But instead of the prosecutor, he encountered Beatrice Andersson and Berglund standing in the corridor outside Ottosson’s open door. Unlikely, he thought. Beatrice has a free Saturday, and Ottosson there besides. And Berglund! But then he understood the connection, Ottosson had called them in.
Beatrice turned around.
“Good that you came,” she said. “A few things have emerged. Kurt Johansson has started to talk a little.”
Who the hell is Kurt Johansson, wondered Fredriksson.
Thirty-seven
Ann Lindell did her level best not to burst into tears. Beside her at the kitchen table, Erik was having breakfast, yogurt with cornflakes and a caviar-paste sandwich on rye. He smiled a little uncertainly.
“I couldn’t wait,” he said, “I got so hungry.”
“That’s fine, honey, you’re very clever.”
She tousled his hair, bent over, and kissed his neck.
“Are you still sick?”
“No, I feel a lot better,” she reassured him.
After preschool on Fridays they always shopped at Torgkassen, buying a little something special before the weekend. Breakfast, especially on Saturdays, was usually substantial, with warm sandwiches, boiled eggs, smoked ham, fruit, sometimes pancakes with strawberry jam, and other things they didn’t have during the week.
But yesterday had not been a typical Friday, no shopping and no cozy evening. Erik fell asleep in front of his video and when Sammy Nilsson left, Ann carried Eric to the bedroom, undressed him and tucked him in, and then sat for a long time by his bed looking at her son.
She did not go to bed until two. She limited herself to one glass of wine. Sleep would not come until it was starting to get light. It was now ten o’clock in the morning. She was awakened by the phone, sat up half asleep and answered, sure that it was about work. But it was Sammy Nilsson wondering how she was feeling. He also told her that in the morning he had e-mailed Anders Brant and that Tärnsjö was waiting. He ended the call by encouraging her to phone if anything came up.
“We’ll have a big breakfast tomorrow instead, okay?” said Ann.
Erik nodded, but did not look convinced.
“I want to do something fun.”
“And what would that be?”
“Go swimming,” he said.
“We’ll do that,” she said. “It looks like it’s going to be a nice day.”
“It’s super hot out.”
“Have you been on the balcony?”
He nodded.
“You’re not allowed out on the balcony alone, you know that.”
“I was afraid the food had run out,” he said morosely.
In a big box on the balcony Erik was cultivating tortoiseshell butterflies, small caterpillars that he fed with nettles he gathered in the bushes at preschool where he had also found the caterpillars and come up with the idea of raising his own. A few had already pupated and he was now waiting eagerly for the arrival of the butterflies. Ann thought the caterpillars were disgusting but let him have his way.
“We’ll go to Fjällnora,” she decided. “But first I have a few things to take care of.”
She was not clear what it was she had to take care of, but she felt she needed to think things over properly. Yesterday’s feeling of total dejection at a life that lacked meaning had rocked her foundations. She had had real lows before, but Brant’s duplicity triggered something she had never experienced, a wish to just lay down and let go of everything.
She was drained of all energy, there were no reserves left. Sammy’s intervention had rescued her from total collapse. She felt anxious when she thought about what might have happened if he hadn’t shown up; maybe the preschool staff would have called for an ambulance or taken her to the nuthouse. In the state she was in she would have been unable to protest or even care. She would have let herself be taken anywhere, and that was what frightened her the most. She had jeopardized Erik’s well-being.
Now she had escaped with no more than a scare, and admittedly Erik was hesitant, she noticed that in his actions, but he did not have to experience a total shipwreck.
She sat down on the couch with a new notepad, a white, blank sheet before her, and her pen at the ready. It did not worry her that no words came immediately to jot down. She was accustomed to that. Many times she sat that way, sometimes for an hour or more, before she started writing.
But now she did not have the time, and Erik would soon start pattering around her like a lost soul.
“Car” was the first thing she wrote, then “moped.” Then five minutes passed before the next notation, “spade.”
In between a murder happened, she thought, trying to imagine the scene at the old shed. So common, a shed. Did Fredrik believe, and later perhaps Andreas, that Klara Lovisa would want to lose her virginity that way, on a dirty floor, in that setting? The girl who wanted to wait. Ann Lindell could understand her decision, imagine her tension, her expectation, but not that she would ever accept such a scenario. Never. Lindell had read her diary, the girl was a romantic, but in a touching, mature way, perhaps even more aware of the conditions of love than Lindell was, almost thirty years older. That was what she thought when she read the diary.
“Rape,” she wrote. The word screamed violence. The one who supplied the violence was capable of pushing Klara Lovisa down on the floor, pressing his hands around her neck, watching her gasp for air and finally stop struggling and go limp. He must possess not only physical strength but also anger beyond what Lindell could imagine.
Perhaps the scene of the murder and the discovery site were one and the same. Perhaps she had tried to run away, in her confusion dashed into the forest and been caught, pulled down into the moss, and murdered.
Fredrik and Andreas, were they capable of this? It could not be ruled out, but something told Lindell that they lacked just that anger. They were excited, they were eager to have sex with her, they were in a hurry, they wanted to take her virginity as a trophy, to win. But were they capable of violence?
Fredrik had reacted with childish rage, left her to manage as best she could. How did Andreas behave? Pleading, a little pathetic, perhaps. He was also a romantic. The necklace, that was certainly just the right thing for Klara Lovisa, but she could do without his teenage, panting eagerness; his begging puppy-dog eyes. He would have been angry too, but mainly sad. Tears came easily to him, Lindell had seen that.
He had slouched away, crushed, with a shock that turned into anxiety when she never came back again, either to him or to life. If he was innocent of murder, he probably felt guilty of her death. He must be constantly asking himself whether he could have saved her life by acting a different way.
That was the reason for his lies! He could not bear to tell what had really taken place. He could not admit to anyone that he could have driven Klara Lovisa home, but didn’t; he, the only person on earth who could have saved her life. He betrayed her.
The insight came to Ann Lindell just as Erik came into the living room. He had a pair of swimming trunks in his hand.
“They’re worn out,” he said.
“I bought you a new pair,” said Ann.
“What color?”
“Blue.”
Erik looked at her a moment, their eyes met. She smiled.
“Is that okay?”
Erik shrugged and disappeared.
Ann looked at the words she had written. If she could get Andreas to admit that he had gone to the shed, because she was convinced he had, then the timetable could be improved. Every minute that she could chart the last part of Klara Lovisa’s life also brought Ann Lindell closer to the murderer. Maybe Klara Lovisa said something to Andreas before he went back to town? Something that might cast light on what she intended to do. Perhaps Andreas had seen something, encountered someone on the way home, met the third man? A little shard would be enough. It might lead her closer.