He forced a smile in return and carried Saga back to the buggy. The fact that he still hadn’t told Fredrika about the hell he was going through was making him feel more and more guilty by the minute. He would have to start talking very soon.
Spencer had dismissed the idea that Tova might be interested in him, told himself he was being a silly old fool. He had thought he was doing the right thing, when in fact he couldn’t have done anything more wrong.
The garage was bigger than Fredrika Bergman had expected. A broken ceiling light, an undisturbed layer of dust. The place hadn’t been used for a long time. Diana Trolle’s sister confirmed this as she handed Fredrika a torch.
‘We use the garage as a storage room. I don’t know how many times we’ve said we ought to sort it out, get rid of all the old stuff. But we never quite get around to it somehow…’
She sighed.
‘I suppose it will be easier to throw it all away now we know she’s dead.’
Fredrika could understand the logic. The beam of the torch swept across boxes piled on top of one another. A few black bin bags, stuffed to the brim, had been pushed into one corner. A sofa was standing on end in the middle of the room, next to some chairs and a dining table that had been dismantled.
‘She didn’t have much furniture; it was mainly clothes and bits and pieces. It’s all in these boxes.’
‘What’s in the bin bags?’
‘Bedding, that kind of thing.’
Fredrika looked around. The garage door leading to the street was closed; they had come in through a door leading from the house. All the windows had been covered with cardboard; hardly any light found its way inside.
‘Give me a shout if you need any help.’
Diana’s sister disappeared back indoors, leaving Fredrika alone. The relatively meagre pile of belongings made her feel sad; Rebecca hadn’t acquired very much during her life.
Resolutely, she marched over to the pile of boxes and opened the top one. Dust and grime stuck to her hands as she began to rummage. She propped the torch on another box to give her some light. The box contained books. Fredrika pulled out one after another; they were all children’s books, titles that she too had read: The Famous Five, Anne of Green Gables, the story of Kulla-Gulla the little orphan girl, Whitenose the pony. She closed the box, lifted it down onto the floor and opened the next one.
More books.
The third box contained what looked like textbooks. She recognised several of them from her own degree course. She took them out one at a time, flicked through them, read the back cover, put them back. She carried on searching even though she didn’t actually know what she was looking for.
Another box, more books. Right at the bottom, a magazine rack full of newspapers and journals. Fredrika noted that Rebecca Trolle had been very organised; everything had its allotted place. On closer inspection she had noticed that several piles of books were arranged in alphabetical order according to the author’s surname. She couldn’t imagine that whoever had packed the boxes would have bothered to do that, so they must have been in order on Rebecca’s bookshelves. Fredrika, who had always read a great deal, felt an intuitive affinity with Rebecca.
She moved on to the next pile of boxes, wishing they were marked in some way. The top box contained household items, the next one shoes. The torch fell to the floor; Fredrika shook it anxiously as it flickered. It would be impossible to carry on without light. She was relieved to discover that it had survived, and she resumed the search. The sight of all those shoes almost made her feel ill, as if they brought her too close to Rebecca. Shoes seemed somehow private; it was obvious that they had been worn. Hesitantly, she picked one up: pink, with high heels. When did you wear that kind of shoe? She dropped it back in the box and moved on.
Notes. Fredrika’s heart beat a little faster and she picked up the torch so that she could see better. Files and folders and a hardbacked notebook. Fredrika grabbed the box and with a sweeping movement she tipped everything out on the floor. Then she sat down cross-legged and started to leaf through all the papers. The garage floor was cold; Fredrika dug out a book and sat on it.
Two of the files were full of what she presumed were lecture notes. Page after page of neatly written phrases, snatched from their context to the uninitiated reader. Weighty words on the significance of Selma Lagerlöf for Swedish women writers, summarised in a few simple sentences.
Fredrika put the files to one side and opened the notebook. On the first page, Rebecca had written ‘Thea Aldrin and the lost Nobel Prize’.
Thea Aldrin. The name evoked memories that washed over Fredrika like warm waves. Thea Aldrin’s books about an angel called Dysia had been Fredrika’s absolute favourites when she was a little girl. She had been surprised when she found out that the publisher had stopped reprinting them, on the basis that there was no demand. Anyone who wanted to read Thea’s books had to seek them out in a library or a second-hand book shop.
Fredrika thought this was ridiculous, and suspected that the publisher’s lack of interest in new editions was more than likely due to the fact that they didn’t want anything to do with the author. Fredrika knew only the salient points about Thea Aldrin’s life story; from time to time, she would appear in a double-page spread in one of the tabloids under the headline ‘Unforgettable Crimes’. She knew that Thea had been sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of her ex-husband, and that the police had also suspected her of the murder of her teenage son, who had been missing since the early 1980s. There was also a suggestion that she was the author behind two extremely vulgar works that had been published under a pseudonym in the seventies. Fredrika had no idea what Thea was doing today; she only knew that she had been released in the nineties.
But Rebecca had found out a great deal more. From her notes Fredrika could see that she had got quite a long way in her research into Thea’s life. How had Alex put it? He had said that Rebecca was writing her dissertation about a children’s author. An author who, according to many critics in days gone by, was likely to be the first children’s writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Fredrika flicked quickly through the notebook. She decided to take it with her and read it properly later.
The folders contained a plethora of photocopied articles on the fate of Thea Aldrin, covering every possible angle. There were feminist critics, insisting that the interest in Thea’s books would never have faded if she had been a man. More traditional researchers claimed that Thea’s writing would not have attracted so much attention if she hadn’t been such a controversial figure, challenging the basic values prevalent in the 1960s.
Fredrika found a carrier bag and started packing up the files and notes. She couldn’t find a draft of the dissertation, which annoyed her. The dissertation had obviously not been completed, which meant that the likelihood of the university having a copy was increasingly unlikely.
She went through the last two boxes. One contained ornaments and photo albums. Fredrika assumed the albums had already been checked and dismissed as being of no interest, but she couldn’t resist opening them. There were pictures of lots of different places and people she didn’t recognise. She must remember to mention the albums to Rebecca’s aunt; the pictures would mean a lot to the family.
She put them back and opened the last box. Even more papers, and – right at the bottom – two floppy disks, which indicated that Rebecca had owned an old computer. Fredrika was surprised that the police hadn’t taken the disks; then again, perhaps they had been checked and returned to the family. She picked them up and turned them over; one was labelled ‘DISSERTATION’ and the other ‘THE GUARDIAN ANGELS’.
She put them both in her bag.