The Gallows Bird

‘Fish or fowl?’

‘In between,’ replied Anna with a laugh.

‘Oh, cut it out,’ said Erica, sticking out her tongue at her sister. They were sitting on the veranda, wrapped up in blankets and drinking coffee. On her lap Erica had the menu suggestions from Stora Hotellet, and she could feel her mouth watering. Her strict diet the past two weeks had livened up her taste-buds and fired up her hunger. It felt as though she might start drooling in earnest.

‘What do you say to this, for example?’ She read aloud for Anna. ‘Crayfish tails on a bed of lettuce with lime vinaigrette as an appetizer, halibut with basil risotto and honey-roasted carrots for the main, and then cheesecake on a mirror of raspberry sauce for dessert?’

‘Sounds divine!’ said Anna. ‘Especially the halibut!’ She took a sip of coffee, snuggled up a bit more in her blanket, and looked out over the sea before them.

Erica couldn’t help being amazed at how much her sister had changed recently. She regarded Anna’s profile and saw a sense of calm over her face that she couldn’t remember having seen before. She had always worried about Anna. It was delightful to be able to start letting go.

‘Pappa would have loved to see us sitting here and gabbing,’ she said. ‘He always tried to make us understand that we had to get close to each other, as sisters. He thought that I mothered you way too much.’

‘I know,’ Anna said with a smile, turning to face Erica. ‘He talked to me too, tried to get me to take more responsibility, to be more grown-up, not push so much of the burden onto you. Because I did do that. No matter how much I protested that you mothered me, I liked it in a way. And I always expected you to be the one who was mature and took care of things.’

‘I wonder how it would have been if Mother had taken the responsibility instead. It was her job to be the grownup, after all, not mine.’ Erica felt her chest tighten whenever she thought about her mother. The mother who for their entire childhood had been near in body but far away in her thoughts.

‘It’s no use speculating,’ Anna said pensively, pulling the blanket up to her chin. Even though the sun was shining on them, the wind was cold and found its way into all the gaps. ‘Who knows what sort of baggage she carried with her. Come to think of it, I can’t recall her ever talking about her childhood, about her life before Pappa. Isn’t that odd?’ Anna had never thought about it before. That was just the way things were.

‘The whole thing was odd, if you ask me,’ said Erica with a laugh. But she could hear the bitter undertone in her laugh.

‘But let’s be serious for a moment,’ said Anna. ‘Can you ever remember Elsy talking about her childhood, her parents, how she met Pappa, anything at all? I can’t recall a single comment. And she didn’t have any pictures either. I remember asking to see pictures of Grandma and Grandpa once, and she got annoyed and said they’d been gone so long she had no idea where she had put all that old stuff. Isn’t that a bit strange? I mean, who doesn’t have old photos? Or at least know where they are?’

All of a sudden Erica realized that Anna was right. She had never seen or heard anything about Elsy’s past either. It was as though their mother began to exist only when the wedding photo of her and Tore was taken. Before that there was… nothing.

‘Well, you’ll have to do some research into it someday,’ said Anna, and Erica could hear that she wanted to change the subject. ‘You know how to do stuff like that. But for now I think we should go back to the menu. Did you decide on that last option you read to me?’

‘I’ll have to check with Patrik first and see if he thinks it sounds okay,’ said Erica. ‘I have to admit it feels a bit trivial to keep bothering him with details like this when he’s in the middle of a murder investigation. It feels too… super-ficial somehow.’

She put the menu on her lap and stared gloomily out towards the horizon. She had hardly seen Patrik the past few days, and she missed him. But she did understand. The murder of that girl was appalling, and she knew that Patrik wanted to catch the killer more than anything else. At the same time his being immersed in such a vital case served to accentuate her own lack of employment. True, being a mum was important too. But she couldn’t help longing to do something… grown up. Something where she could be Erica, not just Maja’s mamma. Now that Anna had resurfaced from the twilight that had held her captive, Erica was hoping to be able to start writing a few hours each day. She had broached the idea with Anna, who enthusiastically volunteered to take care of Maja.

So Erica had begun looking for new projects, a real murder case that had an exciting human aspect, and which she thought would make a good book. After the two previous books, she’d been subjected to some criticism in the media. Several reviewers accused her of having a hyena mentality and feeding off real murder cases. But Erica didn’t see it that way. She was always careful to let everyone involved have their say, and she tried to present the fairest and most multifaceted picture possible of what had happened. Nor did she think that the books would have sold as well as they did if they hadn’t been written with empathy. But she had to admit that it had been easier to write the second one, when she didn’t have a personal connection with the case as with the murder of her friend Alex Wijkner. It was much more difficult to remain objective when everything she wrote was coloured by her own experiences.

Thinking about the books began to arouse her desire to get to work.

‘I think I’ll go surf the Web for a while,’ she said, getting up. ‘Thought I’d see if I can find some new case to write about. Could you take Maja for a while if she wakes up?’

Anna smiled. ‘I’ll take Maja, just go and work. Good fishing!’

Erica laughed and headed for her office. Life at home had become much easier lately. She just wished that Patrik would soon get a break from the case he was working on.

Chapter 5

The smell of salt water. Screeching birds in the sky above and the blue that stretched as far as he could see. The feeling of a boat’s rocking motion. The feeling that something was different. Someone had disappeared. Something that had been warm and soft had instead become hard and sharp. Arms that held him but bore a sharp, nasty smell, which sat in the clothing and on the skin. But the worst smell of all came out of the mouth of the woman. He couldn’t remember who she was. And he didn’t know why he was trying to remember. It seemed that he had dreamed something during the night, something nasty, but still familiar. Something he wanted to know more about.

And he couldn’t stop his questions. He didn’t know why. Why couldn’t he just accept everything, as his sister did? She always looked so scared when he asked questions. He wished he could leave her alone. But he couldn’t. Not when he smelled the salty water and remembered the wind in her hair. And the man who used to swing him and his sister high up in the air. While the other one, the woman with the voice that first was soft and then turned hard, stood beside him and watched. Sometimes, in his memory, he thought he saw her smile.

But maybe it was like she said. She who was real and beautiful and loved them. That it was only a dream. A bad dream that she would replace with lovely, fine dreams. He didn’t contradict her. But sometimes he caught himself longing for that salty smell. And the screeching birds. Even for the hard voice. But he never dared say so.

‘Martin, what the hell are we doing?’ Patrik flung down his pen in frustration. It bounced off the desk and onto the floor. Martin calmly picked it up and put it in Patrik’s pen holder.

‘It’s only been a week, Patrik. It takes time, you know that.’

‘All I know is, the statistics show that the longer an investigation takes the less likely it is that the case will be solved.’

‘But we’re doing everything we can. There aren’t any more hours in the day.’ Martin studied Patrik for a moment. ‘Apropos that, shouldn’t you take the morning off, take a nice long shower, relax? You look exhausted.’

‘Relax? In the middle of this circus? I don’t think so.’ Patrik ran his hand through his hair, which was already so dishevelled that it stood on end. The phone rang shrilly, and both of them jumped. Annoyed, Patrik picked up the