‘Was there anything else?’ he said with effort.
Margareta shook her head.
‘Not for now,’ she said. ‘But I shall be keeping a close eye on how you deal with your colleagues from now on. Try to see it as a fresh start, a second chance. Take the opportunity of getting something out of this, especially out of your talk to the psychologist.’
Peder nodded and left the room, convinced he would fucking well kill the woman if he stayed a second longer.
Neither Alex Recht nor Joar Sahlin said a word as they drove the short stretch from HQ in Kungsholmen to Bromma Church where Jakob and Marja Ahlbin had worked. Ragnar Vinterman, the vicar, had promised to meet them at the parish rooms at two thirty.
Alex’s thoughts went to Peder. He knew he had been hard on him at the meeting in the Den, but he did not really know what else he could have done. The croissant episode was as odd as it was unacceptable, and revealed poor judgement in a colleague whose employer had placed a good deal of trust in him. Alex knew well enough that the boy had been having a hard time in his private life over quite a long period. It was only natural for that sort of thing to affect one’s judgement, and if Peder had ever commented on his own conduct in a way that showed he knew he was behaving badly, people might have been more tolerant. But Peder had not. He got himself into awkward situations more and more often, embarrassing his employer in front of other employees.
In front of other female employees.
Alex suppressed a sigh. And then there was Peder’s peculiarly lousy sense of timing. The last thing they needed at the moment was any negative publicity, with the special investigation group’s continued existence currently under discussion. It was enough that their only civilian appointment and only female investigator had been forced to go part time by a more than hellish pregnancy which Alex’s bosses had initially construed as symptoms of stress and exhaustion. He had been more than thankful the day Fredrika finally gave in and followed the rules for a proper reduction in hours backed up by a convincing doctor’s note.
Meanwhile, the group had acquired new blood in the shape of Joar. Admittedly only for a limited period, but still. The decision was in itself an indication that the group had not been written off. It had not taken Alex long to appreciate Joar as an exceptionally talented detective. By contrast with both Peder and Fredrika, he also seemed mentally stable. He never flared up like Peder, and never seemed to misconstrue things the way Fredrika tended to. He always stayed calm and his integrity appeared boundless. For the first time in many months, Alex felt as though he had someone he could talk to at work.
‘Mind if I ask about your surname?’ Joar suddenly said. ‘Is it German?’
Alex gave a laugh; it was a question he was often asked.
‘If we go back far enough in our family tree it apparently is,’ he replied. ‘Jewish.’
He glanced sideways at Joar, keen to see if he reacted. He did not.
‘But that was a long time ago,’ Alex added. ‘The men whose surname it was married Christian women, and the Jewish blood ties between mother and child were broken.’
They were approaching the church. Alex parked outside the parish rooms as arranged. A tall, dignified-looking man was on the front steps in his shirtsleeves and dog collar, waiting for them. He was silhouetted like a dark statue against the white building and pale grey sky. Commands respect, was Alex’s assessment before he was even out of the car.
‘Ragnar Vinterman,’ said the clergyman, taking Alex’s hand and then Joar’s.
Alex noted that he could not have been on the steps for long, because his hand was still warm. And large. Alex had never seen such large hands before.
‘Let’s go in,’ said Ragnar Vinterman in a deep voice. ‘Alice, our parish assistant, has provided some refreshments.’
There were coffee cups and a generous plate of buns set out on one of the big tables in the parish rooms. Other than that, the whole place looked deserted, and Alex could feel how chilly the place was even before he took off his coat. Joar kept his on.
‘I’m sorry it’s so cold,’ said Ragnar with a sigh. ‘We’ve been trying to sort out the heating here for years; we almost despair of ever getting it to work. Coffee?’
They accepted the hot drinks gladly.
‘I should probably start by expressing condolences,’ Alex said cautiously as he put down his cup.
Ragnar nodded slowly, head bowed.
‘It’s a huge loss to the parish,’ he said quietly. ‘It’s going to take us a very long time to get over it. The grieving process is going to be hard work for us all.’
The man’s bearing and voice filled Alex with instinctive trust in him. Alex’s daughter would have said that the vicar had the body of a senior athlete.
The vicar ran a hand through his thick, dark brown hair.
‘Here in the church we always follow the saying “Hope for the best but prepare for the worst”, but to do that you need to form a clear view of what the worst conceivable thing would be.’
He stopped abruptly and fiddled with his coffee cup.
‘I fear we who work and worship here had not really done that on this occasion.’
Alex frowned.
‘I don’t think I quite understand.’
‘Everybody here knew about Jakob’s health problems,’ he said, meeting Alex’s gaze. ‘But only a few of us knew how bad things sometimes got for him. Only a handful of colleagues and parishioners knew he had had electric shock treatment several times, for example. When he was in the clinic we would generally say he was at a health resort or away on holiday. He preferred it that way.’
‘Was he afraid of being seen as weak?’ asked Joar.
Ragnar turned his gaze to the younger man.
‘I don’t think so,’ he answered, leaning back in his chair slightly. ‘And he knew, just as we did, that there are so many preconceptions about the condition he suffered from.’
‘We gather he’d been living with it for a long time,’ said Alex, kicking himself for not yet having got hold of Jakob’s doctor.
‘For decades,’ sighed the vicar. ‘Ever since his teens, really. Thank goodness treatment in that area has made such strides as time has gone on. From what I can understand, those early years were pretty ghastly for him. His mother was apparently diagnosed with the same thing.’
‘Is she still with us?’ asked Joar.
‘No,’ said the vicar, and drank some coffee. ‘She took her own life when Jakob was fourteen. That was when he decided to take holy orders.’
Alex gave a shudder. Some problems seemed to pass from generation to generation like a relay baton.
‘What’s your view on what happened yesterday evening?’ he said tentatively, seeking eye contact.
‘You mean do I think Jakob did it? Did he shoot Marja and then himself?’
Alex nodded.
Ragnar swallowed several times, looking past Alex and Joar and out of the window at the snow covering the trees and ground.
‘I’m afraid I think that is exactly what happened.’
As if he had just realised that he was sitting very uncomfortably, he shifted position on his chair and put one knee over the other. His big hands rested on his lap.
The only other sound was that of Joar’s pen at work, adding to the half-page of notes he already had.
‘He was in such a wretched state those last two days,’ Ragnar said, his voice strained. ‘And I regret, yes, I regret with all my heart that I didn’t sound the alarm and at least tell Marja everything.’
‘Such as what?’ asked Alex.
‘About Karolina,’ said Ragnar, leaning forward over the table and resting his face in his hands for a few moments. ‘Little Lina, whose life had gone so far off course.’