Tommy started to exchange pleasantries with the young woman.
“I’ll go get three cups of coffee,” Irene chirped as she headed down the hallway. She wanted Anna-Karin to relax with Tommy before she would hit her full force.
Anna-Karin was sobbing when Irene came back. Tommy was sitting next to her and petting her hand comfortingly as he murmured consoling words. He was great at this. He glanced up at Irene with a look that said, Let’s give her a few more minutes.
“I’ve just told her about the fire in her apartment and that it was arson,” Tommy said.
Irene nodded and set the coffee mugs on the table. She calmly sipped from hers while she waited for Anna- Karin to stop crying. Just about the time Irene wondered if she’d ever stop, Anna-Karin began to pull herself together. She blew her nose into a paper tissue that Tommy pulled out of nowhere for her. Her voice shook as she asked, “Who would have done this? Why would anyone.…”
Quietly, Irene replied, “We can’t say who it is, but we know that only you can answer why.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you. You shared a secret with Linda. Poor Gunnela Hagg saw something that she shouldn’t have seen. Now both Linda and Gunnela are dead.”
Irene paused dramatically to let her words sink in before she continued. “A few evenings ago, Siv Persson received a visit from someone who knocked on her door and peered through her mail slot. Siv was home, and the killer could see her feet next to the door. Otherwise a fire might have broken out there as well. Who knows?”
“Why … why Siv?”
“She saw the murderer dressed as a ghost on the night of the murder. The only other witness was Gunnela Hagg, and now she’s dead.”
“How is Siv?”
“We’ve sent her away to a safe place. Now the killer has turned to you. Why?”
Although she cleared her throat a few times, Anna-Karin’s voice wavered. “I … I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do. You know. Or you suspect. Your loyalty to Linda is admirable but misguided. Remember, she’s dead and you’re next in line.”
Anna-Karin began to shake. “That’s … impossible. There can’t be a connection.”
With great care Tommy edged his way into the conversation. “Let us make that decision. Maybe what you know is just a tiny piece of the whole puzzle. But it might be the most important one, so much so that the killer is willing to murder you because of it.” He placed his hand lightly over hers again. “You’re protecting someone. Not Linda. Someone who is still alive. I have an idea who it might be, but you need to tell us his name.”
Anna-Karin pulled her hand back and stared at Tommy wildly. He returned her look with calm, sympathetic brown eyes.
She opened and closed her mouth a few times, as if she were trying to catch her breath, her lips pale in her white face. Irene was afraid that she was going to pass out. Instead she exhaled slowly, and tears began to slide down her face again. Her voice sounded half suffocated, but she managed to say, “Sverker. Sverker Lowander.” She received a fresh tissue and blew her nose again. It seemed that just pronouncing the doctor’s name out loud broke a dam. “Sverker and Linda were … together. They were very much in love. Linda told me that they were going to get married as soon as his divorce from Carina was final.”
Irene had had her suspicions but was surprised to have them confirmed. Sverker and Linda! He was twice her age! She gathered her scattered thoughts and remembered the effect he had even on herself. He had “it,” as people used to say. The twins would say that he was “hot.” Some have it, some don’t. And some are monogamous by nature and some are not. Sverker Lowander had proved that he certainly wasn’t monogamous when he left Barbro for Carina. This time he was having an affair with an even younger woman. Why hadn’t he admitted to it?
“Do you know how long this has been going on?” she asked.
Anna-Karin nodded and swallowed. “Since the Christmas dinner. They were together after that.”
“You know this for sure?”
“Yes. Linda told me how it happened. I promised never to tell anyone, but … I don’t know.… It must be what you’re talking about.… This must be the secret. Though I really don’t understand why. Sverker loved Linda. He never would have hurt her. He’s a gentle man.” Anna-Karin fell silent and wiped her nose on a dry corner of the tissue.
“What else did Linda tell you? Did she say how it came about?”
“As I said, it was after the Christmas dinner for the employees. We always have a dinner before we close the hospital for Christmas vacation. We went to a restaurant. I guess they used to have the dinner at the hospital, but I wasn’t there back then. Anyway, we had a Christmas smorgasbord, and there was dancing later. The older nurses went home early, but we younger ones stayed. Sverker Lowander stayed, too, and danced with all of us. He knows a bunch of different dances.”
Anna-Karin paused for a moment to think. “We were all really loaded, too. We’d been drinking mulled wine, beer, and schnapps. Linda told me later that lightning seemed to strike them when they were out on the dance floor together. They probably slipped away in a taxi when we weren’t looking.”
“Where?”
“The hospital. They couldn’t go to his place or hers. Pontus was still living with her, and Sverker had Carina. So they went to the on-call apartment.”
Irene had the unpleasant thought that history certainly had a tendency to repeat itself. “Did they meet there often after that?”
Anna-Karin nodded. “Yes, that’s the only place they could be together. On the weekends, when the hospital was empty. Then Linda broke up with Pontus. They probably could have gone to her place after that, but the neighbors.…”
“Linda told you that they were planning to get married?”
“Yes.”
“When did she tell you that?”
Anna-Karin swallowed a few times before she replied in a whisper, “The weekend before she … died. She’d come to my place because I was alone. My guy was at work. We shared a bottle of wine. That’s when she told me everything. Nobody else knew anything about it. But I guess she felt she had to confide in someone.”
“Please excuse this personal question, but what is your boyfriend’s name and why was he working on the weekend? We’ve heard he worked at a school, and they don’t work on weekends, do they?”
A tiny smile appeared on Anna-Karin’s otherwise troubled face.
“His name is Ola Pettersson, and he is the principal of Varberg’s high school. He was one of the chaperones for a school dance Saturday evening, so we weren’t together that weekend.”
Irene returned to her main line of questioning. “So in that short space of time, Sverker had already proposed?”
“Yes, that’s what she said.”
“Did she say anything else? Did she feel threatened by anyone?”
“No, not at all. She was out of her mind with happiness.”
Irene thought over what she’d just heard. Now she understood why Linda was at Lowander Hospital in the middle of the night. She asked carefully, “Do you believe that Linda was meeting Sverker the night she and Marianne were killed?”
Anna-Karin nodded and said with a shaking voice, “Yes, and I just can’t figure it out. I’ve been beating my brains out over this. I was the only person who knew that they were together and meeting at the hospital. Why were Marianne and Linda killed? It can’t have been Sverker. I know that. He loved Linda.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because of what Linda said. And you police, too, must see that he’s sick with sorrow! I can tell you he’s aged ten years in just the few weeks since Linda disappeared—and was found.”
Anna-Karin had turned her tissue into a hard ball by this point, and she started nervously plucking tufts from it. Irene sighed and reached for the wastebasket under her desk. She held it toward Anna-Karin as she said in a friendly manner, “You can throw it here.”
For the first time that day, the nurse’s pale face flushed again to the well-known bright red. It looked much
