Knutas shrugged. ‘It’s possible that it was pure chance. Maybe he was tailing Wallin and waited outside his house until the lights were turned off.’
‘Or maybe he knew that Wallin was going out to meet somebody!’
Kihlgard sounded triumphant, as if he’d come up with something new and revolutionary.
‘Yes, well, we’ve already discussed that possibility at least a hundred times,’ said Knutas impatiently. He had no intention of standing there, wasting valuable time on such drivel.
‘The perp must have known that Wallin was planning to go out later in the evening to meet someone,’ Kihlgard went on, unperturbed. ‘He probably also knew that the person was staying at the Wisby Hotel.’
‘At the Wisby?’ Knutas raised his eyebrows. ‘How do you know that the woman he went out to meet was staying there?’
Kihlgard held out the code that Knutas had copied from the Post-it note earlier in the morning. ‘Why else would he be walking around with the hotel’s night-time code in his wallet?’
‘How did you figure that out?’
‘First I checked the bank to see if it might be his credit-card PIN number. Then I asked his wife if it was a code for the security alarm at their house. They have lots of valuable stuff, after all. But both were dead ends. So I started thinking about the fact that he was on his way to meet someone, possibly at a hotel. I checked to see which hotels had receptionists on duty at night. It so happens that after the female night manager at the Wisby was murdered, the hotel changed their system. If you arrive at the hotel after midnight and before six in the morning, you have to ring the bell and the receptionist will unlock the door for you. So anybody who doesn’t belong there can’t just come in. But if a hotel guest doesn’t want to call the receptionist, possibly because he or she wants to smuggle someone up to their room…’ Kihlgard winked at Knutas with a you-know-what-I-mean look on his face, ‘… all of the guests are given a code they can use instead of ringing the bell. I checked the hotel code, and it turned out to be a match. For security reasons, they change the number every day, and this was the code that was valid between Saturday the nineteenth and Sunday the twentieth of February.’
Knutas whistled. ‘Not bad,’ he said with admiration. ‘Very impressive. So now we’ve narrowed it down to the Wisby Hotel. There can’t be many guests to choose from. Brilliant, Martin.’
He gave his colleague a friendly pat on the back.
‘Thank you.’
They were interrupted by Karin Jacobsson, who poked her head in the door. ‘Lunch, anybody?’
Kihlgard’s face lit up. ‘That sounds like a splendid idea,’ he said, stuffing the last bit of baguette into his mouth. ‘There’s just one more thing. I compared the list of hotel guests on the night in question to the list of the people invited to the gallery opening.’ ‘Yes?’
‘Not a single woman is on both lists. All of the individuals who went to the opening and also stayed at the hotel are men.’
38
On Saturday morning Johan woke early. He lay on his side, staring at Emma’s face as he thought about what plans they should make for the wedding. Considering how turbulent their relationship had been up until now, he wanted to comply with Emma’s wishes that they get married soon. He didn’t want to risk having something else happen that might upset their plans.
He might have to give up his dream of getting married in a church, even though that would be wonderful.
It was now the end of February, and they would need at least two months to send out the invitations and make the arrangements. Having friends and family members present at the wedding was a minimum requirement. He refused to budge on that issue. But where could they hold the ceremony if not in a church? The instant he asked himself that question, an idea popped into his head — why not at the Roma cloister ruins? And then they could have the party at home. It might get a little crowded, but the house was a spacious 2,000 square feet, and if the guests spread out into all the rooms, it should be manageable. They didn’t have to serve a formal dinner; maybe it would be enough to offer a light snack and champagne, followed, of course, by coffee and wedding cake. And that would obviate the need for seating arrangements and embarrassing speeches. Just laughter and conversation, fun and celebration.
He got so wrapped up in the whole idea that he got out of bed to find a pen and paper. He wanted to make a list of people to invite, to see if it would even be possible to hold the party at home. Though if they were going to get married outdoors, maybe they should postpone the ceremony until a little later. Wait until May or June, when it was warmer and everything was green and in bloom. Of course, they would have a honeymoon. It shouldn’t be any problem finding someone to baby-sit. It would be best if they could leave Elin at home; either his mother or Emma’s parents, who lived on the island of Faro, could take care of her. And Sara and Filip could stay with them too.
Maybe they should go to Paris, he daydreamed. He couldn’t imagine a more romantic city. In the springtime or early summer. That would be perfect.
He was just about to wake Emma when something occurred to him. Shouldn’t they make their engagement official, now that he had proposed? Should he buy her an engagement ring or should they do it together? He didn’t know how such things were done. He would have to ask somebody. He ran his finger along Emma’s bare back. He had no doubt whatsoever that he loved her deeply, so it really made no difference what sort of wedding they had. The only thing that mattered was that they got married.
39
The emptiness that always followed one of those nights washed over him. Erik Mattson had gone home and spent a couple of hours recovering. Later in the afternoon he left his flat and took a bus to the Waldemarsudde Art Museum in the Kungliga Djurgarden, the Royal Deer Park.
He got off at the museum bus stop, which was close to the shore. He walked the last stretch of the way up to what had once been Prince Eugen’s home during the first half of the twentieth century. The painter prince who never became king. He was a great artist and an especially good landscape painter. During his lifetime the prince put together an enormous art collection, which he donated, along with his beautiful villa, to the Swedish nation at his death in 1947.
The building with its yellow facade was located on a hill and seemed to be rising out of the rock. It stood on the shore at the very end of a peninsula facing the Baltic Sea, which reached all the way to Stockholm on this side. The main building in which the prince had lived was called the castle, although it looked more like a mansion on a small country estate.
At the moment the museum was showing an exhibition of Swedish art from the early 1900s. Erik went inside and paid the entrance fee. He wasn’t interested in going into the beautiful gallery; instead, he headed for what had once been the prince’s private residence, the castle. There, too, artworks were on display, and hanging in one of the drawing rooms was the painting he was looking for.
He saw it from far away. The large oil painting took up an entire wall. It was the mood depicted in the painting that attracted him — the colours, the soft and gentle movements, the tragedy and the coquettishness. Reverently he sank down on a bench that had been placed in front of Nils Dardel’s masterpiece, ‘The Dying Dandy’.
The motif was bewitching, and Erik hardly noticed the other visitors. Contradictory emotions welled up inside him.
He felt so close to Dardel, as if there were some kind of secret bond between them, a connection not limited by time or space. The fact that they’d never met was of no importance. He understood that they were twin souls. That was something he’d known ever since he saw ‘The Dying Dandy’ for the first time when he was visiting the home of a fellow student many years ago.
He was seventeen at the time, insecure and searching. The painting seemed to speak directly to him. The
