According to the map, they were a bit higher up on the shore, near the Russian cemetery.
She pulled on her shirt and shorts and walked up towards the woods. There it was. Slowly, an idea was taking shape in her mind. She stopped short. The Russian cemetery. Of course. The murders had nothing at all to do with illegal workers or Russian coal transports. The key was here, on Gotska Sandon. Right in front of her eyes. How could she have been so stupid? She ran down to the beach and grabbed her things.
She thought about Morgan Larsson’s visits to Gotska Sandon. When was it he’d come here? Always on the same date, over the past fifteen years. She got her notebook out of the rucksack. He was usually here between 21 and 23 July. When was Tanya murdered? It was in the summer, but she couldn’t remember the exact date. She cursed herself for not writing it down. She pulled out her mobile to ring the head ranger. It was dead. No coverage. Shit. That meant she couldn’t ring Knutas either.
She checked the map to find the quickest route back to camp.
BY THE TIME Jacobsson finally reached the campsite, she was parched and drenched with sweat. She was dying for a drink of water, but there was no time for that. First she had to do two things: get in touch with Knutas, and then find out the date that Tanya was murdered. She also wanted to get home as fast as possible. Her mobile still wasn’t working. Near the rows of outhouses, she ran into a couple of young guys who were emptying the latrines. They told her that the next boat to Gotland was leaving in fifteen minutes.
She dashed into the cabin and threw all her things into the rucksack, then raced over to the museum. Luckily, it was open. Not a soul was in sight. She bounded up the stairs and grabbed the folder she was looking for. Five minutes until the boat left.
On her way down to the beach, she saw that the mobile phone signal was back, and she rang Knutas. He answered immediately.
‘Hi,’ she panted. ‘I’ve worked out how everything fits together. The murders have to do with an old case. A German girl who came here to Gotska Sandon on holiday with her family, an unsolved homicide from 1985.’
Her mobile beeped, warning her that the battery was almost used up.
‘Damn it. If we get cut off, I’ll ring from the boat. I’m going on board right now; it leaves in a few minutes. I think the father is the killer. He’s Russian.’
‘OK, start over. I’m not following you.’
‘You remember the case, don’t you? It was in the middle of the summer, a German family whose daughter was murdered, in 1985.’
‘Oh right, I do now. Although I was working in uniform back then, so I don’t recall much about it. But good God, that was twenty years ago, and the case was never solved.’
‘Exactly, but now I’ve…’
The connection was broken. The battery was dead. Karin swore as she ran down towards the boat, where the gangway was being pulled on board.
‘Wait!’ she shouted, waving her arms.
A boy standing on shore, who was tossing the last bag on to the ship’s deck, signalled to the captain.
Jacobsson thanked him as she stumbled on board, gasping for breath.
It was with relief that she recognized the captain, Stefan Norrstrom, from before, and she quickly went up to the wheelhouse.
‘Hi again. Could I borrow your phone?’
‘Absolutely. Has something happened?’
‘Yes, you might say that,’ replied Jacobsson as she opened the folder containing the old newspaper clippings.
She wanted to find out the date that the German woman was murdered before she talked to Knutas. The captain cast a curious glance at the folder over her shoulder.
‘I have to ring the police. My crappy mobile isn’t working.’
‘Sometimes there are problems with coverage out here.’
‘The battery’s dead, and I left the charger back home in Visby,’ she said, with a gesture of resignation.
She had reached the pages with the clippings about the murder of Tanya Petrov. In her mind, she went over what she knew. Morgan Larsson always travelled to Gotska Sandon on the same date. He’d visited the island every few years over the past fifteen years. And each time he’d been here from 21 July until 23 July.
Her eyes fell on the date of the murder. Tanya had been killed in the early hours of 22 July 1985. Her body had been found on the twenty-third. Jacobsson took a deep breath. The connection was crystal clear.
‘What do you have there?’ asked the captain as he handed her the phone. ‘Is that about the girl who was murdered out here?’
‘Yes,’ said Jacobsson curtly as she took the phone. She had neither the time nor the desire to tell an outsider about what she’d discovered.
She began punching in Knutas’s number.
‘Do you have any water?’ she asked.
‘Of course.’
Stefan Norrstrom got up from his chair and turned away to get a bottle of water out of the refrigerator. Jacobsson happened to catch a glimpse of his expression. It had changed completely.
AT POLICE HEADQUARTERS in Visby, Knutas contacted the German police and asked them to find out what had happened to the family from Hamburg that had spent a holiday on Gotska Sandon in July 1985. A holiday that had ended in tragedy. Could it be the father, Oleg Petrov, who had finally decided to avenge his daughter’s death?
While he waited to hear back from the Germans, he summoned to his office everyone from the investigative team who was available. He told them the facts that Karin Jacobsson had managed to tell him before their conversation was cut off.
‘So it’s the father who’s supposedly the murderer?’ said Kihlgard, sounding dubious. ‘After such a long time? Why now?’
‘Yes, that’s the big question,’ said Wittberg. ‘Something must have triggered the whole chain of events.’
‘I remember that case,’ interjected Prosecutor Smittenberg. ‘The girl went missing, and at first a search party was organized; a lot of officers from here helped look for her. Then her body was found in the water off the coast of Gotska Sandon; she’d been raped and murdered. A terrible story. There was something about some young men who had come ashore from a boat and later disappeared. They were never caught.’
‘I can’t understand why Karin hasn’t reported in again,’ said Knutas, annoyed. ‘She was supposed to ring me as soon as she was on board.’
‘Why don’t you try the boat?’ suggested Wittberg. ‘Ask them to call her on the loudspeakers.’
‘Oh, right. Good idea.’
Knutas looked a bit embarrassed, but he got the police switchboard on the line, and was connected to the
‘
Knutas introduced himself.
‘Would it be possible to contact a specific individual on board, by using the loudspeaker system, for example?’
‘Who do you want to speak to?’
‘A police officer named Karin Jacobsson.’
‘Do you want to wait on the line or ring back in a few minutes?’
‘I’d like to wait.’
‘OK.’
Knutas heard the captain announcing Karin’s name, asking her to come to the wheelhouse immediately. Then he was back on the phone.
‘If she’s on board, she should be here in a minute. This boat isn’t very big.’
‘OK.’
Several minutes passed.
‘Shouldn’t she have responded by now?’
‘Yes. She can’t be on board.’
‘Could you try one more time?’
