‘Well, let’s hope it’s worth the trouble. The traffic is terrible today.’
‘There’s nothing we can do about it,’ said Paula. ‘How’s Ebba, by the way?’
‘I don’t know. She was asleep when I came home yesterday, and she was still sleeping when I left. Erica said she was totally exhausted.’
‘I’m not surprised. This whole thing must be a nightmare for her.’
‘Hey, step on it!’ Patrik pressed his hand on the horn as the driver in the car ahead of them failed to react when a gap appeared in the queue of vehicles.
Paula shook her head but refrained from commenting. She’d driven with Patrik often enough to know that he was a different person the minute he got behind the wheel.
It took them almost an hour longer to reach Göteborg in the summertime traffic, and Patrik was fit to explode as they climbed out of the car on the quiet residential street in Partille. He tugged on his shirt to fan himself.
‘God, it’s hot today. Aren’t you dying in this heat?’
Paula cast a smug glance at his forehead, which was shiny with sweat.
‘I’m a foreigner. I don’t sweat,’ she said, raising her arms to emphasize her point.
‘Then I reckon I’m sweating enough for the both of us. I should have brought along an extra shirt. What will they make of us? I’m completely soaked, and you look like a beached whale. This’ll have them wondering about the Tanum police force,’ said Patrik, pressing the doorbell.
‘I am not a beached whale, I’m pregnant. So what’s your excuse?’ Paula gave Patrik a poke in the stomach.
‘This is just a slight paunch. It’ll disappear in a flash, as soon as I start working out again.’
‘I heard the gym had put out an APB on you.’
The door opened before Patrik had a chance to offer a retort.
‘Hello. Welcome. You must be the police officers from Tanumshede,’ said a man in his sixties, giving them a friendly smile.
‘That’s right,’ said Patrik, introducing himself and Paula.
A woman about the same age joined them and said hello.
‘Come in! I’m Berit. Sture and I were thinking we could sit in the retiree incubator to have a talk.’
‘Retiree incubator?’ Paula whispered to Patrik with a bewildered look.
‘The glass veranda,’ he whispered back, and she grinned.
In the small sunny veranda Berit pulled a big wicker chair over to the table and motioned to Paula. ‘Have a seat here. It’s the most comfortable.’
‘Thanks! You’ll probably have to get a crane to haul me out of it,’ said Paula, sinking gratefully on to the thick cushion.
‘And prop your feet up on this stool. It can’t be easy to be so late in your pregnancy in this heat wave.’
‘It’s getting a bit difficult,’ Paula agreed. After the long ride in the car, her calves were like footballs.
‘I remember so well the summer when Ebba was expecting Vincent. It was hot then too, and she…’ Berit stopped in mid-sentence and her smile faded. Sture put his arm around his wife and tenderly patted her shoulder.
‘All right then. Let’s sit down and offer our guests some coffee and cake. This is Berit’s tiger cake. The recipe is top secret – even I don’t know how she makes it.’ He kept his tone light in an attempt to lift the mood, but his eyes were as sorrowful as his wife’s.
Patrik sat down, but he realized that sooner or later he would have to broach the subject that was clearly so painful for Ebba’s parents.
‘Help yourselves.’ Berit pushed the cake platter towards the police officers. ‘Do you and your husband know whether it’s a boy or a girl?’
Paula paused with a piece of cake halfway to her mouth. Then she looked directly at the woman sitting across from her and said:
‘No, my partner Johanna and I decided that we didn’t want to know ahead of time. But we have a son, so of course it would be nice to have a girl this time. But as everyone says, the most important thing is for the baby to be healthy.’ She stroked her stomach, steeling herself for the couple’s reaction.
Berit’s face lit up. ‘How nice that your son is going to be a big brother! He must be so proud.’
‘With such a beautiful mother, I’m sure the baby will be lovely, whether it’s a boy or a girl,’ said Sture with a warm smile.
Paula smiled happily. They didn’t seem in the least bothered that the child was going to have two mothers.
‘Now you must tell us what’s going on,’ said Sture, leaning forward. ‘We can’t get much out of Ebba and Tobias when they phone, and they don’t want us to visit.’
‘No, it’s best if you don’t do that,’ said Patrik, thinking that the last thing they needed was to have more people on Valö.
‘Why’s that?’ Berit’s eyes shifted anxiously from Patrik to Paula. ‘Ebba mentioned that they found blood when they broke up the floor. Is it from…’
‘Yes, that seems most likely,’ replied Patrik. ‘But the blood is so old that we can’t be sure whether it came from Ebba’s family, or how many different people we might be talking about.’
‘How dreadful,’ said Berit. ‘We’ve never talked much to Ebba about what happened. We only knew what social services told us, and what we read in the newspapers. So we were surprised that she and Tobias wanted to take over the house.’
‘I don’t think they particularly wanted to go there,’ said Sture. ‘It was more a case of wanting to get away from here.’
‘Would you be willing to tell us what happened to their son?’ said Paula cautiously.
Berit and Sture exchanged glances, and then Sture told them the story. Slowly he described the day when Vincent died, and Patrik felt a lump settle in his throat as he listened. Sometimes life seemed so cruel and meaningless.
‘How soon afterwards did Ebba and Tobias move?’ he asked when Sture fell silent.
‘It was about six months later,’ said Berit.
Sture nodded. ‘Yes, that’s right. They sold the house. It wasn’t far from here.’ He pointed vaguely down the street. ‘And Tobias gave up his job as a carpenter. Ebba has been on sick leave ever since it happened. She worked as an economist for the Internal Revenue Department, but she never went back. We’re a bit worried about how they’re going to manage financially, but they do have money in the bank from the sale of their house.’
‘We’re trying to help them as best we can,’ Berit said. ‘We have two other children, who are our own, so to speak, although we consider Ebba to be our daughter too. Ebba has always been the apple of their eye, and they’d like to help her if they can, so I’m sure everything will work out.’
Patrik nodded. ‘That place is going to be quite something. Tobias seems to be a very skilled carpenter.’
‘He’s incredibly talented,’ said Sture. ‘When they lived here, he always had work. Maybe too much work at times, but that’s always better than having a son-in-law who’s lazy.’
‘More coffee?’ asked Berit. Without waiting for an answer she got up and headed for the kitchen to fetch the coffee pot.
Sture watched her go and then said, ‘This has taken its toll on my wife, but she doesn’t want to show it. Ebba came to our family like a little angel. Our older children were six and eight at the time, and we’d talked about having another. It was Berit’s idea to see if there might be a child we could help by taking her in.’
‘Had you taken in other foster children before Ebba?’ asked Paula.
‘No. Ebba was our first and only one. She ended up staying with us, and later we decided to adopt her. Berit could hardly sleep at night, waiting for the adoption to be finalized. She was terrified that someone would come and take her away from us.’
‘What was she like as a child?’ asked Patrik, mostly out of curiosity. Something told him that the Ebba he’d met was merely a pale copy of her true self.
‘Oh, she was a proper little whirlwind, let me tell you.’