‘So that went well, didn’t it?’ said Mellberg with a satisfied smile. ‘Shouldn’t you be going home to rest, Paula?’ He spoke so loudly that Patrik jumped in his chair.
Paula glared at him. ‘If you don’t mind, I’ll decide for myself when I need to rest.’
‘You come running over here even though you’re on leave, and then you ride all the way out to Göteborg and back. If anything goes wrong, just remember that I…’
‘I think we have the situation under control,’ said Patrik, trying to avert the quarrel that was brewing. ‘Right now those boys are going to be feeling the heat.’
It was absurd to use the term ‘boys’ for men who were now well over fifty. But when Patrik thought about them, he always pictured the five boys in the photograph, wearing seventies clothing and with slightly wary expressions on their faces.
‘You’re right about that. Especially John Holm,’ said Mellberg, scratching Ernst behind the ear.
‘Patrik?’ Annika stuck her head in the kitchen and motioned for him to come with her. He got up and followed her out to the hall, where she handed him a cordless phone. ‘It’s Torbjörn. They’ve found something.’
Patrik felt his pulse quicken. He took the phone and went into his office, closing the door behind him. For almost fifteen minutes he listened to Torbjörn, asking him several follow-up questions. When he ended the call, he hurried back to the kitchen where Paula, Mellberg, Gösta, and Annika were all waiting. Even though it was late, no one showed any sign of wanting to go home.
‘What did he say?’ asked Annika.
‘Hold your horses. First I need some coffee.’ Moving with exaggerated slowness, Patrik went over to the coffee maker and reached for the pot, but before he could get to it, Annika stood up. She grabbed the pot, filled a cup so abruptly that the coffee sloshed over the side, and then set it down on the table in front of Patrik’s empty chair.
‘All right. Now sit down and tell us what Torbjörn said.’
Patrik grinned but did as he was told. He cleared his throat.
‘Torbjörn found a clear fingerprint on the back of the stamp on the card from “G”. So now we have a chance to match the print with a potential suspect.’
‘That’s great,’ said Paula, propping her swollen legs on a chair. ‘But you look like the proverbial cat that swallowed a canary, so there must be even bigger news.’
‘You’re right.’ Patrik took a sip of the scalding coffee. ‘It has to do with the bullet.’
‘Which one?’ asked Gösta, leaning forward.
‘That’s the thing. The bullet that was found under the floorboards and the bullets that were, contrary to regulations, prised out of the kitchen wall after the attempt on Ebba’s life…’
‘Okay, okay,’ said Mellberg, waving his hand. ‘I get the message.’
‘Well, they were probably fired from the same gun.’
Four pairs of eyes stared at him. Patrik nodded.
‘It sounds incredible, but it’s true. An unknown number of members of the Elvander family were murdered in 1974, and they were most likely shot with the same gun that was used yesterday in an attempt to kill Ebba Stark.’
‘Could it really be the same perpetrator after so many years?’ Paula shook her head. ‘That’s hard to believe.’
‘I’ve always thought that the attacks on Ebba and her husband had something to do with the family’s disappearance. And this proves it.’
Patrik threw out his hands. In his head he heard the echo of similar questions from the press conference. He hadn’t been able to provide any answers, other than to acknowledge that it was one of their theories. Only now did the police have some proof to go on.
‘Based on the bullet’s grooves, Forensics have also been able to ascertain the type of gun used,’ he went on. ‘So we need to find out whether anyone in the area owns or has owned a Smith & Wesson.38.’
‘If we look at the bright side, this means that the gun used to murder the Elvander family isn’t lying at the bottom of the sea,’ said Mellberg.
‘At least not yesterday when the shots were fired at Ebba. Of course, it might have ended up there afterwards,’ Patrik pointed out.
‘I don’t think so,’ said Paula. ‘If someone has been saving that gun all this time, it’s hard to imagine them getting rid of it now.’
‘You could be right. Maybe this person regards the gun as some sort of trophy and is keeping it as a souvenir. Whatever the case, we need to focus our efforts on establishing what happened in 1974. We’ll have to re-interview the four men we’ve already talked to, see if we can’t clarify the precise sequence of events on the day in question. And we need to locate Percy von Bahrn ASAP. We should have done so already, and I’ll take full responsibility for failing to interview him. We also need to talk to that teacher, the one who’s still alive. What’s his name? You know, the one who was on holiday during Easter…’ Patrik snapped his fingers.
‘Ove Linder,’ said Gösta. His voice had taken on an anxious note.
‘Exactly. Ove Linder. Doesn’t he live in Hamburgsund now? We’ll go out there and have a talk with him tomorrow morning. He might have valuable information about what went on in that school. You and I will go out there together.’ He reached for pen and paper, which were always at hand on the table, and began making a list of the most urgent tasks.
‘Well, er…’ said Gösta, rubbing his chin.
Patrik went on writing.
‘Tomorrow we need to meet with all five of the boys. We’ll divide them up among us. Paula, do you think you could do some more digging into where the money came from that was deposited in the bank for Ebba?’
Paula’s face lit up. ‘Absolutely. I’ve already contacted the bank to ask for their help.’
‘Er, Patrik?’ Gösta ventured again, but his colleague was too busy doling out assignments to hear. ‘Patrik!’
All eyes turned to Gösta. It wasn’t like him to raise his voice.
‘Yes, what is it? What did you want to say?’ Patrik studied Gösta’s face, and realized all at once that he wasn’t going to like what he was about to hear.
‘Well, the thing is, that teacher named Ove Linder…’
‘Yes?’
‘Somebody has already talked to him.’
‘Somebody?’ Patrik repeated, and then waited to hear more.
‘I thought it might be smart to have more people working the case. And you can’t deny that she’s good at digging up information, and we have such limited resources. So I thought it wouldn’t hurt to get some help. And as you just said, it’s something that we ought to have done by now, which in a sense we already have. So it’s actually all fine.’ Gösta paused to catch his breath.
Patrik stared at him. Was the man out of his mind? Was he trying to make excuses for having gone behind the backs of his colleagues? Was he attempting to put a positive spin on his actions? Then Patrik was seized with a suspicion that he hoped would not be confirmed.
‘When you say “she” – are you referring to my dear wife? Did Erica go out to talk to that teacher?’
‘Er… yes,’ said Gösta, eyes downcast.
‘Oh, Gösta,’ Paula said reproachfully, sounding as if she were talking to a child who had been caught stealing a biscuit.
‘Is there anything else I should know?’ asked Patrik. ‘You might as well tell me. What has Erica been up to? And you too, for that matter.’
With a heavy sigh Gösta began recounting what Erica had told him about her visits with ‘Liza’ and John Holm, about what Kjell had said about John’s background, and about the note that she’d found. Then he seemed to hesitate for a moment before he finally told everyone about the break-in at Erica and Patrik’s house.
Patrik’s expression turned icy cold. ‘What the hell are you saying?’
Gösta stared down at the floor in shame.
‘Never mind, I’ve heard enough!’ Patrik leaped to his feet, dashed out of the station, and jumped into his car. He could feel his blood boiling. As he turned the key in the ignition and the engine started up, he forced himself to take several deep breaths. Then he floored the accelerator.