Buried Angels

Chapter Eighteen

They were approaching Torp, just north of Uddevalla, when they got caught in a traffic jam. Patrik had to slow down, and Paula kept shifting position, trying to get comfortable in the passenger seat.

He glanced at his colleague with concern. ‘Do you really feel like driving to Göteborg and back?’

‘Of course. And don’t you start worrying too. There are enough people worrying about me at the moment.’

‘Well, let’s hope it’s worth the trouble. The traffic is terrible today.’

‘There’s nothing we can do about it,’ said Paula. ‘How’s Ebba, by the way?’

‘I don’t know. She was asleep when I came home yesterday, and she was still sleeping when I left. Erica said she was totally exhausted.’

‘I’m not surprised. This whole thing must be a nightmare for her.’

‘Hey, step on it!’ Patrik pressed his hand on the horn as the driver in the car ahead of them failed to react when a gap appeared in the queue of vehicles.

Paula shook her head but refrained from commenting. She’d driven with Patrik often enough to know that he was a different person the minute he got behind the wheel.

It took them almost an hour longer to reach Göteborg in the summertime traffic, and Patrik was fit to explode as they climbed out of the car on the quiet residential street in Partille. He tugged on his shirt to fan himself.

‘God, it’s hot today. Aren’t you dying in this heat?’

Paula cast a smug glance at his forehead, which was shiny with sweat.

‘I’m a foreigner. I don’t sweat,’ she said, raising her arms to emphasize her point.

‘Then I reckon I’m sweating enough for the both of us. I should have brought along an extra shirt. What will they make of us? I’m completely soaked, and you look like a beached whale. This’ll have them wondering about the Tanum police force,’ said Patrik, pressing the doorbell.

‘I am not a beached whale, I’m pregnant. So what’s your excuse?’ Paula gave Patrik a poke in the stomach.

‘This is just a slight paunch. It’ll disappear in a flash, as soon as I start working out again.’

‘I heard the gym had put out an APB on you.’

The door opened before Patrik had a chance to offer a retort.

‘Hello. Welcome. You must be the police officers from Tanumshede,’ said a man in his sixties, giving them a friendly smile.

‘That’s right,’ said Patrik, introducing himself and Paula.

A woman about the same age joined them and said hello.

‘Come in! I’m Berit. Sture and I were thinking we could sit in the retiree incubator to have a talk.’

‘Retiree incubator?’ Paula whispered to Patrik with a bewildered look.

‘The glass veranda,’ he whispered back, and she grinned.

In the small sunny veranda Berit pulled a big wicker chair over to the table and motioned to Paula. ‘Have a seat here. It’s the most comfortable.’

‘Thanks! You’ll probably have to get a crane to haul me out of it,’ said Paula, sinking gratefully on to the thick cushion.

‘And prop your feet up on this stool. It can’t be easy to be so late in your pregnancy in this heat wave.’

‘It’s getting a bit difficult,’ Paula agreed. After the long ride in the car, her calves were like footballs.

‘I remember so well the summer when Ebba was expecting Vincent. It was hot then too, and she…’ Berit stopped in mid-sentence and her smile faded. Sture put his arm around his wife and tenderly patted her shoulder.

‘All right then. Let’s sit down and offer our guests some coffee and cake. This is Berit’s tiger cake. The recipe is top secret – even I don’t know how she makes it.’ He kept his tone light in an attempt to lift the mood, but his eyes were as sorrowful as his wife’s.

Patrik sat down, but he realized that sooner or later he would have to broach the subject that was clearly so painful for Ebba’s parents.

‘Help yourselves.’ Berit pushed the cake platter towards the police officers. ‘Do you and your husband know whether it’s a boy or a girl?’

Paula paused with a piece of cake halfway to her mouth. Then she looked directly at the woman sitting across from her and said:

‘No, my partner Johanna and I decided that we didn’t want to know ahead of time. But we have a son, so of course it would be nice to have a girl this time. But as everyone says, the most important thing is for the baby to be healthy.’ She stroked her stomach, steeling herself for the couple’s reaction.

Berit’s face lit up. ‘How nice that your son is going to be a big brother! He must be so proud.’

‘With such a beautiful mother, I’m sure the baby will be lovely, whether it’s a boy or a girl,’ said Sture with a warm smile.

Paula smiled happily. They didn’t seem in the least bothered that the child was going to have two mothers.

‘Now you must tell us what’s going on,’ said Sture, leaning forward. ‘We can’t get much out of Ebba and Tobias when they phone, and they don’t want us to visit.’

‘No, it’s best if you don’t do that,’ said Patrik, thinking that the last thing they needed was to have more people on Valö.

‘Why’s that?’ Berit’s eyes shifted anxiously from Patrik to Paula. ‘Ebba mentioned that they found blood when they broke up the floor. Is it from…’

‘Yes, that seems most likely,’ replied Patrik. ‘But the blood is so old that we can’t be sure whether it came from Ebba’s family, or how many different people we might be talking about.’

‘How dreadful,’ said Berit. ‘We’ve never talked much to Ebba about what happened. We only knew what social services told us, and what we read in the newspapers. So we were surprised that she and Tobias wanted to take over the house.’

‘I don’t think they particularly wanted to go there,’ said Sture. ‘It was more a case of wanting to get away from here.’

‘Would you be willing to tell us what happened to their son?’ said Paula cautiously.

Berit and Sture exchanged glances, and then Sture told them the story. Slowly he described the day when Vincent died, and Patrik felt a lump settle in his throat as he listened. Sometimes life seemed so cruel and meaningless.

‘How soon afterwards did Ebba and Tobias move?’ he asked when Sture fell silent.

‘It was about six months later,’ said Berit.

Sture nodded. ‘Yes, that’s right. They sold the house. It wasn’t far from here.’ He pointed vaguely down the street. ‘And Tobias gave up his job as a carpenter. Ebba has been on sick leave ever since it happened. She worked as an economist for the Internal Revenue Department, but she never went back. We’re a bit worried about how they’re going to manage financially, but they do have money in the bank from the sale of their house.’

‘We’re trying to help them as best we can,’ Berit said. ‘We have two other children, who are our own, so to speak, although we consider Ebba to be our daughter too. Ebba has always been the apple of their eye, and they’d like to help her if they can, so I’m sure everything will work out.’

Patrik nodded. ‘That place is going to be quite something. Tobias seems to be a very skilled carpenter.’

‘He’s incredibly talented,’ said Sture. ‘When they lived here, he always had work. Maybe too much work at times, but that’s always better than having a son-in-law who’s lazy.’

‘More coffee?’ asked Berit. Without waiting for an answer she got up and headed for the kitchen to fetch the coffee pot.

Sture watched her go and then said, ‘This has taken its toll on my wife, but she doesn’t want to show it. Ebba came to our family like a little angel. Our older children were six and eight at the time, and we’d talked about having another. It was Berit’s idea to see if there might be a child we could help by taking her in.’

‘Had you taken in other foster children before Ebba?’ asked Paula.

‘No. Ebba was our first and only one. She ended up staying with us, and later we decided to adopt her. Berit could hardly sleep at night, waiting for the adoption to be finalized. She was terrified that someone would come and take her away from us.’

‘What was she like as a child?’ asked Patrik, mostly out of curiosity. Something told him that the Ebba he’d met was merely a pale copy of her true self.

‘Oh, she was a proper little whirlwind, let me tell you.’

‘Ebba? Yes, she was.’ Berit came in, carrying the coffee pot. ‘That child was always getting into mischief. But she was so cheerful, and you could never stay cross with her for long.’

‘That’s what has made the whole thing so much harder to bear,’ said Sture. ‘We didn’t only lose Vincent, we lost Ebba too. It feels as though a big part of her died with Vincent. And the same is true of Tobias. He’s always had a rather mercurial temperament and suffered bouts of depression, but until Vincent died, things were good between them. Now… now I don’t know. At first they could hardly stand to be in the same room, and now they’re out on an island in the archipelago. As I said, we can’t help but worry about them.’

‘Do you have any theory as to who might have set the fire, or who could have fired shots at Ebba yesterday?’ asked Patrik.

Berit and Sture stared at him in horror.

‘Didn’t Ebba tell you?’ he said, glancing at Paula. It hadn’t occurred to him that Ebba’s parents knew nothing of the shooting, otherwise he would have been more careful about how he phrased the question.

‘No, the only thing she told us about was the blood they found,’ said Sture.

Patrik was searching for the right words when Paula came to his aid. In a calm and matter-of-fact voice she told them about the fire and the shooting.

Berit gripped the edge of the table so hard that her knuckles turned white. ‘I can’t understand why she didn’t tell us.’

‘She probably didn’t want to worry us,’ said Sture, but he seemed just as upset as his wife.

‘But why are they staying out there? That’s madness! They need to leave the island at once. Let’s go out there and talk to them, Sture.’

‘They seem determined to stay,’ Patrik told them. ‘But for the moment Ebba is at our house. My wife brought her home yesterday and she spent the night in our guestroom. Tobias refused to leave the island, so he’s still there.’

‘He’s out of his mind,’ said Berit. ‘We’re going over there. Now.’ She was about to get up, but Sture gently pressed her back down on her chair.

‘Let’s not do anything hasty. We’ll phone Ebba and hear what she has to say. You know how stubborn they both are. There’s no sense in making a fuss.’

Berit shook her head but made no further move to get up.

‘Can you think of any reason why someone would try to harm them?’ Paula was restlessly shifting about. Even sitting in this comfortable armchair, her joints had started to ache.

‘No, none at all,’ said Berit firmly. ‘They live a completely ordinary life. And why would anyone want to cause them more pain? They’ve already had enough grief and sorrow.’

‘It must have something to do with what happened to the Elvander family,’ said Sture. ‘Perhaps someone is afraid that they’ll find out something.’

‘That’s our theory too, but so far we don’t have much to go on,’ Patrik told them. ‘There’s one thing that puzzles us. We heard that Ebba has been receiving cards signed with the initial “G”.’

‘Yes,’ said Sture. ‘Those cards have arrived for every birthday. We thought it odd, but assumed that some distant relative was sending them. It seemed harmless so we never bothered to investigate.’

‘Ebba received a new card yesterday that was definitely not harmless.’

Ebba’s parents stared at Patrik in surprise.

‘What did it say?’ Sunlight was reflecting off the table into their eyes. Sture got up to draw the curtains.

‘Let’s just say that it sounded threatening.’

‘If so, that would be the first time. Do you think it was sent by the same person who’s been trying to harm Ebba and Tobias?’

‘We don’t know. But it would be helpful if we could see some of the other cards. Do you have any?’

Sture shook his head apologetically. ‘I’m afraid we never kept them. We showed them to Ebba and then threw them out. There were no personal messages. They just said “Happy Birthday” and were signed “G”. Nothing else. It didn’t occur to us to save them.’

‘I understand,’ said Patrik. ‘And there was nothing else about the cards that might reveal who sent them? Could you tell where they were postmarked?’

‘They came from here in Göteborg, so that wasn’t much of a clue.’ Sture fell silent. Then he gave a start and looked at his wife. ‘The money,’ he said.

Berit’s eyes opened wide. ‘Why didn’t we think of that?’ She turned to Patrik and Paula. ‘From the time Ebba first came to us up until her eighteenth birthday, money was deposited anonymously in the bank for her every month. We received a letter saying that a bank account had been opened in Ebba’s name. We saved up the money and gave it to her when she and Tobias decided to buy a house.’

‘And you have no idea who deposited the money? Have you ever tried to find out?’

Sture nodded. ‘We were curious, of course. But the bank told us that the person wanted to remain anonymous, so we had to give up. We thought it must be the same person who sent the birthday cards. Probably a distant relative.’

‘Which bank sent the initial letter about the account?’

‘Handelsbanken. The branch on Norrmalmstorg in Stockholm.’

‘We’ll check it out.’

Patrik raised an enquiring eyebrow at Paula. She nodded, so he stood up and shook hands with Sture.

‘Thank you so much for taking the time to see us. Let us know if anything else occurs to you.’

‘We will. Naturally we want to help in any way we can.’ Sture gave him a wan smile, and Patrik knew that he and Berit would phone their daughter the moment they were alone.

The trip to Göteborg had turned out to be more productive than he’d dared to hope. ‘Follow the money,’ as they said in American movies. If they could track down where the money had come from, they might get the lead they needed to move forward.

When they were back in the car, he checked his mobile. Twenty-five missed calls. Patrik sighed and turned to Paula.

‘Something tells me that the media are on to the story.’ He started up the car and headed towards Tanumshede. It was going to be a rough day.

Expressen had published the news about Valö, and when Kjell’s boss heard via the grapevine that Bohusläningen could have been first out with the story, he was not happy – and that was putting it mildly. When he finished bellowing, he sent Kjell off with orders to outdo the big-city paper. ‘Just because we’re smaller and provincial doesn’t mean that we have to be worse,’ he said.

Kjell leafed through his notes. Naturally it had gone against all his journalistic principles to give up the story, but his fight against the anti-immigrant organizations was more important. If he had to sacrifice a scoop in order to root out the truth about the Friends of Sweden and John Holm, he was prepared to do it.

It was all he could do to stop himself phoning Sven Niklasson to find out how it had gone. Most likely he wouldn’t find out much until he read about it in the newspaper, but he still couldn’t help brooding over the possible meaning of ‘Gimle’. He was convinced that Sven’s voice had changed when he heard about the note that Erica had found at Holm’s house. It sounded as if Sven had heard of Gimle before and already knew something about it.

Kjell opened his copy of Expressen and read what they’d written about the discovery on Valö. The paper had devoted four pages to the story, and it would probably be followed up with more articles over the next few days. The police in Tanum had called a press conference for the afternoon, and Kjell was hoping to hear something that would serve as a basis for his article. But there were still several hours to go, and the challenge was not to make use of the same information that the other reporters would have, but to come up with a fresh lead. Kjell leaned back in his chair to think. Locals had always been fascinated by the mysterious events on Valö, and in particular the role of the boys who had been staying at the school that Easter holiday. Over the years there had been a lot of speculation about what the boys knew or didn’t know, and whether they’d had anything to do with the family’s disappearance. If he dug up as much information as he could find about the five boys, he might be able to write an article that none of the other newspapers could match.

He turned to his computer and began entering data into a search engine. It should be possible to find out a lot about the men that the boys had become by combing through public records. He’d already interviewed Holm; the next step would be to contact the other four. It was going to require a lot of work in a short period of time, but if he managed to find out anything new, it would be worth it.

Something else occurred to him, and he quickly jotted a memo to himself. He needed to talk to Gösta Flygare, who had been involved in the original investigation. If he was lucky, Gösta might be prepared to share his thoughts on the boys, maybe recall his first impressions after interviewing them. That would add some weight to the article.

The word ‘Gimle’ kept popping up in his mind, but Kjell resolutely pushed it aside. That was no longer his responsibility, and maybe it didn’t mean anything. He picked up his mobile to start making calls. He had no time to sit around brooding.

Slowly Percy packed his suitcase. He would not be attending the sixtieth birthday party of their friend. After a few phone calls he’d found out that not only had Pyttan left him, but she’d moved in with the man whose birthday was being celebrated.

Early in the morning Percy would get into the Jaguar and drive to Fjällbacka. He wasn’t sure it was a good idea, but his conversation with Leon had served to confirm that his whole life was on the verge of collapse. So what did he have to lose?

As always, when Leon commanded, he obeyed. Even back then Leon had been in charge, and it was both strange and rather frightening to realize that he’d had the same authority at the age of sixteen as he had today. Perhaps his life would have turned out different if Percy hadn’t followed Leon’s orders, but he wasn’t going to think about that now. He’d spent years suppressing what happened on Valö, and he’d never returned to the island. As they sat in the boat on that Easter eve, he hadn’t given it so much as a backward glance.

Now he was going to be forced to remember. He knew that he ought to stay in Stockholm, get thoroughly drunk, and then sit and watch life pass by on Karlavägen as he waited for the creditors to knock on the door. But Leon’s voice on the phone had stripped him of all willpower, just as it had back then.

He gave a start when the doorbell rang. He wasn’t expecting visitors, and Pyttan had already taken everything of value. He had no illusions that she might regret her actions and come back to him. She wasn’t that stupid. She knew he was about to lose everything, so she’d made her escape. And when it came right down to it, he understood. He had grown up in a world where people married spouses who had something to offer – a form of aristocratic barter.

He opened the door. There stood Attorney Buhrman.

‘Do we have an appointment?’ asked Percy, trying to remember.

‘No, we don’t.’ The attorney took a step forward, forcing Percy to back up and allow him in. ‘I had a number of errands here in town, and I was supposed to head home this afternoon. But this can’t wait.’

Buhrman was avoiding meeting his eye, and Percy felt his knees begin to tremble. This was not good.

‘Come in,’ he said, fighting to keep his voice under control.

In his mind he heard his father saying: ‘No matter what happens, never show any sign of weakness.’ Memories flooded over him from the time when he failed to follow this advice and had fallen to the floor in tears, begging and pleading. He swallowed hard and closed his eyes for a moment. This was not the time to allow the past to intrude. He’d have to endure enough of that tomorrow. Right now he had to deal with Buhrman.

‘Would you like a whisky?’ he asked, going over to the drinks cart and pouring one for himself.

With an effort the attorney slowly sank to the sofa. ‘No, thank you.’

‘Coffee?’

‘No, thank you. Now sit down.’ Buhrman thumped his cane on the floor, and Percy did as he was told. He sat in silence as the attorney talked, merely nodding occasionally to show that he understood. His expression gave no clue to what he was thinking. He father’s voice echoed louder in his head: ‘Never show any sign of weakness.’

After Buhrman had left, Percy resumed packing. There was only one thing he could do. He’d been weak then, so long ago. He had allowed evil to triumph. Percy zipped up the suitcase and sat on the bed, staring straight ahead. His life was in ruins. There was no meaning to anything. But he would never again show that he was weak.