That instance the alarm in the wristwatch went off.
'Christ! Sunday lunch!'
He turned off the signal.
'Mum forced me to set the alarm. She'll have a fit if I don't turn up.'
'Don't risk it. Off you go.'
'Do you want to keep hanging out in the attic?'
She didn't reply.
'Do you?'
'Maybe that's the best idea.'
She hadn't even lied. It almost certainly was the best idea if she stayed hidden in Patrik's attic for the foreseeable future, allowing him to feed her the leftovers from the family meals.
Be that as it may. It was too late now.
Somewhere a man or a woman existed, who had had an improbable stroke of luck when their paths crossed that night in the Grand Hotel. That person had stolen her name and exploited her outsider's isolation to further a purely personal vendetta.
She was not going to let that pass. The invisible one had almost succeeded in crushing her. Almost, but not quite.
When the large iron door leading to Patrik's attic had slammed behind her and Patrik's steps were disappearing down the stairs, she pulled the second sheet of A4 paper from her pocket.
She read it carefully, memorising the text.
Rune Hedlund. ID 46 06 08 – 2498 res. Vimmerby.
The cemetery was large and it took her the best part of an hour to find the tombstone. It was tucked away in the parkland set aside for urns, a rounded natural boulder with an inscription in gold lettering.
RUNE HEDLUND
8 june 1946
to
15 march 1998
Below was a space large enough for another name. An eternal flame was burning inside a white plastic cover. Yellow and purple crocuses were filling the area round the stone. Spring was earlier this far south.
She crouched down. Noticing some dry leaves caught between the spring flowers, she pulled them out and threw them to the wind.
'What are you doing here?'
The voice behind her startled her so much she lost her balance and sat down with a thump. She rose quickly, turning to look at the woman who had crept up behind her. Sibylla's heart was racing.
'Just removing some dead leaves.'
Their eyes met, fiercely, as if facing each other across a battle demarcation line. The woman's eyes were full of suspicion and dislike. Sibylla suddenly felt sure she had found her quarry.
They faced up to each other in hostile silence. Sibylla's adversary was dressed in white under her grey coat and she had brought along a green, funnel-shaped vase filled with multicoloured tulips.
'You're not to mess about with my husband's grave.'
Aha. Rune Hedlund's widow.
'I was just clearing some leaves away.'
The woman breathed heavily through her nose, as if trying to pull herself together.
'What have you got to do with my husband?' 'I never met him.'
The woman smiled suddenly, but there was no friendliness in her smile. Fear started creeping up on Sibylla. Had the woman recognised her? The police might have worked out the link between the killings and the organ transplant and asked Hedlund's wife to keep a look-out for Sibylla. They would be keen to find a link between them, to trace Sibylla's motive.
She glanced over her shoulder. Maybe they were here already?
'Don't you realise I know what you've been up to for ages?'
After a pause the woman spoke again.
‘I knew ever since the funeral, when I saw your flowers.'
She sounded outraged.
'What's going on in the mind of someone sending an anonymous bouquet of red roses to a funeral? What did you hope to gain by it? Can you tell me that? Did you think it would please Rune?'
The contempt in the woman's eyes was so searing that Sibylla had to look away.
'If he really wanted to live with you he'd have chosen you while he was alive. But he stayed with me. Not you. So was that why you had to produce the flowers – to humiliate me?'
The woman's face was twisted into a frown as if she was trying to make the revulsion she felt visible.
'Every Friday, week in and week out, one more bloody red rose on his grave. Do you want to punish me? Make me suffer because I was the one who got him in the end?'
Her voice was cracking but it was obvious that she had stored up more to say. Words had been piling up, waiting for an outlet.
Sibylla was shaken by her own miscalculation. The authorities would have had to ask this woman. She was one of the 'close relatives' whose informed consent must be sought. The answer was presumably that someone else out there was feeling abandoned and bitterly wanted to restore something of what had been lost. She had to make sure.
'Have the police contacted you?'
'What? The police? Why should they?'
Rune Hedlund's widow took a step forward, kneeled and jammed the sharp tip of her tin vase into the ground. The crocuses shied away in alarm.
Watching the other woman's back rising and falling with her heavy breathing, Sibylla was quite sure that she had been looking forward to this moment of confrontation. She had probably practised carefully what to say when she was finally face to face with her husband's unknown mistress.
Shame that she had wasted her ammunition.
Of course she was not to know that Rune's real lover had committed much, much worse acts than putting flowers on her man's grave. Sibylla wouldn't like to be the one who enlightened her.
When the distraught woman got up, there were tears in her eyes.
'You're sick – you realise that, don't you?'
The detestation in her eyes hit Sibylla almost like a physical blow. Old memories came back and she looked away to stop remembering.
'Can't let him be, can you? Not even in death?'
She walked away. Sibylla just stood there, watching her disappear.
It was obvious that Rune Hedlund's widow had no idea of how right she was in a way.
She stayed in the cemetery, sitting on a bench she had picked for its good view of Rune Hedlund's final resting place, even though it was a safe distance away. Not many people had decided to visit their loved ones' graves that day and those who did come were either in couples or too old.
Not that she was in a hurry. She was ready to stay until that woman came. Sooner or later she would.
At nightfall she pulled out her sleeping bag and mat. There was a stone wall at the back of the urn enclosure and she tucked herself up between it and the bare branches of a shrubbery. It was reasonably out of sight, but also allowed her to keep watch at all times. Not that she thought the woman would turn up this late, but from what she had learned abut her she was well able to surprise.
She wouldn't miss this woman when she finally came.
The next day she picked another bench to sit on. It was less well placed for observing the grave, but the wife's big bouquet of tulips helped by marking it out. She left her station only once, when she ran to the nearby garage to use their toilet and buy bread. It took only ten minutes before she was back in place, resuming her guard.
No one came near Rune Hedlund's grave.
The next day she fell asleep. She did not know for how long but rushed to the grave to check. No red rose had turned up during the night.
On the Wednesday she felt her pulse beat faster, for the first time. A solitary woman in her forties turned the corner by the water tap and walked briskly along the path towards the urn enclosure.
Sibylla hurried away, taking a shortcut across a small lawn to keep an eye on what was happening. The woman disappointed her by continuing past the pink and yellow tulips to bend over a stone a little further along,
Sibylla returned to her bench with a sigh.
By that afternoon she was feeling real hunger pangs. Taking money from her savings had almost become a habit and didn't bother her any more. With a last look at the deserted cemetery, she went off to the handy garage. She used the toilet again, just in case, and bought two grilled hot dogs with plenty of mustard and ketchup.