For a few short, wonderful moments it was as if he was sharing it all with her. As if he was inside in the warmth. Until her mother arrived home, and he was caught in the car headlights. He’d fled, ran home, jumped on his moped and got as far away as he could. He went to Svartgården. Lasse was one of the few in the area who didn’t look down on him or call him Downhill Arne. Lasse had even given him work, made him feel important.
When the police started asking questions, Lasse had provided him with an alibi, and since neither Ida nor her mother could be absolutely certain that it was Arne they’d seen in the garden, the matter was soon forgotten.
Stupidly, Arne had assumed that all the favours he’d done for Lasse over the years would have evened things out, but he should have realised that a debt to Lasse Svart could never be paid off. Then again, maybe there was hope? He hadn’t said anything to Lasse about what he’d heard at the bank, but it sounded as if the count and Erik Nyberg were going to solve the problem for him. Make sure Lasse disappeared for good.
‘Hi, Arne.’
He gave a start; Elita was standing right behind him, carrying a little case with a strap.
‘Nice car.’
She took a step closer and slowly adjusted his tie.
‘You look good in uniform.’
‘Thanks!’ Arne didn’t know what to do with himself. She was standing so close that he was all too aware of her smelclass="underline" sweat, horse and something else, something incredibly appealing. In some ways Elita reminded him of Ida Axelsson; she was a dark-haired, much prettier version of Ida. She was still fiddling with his tie, her hip brushing against his. Arne swallowed hard.
‘There you go.’ Elita stepped back, dangling the case in front of him. ‘Thanks for the loan.’
Only now did Arne recognise the case; it contained the Polaroid camera Ingrid and Bertil had given him when he graduated from high school.
‘No problem. Can I see the pictures?’
‘Maybe. If you’re nice to me.’ Elita winked at him, just as she’d done in the paddock.
Arne chewed his moustache. ‘And the ghetto blaster?’
‘I need that a while longer, if that’s OK.’
‘No problem,’ he said again. He turned and closed the boot of the car so that she wouldn’t see the containers.
‘Are you going into the village?’
‘Yes!’ His hands were wet with perspiration; he wiped them on his trousers.
‘Can you give me a lift to the castle forest?’
‘And why do you want to go there?’
She shrugged. ‘I’ve got to get something ready for tonight.’
‘Tonight? Don’t do anything silly now, will you?’ Arne swore silently to himself. Why did he suddenly sound like such an old killjoy?
‘We’ll see,’ she said with a smile. ‘We’re meeting up at the stone circle. Why don’t you come? I think you’ll enjoy it.’
Her voice was inviting. Arne realised he was staring at her lips. They were so perfect, so soft, so . . .
‘Who knows – maybe the Green Man will turn up,’ she added.
Arne tried to speak, but his mouth refused to co-operate. The sound of a car engine made Elita spin around.
‘Leo!’ she shouted, and began to run. Something in her voice made Arne feel as if a rusty knife had just been plunged into his heart.
14
‘The story behind the photograph is horrible. It’s about a dead girl, and it touched me deeply, in a way I daren’t explain to you – not yet. There’s so much you don’t know about me, Margaux. So much I haven’t told you. About the person I used to be. About the people I’ve left behind.’
They say goodbye to Kerstin Miller and drive back the way they came. Dr Andersson remains silent, as if she doesn’t know what to say – for once.
‘So the girl in the photograph is Elita Svart,’ Thea says. ‘And she was murdered in the forest.’
That’s all Kerstin was prepared to tell her. Maybe she thinks it’s up to David to fill in the rest, but Thea can’t wait that long.
The doctor drums her fingers on the wheel, as if she is engaged in some kind of internal battle.
‘What happened to Elita was very sad,’ she says eventually. ‘A family tragedy. They lived at Svartgården, deep in the marsh. There used to be a track, but it’s gone now. Elita’s father, Lasse Svart, was a farrier, but he did all kinds of other things as well. Water divining, curing sick animals, breaking in horses. There were rumours that he had other irons in the fire too . . . He went to prison more than once, and a lot of people were afraid of him.’
The doctor pauses while she negotiates a water-filled pothole in the road.
‘Lasse lived with two women, Eva-Britt and Lola. Eva-Britt was about the same age as Lasse. She took care of his business affairs, and she made and sold homeopathic medicines. Her son Leo lived at Svartgården too.’
Another pothole, another pause.
‘Lola, Elita’s mother, was a little . . . strange. She never really went anywhere, couldn’t look you in the eye. The whole family was . . .’ Dr Andersson hesitates. ‘I don’t really know what the right word is these days, but back then people like that were described as gypsies.’
Thea’s skin crawls, her upper lip twitches.
‘Right,’ she hears herself say in a surprisingly neutral tone.
‘As you can see from the photograph, Elita was a very pretty girl with a special aura. And she knew how to exploit all of that.’
‘In what way?’ Thea asks, mainly to stop her brain repeating that word.
‘Elita loved to be the centre of attention, and she could wrap boys and men around her little finger. Including her stepbrother – Leo did everything she asked him to do. Everything.’
The doctor takes a deep breath.
‘On Walpurgis Night 1986, Elita had set up a little performance. It turned out later that she’d seen the photographs in the Folk Museum and wanted to recreate the old rite of spring. And that she’d persuaded four younger children to help her.’
‘David, Nettan, Sebastian and Jan-Olof.’
‘Exactly,’ the doctor says with a sigh. ‘They gathered at the stone circle in the forest, lit a fire, then Elita and the children danced, just like in the old ritual. Then her stepbrother turned up on horseback.’
She breaks off again, searching for the right words.
‘Leo killed Elita. Laid her down on the sacrificial stone with her hands folded across her chest. The newspapers called her the Spring Sacrifice.’
Thea inhales sharply. ‘And David and his friends saw all this?’
‘More or less. It was a terrible business, as you can imagine – both for the children and their families. They were questioned by the police, then there was the trial . . . Has David really never said anything about this? Or Ingrid?’
‘Not a word.’
There is a silence as Thea tries to process what she’s just heard. With hindsight, it’s hardly surprising that David lost the thread during the TV interview, but why wouldn’t he tell her what was going on?
‘Why did the stepbrother do it? What was his motive?’
Dr Andersson shakes her head.
‘Elita had left a letter in her bedroom. She wrote that she didn’t want to grow up, along with a lot of other teenage nonsense. She’d planned the whole thing. Planned to die.’
‘And Leo agreed to kill his stepsister?’
The doctor nods slowly. ‘He confessed, and was convicted of murder – but with a reduced sentence, because the court believed that Elita had manipulated him. A terrible business, as I said.’
It’s clear that the doctor is trying to bring the conversation to an end, but Thea isn’t done yet.
‘Were you their GP?’
‘No, I was working at the hospital in Helsingborg back then, so I wasn’t involved – except that we lived in Tornaby and knew the family.’