Erica followed her down the hall to the living room, where they both sat down. She wondered, panic-stricken, how to begin, but Marta spoke first.
‘Have you made any progress in the murder investigation?’ she asked. ‘I’m sorry that we couldn’t be of more help when you were here last time, but as I said, I really knew nothing about our finances.’
‘I know what the money was for. Or rather, who it was for,’ said Erica. Her heart was thumping in her chest.
Marta gave her a puzzled look but didn’t seem to know what she meant.
With her eyes fixed on the old woman, Erica said gently: ‘In November 1945, my mother gave birth to a son who was immediately put up for adoption. She gave birth at the home of her aunt, in Borlange. I think the man who was murdered, Erik Frankel, made the payments to your husband on behalf of that child.’
It was utterly silent in the living room. Then Marta looked away. Erica saw that her hands were shaking.
‘I thought as much. But Wilhelm never said anything to me about it, and… well, part of me didn’t want to know. He has always been our son, mine and Wilhelm’s, and we never loved him any less just because I hadn’t given birth to him myself. We’d wanted a child for such a long time, tried for so long, and… well, Goran arrived like a gift from Heaven.’
‘Does he know that…?’
‘That he’s adopted? Yes, we’ve never hidden that fact from him. But to be honest, I don’t think he’s ever given it much thought. We were his parents, his family. We did talk about it on occasion, Wilhelm and I, about how we might feel if Goran wanted to find out more about his… biological parents. But we always told ourselves that we’d cross that bridge when we came to it. And Goran never seemed to want to find out about them, so we let it be.’
‘I like him,’ said Erica impulsively, trying to get used to the idea that the man she had met here last time was actually her brother. Hers and Anna’s, she corrected herself.
‘He liked you too,’ said Marta, her face lighting up. ‘And part of me reacted subconsciously to the fact that you do look a bit alike. There’s something about your eyes… I’m not really sure, but you have similar features.’
‘How do you think he would react if…’ Erica didn’t dare finish her question.
‘Considering how much he always talked about having siblings when he was a child, I think he would welcome a little sister with open arms.’ Marta smiled and seemed to have already recovered from the initial shock.
‘Two sisters,’ Erica said. ‘I have a younger sister named Anna.’
‘Two sisters,’ repeated Marta, shaking her head. ‘How about that? Life never ceases to amaze me. Even at my age.’ Then she turned serious. ‘Would you mind telling me something about your mother… his mother?’ She gave Erica a searching look.
‘I’d be happy to tell you about her,’ said Erica, and then she recounted the story about Elsy and how she came to give up her son for adoption. She talked for a long time, for more than an hour, trying to do justice to her mother and her situation as she talked to this woman who had loved and brought up the son that Elsy had been forced to give away.
When the front door opened and a cheerful voice called from the hall, they both jumped.
‘Hi, Mamma. Do you have visitors?’ Footsteps approached the living room.
Erica looked at Marta, who nodded to give her consent. The time for secrets was over.
Four hours had passed and Paula and Martin were starting to despair. They felt like a pair of moles, trapped in the pitch-dark, though their eyes had now grown sufficiently accustomed to the gloom that they were able to distinguish the contours of the room.
‘This really isn’t how I imagined things would go,’ said Paula, sighing. ‘Do you think they’ll send out a search party soon?’ she joked, although she couldn’t help sighing again.
Martin was busy rubbing his shoulder, which was throbbing after several attempts to break down the door. He was going to have some serious bruises to show for this.
‘He must be long gone by now,’ said Paula, feeling frustration well up inside her.
‘There’s a good chance you’re right,’ Martin agreed, which only made her feel even more frustrated.
‘He certainly has a lot of creepy souvenirs down here.’ Paula squinted, trying to make out the outlines of some of the things that filled the shelves in the basement room.
‘They’re probably mostly Erik’s,’ said Martin. ‘From what I understood, he was the collector.’
‘But all these Nazi artefacts… They must be worth a fortune.’
‘No doubt. A person who devotes most of his life to collecting things is bound to end up with a lot of stuff.’
‘Why do you think he did it?’ Paula stared into the darkness, trying to wrap her head around what they now regarded as fact. To tell the truth, she had become convinced the minute she started looking into his alibi. That was when she got the idea to find out whether Axel Frankel’s name appeared on any other airline passenger list. When they’d checked his alibi, they had verified only that he departed on the day he had specified; it hadn’t occurred to them to see whether he had made any other trips. It was only this morning that she had learned a passenger named Axel Frankel had travelled from Paris to Goteborg on June sixteenth, and then returned on the same day.
‘I don’t know,’ Martin replied to her question. ‘It’s hard to understand. The brothers seem to have had a good relationship, so why would Axel kill Erik? What was it that triggered such a strong reaction?’
‘It must have something to do with the sudden renewal of contact between the four of them: Erik, Axel, Britta, and Frans. That can’t be a coincidence. And somehow that’s all connected to the murder of the Norwegian.’
‘I agree. But how? And why? Why now, after sixty years? It just doesn’t make sense.’
‘We’ll have to ask him. If we ever get out of here, that is. And if we ever manage to catch him. He’s probably on his way to the other side of the world right now,’ said Paula, discouraged.
‘Maybe they’ll find our skeletons down here sometime next year,’ Martin joked, but his attempt at humour was not appreciated.
‘If we’re lucky, maybe some kid will break in,’ said Paula drily.
‘Hey! You’ve got something there!’ Martin said excitedly, poking her hard in the side.
‘Whatever it is, I sincerely hope it’s worth the damage you just did to my ribs,’ said Paula, probing the tender spot where he’d jabbed her with his elbow.
‘Don’t you remember what Per said when we interviewed him?’
‘I wasn’t there. You and Gosta conducted the interview,’ she reminded him, but she was starting to sound interested.
‘Well, he said that he broke into the house through a window in the basement.’
‘I don’t think there are any windows down here. If there were, it would be a lot brighter,’ said Paula sceptically, squinting as she looked at the walls in the basement.
Martin got up and fumbled his way over to the outside wall.
‘But that’s what he said. There has to be a window. Maybe something is hanging in front of it. You said it yourself – the stuff stored in here must be worth a fortune. Maybe Erik didn’t want anyone to be able to see his collection from outside.’
Now Paula got up too and headed in Martin’s direction. She heard him say ‘ow!’ as he ran into the opposite wall, but when that was followed by ‘aha!’, she felt her hopes rise. And hope turned to triumph when Martin pulled aside a heavy curtain and daylight came flooding into the basement.
‘Couldn’t you have thought about this a couple of hours ago?’ Paula complained.
‘Hey, how about a bit of gratitude?’ said Martin cheerfully as he unfastened the latch and pushed the window open. He reached for a chair standing a metre away and put it directly under the window.
‘Ladies first!’
‘Thanks,’ Paula muttered as she climbed up on the chair and squirmed her way out through the gap.
Martin was right behind her. For a moment they both stood still to allow their eyes to adjust to the dazzling daylight. Then they set off running. They dashed up to the front door but found it to be locked, and this time there was no key above the door. That meant their jackets were locked in the house, with their mobiles and car keys. Martin was just about to run over to the nearest neighbour’s house when he heard a loud crash. He glanced in the direction the sound came from and saw that Paula, with a satisfied expression, had hurled a rock through a window on the ground floor.
‘Since we got out through a window, I thought we might as well get in the same way.’ She picked up a stick
