The Gallows Bird

and sorrow. Sorrow about how frail and small human beings sometimes were. Shock at the scope of the mistakes that people were capable of making. In his mind’s eye Patrik could see Hedda wandering about in Uddevalla. How she searched for the children whom, in an attack of despair, exhaustion and need for booze, she had given away to a total stranger. He felt the panic that she must have experienced when she understood that she couldn’t find the twins. And the desperation that drove her to say that they had drowned, instead of admitting that she had handed them over to a stranger.

They didn’t speak until Patrik had tied up the old boat to one of the pontoon wharves at Badholmen.

‘Well, now we know at least,’ Gosta said, and his face revealed the guilt that he still felt.

Patrik patted him on the shoulder as they walked towards the car. ‘You couldn’t have known,’ he said. Gosta didn’t answer, and Patrik didn’t think that anything he said was going to help. This was something that Gosta would have to work out for himself.

‘We have to find out soon where the children ended up,’ Patrik said as he drove back to Tanumshede.

‘Still nothing from social services in Uddevalla?’

‘No, and it’s probably not easy to find information from so long ago. But they must be somewhere. Two five- year-olds can’t just disappear.’

‘What a miserable life she has led.’

‘Hedda?’ Patrik said, although he understood that’s who Gosta meant.

‘Yes. Imagine living with that guilt. Your whole life.’

‘No wonder that she’s tried to numb herself as best she can,’ said Patrik.

Gosta didn’t reply. He just looked out of the window. Finally he said, ‘What are we going to do now?’

‘Until we find out where the children went, we’ll have to keep working on what we’ve got. Sigrid Jansson, the dog hairs from Lillemor, trying to find a connection between the murder locations.’

They turned into the car park at the police station and walked towards the entrance, their expressions grim. Patrik stopped at reception for a moment to tell Annika what had happened, and then went to his office. He couldn’t bear to repeat the whole story to the others yet.

Carefully he took the photo out of his wallet and studied it. The eyes of the twins stared back at him, revealing nothing.

Chapter 9

Finally she had given in. Just a short ride. A little expedition out into the big, unknown world. Then they would come back home. And he would stop asking.

He had nodded eagerly. Could hardly contain himself. And a glance at sister showed that she was just as excited.

He wondered what he would get to see. How it looked out there. Beyond the forest. One thought left him no peace. Would the other one be out there? The woman with the harsh voice? Would he smell that smell that was like a memory in his nostrils, salty and fresh? And the feeling of the boat rocking, and the sun over the sea, and the birds circling, and… He could hardly sift through all the expectations and impressions. A single thought was buzzing round in his head. They would get to take a ride with her. Out to the world beyond. It was no problem for him to promise in turn never to ask again. One time would be enough. He was quite convinced of that. One time, just so he could see what was there, so that he and sister would know. That was the only thing he wanted. Just once.

With a stern expression she had opened the car door for them and watched them scramble into the back seat. She carefully fastened their seat belts and shook her head as she got behind the wheel. He remembered that he had laughed. A shrill, hysterical laugh, when all the pent-up tension was finally allowed to come out.

When they turned onto the road he had glanced briefl y at sister. Then he had taken her hand. They were on their way.

Patrik sat with the list of dog owners on the screen and went through it carefully one more time. He had informed Martin and Mellberg about what he and Gosta had learned out on the island, and he asked Martin to ring Uddevalla again and try to get more information on the twins. There wasn’t much they could do. He had been given access to all the documents regarding the accident in which Elsa Forsell killed Sigrid Jansson, but nothing seemed to lead any further.

‘How’s it going?’ said Gosta as he looked in the doorway.

‘It’s not,’ said Patrik, flinging down the pen he had in his hand. ‘We’re in a holding pattern until we know more about the children.’ He sighed, ran his hands through his hair, and then clasped them behind his neck.

‘Is there anything I can do?’ said Gosta tactfully.

Gobsmacked, Patrik gave him a look. It wasn’t like Gosta to come in and ask for work. Patrik thought for a moment.

‘I’ve gone over this list of dog owners a hundred times, it seems. But I can’t find any connections to our case. Could you check through it again?’ Patrik tossed him the disk, and Gosta caught it in mid-air.

‘Of course,’ he said.

Five minutes later Gosta came back with an astonished look on his face.

‘Did you delete a line by any chance?’ he said.

‘Delete? No, what do you mean?’

‘Because when I put together the list there were a hundred and sixty names. Now there are only a hundred and fifty-nine.’

‘Ask Annika; she was the one who matched up the names with the addresses. Maybe she deleted one by mistake.’

‘Hmm,’ Gosta said sceptically and went to see Annika. Patrik got up and followed him.

‘I’ll check,’ said Annika, searching for the Excel chart on her computer. ‘But I remember that there were a hundred and sixty rows. It was such a nice round number.’ She looked through her folders until she found the file she was looking for.

‘Aha, a hundred and sixty,’ she said, turning to Patrik and Gosta.

‘I don’t get it,’ said Gosta, looking at the disk in his hand. Annika took it and put it into her disk drive, opened the same document and put the two windows next to each other so they could compare them. When the name that was missing on the disk turned up, Patrik felt something click in his head. He turned on his heel, ran down the corridor to his office, and stood staring at the map of Sweden. One by one he looked at the pins marking the home towns of the victims. What had previously been an indecipherable pattern now became clearer. Gosta and Annika had followed him to his office and now looked utterly perplexed as Patrik began pulling out papers from his desk drawer.

‘What are you looking for?’ said Gosta, but Patrik didn’t answer. Paper after paper was pulled out and tossed to the floor. In the last drawer he found what he was looking for. He stood up with an excited expression and began reading the document carefully, sometimes sticking new pins into the map. Slowly but surely each marked location got a new pin placed close to the old one. When he was done he turned round.

‘Now I know.’

Dan had finally taken the plunge. There was a firm of estate agents right across the street, and finally he decided to ring the number he saw from his kitchen window every day. Once the wheels were set in motion everything had gone surprisingly fast. The young man who answered had said he could come over immediately and take a look, and for Dan that was perfect. He didn’t want to drag things out unnecessarily.

And yet selling the house didn’t feel like such a big deal anymore. All the conversations he’d had with Anna, everything he’d heard about the hell that Lucas had put her through, all of it had made his attempt to hang on to a house seem so… ridiculous, to put it bluntly. What did it matter where he lived? The main thing was that the girls came to visit. That he could hug them, nuzzle their necks, and hear them tell him about their day. Nothing else mattered. And as for his marriage to Pernilla, it was definitely over. He’d realized it long before, but hadn’t been