‘Wie heissen Sie?’ he said, gazing up at her, his eyes bright.
Dagmar gave him a puzzled look. Swedish was the only language she knew.
‘What’s your name?’ slurred the man sitting across from the pilot. ‘He wants to know your name. Tell the pilot, there’s a good girl, and then maybe you’d like to come over here and sit on my lap for a while. And find out how a real man feels…’ He laughed at his own joke and patted his fat thighs.
Dagmar wrinkled her nose in disgust and turned back to the pilot.
‘Dagmar,’ she said. ‘My name is Dagmar.’
‘Dagmar,’ repeated the German. He pointed with an exaggerated gesture at his own chest. ‘Hermann,’ he said. ‘Ich heisse Hermann.’
After a brief pause he raised his hand to touch the back of her neck, and she felt the little hairs on her arms stand on end. He said something else in German, and she turned to the fat man sitting across the table.
‘He says that he wonders what your hair looks like when it’s loose.’ The man again laughed loudly, as if he’d said something enormously funny.
Dagmar instinctively put her hand up to her hair, which was gathered in a bun. Her blonde hair was so thick that she never managed to fasten it properly, and a few stray locks were always coming loose.
‘He’ll just have to keep on wondering. Tell him that,’ she said, and turned to go.
The fat man laughed and uttered several long sentences in German. The pilot didn’t laugh, and as she stood there with her back to him, she felt his hand again touch the nape of her neck. With a tug he pulled out the comb and her hair came tumbling down her back.
Her posture rigid, she slowly turned to face him. For a few moments she and the German pilot stared at each other, accompanied by the fat man’s roar of laughter. Between them a tacit understanding arose, and with her hair still loose, Dagmar walked up towards the house where the hooting and howling of the other guests shattered the peace of the summer night.
Chapter Six
Patrik was crouching down next to the big hole in the floor. The planks were old and rotting, and it was obvious that the floor needed to be replaced. So what they’d found underneath was all the more surprising. He felt an uneasy lump forming in the pit of his stomach.
‘Good thing you called us immediately,’ he said, without taking his eyes off the hole.
‘It’s blood, isn’t it?’ Tobias swallowed hard. ‘I don’t know what old blood looks like, and it might be tar or whatever. But considering…’
‘It does appear to be blood. Could you ring the tech team, Gösta? They need to come out here and take a closer look at this.’ Patrik stood up, grimacing when he heard how his joints creaked. A reminder that he wasn’t getting any younger.
Gösta nodded and moved a short distance away as he tapped in a number on his mobile.
‘Do you think there’s something else… underneath there?’ asked Ebba, her voice quavering.
Patrik realized at once what she was hinting at.
‘It’s impossible to say. We’re going to have to rip up the rest of the floor to see what we can find.’
‘It’s true that we could use some help with the renovation, but this wasn’t exactly what we had in mind,’ said Tobias with a hollow laugh. No one else laughed.
Gösta finished his phone call and came back to join them. ‘The techs can’t come out here until tomorrow. So I hope you can stand to leave things the way they are until then. Nothing must be touched. You can’t do any cleaning or tidying up.’
‘We won’t touch anything. Why would we do that?’ said Tobias.
‘This is my chance to find out what happened,’ said Ebba.
‘Maybe we could sit down somewhere and have a little talk.’ Patrik backed away from the section of the floor that had been removed, but what he’d seen was already burned into his memory. For his part, he was convinced that it was blood. A thick layer of congealed blood, no longer red but dark with age. If his theory was right, it had to be more than thirty years old.
‘We can sit in the kitchen, that’s nice and neat,’ said Tobias, making a move to show Patrik the way. Ebba stayed where she was, along with Gösta.
‘Are you coming?’ Tobias turned to his wife.
‘You go ahead. Ebba and I will join you in a minute,’ said Gösta.
Patrik was about to say that it was Ebba, above all, that they needed to talk to. But he glanced at her pale face and realized Gösta was right. She could use a moment to herself, and there was really no hurry.
Describing the kitchen as nice and neat proved to be an overstatement. Tools and paintbrushes were scattered everywhere, and the worktop was hidden beneath piles of dirty dishes and the remains of breakfast.
Tobias sat down at the kitchen table.
‘We’re actually neat-freaks, Ebba and I. Or rather, we were,’ he corrected himself. ‘Hard to believe when you see things in this state, isn’t it?’
‘Renovating is hell,’ said Patrik, sitting down on a chair after first brushing off a few breadcrumbs.
‘It doesn’t seem so important to keep everything neat and clean any more.’ Tobias looked towards the kitchen window. It was covered with dust, as if a veil had been drawn across it to hide the view.
‘What do you know about Ebba’s past?’ asked Patrik.
He could hear Gösta and Ebba talking in the dining room, but he couldn’t make out what they were saying, although he tried. Gösta’s behaviour surprised him. Back at the station, when he had dashed into Gösta’s office to tell him what had happened, his colleague’s reaction had also seemed completely out of character. But then Gösta had closed up like a clam, remaining silent all the way out to Valö.
‘My parents and Ebba’s adoptive parents are good friends, and what happened in her past has never been a secret. So I’ve known for a long time that her family disappeared without a trace. I don’t think there’s much more to know, is there?’
‘No. The police didn’t make any progress with their investigation, despite putting in a lot of time and energy. It remains a mystery why they simply disappeared.’
‘But maybe they’ve been here the whole time.’ Ebba’s voice made them both jump.
‘I don’t think they’re lying under the floor,’ said Gösta, pausing in the doorway. ‘If someone had damaged the floorboards in any way, we would have noticed. The planks were completely untouched, and there was no trace of blood either. It must have seeped in between the boards.’
‘Well, I want to know for sure that they’re not under there,’ said Ebba.
‘The techs will inspect every millimetre when they get here tomorrow. You can be sure of that,’ said Gösta, putting his arm around Ebba.
Patrik stared. Normally when they were out on a job, Gösta made very little effort. And Patrik couldn’t recall ever seeing him touch another person.
‘Right now you need some strong coffee.’ Gösta gave Ebba a pat on the shoulder and went to turn on the coffee maker. As the coffee began dripping into the pot, he stood at the sink and washed a few cups.
‘Why don’t you tell us what you know about what happened here.’ Patrik pulled out a chair for Ebba.
She sat down, and he was struck by how thin she was. Her T-shirt seemed much too big, and her collarbone was clearly visible under the fabric.
‘I don’t think I can tell you anything that people around here haven’t already heard. I was barely a year old at the time, so I don’t remember. And my adoptive parents know only that someone called the police to report that something had happened. When the police arrived, my family were nowhere to be seen, and I was here all alone. This was on the evening before Easter. That’s when they disappeared.’ She pulled out the pendant that was hidden under her T-shirt and began tugging on it, just as Patrik had noticed her doing the day before. It made her seem even more fragile.