There is a brief silence.
‘It’s true that a lot of things pointed to him. Wasn’t some part of his uniform found at the scene?’
‘Yes, a cap badge. Plus there were hoof prints from a horse that was stabled at Svartgården, and the witnesses said they’d seen him on the horse.’
‘But those witnesses were children, and they ran away immediately, as I understand it. Except for the boy who came back, they can’t have seen much.’
‘David Nordin.’
‘That’s right, that was his name. David was the only one who said he’d seen Leo without the Green Man costume. He could easily have influenced his friends. They were interviewed together, which is highly irregular. Children have a tendency to back up one another’s stories. If one of them claimed that it was Leo they’d seen, and that person held a strong position within the group, it’s not impossible that the rest would just go along with him.’
‘So you do think Leo was innocent?’
Another silence.
‘Let me put it this way,’ Bexell says eventually. ‘I think there are certain aspects of Leo’s confession, the witness statements and the investigation as a whole that suggest he might have been.’
63
‘Do you remember the time we got a puncture out in the bush, and that bull elephant appeared? He stood and stared at us, maybe only fifteen metres away, snorting and scraping at the ground. Do you remember that sense of fascination, of danger? Then you’ll understand what I’m feeling right now.’
In her dream she is back in the cellar. At first, it’s the one from her childhood. Maybe she’s little too, little and terrified. Sitting with her back pressed up against the wall, listening to Daddy shouting on the other side of the door. Then everything changes. The cellar is older, damper. The ceiling is not made of solid concrete but of planks of wood, a small amount of light seeping through the gaps.
She can hear voices in the room above, a man and two women. She moves back and forth across the cellar floor, trying to peek between the planks, but all she can see are legs. A pair of wellingtons, two pairs of clogs.
The voices grow louder, angrier. A crash as a chair is knocked over directly above her head. She instinctively closes her eyes, protects her head with one arm.
Footsteps, shouting. Then a scream of pain.
Suddenly she is somewhere else. In the stone circle. Veils of mist hover around the ancient hawthorns. She is wearing a white dress, clutching two sets of antlers in her hands. Her feet are ice cold against the stone.
Elita Svart is standing opposite her. She looks the same as in the school photo. She has a Polaroid camera on a strap around her neck, and she is carrying a blue suitcase.
‘Who killed you?’ Thea asks.
The girl doesn’t answer; she merely gives a sad smile.
‘Who killed Elita Svart?’
Suddenly there is the sound of approaching hoof beats. The girl turns her head, fear in her eyes.
‘He’s coming,’ she whispers. ‘Be careful!’
The hoof beats come closer and closer. Become a roar, become the sound of barrel bombs ripping apart a building and the people inside it.
Thea tries to scream but her mouth is full of concrete dust. The darkness envelops her, takes her back to the cellar of her childhood.
Someone is there, right beside her.
Are you trying to blackmail me, little Jenny? her father whispers the second before she wakes up.
She looks at the clock. Four thirty, and the chances of getting back to sleep are non-existent. The nightlight spreads a faint glow through the room. The damp patch has grown darker, as if the plaster, or whatever the bedroom ceiling is made of, is becoming saturated.
She lies there gazing up at the patch for a while. She thinks of her father, and the letter she hasn’t written yet. How long will he wait? What will happen when he gets tired of waiting?
She pushes away the thought, replaces it with yesterday’s conversation with Kurt Bexell. It is surprisingly easy.
Bexell told her that he’d fallen out with the chief of police in Ljungslöv, who sent Arne Backe to threaten him.
Why was the chief of police so keen to put him off? Who was he?
She turns to Google, enters chief of police Ljungslöv in the search box and immediately gets a hit from the local paper.
Crowds turn out to say goodbye to valued chief of police
The article from 2010 is about the funeral of Stig Lennartson, chief of police in Ljungslöv from 1981 to 2006. It is illustrated with two pictures: one of Lennartson himself, a bald man with heavy bags under his eyes, and one of a large group of mourners leaving the church. Thea immediately recognises her in-laws, followed by Arne Backe, Dr Andersson, Erik and Per Nyberg, and various other people she’s seen around the village.
So Lennartson is dead. Was he the one who tried to hide Elita’s pregnancy in the autopsy report? Judging by Bexell’s account, that seems entirely possible – but why? Lennartson had no personal connection to the case, as far as she can see. According to the article, he didn’t even live in Tornaby, but out in the country on the other side of Ljungslöv.
If Lennartson didn’t tamper with the report of his own initiative, then who had enough power and influence to make a senior police officer alter the information in a case file?
Thea looks at the funeral photo again. Her in-laws are almost right at the front. Ingrid looks the same as usual, the same determination in her eyes, chin carried a little too high. Bertil, on the other hand, looks quite different. The gentleness she is accustomed to isn’t there; instead his gaze is fixed, his expression grim.
In 2010 Thea and David hadn’t met. And Bertil wasn’t diagnosed with dementia until two years later. Was he caught at an unfortunate moment, or does the picture show the real Bertil, the man he was before he began to slip into oblivion?
She googles him, finds some photos from roughly the same period. Meetings at the sports club, some celebratory dinner. He looks more cheerful at these occasions, but it’s very clear that the gentleness she likes so much is something that he’s acquired in later years.
Ingrid is there too, standing slightly behind Bertil, her hand tucked under his arm, as if she is deliberately staying in his shadow.
Thea thinks about the strange visit from her mother-in-law the other day. The effort Ingrid has made to help her and David get here. Ingrid’s concerns over what people will think if Thea goes around talking about Elita Svart. Or is Ingrid actually worried about something else? Is she afraid that Thea will find something? A crack in the perfect façade, which will allow the dampness to start spreading, allow secrets to slip out.
She and David have breakfast together. He got home late, long after she’d gone to bed. He looks exhausted; he’s spending every waking moment getting ready for the dinner.
She’s finding it difficult to let go of what Kurt Bexell said: that David might have influenced the other children to identify Leo. She’d like to ask him about it, but he’s already made it very clear that he doesn’t want to talk about Elita Svart. Bringing it up now would definitely lead to a row.
Another thought has struck her. If Bexell was right, if Leo’s confession was false and he was actually innocent, then the murderer is still out there. A murderer who has got away with it for over thirty years.
Is that what the warnings were about? The cellar, the Green Man on her car – is she in danger?
‘I have to go.’ David pulls on his jacket as he finishes his sandwich. ‘I’ve got my hands full all day. See you tonight.’