‘Yes, once it was all over between Karolina and Måns. But they kept the relationship very discreet. They presumably thought it best to, considering all they were planning together. Even Marja didn’t know, although she was working with them on the refugee operation. They’d been together for several years before I realised they were a couple. And I didn’t say a word to anyone except Sven. We decided their relationship wasn’t really any of our business, and we’d just have to wait and see. I regret that now.’
Fredrika hesitated over what had to come next.
‘How would you describe the state of Johanna’s mental health?’
‘She’s sick,’ said Elsie. ‘Utterly sick. Definitely not the sort of woman I’d want as a daughter-in-law.’
‘Have you had any contact with Karolina over the past few days?’
It was Elsie’s turn to hesitate.
‘She came to find me,’ she said. ‘Today. She was worried about Måns and wanted to make sure he was all right. I tried to get her to see reason and hand herself over to the police, but she said she had something important to do first. She said she had to face the person who had destroyed her before she could move on. I think I know where they might be.’
‘So do we,’ said Fredrika, and thought to herself: they deceived Jakob and Marja and lots of other people. The murder of Jakob and Marja was never a matter of dangerous secrets and people needing to be silenced. It was just a clever front for the real motive: personal vengeance.
The house lay dark and deserted as Karolina parked the hired car in the driveway. Without the slightest hesitation, she opened the car door and got out into the snow. She tramped as quickly as she could round the house and in through the basement door. A few moments later she was back out again and unlocked the front door on the other side of the house. A wave of memories overpowered her as she stepped inside and closed the door behind her, still in the dark.
This was where the story had started, and this was where it would reach its conclusion.
First they had destroyed everything for her and Måns. Weakened him to a point where he could no longer be counted on, so any relationship with him became impossible. After that they had carried on working through their plan, so methodically and purposefully that it had scared her witless.
She moved towards the living room. She stretched out an arm and ran her fingertips along all those dear photographs as she passed them. She was the one who had once helped her mother put them up.
Everything had started falling apart right back when she was a child, she realised that now.
But there were other things she could not make head nor tail of, and she would demand answers from her sister about those, as soon as she turned up. Karolina crouched down by one of the big windows and scanned the darkness in front of the house. With all the lights off, she would be invisible to anybody trying to look in, but have a better view of the garden herself.
She kept a tight hold on the shotgun she had loaded in the basement, which was now resting in her lap. She was ready to meet her sister, any second now.
The flying squad minibus was having trouble gripping the slippery road surface, but the driver accelerated even so. Fredrika’s call came through to Alex when they were about ten minutes from the house.
‘Elsie’s confirmed almost everything we thought, and told me more besides,’ she reported. ‘Hiding the migrants was a joint project of Viggo and Sven’s from the word go, but unlike Sven, Viggo carried on in Ragnar Vinterman’s expanded operation. It was Viggo who took the Ljungs’ car and reported it stolen so they’d be in the clear if there were suspicions it had been used to commit a crime.’
‘Well I’ll be…’ began Alex.
‘There’s more,’ Fredrika broke in. ‘Elsie’s sure that Viggo killed Jakob and Marja and that he and Johanna staged the whole thing. They’ve been together for several years, but they didn’t let on to anybody. Oh, and it turns out it was Karolina who was raped at the holiday house, not Johanna.’
Fredrika paused for breath as Alex tried to slot all this new information into the tragic framework. Two brothers, two sisters. Two disintegrating families, and strong individuals who broke loose and demanded redress.
‘Could she tell you anything about Viggo’s reasons for murdering his girlfriend’s parents?’ he asked briskly.
‘Revenge,’ Fredrika said. ‘Viggo and Måns were with their parents on a surprise visit to Ekerö the evening Karolina was raped and heard all about it from Johanna. What nobody realised was that both boys were in love with the same girl, Karolina. To start with it wasn’t a problem because she didn’t want either of them. But later on, when she’d left home to study, she got interested in Måns. In a crazy attempt to outdo the competition, Viggo located the man who raped Karolina, who turned out still to be in the country.’
A gust of wind caught the minibus and tried to knock it off the road. Alex had to concentrate hard to hear what Fredrika was saying.
‘His confrontation with the rapist ended very violently: Viggo was knifed in the face and fled. He’s apparently had a terrible scar ever since.’
‘I thought it was a cleft-palate operation that had gone wrong,’ Alex said, bitterly recalling what Tony Svensson had said to Peder and Joar:
It’s not somebody like me you’re looking for… I haven’t got a name… just a fucking ugly face.
‘That was what everybody who met him later thought,’ Fredrika said eagerly. ‘And the family let them think it, because they were ashamed of the real reason for the scar. The incident was never reported to the police; Karolina’s rapist had too many motives for keeping out of judicial hands.’
‘I don’t suppose Karolina was very impressed by Viggo’s bit of bravado?’ Alex guessed.
‘No he wasn’t, and that seems to have been one of the things that pushed him into helping Johanna with her plan. He never forgave Karolina’s family, or his own, for condemning what he’d done. Johanna was part of the Vinterman network as well, and she got her mother to join, too, because Marja had strong objections to her husband’s idea of starting up his voluntary work again. She felt the refugees had cost her so much personally that she never wanted to help them for free again. Ragnar tempted her with money and I’m sure Johanna had some strong arguments, too.’
Fredrika swallowed.
‘Lots of people were damaged for life that midsummer eve.’
‘And Elsie and Sven knew this all along,’ Alex said dully.
‘We have to understand them,’ Fredrika said. ‘They’ve been fearing for their own lives since they found Jakob and Marja. The only thing they dared give us was their conviction that Jakob hadn’t done it himself. They hoped we’d find out the rest.’
Alex paused.
‘Good God, what a betrayal on Marja’s part,’ he said in a voice that Fredrika had never heard him use before.
‘I don’t think so, Alex,’ she said. ‘I’m sure Johanna convinced her mother there was no risk in the project. Maybe she played on her feelings of guilt about the past, too.’
‘And when she realised the full ghastliness of it…’
‘… it was too late. But she tried anyway. We know she sent those threats to Jakob, and I think we can assume she sent them with the best of intentions. She was trying to save what could still be saved.’
Alex stared out of the minibus window at the whirling snow. He thought ahead to the Ekerö house, where the sisters must be gearing up for their final battle.
‘She could have done more,’ he said sternly. ‘Then maybe she and Jakob would still be alive today.’
‘But they might not. She was a pawn in Johanna’s game, and she presumably wanted nothing better than to see her parents dead. She was just waiting for the right opportunity.’
Initially Karolina could not be sure if it was her sister walking up the road towards the house. She leant up against the window, pressing her forehead to the cold glass to try to see better. When the figure turned in at the driveway, Karolina’s heart missed a beat. It really was her sister.