tone as the walls, so as to not disturb the aesthetics.
The elevator swished silently to the top floor. Just as Irene was about to press the doorbell, the door was yanked open. The angry twist to Niklas’s mouth took away from his handsomeness. “Is this really necessary?”
Irene replied mildly, “And a good evening to you, too, sir. Yes, our errand is really necessary, since Marianne has been murdered.”
Niklas jerked at her last word but said nothing else. He still wore the sour expression as he led them through the entry hall over a rug that was soft underfoot. He motioned them toward a large, cozy living room. The furniture and the artwork gave the room an upscale feeling. A man was sitting on the silver-gray sofa. He stood and offered his hand.
“Hi. I’m Andreas Svard.”
“Hello. I’m Criminal Inspector Irene Huss.”
“Tommy Persson here. I’m also a criminal inspector.”
“Welcome. Please sit down.” Andreas Svard was a pleasant contrast to Niklas. He treated them as welcome guests. As Irene sank into one of the plush leather armchairs, she observed the lawyer before them. Andreas Svard was six feet tall and slender. He had thick blond hair and a fairly ordinary face. Irene knew he was thirty-three years old, but he appeared younger. He wore a light gray silk shirt, chinos in a darker gray, and a wine-colored lamb’s- wool sweater—casual but obviously expensive. To her surprise, Irene could tell that he’d been crying.
“I understand why you’re here. This has been a real shock for me … what happened to Marianne, that is. In spite of how our relationship ended, we were actually still close.”
Andreas Svard turned his face away. Irene looked at Niklas, who glowered even more. Andreas appeared to be mourning, but Niklas just seemed angry.
Irene cleared her throat. “When was the last time you saw Marianne?”
Andreas cast a sidelong glance at Niklas before he answered. “We had lunch two weeks ago.”
Niklas seemed even angrier, so Irene turned to him. “What about you?”
“I haven’t seen her since last Christmas,” he growled.
“How was that?”
“She came to dinner here.”
It was obvious that he wasn’t the one who’d invited her. Irene turned back to Andreas. “Did you get together often?”
“Not that much.”
“How often?”
Andreas looked nervously at Niklas but seemed determined to tell the truth. “About once a month.”
“Why did you meet?”
The lawyer seemed truly surprised by her question. “We’ve known each other all our lives. We grew up together on the same street. Over the last year, we’d sometimes have lunch together.”
“At which restaurant did you last have lunch?”
“The fish restaurant Fiskekrogen.”
Niklas could not contain himself any longer. Half suppressing a swear word, he swiveled on his heels and stalked from the room. Andreas looked after him thoughtfully but said nothing. It seemed he was willing to tell the truth even if it enraged Niklas. At any rate, now it would be easier to interview Andreas, one-on-one. “Would it be possible for you to come down to the police station tomorrow afternoon?”
“Sure, but not till after four.”
“That’ll work for me, too.”
The police officers stood up and shook hands. Irene noticed Andreas’s hands were unusually small and well formed.
In the apartment’s hallway they saw no sign of Niklas. Irene did not raise her voice as she said, “Niklas, I need to talk to you.”
A door opened, and Niklas stuck his head out. “What do you want?”
“We need to talk to you some more. I would like you to come down to the police station tomorrow. What time can I expect you?”
“I work until four-thirty. I can’t get there until five, but five-thirty is more likely.”
Tommy let his eyes wander to the artwork in the hallway. He pointed to a framed poster. “Is that you?”
Irene turned to look at the poster.
His smile was both amused and vicious. “Shocked again?”
“No, not this time either. But what’s the poster for?”
“I was a drag-queen dancer. A poor nursing student who needed some extra cash to fill in the gaps left by his student loans.”
“Are you still dancing?”
“No.”
Niklas opened the front door to let them out.
AT SEVEN-THIRTY IN the morning, Irene and Tommy began their workday at the edge of the forest grove on the far side of Lowander Hospital’s park. Since it was a long time before full daylight, they decided to wait half an hour. The park was large and overgrown, so it would take some time to comb through it, even though the trees were bare of leaves. During the night the temperature had risen to around freezing. The sky was dark gray, which could mean either snow or sleet.
They began their search near the small grove of fir trees. There were many footprints in the thin layer of frost, but also paw prints both large and small. This was clearly a favorite spot to take dogs for walks. Where the grove ended, deciduous trees took over. Most of them had been planted more than a century ago, when the park was first founded. Right behind the hospital itself were big clumps of lilac and golden chain. As the two of them examined the densest bushes more closely, they could see that once upon a time this had been a lilac arbor. Decades of neglect had made it as thick as rain-forest vegetation. Deep among the branches, they could make out a hut.
Irene and Tommy searched for a way in and found an opening almost completely hidden by overgrowth, which appeared to be the former entrance to the arbor and from which they could clearly see the hospital’s employee back door.
They stood in the middle of the thicket. The lilac bushes grew several meters high and concealed almost totally the tiny, green-painted hut. It seemed to be surprisingly new, with a ramp leading up to the wide door. Tommy approached it and tried the handle. With a protesting creak, the door opened. Tommy went inside but came out just as quickly.
“Goddamn it. We’ve found her hidey-hole.”
Irene looked inside. A stench assaulted her nose. Its source was clear. Right by the door was a plastic bucket filled with urine and excrement. The hut was apparently a gardening shed: shovels, rakes, and other gardening tools were lined up neatly against the wall. In the middle of the floor stood a riding lawn mower. There was not much space around it, but here was where Mama Bird had made her home.
At the back of the room, she’d heaped newspapers and flattened cardboard boxes. On top of that was an old sleeping bag covered with a bloom of mildew. She had a plastic bag stuffed with newspapers and rags as her pillow.
