There was another youngster in the photo, standing separate, the image blurred and darker, as if the boy hid in the shade. His scowling face contrasted with the happiness of the others. He looked to his right and seemed to be beckoning to Klara. Brand could hardly make out his features.
The old photograph represented a perfect portrait of carefree adolescence, a sweet moment adrift in time. Death had no dominion. In a few short years, the Second World War would descend on Europe, but at this moment, the darkness to come was only a bare whisper on the wind. One might extract the ink from the photo, distill it, and thereby create a tiny sip from the fountain of eternal youth. Flipping the fragile photograph over, Brand saw writing. The light was bad. She could barely make out the faded handwriting of her great aunt Alice.
Five names: Elin, Alice, Klara, Gustav, Loke.
She stared into the unsmiling eyes of the boy in the shadow to the right of the others. Yes, here was the scion of the celebrated Voss family, one of Sweden’s wealthiest, Loke Voss. He had grown up friendly with her grandparents.
Brand heard a sound behind her. She turned to see Krister Hammar standing in the doorway of Elin’s apartment.
“Doing some snooping, Detective?”
“Um, no, not at all,” Brand said hurriedly. She slipped the old photograph into her pocket. “I was just…”
She let the words trail off.
“I have some bad news,” Krister said. “I’m afraid we’ve had a death.”
7.
Elin Dalgren, Hammar informed her solemnly, had taken a fall during the night. She suffered a “cerebral event” and passed away quietly in the early morning. They sat together in the kitchen of the homestead, at a long kitchen table made of varnished yellow wood.
“She was gone before the ambulance arrived,” Hammar said.
The news hit Brand like a heavily cushioned blow. Through the fog of her hangover and her overall feelings of depression and dislocation, she struggled to latch onto a sense of grieving and loss. She had not known the old woman, not really. Just that odd phone trans-Atlantic phone call that had summoned her to Sweden.
“Kom hit.”
Come here. The fierce insistence in Elin’s voice rendered the words more than a sweet and sunny invitation to a family get-together. Or at least that’s the way Brand had come to think of it.
Sanna had told her that Elin had family secrets to tell, “probably cake recipes,” she had said, laughing. But cake recipes did not require the level of urgency Brand heard in the old woman’s voice.
“I should have spoken to her,” she said, half talking to herself and not Hammar.
“It’s okay,” he said.
“I tried, and then she was whisked off. And why was that? The woman was afraid. You saw that!”
The words spilled out of her mouth before she could catch them. She was aware she sounded suspicious, even paranoid.
“Elin was old, Veronika,” Hammar said gently. “Old people die.”
All right, Elin, Brand thought. You ordered me to come, and I am here. But now you are gone. A brief meeting, and that was all the two of them had managed. How had Hammar translated the old woman’s words? You are here to kill the devil.
Hammar explained that Sanna and Folke sent her their apologies. They would be staying in town with relatives for several days, making arrangements for the memorial service.
“So you must extend your visit,” he said. “The ceremony and burial will be in a few weeks.”
“Weeks? Really?”
“Here the cremation takes place first, then some weeks after we gather to celebrate the life. Often only the closest relatives attend the final burial at a later date. Your presence is not expected at the burial, our grieving is a far more private affair.”
“Nice and controlled then,” Brand said.
“Yes, that way might sound indifferent, but eventually, goes the reasoning, the loss will become real.”
He hesitated. “You will have all this time, Veronika, so you can occupy yourself with the other thing I spoke about.”
The disappearing Romani girls. Mulling over her own concerns, Brand mentally dismissed the suggestion.
What do I do now? She posed the question without asking it aloud to Hammar. Skip the funeral? That didn’t seem right. Go back to Stockholm? For what purpose? Fly home? No, that would be like jumping back into the frying pan from out of the fire. Hammar sensed her uncertainty.
“I’m very sorry such a bad event happened during your visit.”
A death on her watch. The loss deepened Brand’s mood of gloom. “I thought Swedes were silent and moody,” she said. “Last night everyone was pretty chatty.”
“Alcohol,” Hammar said.
He got up and crossed the kitchen to the huge cast iron stove. “But you want coffee.” A statement, not a question.
“Yes, please.”
The man brought her a ceramic mug and a steaming glass carafe. He pushed a small pitcher of cream toward her.
“Black,” she said. The brew was strong and scalding. “Now the rumors of this country having excellent coffee are confirmed.”
Hammar nodded. He returned to the stove. A steel pot simmered above a low flame on a front burner. He shut off the heat. Using a wooden spoon, he dished warm rolled oats into a bowl. He added a splash of milk and set the bowl down in front of Brand.
Brand’s gut churned. She didn’t think she could stomach food. At the first spoonful, though, she realized she was ravenous. She helped herself to one of the half-dozen cheese smörgåsar that Hammar had arranged on a platter. As she ate she felt herself slowly coming back to life.
Cheese sandwiches for breakfast. Another of the sharp, intoxicating memories
