‘My dear sir, that’s not really so surprising, is it? Simon is suffering from depression. He needs peace and quiet for a while. But soon he’ll be back on his feet, and then he’ll move back over here. I’m convinced of that.’
‘How long has he been gone?’
‘I don’t really remember. Now wait a minute, I think it’s been since Christmas.’
‘So over four months.’
Veronika Hammar didn’t reply. Her lips were pressed so tight that they were no more than a thin line.
‘What about your daughter Mikaela? How often do you see each other?’
‘Ah, yes, Mikaela.’ She sighed a bit and then smiled again. ‘My little daughter. She’s always gone her own way.’
‘She lives quite a distance from here. Is it difficult to stay in contact?’
‘Difficult? Why should it be difficult? Some people have children living in Australia.’
‘From what I understand, you never see each other. Is that right?’
‘What do you mean? Why wouldn’t I be in touch with my daughter? That’s the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard.’
She stood up abruptly and gathered up the coffee cups. Without a word she carried the dishes into the house. Knutas waited as he tried to decide how to proceed without risking another outburst. The sun was hot, and he was sweating under his jacket. He suddenly felt trapped in the small courtyard and wanted to leave. There was something very unpleasant about Veronika Hammar. She was unpredictable. It was impossible to foresee how she was going to react. Why had she denied so strongly that her daughter had broken off their relationship?
That was as far as he got with his muddled thought before Veronika appeared in the doorway, her expression tense.
‘I’d like you to leave now,’ she said, sounding stressed.
‘But I do have a few more questions,’ Knutas said. ‘How are things with your eldest son, Mats?’
A cloud passed over Veronika’s face. She had to gasp for air before she repeated her demand.
‘Didn’t you hear what I said? Get out of my house. Now,’ she snarled, spraying saliva.
Knutas stared at her in astonishment. He saw a hint of insanity in her eyes. This woman is off her rocker, he thought.
He stood up and slipped past her.
‘Thanks for the coffee,’ he said quietly.
AFTER HIS MEETING with Veronika Hammar, Knutas rang Jacobsson at the police station. She told him that everything was going smoothly, and his presence wasn’t immediately needed. He decided to pick up his car at headquarters and drive out to have a look at the site of the fire near Holmhallar. The techs had finished their search of the area without finding anything new, other than to reinforce the theory that the fire was the work of an arsonist. It had apparently started in the kitchen, which indicated that the perp had also been inside the cabin.
Knutas was frustrated by the fact that they didn’t have the faintest lead on a possible suspect. The perpetrator’s shadow kept dancing before his eyes but he couldn’t distinguish any features. There was no pattern. First a man was poisoned to death, and by all indications it was the wrong victim who had died. Now they were dealing with an attempted murder by arson. This was clearly not someone who was a hardened criminal or a cunning murderer. In fact, all the circumstances pointed to someone whose actions were prompted by intense emotions, someone who had a strong personal connection to Veronika Hammar. Maybe it’s one of her children, thought Knutas. Or else she has a relationship with somebody that we don’t know about yet. He needed to talk to her again. And her children too. He would have preferred to meet all four of them in person, but her son Simon refused to answer any phone calls. And both Mats and Mikaela were still away.
Knutas drove south along the coast road. It was a beautiful day, offering a hint of the summer that would soon arrive. The birches were sprouting leaves, and spring flowers were just starting to come up along the road.
As he approached the exit for Holmhallar, he happened to think about Sten Bergstrom. Had anyone interviewed the man again? Knutas reminded himself to check with Rylander. Viktor Algard’s former competitor lived only a kilometre or so from the summer-house area where the fire had occurred. Was that just a coincidence? Maybe Bergstrom’s fight with Algard over clients was not the only thing he was hostile about. He was about the same age as Veronika Hammar, and they were practically neighbours out here in the country. When they interviewed Bergstrom, he and Karin had confined their questions to the conflict between the two companies owned by Algard and Bergstrom. Could there be something else behind their animosity?
There was one other person that he kept thinking about: Elisabeth Algard. After the initial interview, he had essentially crossed her name off the list of potential suspects. She did have an alibi for the night of the fire, but was it possible that he had let her off too easily? He was well aware that it could be disastrous for a detective to lock himself into one line of thought at the beginning of an investigation.
The police in Stockholm had finally got hold of Veronika’s son, Simon, and had gone over to talk to him. The interview had produced very little. The officers reported that he seemed physically weak and in a much too fragile psychological state to have committed a murder. That’s one way of looking at it, thought Knutas sarcastically. Normally the conclusion would be just the opposite. People committed murder precisely because they were in a fragile psychological state.
Before reaching the Holmhallar bed and breakfast, he turned on to a narrow forest road. The area around the cabin was still cordoned off.
Knutas spent a long time walking through the rubble on Veronika Hammar’s property. All that remained of the cabin were the soot-covered foundations. He looked in the direction of the sea. It wasn’t visible from where he stood, but he could hear the roar of the surf. Knutas tried to conjure up the image of Veronika in this setting. Her contorted face appeared before him, as she’d looked during her outburst at the hospital. An emotionally unstable woman. Unpredictable and perhaps dangerous. Could she be the person behind all of this? He toyed with that thought as he made his way over to the charred remains of the cabin. A woman could easily have killed Viktor Algard. Death by poisoning required no physical strength and it was quick and effective, with no blood.
Veronika had a complicated relationship with her children, and that was putting it mildly. Her parents were dead, as was her ex-husband who was father to three of the children. When Jacobsson had looked closer into Veronika’s family history, she had been unable to find out who was the father of the eldest son, Mats. Veronika had attended the party at the conference centre, and she had just started having an affair with the victim. Her art studio was located in the courtyard where Algard had his own pied-a-terre. She had definitely been at the crime scene, since her fingerprints were everywhere. She could have staged the whole episode with the cocktail. It was true that the bartender had confirmed that he’d served her a drink, but who was to say that Veronika hadn’t asked someone to make the request and then doctored the drink herself?
And she might have a good motive. Maybe Viktor Algard had changed his mind and decided to stay with his wife. Jealousy was a common reason behind a murder.
An enraged woman who felt hurt, insulted, and betrayed – and on top of all that was emotionally unstable – might be capable of anything. That sort of person could be seriously dangerous.
Knutas scanned the scene of destruction. Had Veronika Hammar gone so far as to sacrifice her own cabin in order to fool the police?
Questions whirled through his mind.
Feeling discouraged, he walked back to his car.
WHEN KNUTAS RETURNED from his expedition to Holmhallar, he ate a late lunch at his desk, wolfing down two cheese sandwiches with a cup of coffee. Then he slowly spun his chair as he filled his pipe. He was trying to gather all the impressions from the day, all the thoughts he’d had about Veronika Hammar’s odd personality.
The police had interviewed two of her sons. Neither of them had an alibi. What sort of motive could Andreas possibly have?
The relationship between him and his mother seemed basically chilly and sporadic, but it wasn’t any worse than in many other families. He hadn’t been willing to say very much during the interview.
Through an aid worker in Bolivia, Jacobsson had finally managed to get in touch with the daughter, Mikaela. She seemed to have left behind both Gotland and her mother for good. A few years back she had broken off all contact with Veronika and had never tried to resume their relationship. She said that she simply couldn’t take any more of her mother’s martyr act, which wreaked havoc with her own life and had done so ever since she was a child. Of the four children, she was the most candid, explaining that her mother had nearly annihilated her. Veronika lacked any sense of boundaries, and she had prevented Mikaela from living her own life. Or rather, a decent life, as
