distance, the ring wall and the sea.
On the windowsill stood a healthy-looking white geranium that had only recently stopped blooming in anticipation of winter. Jacobsson had given it to him for his birthday several years earlier. He had brought the potted plant with him from his old office, along with his beloved old desk chair made of oak with a soft leather seat. It spun nicely, and he often made use of that feature.
He filled his pipe, taking great care. His thoughts were on Henry Dahlstrom’s darkroom and what he had seen there. When he thought about the man’s crushed skull, he shuddered.
Everything pointed to a drunken brawl that got out of hand and came to an unusually brutal end. Dahlstrom had presumably taken a buddy down to the basement to show him some photographs, and they started arguing about something. Most cases of assault and battery started out that way, and every year some drunk or addict on Gotland was murdered.
In his mind he thought back, trying to summon up a picture of Henry Dahlstrom.
When Knutas had joined the police force twenty-five years earlier, Dahlstrom was a respected photographer. He worked for the newspaper Gotlands Tidningar and was one of the most prominent photographers on the island. At the time Knutas was a cop on the beat, patrolling the streets. Whenever big news events occurred, Dahlstrom was always the first on the scene with his camera. If Knutas met him at private functions, they would usually have a chat. Dahlstrom was a pleasant man with a good sense of humor, although he had a tendency to drink too much. Knutas would sometimes meet him heading home from a pub, drunk as a skunk. Occasionally he would give him a ride because the man was too drunk to get home on his own. Back then Dahlstrom was married. Later on he quit his job with the newspaper and started his own company. At the same time, his alcohol consumption seemed to increase.
Dahlstrom was once found passed out inside the thirteenth-century ruin of Saint Karin’s church in the middle of Stora Torget, the central marketplace in Visby. He was lying on a narrow stairway, asleep, when he was discovered by a startled guide and his group of American tourists.
Another time he walked boldly into the Lindgard restaurant on Strandgatan and ordered a real feast consisting of five courses with wine, strongbeer, aquavit, and cognac. Afterward he asked for a cigar imported directly from Havana, which he puffed on as he enjoyed yet another liqueur. When the bill was presented, he openly admitted that, unfortunately, he was unable to pay due to a shortage of funds. The police were called. They took the sated and tipsy man down to the police station, but he was released a few hours later. Dahlstrom probably thought all the trouble was worth it.
Knutas hadn’t seen Dahlstrom’s wife in years. She had been notified about the death of her exhusband. Knutas hadn’t yet spoken to her, but she was scheduled to be interviewed later in the day.
He sucked on his unlit pipe and leafed through Dahlstrom’s file. A few minor misdemeanors, but nothing serious. His friend Bengt Johnsson, on the other hand, had been convicted twenty or more times, mostly on burglary and minor assault charges.
It was strange that they hadn’t heard from him.
Emma Winarve sat down on the worn sofa in the teachers’ lounge. She was holding her mug of coffee in both hands to warm them. It was drafty in the old wooden building housing the Kyrk School in Roma. Her mug was inscribed with the words: “World’s Best Mom.” How ridiculous. A mother who had cheated on her husband and who, for the past six months, had also neglected her children because her mind was always on something else. She was fast approaching forty, and also fast losing all control.
The clock on the wall told her that it was nine thirty in the morning. Her colleagues were already crowding around the table, chatting congenially. The smell of coffee had permanently seeped into the curtains, books, papers, file folders, and the dirty-yellow wallpaper. Emma didn’t feel like taking part in the conversation. Instead, she looked out the window. The leaves on the oak trees hadn’t yet fallen. They were in constant motion, sensitive to the slightest gust of wind. In the yard next to the school, shaggy gray sheep stood huddled together, grazing. Their jaws were grinding as they ceaselessly chewed their cud. Roma’s stone church with eight hundred years of history behind it stood there as steadfast as always.
Everything was going on as usual, no matter what storms might be raging inside of someone. It was incomprehensible that she could sit here, seemingly unperturbed, sipping endless cups of coffee, and no one even noticed a thing. Such as the fact that her mind was in the grip of a psychological battle. Or that her whole life was in the process of going to hell. But her colleagues merely sat around her, carrying on subdued conversations. As if nothing were happening.
In her mind’s eye, video clips were playing in rapid succession: her daughter Sara’s birthday when all Emma could do was cry; she and Johan rolling around in a hotel bed; her mother-in-law’s searching eyes; Filip’s cello concert, which had totally slipped her mind; her husband Olle’s face when she once again rejected him.
She had gotten herself into an impossible situation.
Six months earlier she had met a man who had ended up changing everything. They got to know each other in connection with last summer’s police hunt, when Emma’s best friend became one of the killer’s victims, and she herself came very close to meeting the same fate.
Johan had stepped into her path, and she couldn’t just walk by him. He was so unlike everyone else she had ever known; so alive and intense about everything he did. She had never laughed so much with anyone else or felt so calm, almost spiritual. He made her discover sides of herself that she didn’t even know existed.
She quickly fell madly in love with him, and before she knew it, he had totally invaded her life. When they made love she was filled with a sensuality that she had never experienced before. He made her relax. For the first time she didn’t give a thought to how she looked or how he might judge her expertise in bed.
To be one hundred percent in the moment was something that she had known only from giving birth to her children.
Yet eventually she chose to break it off with him. For the children’s sake, she decided to stay with Olle. When the drama of the serial murders was over and she woke up in the hospital with her family around her, she realized that she lacked the will to go through with a divorce, even though she felt that Johan was the great love of her life. Security counted more, at least at the time. With much anguish she put an end to their affair.
The whole family went to Greece on vacation because she needed to get away and have some distance from everything. But it hadn’t turned out to be that simple.
When they were back home, Johan had written to her. At first she considered throwing out the letter, unread. But her curiosity got the better of her. Afterward she regretted it.
It would have been best for all parties concerned if she hadn’t read even one line of that letter.
Karin Jacobsson and Thomas Wittberg walked down to Ostercentrum as soon as the investigative meeting was over. The pedestrian street between the shops was almost deserted. The wind and rain were having their effect. They hurried into the mall at Obs supermarket and shook off the worst of the rain as they stood inside the glass doors.
The shopping center was quite modest: H amp;M, Guldfynd, a couple of beauty parlors, a health food store, a bulletin board. Obs with its rows of cashiers, then the bakery and pastry shop, the customer service counter, the Tips amp; Tobak betting parlor and tobacco shop. Restrooms in the back, a recycling station for bottles, and the exit leading to the parking lot. Along with weary retirees and the parents of small children, needing to rest their feet, drunks occupied the benches in the mall whenever the weather was bad.
Most of them kept a hip flask in a bag or pocket, but as long as they didn’t do any drinking inside, the security guards left them in peace.
Jacobsson recognized two local winos sitting on the bench nearest the exit. They were filthy and unshaven, dressed in worn-out clothes. The younger man was leaning his head against the wall behind him and staring indifferently at the people walking past. He wore a black leather jacket and tattered running shoes. The older man had on a blue down jacket and knit cap. He was leaning forward with his head in his hands. Greasy locks of hair had crept out from under his cap.
Jacobsson introduced herself and Wittberg, even though she was fully aware that the two men knew who they were.
“We haven’t done anything. We’re just sitting here.”
The man in the cap glanced up, his eyes crossed. And it’s not even eleven o’clock in the morning, thought Jacobsson.
“Take it easy,” Wittberg told them. “We just want to ask you a few questions.”
