“How long were the two of you here?”
“Maybe fifteen minutes, no more. Then I left. I knew that Klovisa wouldn’t change her mind. She’s always been super stubborn. I promise, that’s what happened!”
“And she stayed here?”
“I don’t know.”
“You didn’t feel lousy?”
“Yes, afterward, but then it was too late.”
“Okay,” said Lindell, looking at the prosecutor, who shook his head. “Now you can ride back to the police station, and we’re going to do an investigation of the hut. But I think it’s good that we’ve gotten this far. You’ve been helpful.”
Kuusinen made a face that clearly showed what he thought of Fredrik Johansson, took him by the shoulder, and more or less turned him on the spot.
Lindell watched how Kuusinen, Fredrik, and Fredriksson got into the car. Fredriksson made some elaborate maneuvers to wriggle the car out of the yard and it then jolted me out of sight.
Lindell had made an agreement with Sixten Molin to ride with him back to Uppsala.
“What do you think?” she asked.
“It doesn’t look promising for our dear Fredrik,” said Molin.
“Now we’ll let the dogs loose,” said Lindell.
“The dogs?”
“Zero, Morgansson, and Kraag,” said Lindell.
Vidar Arleman did not need to worry. Zero, who was first allowed to sniff a few of the garments the police had obtained from Klara Lovisa’s parents, immediately marked by the door to the hut, even if the dog handler did not believe that Klara Lovisa’s scent was still lingering after two months. Zero was not allowed to go into the hut. The technicians wanted to do their work first.
Arleman then led the dog in wider and wider circles around the shed, searched the ground, and then the edge of the forest that surrounded it. In the gap between the birches, where the path disappeared, Zero whimpered and marked toward the path. Arleman knew then that it would go that way. He released the dog, who eagerly bounded away with his nose a centimeter or two over the ground.
Arleman walked slowly after, while the others waited at the start of the path. Thirty meters into the forest Zero stopped suddenly. There the vegetation opened into a glade.
Lindell, who got a flashback to another forest and glade in Rasbo a few years earlier, followed after Arleman. Halfway she turned her head and saw the prosecutor nodding and smiling.
We smile when we find bodies, thought Lindell, because she was sure now that they would find Klara Lovisa.
Zero disappeared behind a thicket, and then the confirmation came with a few short, sharp barks.
At 12:20 P.M. on a numbingly beautiful day in June, Klara Lovisa Bolinder’s body was dug up. It was covered by a meter-thick layer of dirt, branches, and moss.
She had been buried lying on her back with her arms along her side. The body was half decomposed. Lindell could not avoid seeing the worms crawling.
But there was no doubt that it was Klara Lovisa, enough of the face was preserved to make identification possible. In addition the clothes tallied with what she had been wearing.
“She was going to buy a spring jacket,” said Lindell, who could not hold back the tears.
Arleman had returned with Zero to the car as soon as they started digging, while the others stood gathered around the pit, as if they were at a funeral.
The prosecutor Molin was obviously moved, Kuusinen swore softly, long strings of words that further reinforced his image, while his two colleagues rested with both hands on the spades looking distressed, as if they regretted having contributed to the whole thing. Morgansson slipped up behind Lindell and for a few seconds placed his arm around her shoulders.
Kraag was the only one who was working. With video camera and still camera he documented what had come to be Klara Lovisa’s resting place for a few months.
Lindell already realized that something did not add up but was unable to really think about it. Her thoughts were occupied by the gruesome task of telling Klara Lovisa’s parents that their daughter had been murdered on her sixteenth birthday and buried in the forest, perhaps after being raped.
She took a final look at the remains of Klara Lovisa, the blonde hair, now soiled by dirt, the thin hands and tongue that poked out and had rotted in many places, giving her face a clown-like expression, as if in death she was sticking her tongue out at them. She had never before experienced anything worse than this. She had an impulse to climb down into the opened grave, pull away the clump of moss that disfigured Klara Lovisa’s forehead, arrange, straighten, and wake her to life.
Hatred against the person, or persons, who had done this made her sob, before she collected herself and raised her head. Kuusinen stood on the other side of the pit, framed by multiple stems of a sallow bush. Their eyes met. He had stopped swearing and now looked almost lost.
From the deep forest birdsong was heard. The wind was filtered between the tree trunks, made the branches of the sallow bounce, pleasantly turned a few leaves, brought with it aromas of summer.
I promise you, Klara Lovisa, thought Ann Lindell, that I will… Then the words stuck, she became uncertain what she should promise, what she could promise, and what such a promise was worth.
She turned around, aimed for the path, and tried to move intentionally forward toward the car, without sidelong glances and thoughts. She heard the prosecutor following in her tracks.
From her back pocket a peep was heard from her cell phone. Lindell took it out and checked the display, New message received. It read: Little shook up right now. Witness to a murder. May be problems. I’ll be in touch. Hugs. Anders.
Lindell stared at the display.
“Yes, it feels too awful,” said Sixten Molin, the prosecutor, who misunderstood her surprise.
“This is so fucking unbelievable!” Lindell exclaimed.
She struck the roof of the car with her hand, had an impulse to toss the cell phone to the ground, stamp on it, eradicate Brant, but instinctively turned around so that Molin would not pick up on the extent of her consternation, which she realized was written all over her face.
The prosecutor was ready to get into the car, but stopped in midmotion and looked at her with surprise.
“How are you? Is something else going on?”
Lindell shook her head with her eyes directed into the forest.
Twenty-three
When the call was over he stood for a long time with the receiver in his hand before it occurred to him to hang up. Through the window he stared unseeing at the back side of the lot, before it slowly took shape: the worn-out swing set that only the neighborhood children used now and then; the apple tree which during the spring, despite the onslaught of canker, blossomed like never before; a pale-green, moss-infested lawn hidden under piles of brush, a pile that was now growing before his eyes, turning into an image of how he understood life.
The day before he had done what Henrietta had been nagging about for several weeks, pruned the hawthorn hedge down to an acceptable level. Now the brush had to be removed. He had no desire, he had no time. He loathed hawthorn, with thorns that poked so infernally and straggly branches that were impossible to load onto the trailer efficiently. He would have to make several trips. Besides, his own trailer was uninspected and he would have to go out and rent one.
We should have planted something besides a hedge, he thought. There were lots of things they should have done differently. We should live somewhere else, not in this shitty country, he sometimes thought.
These thoughts had come and gone recently, but he always pushed them aside as unrealistic. There were so many other things that occupied his time. The morrow would always have to wait, that’s how it had felt for several years now. The dreams would have to wait.