‘And you waited until now to tell me this?’ said Anna, pretending to look insulted. ‘Bring out the ice cream before I disown you!’
Erik sighed when he saw Louise’s car skid into the parking area in front of the office. She almost never came here, so the fact that she was here now did not bode well. She’d also tried to reach him by phone a little while ago. Kenneth had mentioned it when Erik came back after a quick trip to the shops. For once, he’d been able to tell his colleague the truth about where he’d been.
He wondered why Louise was so determined to get hold of him. Could she have found out about his affair with Cecilia? No, the fact that he was sleeping with some other woman wasn’t enough of a motivation to make her get in the car and go driving through the slushy snow. He suddenly froze. Could she have found out that Cecilia was pregnant? Had Cecilia broken their agreement, even though it had been her idea in the first place? Had her desire to hurt him and to seek revenge turned out to be greater than her wish to receive a monthly payment to support herself and the child?
He saw Louise get out of her car. He was paralysed by the thought that Cecilia might have given him away. He should never underestimate a woman. The more he thought about it, the more likely it seemed that she had sacrificed the money for the satisfaction of destroying his life.
Louise came in the front door. She looked upset. When she got closer, he could smell how the stench of wine enveloped her like a thick miasma.
‘Are you out of your mind? Did you drive here drunk?’ he snarled. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that Kenneth was pretending to be very interested in whatever was on his computer screen. But it didn’t make any difference, because he couldn’t help hearing what was being said.
‘To hell with that,’ replied Louise, slurring her words. ‘I drive better when I’m drunk than you do sober.’ She swayed a bit, and Erik glanced at his watch. Three in the afternoon, and she was already sloshed.
‘What do you want?’ He just wanted to get this over with. If she was going to rip apart his world, she might as well get on with it. He had always been a man of action, never flinching from unpleasantness.
But she didn’t heap accusations upon him about Cecilia and say that she knew about the child; she didn’t tell him to go to hell and say that she was going to take everything he owned. Instead, she put her hand in her coat pocket and pulled out something white. Five white envelopes. Erik knew at once what they were.
‘You were in my workroom? You went through my desk?’
‘Isn’t it obvious? You never tell me anything. Not even who has been sending you threatening letters. Do you think I’m crazy? Do you think I don’t know that these are the same letters they’ve been writing about in all the newspapers? Just like the ones that Christian got. And now Magnus is dead.’ Her anger boiled over. ‘Why didn’t you ever show them to me? Some sick person is sending threats to our house, and you don’t think I have the right to know about it? When I’m home alone all day, unprotected?’
Erik cast a glance at Kenneth, annoyed that his colleague could hear Louise yelling at him. But when he saw Kenneth’s expression, he froze. He wasn’t looking at the computer screen any more. He was staring at the five white envelopes that Louise had tossed on the desk. His face was pale. For a moment he looked at Erik, then he turned away. But it was too late. Erik understood.
‘Have you received letters like this too?’
Louise was startled by Erik’s question. She turned to look at Kenneth. At first he didn’t seem to have heard because he continued to study a complicated Excel chart showing a breakdown of income and expenses. But Erik wasn’t about to let him off the hook.
‘Kenneth, I asked you a question!’ It was Erik’s voice of command. The same as it had always been for all the years they’d known each other. And Kenneth reacted in the same way as he had when they were boys. Still the compliant one who always followed, submitting to Erik’s authority and need to control. Slowly he spun his chair around until he was facing Erik and Louise. He clasped his hands in his lap and said in a low voice:
‘I’ve received four. Three in the post and one that was left on my kitchen table.’
Louise turned pale. Her anger towards Erik had just been given more fuel, and she turned to face him. ‘What is this all about? First Christian, then you and Kenneth? What have the three of you done? And what about Magnus? Did he get letters like this too?’ She glared at her husband, then at Kenneth, and then back at Erik.
None of them spoke for a moment. Then Kenneth looked at his colleague and shrugged.
Erik shook his head. ‘Not that I know of. Magnus never mentioned it, but that doesn’t really mean anything. Do you know?’ He directed his question at Kenneth, who also shook his head.
‘No. If Magnus ever told anyone about something like this, it would have been Christian.’
‘When did you get the first one?’ Erik’s mind had started working through the new information. Twisting and turning it, trying to come up with a solution and then take control.
‘I don’t really recall. But before Christmas, at any rate. Sometime in December.’
Erik reached for the letters lying on his desk. Louise had retreated into herself, all her anger gone. She was still standing in front of her husband, watching him sort through the letters according to the date they were sent. He put the earliest one on the bottom and then picked it up to peer at the postmark again.
‘December fifteenth.’
‘So that’s about the same time as the one I got,’ said Kenneth, his eyes on the floor.
‘Do you still have the letters? Can you check the dates on the ones that were delivered in the post?’ asked Erik, speaking in his most efficient and businesslike voice.
Kenneth nodded and took a deep breath. ‘When the fourth letter was delivered, it was lying next to one of our kitchen knives.’
‘Are you sure you didn’t put the knife there yourself?’ Louise was no longer slurring her words. Fear had sobered her up, lifting the fog from her brain.
‘No, I’m positive that I cleared everything away, and there was nothing on the table when I went to bed.’
‘Was the front door locked?’ Erik still sounded cold and matter-of-fact.
‘No, it wasn’t. I don’t always remember to lock up at night.’
‘Well, all of the letters I got came with the post,’ said Erik, riffling through the envelopes. Then he happened to recall something he’d read in the articles about Christian.
‘Christian was the first one to get threatening letters. They started arriving a year and a half ago. You and I didn’t get any until three months ago. So what if this whole thing has to do with him? What if he’s the real target of whoever is sending these letters, and we’re just mixed up in this mess because we know him?’ Erik’s voice took on an indignant tone. ‘Damn him if he knows something about this and isn’t talking. Subjecting me and my family to some lunatic without warning us.’
‘But he doesn’t know that we’ve received letters too,’ Kenneth objected, and Erik had to admit that he was right.
‘No, but he’s going to find out now, in any case.’ Erik gathered up the envelopes in a neat stack and slapped them against the desktop.
‘So you’re thinking of going to talk to him?’ Kenneth sounded anxious, and Erik sighed. Sometimes he really couldn’t stand his colleague’s fear of any sort of conflict. He’d always been that way. Kenneth always went with the flow, never said no, always said yes. Which had actually worked to Erik’s advantage, since there could only be one person in charge. So far he had been that person, and that’s the way it was going to stay.
‘Of course I’m going to talk to him. And to the police too. I should have done that long ago, but it wasn’t until I read about Christian’s letters that I started taking the whole thing seriously.’
‘And it’s about time,’ muttered Louise. Erik glared at her.
‘I don’t want to upset Lisbet.’ Kenneth raised his chin, and there was a defiant glint in his eye.
‘Someone went into your house, put a letter on the kitchen table, and set a knife next to it. If I were you, I’d be more worried about that than about whether Lisbet might get upset. She’s home alone for a large part of the day. What if someone gets in while you’re not there?’
Erik saw that Kenneth had already had the same thought. At the same time that he was annoyed by his colleague’s lack of enterprise, he was trying to ignore the fact that he too had failed to report the letters. On the other hand, none of them had been placed directly inside his house.
‘All right, let’s do this. You go home and pick up the letters that you’ve received, and we can take all of them over to the police station together. Then they can get started on this whole matter at once.’
Kenneth stood up. ‘I’ll leave now and be right back.’
