spoke with Mary as often as he could and even tried to buy her forgiveness by bribing her with the sweets he knew that she craved. But nothing seemed to help. Inexorably she slipped farther and farther away from him, and as the distance grew his bitterness towards his wife kept pace. Eight years after they married, Ake knew that he'd made a huge mistake, but he couldn't manage to get out of it. And even though Mary now refused to have anything to do with him, he still felt that he was her last chance at security. If he disappeared from her life, he couldn't imagine what his wife might do to the girl. He no longer had any illusions about her.
Agnes was well aware of all this. Sometimes her intuition was uncanny, and she could read people like an open book.
She was sitting at her dressing table, doing her make-up. Unbeknownst to Ake, she'd been having a passionate affair for the past six months with one of his closest friends. She pinned up her black hair, which had still not a trace of grey in it, and dabbed a little perfume behind her ears, on her wrists, and down her cleavage. She was dressed in black silk undergarments trimmed with lace; she still had a figure that would make many young girls envious.
She was looking forward to the rendezvous, which as usual would take place at Hotel Eggers. Per-Erik was a real man, unlike Ake, and she was pleased that he'd begun to talk more and more about leaving his wife. She wasn't so naive as to believe such promises from a married man, but she knew that he appreciated her skills in bed more than was healthy. His chubby little wife simply couldn't compete.
But there was still the problem of Ake. Agnes's brain began working at high speed. In the mirror she saw her daughter's plump face and the big eyes hungrily watching her.
Despite having taken a long shower and changed his clothes, Martin thought he could still smell the odour of vomit in his nostrils from the day before. The suicide and then the call from Patrik telling him that someone had attacked Maja had shaken him, and he'd been filled with a feeling of helplessness. There were so many threads in this case, so many odd things happening all at once, that for the life of him he couldn't understand how they would ever make any sense of the mess.
Outside Patrik's door he hesitated. In view of what had happened he wasn't sure that Patrik would be working today. But sounds from inside his office told him that Patrik had already come in. He knocked cautiously.
'Come in,' Patrik called out.
'I wasn't sure you'd be here today,' Martin said. 'I thought you might be at home with Erica and Maja.'
'I wanted to stay home,' said Patrik. 'But more than that, I want to catch the psycho who's doing this.'
'But did Erica really want to be at home alone?' Martin said tentatively, unsure whether that was the right thing to say.
'I wanted somebody to come over and stay with them, but she insisted everything was fine. But I did ring and talk to her friend Dan, the guy who was at our house yesterday when it happened, and he promised to drop by and look in on them.'
'Did they get any prints?' Martin asked.
'Unfortunately no. It was raining, so all the tracks had been washed away. But I sent Maja's overalls with the ashes to the lab, so we'll see what that turns up. In my view, it's merely a formality; it would be much too big a coincidence if the ashes didn't match the other sample.'
'But why Maja?'
'Who knows?' said Patrik. 'Presumably it was a warning directed at me. Something I did, or didn't do, during the course of the case. Oh, I don't know,' he said in frustration. 'But the best we can do now is to keep working full speed ahead, so that we get this solved as soon as possible. Until then none of us can relax.'
'What do we do first, interrogate Kaj?'
'Yes,' Patrik said grimly, 'we interrogate Kaj.'
'You do realize that Kaj was in custody yesterday when -'
'Yeah, of course I do,' Patrik said, sounding annoyed. 'But it doesn't mean that he isn't mixed up in this somehow. Or that he won't have to answer to other things.'
'Okay, I was just checking,' said Martin, holding up his hands defensively. 'I'll just hang up my jacket and meet you there.' He headed for his office.
Patrik was gathering up his things to go to the interrogation room when the phone rang. He saw from the display that it was Annika and picked it up, hoping that it wasn't anything important. He was really looking forward to getting into it with the shithead they had in custody. Now more than ever.
'Yes?' He could hear that his tone was curt, but Annika had a thick skin and wouldn't be offended. At least he hoped not.
But Patrik ended up listening with increasing interest and then said, 'Okay, send them in.'
He dashed over to Martin's office. 'Charlotte and Niclas are here, looking for me. We'll have to wait a bit with the interrogation until I hear what they want.'
Without waiting for a reply he ran back to his office. A few seconds later he heard footsteps and a low murmur in the corridor. When Sara's parents stepped into the room, Patrik was shocked to see how Charlotte looked. In the short time since he'd seen her last she had aged considerably, and her clothes hung loosely on her body. Niclas, too, looked tired and worn out, but not as bad as his wife. They sat down in the visitors' chairs, and during the silence that followed Patrik had time to wonder what was so important that they would come here unannounced.
It was Niclas who spoke first. 'We… we lied to you. Or rather, there are some things we didn't tell you, and that's probably almost as bad as lying.' Patrik felt his interest rising, but decided to wait Niclas out. After a moment he went on.
'Albin's injuries. The ones you thought, or believed, that I gave him. It was, it was…' He seemed to be searching for words, and Charlotte took over for him.
'It was Sara.' Her voice sounded mechanical and empty of all emotion. Patrik recoiled in his chair. That wasn't what he was expecting to hear.
'Sara?' he said, baffled.
'Yes,' said Charlotte. 'You know already that Sara had problems. She had a hard time controlling her impulses and would get the most terrible attacks of rage. Before Albin was born she turned her anger on us, but we were big enough to defend ourselves and make sure she didn't hurt herself or us. But when Albin arrived…' Her voice broke and she looked down at her hands, which lay trembling in her lap.
'Everything escalated out of our control after Albin was born,' Niclas said. 'We thought, foolishly, that maybe it would be a positive influence on Sara to have a little brother. Someone she could feel responsible for and protect. But in hindsight that was probably naive of us. She hated him and the time he demanded from us. She took all the opportunities she could to do him harm, and even if we tried to be there and watch them every second, it was impossible. She was quick…' He looked at Charlotte, who nodded feebly.
Niclas went on. 'We tried everything. A social worker, a psychologist, aggression management, medication. There was nothing we didn't try. We experimented with changing her diet, took away all sugar and all fast carbohydrates because some findings suggested that might have a positive effect. But nothing, absolutely nothing, seemed to work. Finally we were at the end of our rope. Sooner or later she was going to do serious harm to someone. We just didn't want to have to send her away. And where would we send her? So when this position at the clinic in Fjallbacka was advertised, we thought that might be the solution. A complete change of scene, with Charlotte's mother and Stig close by to help relieve some of the pressure. It sounded perfect.'
Now it was Niclas's voice that broke. Charlotte put her hand on his and squeezed it. Together they had been to hell and back, and in a way they were still there.
'I'm truly sorry,' said Patrik. 'But I also have to ask: do you have any proof of what you're telling me?'
Niclas nodded. 'I understand that you have to ask. We brought a list of everyone
