‘A notebook,’ Patrik suddenly exclaimed, breaking the silence. It was a thick black book with gold edges. It seemed that Rasmus had taken good care of it.

‘What’s in it?’ asked Martin.

Patrik leafed through some of the pages, which were covered with writing. ‘I think they’re reminders about the animals at the pet shop. Look here: “Hercules, pellets three times a day, give fresh water often, clean cage every day. Gudrun, one mouse per week, clean the terrarium once a week.”’

‘Sounds like Hercules is a rabbit or guinea pig or something, and I would guess that Gudrun is a snake.’ Martin smiled.

‘Yes, he was certainly meticulous, that Rasmus. Just as his mother said.’ Patrik went through all the pages in the notebook. They all seemed to be notes about the animals. There was nothing to arouse their interest.

‘That seems to be everything.’

Martin sighed. ‘Well, I didn’t expect we’d find anything earthshattering. But we could always hope.’

Patrik was putting the notebook at the bottom of the knapsack when a sound made him react. ‘Wait, there’s something else in here.’ He took out the notebook again, put it down on the desk, and reached his hand into the bag. When he pulled out what was lying on the bottom, he and Martin gave each other an incredulous look. This wasn’t anything they’d expected to find. But it proved beyond all doubt that there was a connection between the deaths of Rasmus and Marit.

Ola didn’t sound particularly happy when Gösta rang him on his mobile. He was at work and would have preferred that they wait to interview him. Gösta, annoyed at Ola’s superior attitude, was not in a generous mood; he told Ola to expect them at the Inventing company within half an hour. Ola muttered something about ‘the power of authority’ in his melodic Norwegian-Swedish, but he knew better than to object.

Hanna still seemed to be in a bad mood, and Gösta wondered why as they got into the car and headed for Fjällbacka. He got the feeling that she might have problems on the home front, but he didn’t know her well enough to ask. He only hoped that it wasn’t something serious. She didn’t seem at all interested in small talk, so he left her alone. As they drove past the golf course at Anrås, she looked out of the window and said, ‘Is this a good golf course?’

Gösta was more than willing to accept this peace offering. ‘The best! The seventh hole is notorious. I once made a hole-in-one here – not on the seventh though.’

‘Well, I’ve learned enough about golf to know that a hole-in-one is good,’ said Hanna with a smile, the first of the day. ‘Did they break out the champagne in the clubhouse? Isn’t that the custom?’

‘Indeed,’ said Gösta, his face lighting up at the memory. ‘They did offer me champagne, and all in all it was the most fantastic round of golf. My best to date, actually.’

Hanna laughed. ‘Yes, it’s probably no exaggeration to say that you’ve been bitten by the golf bug.’

Gösta looked at her with a smile, but he had to shift his eyes back to the road when they entered the narrow road past Mörhult. ‘Well, I don’t have much else to do,’ he said, and his smile died.

‘You’re a widower, I understand,’ Hanna said kindly. ‘No kids?’

‘No.’ He didn’t elaborate. He didn’t want to talk about the boy, who would have been a grown man by now, if he’d survived.

Hanna didn’t ask anymore, and they rode in silence all the way to Inventing. When they climbed out of the car they saw many curious eyes turned towards them. An annoyed Ola met them as soon as they stepped inside the doors.

‘Well, this had better be important, now that you’re disturbing me at work. Everybody is going to be talking about this for weeks.’

Gösta understood what he meant, and actually they could have waited another hour. But there was something about Ola that rubbed Gösta the wrong way. His reaction might not be dignified or professional, but that’s how he felt.

‘Let’s go into my office,’ said Ola. Gösta had heard Patrik and Martin describe Ola’s extremely orderly home, so he wasn’t surprised when he saw the office. Hanna, on the other hand, hadn’t heard that information, and so she raised an eyebrow. The desk was clinically clean. Not a pen, not a paper clip marred the shiny surface. The only thing on the desk was a green blotter to write on, and it was placed in the exact centre of the desktop. Against one wall stood a bookcase filled with binders of correspondence. Arranged in tight, upright rows, with neatly handwritten labels. Nothing was out of place.

‘Have a seat,’ said Ola, pointing to the visitor chairs. He sat down behind the desk and leaned his elbows on the desktop. Gösta couldn’t help wondering whether he was going to get shiny spots on his suit from all the polish that must have been applied. He could probably see his face in it.

‘So what’s this about?’