The Quiet Mother

59

The meeting was short. No lawyer was present. Marta had pretty much expected that. It took place in the meeting room at the headquarters of the pharmaceutical company. Marta came alone. They wanted it that way, and she saw no reason to object. She was only gathering information about Valborg. There was no other purpose to the meeting.

The father and daughter sat opposite her. Klara, dressed impeccably in a black suit with a white pearl necklace, had met Marta at the secretary’s desk and shown her to the meeting room. They waited in awkward silence, and finally the father appeared and shook Marta’s hand in a serious manner. He was over seventy but bore his age well, slim and tanned, staying, as Marta understood it, half the year or more in southerly countries and enjoying his retirement years. He was wearing a beautiful dark blue suit that she couldn’t imagine as being anything other than tailor-made and on his ring finger was a gold ring with a black, square stone and a tiny diamond in one corner. He fiddled with the ring every now and then during their conversation. Impatient. Resentful. The man, Bernódus, greeted his daughter with a kiss.

‘Can we put a quick end to this nonsense?’ he said after sitting down. ‘I understand you want to connect us and this company to a murder.’

Klara smiled apologetically and touched her father’s arm, as if trying to keep him from getting too worked up. They needed to be cooperative for a short time, and then this would be over. Marta imagined what must have been an unhappy look on the man’s face when his daughter told him about the visit the police paid to his company with regard to Valborg’s case.

‘Hardly,’ said Marta. ‘As I explained to your daughter, we found clippings of newspaper articles about you and your wife and Klara at the home of the deceased, and we’re following up on that. Can I ask if you knew the woman?’

‘No, I didn’t,’ the man said. ‘I understand that Klara has answered all your questions regarding that woman.’

‘Can you imagine why she collected clippings about your family? We found no articles about other business people. Only about you.’

‘I have no idea. Naturally, we’re... we’re running a big company here that’s talked about around town, but we can’t say why people cut out articles about us. I’m sure you can see that.’

‘Yes, of course. Was she in any contact with you or your company in the past few weeks or months?’

‘No,’ said Klara, ‘I think I can safely say that she wasn’t.’

Marta took a copy of Valborg’s phone record from her bag and placed it on the table in front of them. The man put on gilt-edged reading glasses. Klara ran her eyes over the record.

‘She called the company three times in the weeks before she died,’ Marta said. ‘Did she talk to either of you? Any of your employees?’

‘No,’ said Klara, ‘not to me. I can’t answer for our employees. I’d need to check on that.’

‘Countless numbers of people call here every day,’ said Bernódus, taking off his reading glasses and putting them back in the breast pocket of his jacket.

‘Of course,’ Marta said, digging for another folder in her bag. She placed three photographs from the surveillance cameras on the table.

‘Could she have come to meet with you?’

The father and daughter pored over the photos.

‘Is that the woman?’ Klara asked. ‘Outside this building?’

‘What is this? Are we under investigation?!’ the man exclaimed excitedly, pushing the photos away. ‘What’s the meaning of this?’

His daughter grasped his arm again as a sign that he should calm down.

‘Did she meet with you?’ Marta asked again.

‘No,’ said Klara.

‘Certainly not,’ the man said, twisting the gold ring on his finger. ‘There are dozens of businesses in this building. Who knows, she may have been going to the dentist.’

‘Unless she called here,’ Marta said calmly. ‘Called you.’

‘I don’t know,’ Klara said. ‘Maybe she knew someone here in the company. Lots of people work here. I’ll look into it.’

‘But then there are the clippings,’ Marta said, smiling. ‘They’re not about any employees of the company. They’re about you.’

‘We didn’t know that woman,’ said Klara. ‘I’ve never seen her before. I’ve never spoken to her on the phone. I’ve never met with her.’

She looked at her father.

‘This is ridiculous,’ said Bernódus. ‘We have no idea who this woman is.’

‘She had a child in 1972,’ said Marta. ‘We know that she gave it up after it was born. She didn’t want to have it, for some reason. We have no idea why, but before she died, she looked for the child. We don’t know if it was a boy or a girl. She asked a man in the police to track down the child for her. She had incurable cancer and wanted to find out what had become of the child she’d given up. The question is whether that search led her here.’

Marta looked at Klara and her father in turn, but they remained stone-faced. It was as if neither of them knew what she was getting at with this interrogation of hers.

‘The search for her child?’ Klara said finally, glancing at her father. ‘I don’t know what—’

‘What’s the meaning of these questions?’ said Bernódus, now seriously knitting his brow. ‘Where is this headed? We didn’t know that woman. How often do we have to tell you that? We didn’t know her at all. Not at all!’

Marta tapped her finger on a copy of the newspaper clipping about Klara alone, in which she was smiling confidently at the readers.

‘What did she find here?’ she said.

Klara was bewildered. Marta watched her silently.

‘I... that I was born in 1974?’ Klara said hesitantly. She looked in turn at her father and Marta, her expression full of astonishment and disbelief.

‘Yes, I looked that up,’ said Marta. ‘You’re not—’

‘Klara isn’t a foster child!’ Bernódus spat, no longer able to restrain his anger. ‘How can you spout such nonsense?! Such bullshit?!’

He stared at Marta.

‘What crap is this, anyway? This is ridiculous! I agreed to meet you because I thought we could help you with this tragic case, and this is what I get thrown at me. You’re mad! You must be mad!’ he cried, getting up. ‘I’m not going to sit here and take this! This... this stupidity! Klara... you... I’ve never heard such bullshit! I’m not taking this. I’m not going to sit here and take this!’

He glared at Marta and stormed out of the room, leaving Klara and Marta alone with the clippings, the photos from the surveillance cameras and the printout of Valborg’s phone record. Klara looked it all over and stood up.

‘So this is over,’ she said. ‘Goodbye.’