They sat down on a soft, comfortable sofa group in the living room. Dainty coffee cups and a plate of cookies were on the table. Coconut balls, Knutas observed, and put one in his mouth. How strange. Somehow that type of cookie didn’t really fit in with the rest of the setting. That’s what he and the twins usually baked for their birthday. His kids loved them.
“We know that you’ve talked to the police several times before, but I wanted to meet you in person,” he said. “I’m in charge of the investigation on Gotland. At the present time, we do not have a suspect, but a good deal of information has come to light during the investigation, and I’d like to talk to you about some of it. Is that all right?”
“Of course,” they said in unison, giving him an inquisitive look.
Knutas cleared his throat. “To get right to the point. It has come to our attention that your daughter had a relationship with one of her high school teachers. A PE teacher by the name of Jan Hagman. Did you know about this?”
The husband was the one who answered. He spoke in a resigned tone of voice. “Yes, we knew about it. Helena told us after it had been going on for a while. She ended up getting pregnant by that scumbag. She was only seventeen.” Hans Hillerstrom’s expression grew tense, and he began wringing his hands.
“She was pregnant?” Knutas raised his eyebrows. They didn’t know about this.
“The whole thing was hushed up. She had an abortion, of course. We forbade her to see him ever again. We talked to the principal, and Hagman was asked to leave. He got a job at another school, someplace down south in Sudret. The man was married and had two children. That swine even had the nerve to call us here at home. He said that he loved Helena. What a fool. He was more than twice her age. He said he was ready to leave his family and take care of Helena and the child. I threatened to kill him if he ever tried to get in touch with her again.”
“How did Helena take all of this?” asked Jacobsson.
“She was deeply depressed at first. She had fallen in love with that idiot, and she was mad at us for not letting her see him anymore. She didn’t think we understood. The abortion wasn’t a nice experience, either. She was sad for a long time afterward. We took a trip to the West Indies so that she could get away from the whole thing. In the fall, she started her third year in school as planned. Things didn’t go well at first, but she recovered quite quickly. Helena has always had lots of friends, and I think that was really important,” he said thoughtfully.
A brief silence followed. Both Knutas and Jacobsson felt rather low-spirited. It was a sad story. On the wall hung a big portrait of Helena in a gold frame, a photograph from her graduation. She was smiling, and her long dark hair framed her face. Knutas felt a pang as he looked at it. It was terrible that her life should end the way it had.
He broke the silence. “How was your relationship with your daughter?”
“Not without its problems, I suppose,” replied Hans Hillerstrom. “As she got older she stopped talking to us about anything important. She became more reserved. Not with other people, just with us. We didn’t understand why.”
“Did you try to find out what the reason was?”
“Well, not directly. We thought that with time it would pass.”
“From what I understand, you continued to go out to the cabin in the summertime, and you still have family on Gotland. Do you know whether Helena ever saw Jan Hagman again?”
“Not as far as we know,” replied the father. “We never discussed the matter.”
Now the mother spoke for the first time. “I tried to talk to her about it a few times. Tried to find out how she felt and how she was doing. She said that she had gotten over it. She realized that it was impossible for them to continue the relationship. As for the baby, she said that she thought it was the right thing to do, to have an abortion. She couldn’t have taken care of a child on her own. She didn’t want to, either. She viewed it mostly as something bad that had to be gotten rid of. Like an illness.” She pressed her lips together.
“How were things between her and Per?” asked Jacobsson.
“Things were good. They were together for a long time, and in my view he seemed to be very much in love with her. The fact that he was at first suspected of committing the murder was really hard on us. I think she was everything to him. I’m sure they would have gotten married. If all this hadn’t happened,” said the mother, and her voice faded away.
“Do you know whether she ever met anyone else while she was with Per? Whether she had any kind of crisis for a period of time? They were together for many years, after all.”
“No, I don’t know about anything like that. Things always seemed so good when we asked. Weren’t they?” Agneta Hillerstrom gave her husband a questioning look.
“I never heard anything, either, about there being any problems,” he concurred.
“We’ve found some new connections between Helena and the second victim, Frida Lindh,” said Knutas. “For one thing, they both worked out at the Friskis amp; Svettis gym in Hornstull. Have you ever heard mention of anyone she might have met there?”
Both Hillerstroms shook their heads.
“Why didn’t you say anything about the Jan Hagman story before?” asked Knutas.
“We didn’t think it was important,” said the father. “It happened so long ago. Do you think that Hagman murdered Helena?”
“We can’t rule out anything, and everything that has to do with Helena is of importance to the police. Is there anything else in Helena’s past that you haven’t told us?”
“No,” said Hans Hillerstrom. “I don’t think so.”
“Nothing that happened recently, either?”
“No.”
Knutas wondered how the previous interviews with the couple had proceeded. How could it be that none of this had come out right from the beginning? He decided to discuss it with Karin later on. If all the interviews are equally incomplete, we’re going to have to do them over, every last one of them, he thought grimly.
His stomach was growling. It was time to leave. “Well, I think we’re done for now. Did Helena still have her own room in the house?”
“Yes, upstairs.”
“Could we take a look at it?”
“Yes, sure. The police have already gone over the room, but of course you can look at it if you like.”
Hans Hillerstrom led the way up the impressive staircase. The second floor had ceilings just as high as the rooms downstairs. They walked along a big, bright hallway and then through a sitting room where Knutas caught sight of a balcony and a flash of water. There were fireplaces everywhere.
Helena’s room was quite large. High mullioned windows faced out on the yard. It looked as if the room had not been used in a long time. An old-fashioned wooden bed with tall bedposts stood in one corner. Next to it was a white nightstand. Near one of the windows stood a writing desk, an old easy chair, and several bookshelves filled with books.
Hans Hillerstrom left them alone, closing the door behind him. They searched through the drawers, the shelves, and the closet without finding anything of interest. Suddenly Jacobsson gave a whistle. Behind a photograph of the summer house on Gotland, a slit had been made in the wallpaper. A photo had been slipped inside the rip.
“Look at this,” she said.
It showed a man on a big boat, a passenger ferry-presumably the Gotland Ferry. He was standing on deck with the wind blowing through his hair and the blue sky behind him. He was smiling happily at the photographer, and he had one hand in his pants pocket. It was without a doubt Jan Hagman, almost twenty years younger and forty pounds lighter than when they last saw him.
“Look,” said Jacobsson. “He has that silly look of delight on his face that only someone newly in love ever has. It must be Helena who took the picture.”