Wittberg was the first to enter the small bedroom with two narrow beds on one side. In a corner on top of one of the beds stood a dark-blue carrycot, shoved close to the wall.
Wittberg slowly turned around to look at his older colleague. Kihlgard calmly met his glance and nodded for him to proceed.
At that moment, Thomas Wittberg felt smaller and more insignificant than he’d ever felt before. For a second he shut his eyes, unable to remember ever experiencing such silence. He would never forget the moment when he leaned over the carrycot. The sight that met his eyes would change his life for ever.
There she lay. Under a blanket with a pink knitted cap on her head. Her eyes were closed and her face peaceful. Her little hands lay on top of the blanket. Then Wittberg bent even closer and listened to the most beautiful sound he could imagine.
The regular in and out of Elin’s breathing.
EPILOGUE
The springtime sun had finally begun to loosen winter’s harsh grip on the island, and the icicles were falling from the eaves. During his morning walk to police headquarters, Knutas could feel the sunlight warming his back. The birds were chirping, infusing new hope into life.
And there was certainly a need for that.
As usual, he climbed the stairs to the criminal division, the first to arrive, and sat down at his desk with a cup of coffee. In front of him lay a thick folder with material from the investigation. On top was a stack of photocopies of the diary entries that the killer had made, describing his plans for the murders.
David Mattson lived with his girlfriend and a little kitten in a flat in one of Stockholm’s northern suburbs. He was studying economics at the university, but his studies were not going well. During the past six months he had skipped more classes than he had attended.
His girlfriend had been deeply shocked to hear that he was the one who had killed both of the art dealers. According to her, he was the nicest and most gentle person you could possibly meet.
The whole thing started one day in the autumn when David happened to overhear a conversation between his paternal grandparents. They were talking about the fact that Erik was adopted. This had come as a complete surprise to David. His whole life, he had assumed that these two people were his grandparents, yet they weren’t related to him at all. Not really. His real grandparents were somewhere else, but had never made themselves known. When he found out the truth, it was easy to work out the rest.
The fact that Hugo Malmberg had given Erik up for adoption on the very day he was born had seemed to David an enormous act of betrayal. That he was wealthy and able to throw money around while Erik struggled to pay his bills had filled David with contempt. He started tailing Malmberg, following him to the gallery, as he went about town and at the gym. He soon discovered that his real grandfather was gay.
In the diary entries, David described the terrible incident that became the springboard for everything else. One afternoon in November, David had followed his biological grandfather to an underground club for gay men. There he had witnessed Hugo Malmberg, along with Egon Wallin, using his own son for his sexual pleasures, although without being aware of their kinship.
David was the only one who knew the truth of the matter. It took only a couple of seconds for him to understand what he was seeing. Those seconds turned him into a murderer.
During the investigation, it turned out that Egon Wallin and Hugo Malmberg had not only had a relationship, but on several occasions they had also paid to have sex with male prostitutes. Knutas thought this must have been the reason for Malmberg’s reluctance to admit to the police that his relationship with Egon Wallin was more than a business partnership. And that was why he didn’t want to admit that his colleague on Gotland was homosexual when the police asked him about that.
The basis for the murders seemed to be David Mattson’s complicated and deluded relationship with his father, Erik. As far as Knutas understood from the detailed descriptions in the diary, David had always loved Erik and looked up to him. At the same time, he seemed to have longed for a father who didn’t really exist — the kind that others seemed to have, someone who could give him encouragement, solace, confirmation, love and a sense of security. This hope remained so strong that David hadn’t been able to free himself from Erik. The diary entries were permeated with a striving to make his father happy, to straighten out his life, to please him. Maybe David was hoping that his father would then be able to give him what he needed in return.
The theft of ‘The Dying Dandy’ was, of course, pure insanity. But in David’s eyes, it was a way to redress the wrongs done to his father.
Knutas interpreted the fact that he’d wanted to show a connection with the sculpture as proof that deep in his heart David Mattson wanted to be caught, that he wanted the world to see and understand the suffering he had been forced to endure. That was undoubtedly also why he’d arranged his victims the way he had done. Everything had to do with revenge and redress and going back to the past.
As for the stolen paintings, Wittberg’s persistent efforts had finally paid off. It turned out that Egon Wallin had been collaborating with Mattis Kalvalis’s manager, Vigor Haukas. The paintings were stolen by professional criminals from the Baltics and later sold from there on the international market. Haukas had run the whole operation, with Wallin acting as a middleman while the paintings made their way out of Sweden. It had been a lucrative business for several years.
Knutas sighed as he continued reading. It was a deeply tragic story. And there was one theme that had run through the whole investigation: secrets. First there was the murder of Egon Wallin and everything that he’d kept hidden from his family; then Erik Mattson’s double life; and all the secrets that were part of Hugo Malmberg’s past.
Knutas took out his pipe from the top drawer of his desk, got up and went over to the window. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, the sun was shining, and in the distance the sea was gleaming bright blue, the way it did only in the springtime. He glanced over at Dalman Gate. That was where it had all begun, two months earlier.
It seemed like a very, very long time ago.