managed to forget that. He swivelled round and looked up at the map of Sweden on the wall. The pins seemed to be staring at him, challenging him to see the pattern, break the code they represented. Five pins, five locations, spread over the southern half of the oblong country of Sweden. What was it that made the murderer move from one place to the other? Was it work? Was it pleasure? Was it a tactic designed to confuse? Was the killer’s home base somewhere else? Patrik didn’t believe the last option. Something told him that the answer lay in the geographical pattern, that the murderer for some reason had followed that pattern. He also believed that the killer was still here in the area. It was more of a gut feeling, and it was so strong that he couldn’t help scrutinizing everyone he saw on the street. Was that person the killer? Or that one? Who was hiding behind the guise of an ordinary citizen?
Patrik sighed and looked up when Gosta came in, after knocking discreetly.
‘Well,’ Gosta said, taking a chair. ‘It’s like this: something has been working overtime up here,’ he tapped his temple, ‘since we heard about the children yesterday. It’s probably nothing. Might sound a bit far-fetched.’
He hemmed and hawed and Patrik had to suppress an urge to lean across the desk and shake Gosta to make him stop mumbling.
‘Well, I was thinking about a case that happened in 1967. In Fjallbacka. I was a rookie here back then.’
Patrik looked at him with increasing irritation. Talk about long-winded!
Gosta continued: ‘As I said, I hadn’t been on the job long when we got a call about two kids who had drowned. Twins, three years old. They lived with their mother out on the island of Kalvo. Their father had drowned a couple of months earlier when he fell through the ice, and the mother had apparently started drinking heavily. And on this day, it was in March if I remember rightly, she took their boat to Fjallbacka and then drove her car down to Uddevalla to do some errands. When they took the boat back out to the island, a storm was blowing up. According to the mother, the boat capsized just before they reached the island, and both children drowned. She had swum ashore and called for help on the radio.’
‘But what made you think of this in connection with our case? Those children drowned, so they couldn’t have been with Sigrid Jansson in the car two years later.’
Gosta hesitated. ‘But there was a witness…’ He paused but then went on, ‘A witness who claimed that the mother, Hedda Kjellander, didn’t have the children with her in the boat when she set off.’
Patrik sat in silence for a long moment. ‘Why didn’t anyone ever get to the bottom of this?’
Gosta looked dejected. ‘The witness was an elderly lady. A bit barmy, according to what people said. She used to sit at the window all day looking through her binoculars, and from time to time she claimed to see things… Sea monsters and things like that,’ said Gosta, but he still looked just as dejected.
He said he’d thought about the case occasionally. About the twins, whose bodies never washed up anywhere. But every time he had repressed the thought and convinced himself again that it was a tragic accident. Nothing more.
‘After meeting the mother, Hedda, I also had a hard time believing that she might be lying. She was in such despair. So upset. There was no reason to believe…’ The words died out and he didn’t dare look at Patrik.
‘What happened to her? The mother?’
‘Nothing. She still lives on the island. Seldom shows herself in town. She gets food and booze delivered out to her cabin. Although it’s mostly the booze she’s interested in.’
Patrik heard the penny drop. ‘Is it “Hedda on Kalvo” you’re talking about?’ He couldn’t believe it. But he’d never heard that Hedda had once had two kids. All the gossip he’d heard about her was that she had suffered two tragedies and since then had devoted herself to drinking herself senseless.
‘So you think…’
Gosta shrugged. ‘I don’t know what to think. But it’s a remarkable coincidence. And the ages match.’ He sat quietly and let Patrik consider what he’d said.
‘I think we need to go out there and talk to her.’
Gosta nodded.
‘We can take our boat,’ said Patrik, getting up. Gosta was still looking despondent as Patrik turned to him.
‘It was many years ago, Gosta. And I can’t say I would have done any different. I probably would have come to the same conclusion. And besides, you weren’t the one in charge.’
Gosta wasn’t so sure that Patrik would have dropped the matter so easily. And he probably could have leaned on his boss at the time a bit harder. But what’s done is done. It was no use brooding over it now.
‘Are you sick?’ Worried, Lars sat down on the edge of the bed and placed a cool hand on Hanna’s forehead. ‘You’re burning up,’ he said, pulling the covers up to her chin. She was shaking from a cold coming on and had that weird feeling of freezing even though she was sweating.
‘I just want to be alone,’ she said, turning on her side.
‘I was only trying to help,’ said Lars, hurt, and removed his hand that lay on top of the covers.
‘You’ve helped me enough,’ said Hanna bitterly with her teeth chattering.
‘Did you report in sick?’ He sat down with his back to her and looked out through the balcony door. There was such a distance between them that they might as well have been on separate continents. Something was tightening around Lars’s heart. It felt like fear, but it was a fear that was so deep, so penetrating that he couldn’t recall the last time he’d felt anything like it. He took a deep breath.
‘If I changed my mind about having kids, would that change anything?’
The chattering stopped for a second. Hanna sat up, propping herself against the pillows, but kept the covers drawn up to her chin. She was shaking so hard that the bed felt as if it was trembling too.
‘That would change everything,’ Hanna said, gazing at him with eyes shining with fever. ‘That would change everything,’ she repeated. But after a moment she added, ‘Or would it?’
He turned his back to her again and looked out at the roof of the house next door. ‘It probably would,’ he said, although he wasn’t sure whether he was telling the truth or not. ‘It would.’
He turned round. Hanna had fallen asleep. He looked at her for a long time. Then he tiptoed out of the bedroom.
‘Can you find it?’ Patrik turned to Gosta when they set out from the boat landing at Badholmen.
Gosta nodded. ‘Sure, I can find it.’
They sat in silence on the trip out to the island of Kalvo. When they docked at the worn and leaky pier, Gosta’s face had turned ashen grey. He had been out here several times since that day thirty-seven years ago, but it was always that first visit that popped up in his memory.
They walked slowly up to the cabin that stood on the highest spot on the island. It was obvious that no repairs had been made in a very long time, and weeds had sprouted up around the patch of lawn surrounding the house. Otherwise there was only granite as far as the eye could see, although a closer examination revealed signs of plants that were waiting for the warmth of spring to come and wake them up. The house was white, with the paint peeling off in big flakes that exposed the grey, wind-battered wood underneath. The roofing tiles were hanging crooked, and here and there one was missing, like in a mouth with missing teeth.
Gosta took the lead and knocked cautiously on the door. No answer. He knocked harder. ‘Hedda?’ He pounded his fist even harder on the wooden door, then tried to see if it would open. The door wasn’t locked and it swung open.
When they stepped inside they automatically put their arms over their noses because of the stench. It was like walking into a pig-sty strewn with rubbish, food scraps, old newspapers, and above all empty bottles.
Gosta advanced cautiously into the hall and called out. ‘Hedda?’ Still no answer.
‘I’ll go round and look for her,’ Gosta said, and Patrik could only nod. It was beyond comprehension how anyone could live like this.
After a few minutes Gosta came back and gestured to Patrik to come with him.
‘She’s lying in bed. Knocked out. We’ll have to try and get some life into her. Will you put on some coffee?’
Patrik looked around the kitchen at a loss. Finally he found a jar of instant coffee and an empty pot. It seemed to be mostly used for boiling water, since it was relatively clean compared to the other kitchen equipment.
‘All right, come on now.’ Gosta came into the kitchen dragging a wisp of a woman. Only a dazed murmur
