Rites of Spring

72

Thea runs into the coach house, kicks off her boots and drops her jacket on the sofa. The poetry book is on her bedside table.

She picks it up, sits down at the desk, then finds Elita’s letter in the case file. She follows the text with her index finger until she finds the right section.

She reads the awkward sentence once again.

Beautiful women dead that by my side. Once lay.

Thea leafs through the poetry book, finds a page with the corner turned down. The poem is called ‘I Dreamed That I was Old’. She’s read it a few times; it’s sad. It’s about a man dreaming of his old age, thinking of everything he’s lost.

Almost at the bottom of the page she finds the lines she’s looking for.

And cozy women dead that by my side / Once lay.

The wording is almost identical. She picks up her phone, brings up the pictures she took at Svartgården. Works backwards from the bloody handprint and the empty dressing packet until she reaches Elita’s room. The space under the bed where Elita’s suitcase had been stored. The pile of books next to it. She enlarges the image, her fingers trembling with excitement.

There it is, third from the bottom. The same title as the book in front of her on the desk. Selected Poems by Stanley Kunitz.

Elita has read it too; she even tried to translate one of the poems into Swedish. Where did a sixteen-year-old girl get a book of poems written in English by an American?

We bumped into each other in the forest occasionally.

Elita was . . . different.

She leans back, presses her fingertips against her eyelids.

Elita must have got the book from Hubert. She even mentions his relatives in the same section – Isabelle and Eleonor. The dead girls.

She opens the book again, reads the inscription.

Is he talking about Elita? Was Hubert in love with Elita? The thought is dizzying; it puts everything in a new light.

At that moment her phone rings. Unknown number. Thea rejects the call, but whoever is trying to contact her refuses to give up, and in the end she answers.

‘Hi, Jenny, it’s your father.’

‘I can’t talk now – I’m afraid it’s not convenient.’

Her head is all over the place, and she can’t cope with his mind games right now.

‘That’s a shame. I actually called to apologise.’ His voice is subdued, without the usual sarcastic undertone.

‘Really?’ She doesn’t know what to think.

‘Our last conversation didn’t end well, so I thought I’d offer an olive branch. If you’re interested.’

‘I’m listening.’

‘OK, so I asked around about Leo Rasmussen. A former colleague of mine has a nephew, Dejan, who was apparently Leo’s cellmate in Stålboda in the late Eighties. Dejan is a bright guy with a fantastic memory for detail. It was his first stint inside, so it’s not surprising that he remembers it.’

Thea picks up a pen.

‘According to Dejan, Leo kept himself to himself. Behaved impeccably, was always polite to the guards, worked out every day. Dejan said he didn’t exactly come across as a killer, whatever that means. In my humble opinion anyone can become a killer in the wrong circumstances.’ He breaks off to cough.

‘Did Leo talk about what he’d done?’ Thea asks.

‘No, apparently he preferred to avoid the topic. He didn’t boast about it, but nor did he insist he was innocent.’

A fresh bout of coughing; she can hear his chest rattling.

‘Anyway, Leo told Dejan that he was planning to go abroad as soon as he was released. He said there was money waiting for him – enough to make a fresh start.’

‘Where was this money coming from?’

‘I asked the same question, but Dejan didn’t know. Leo seems to have said too much on one occasion, then closed up like a clam, so Dejan assumed there was something shady about the whole thing.’

‘Did he know where Leo went?’

‘They both enjoyed fishing, and talked about going on a fishing trip to Alaska. Typical prison plans, I’d say – a dream to keep you going from one day to the next.’ He clears his throat. ‘Although they both realised the Americans would never let them in with their criminal records. Leo thought they might be able to get into Canada.’

‘Canada?’

‘That’s what Dejan said. Or rather, this is what he actually said: If the guy’s still alive and doesn’t live in Sweden, I’d look for him in Canada.’

Thea thinks for a moment. Kurt Bexell thought he’d called Leo on an American number, but she’s pretty sure that Canada and the USA have the same international dialling code, so he could have been wrong.

‘Did Dejan say anything else about Leo?’

‘No, that was all. To be honest it was more than I’d hoped for. I also asked a contact in the police to do some checking, and Leo hasn’t set foot in Sweden since he got out of jail – at least not under his own name. According to the tax office, he’s listed as emigrated, address unknown.’

‘OK.’

‘OK? Is that all I get?’

She takes a deep breath.

‘Thanks, Leif.’

‘You’re welcome.’

He ends the call and Thea sits there with the phone in her hand, his words echoing inside her head.

Leo was expecting money. Enough to enable him to leave the country, start afresh somewhere else.

Money from whom? For what?