Ragnar Hirsch had known one of the ambulance crew who had come to the manor in Sörmland the morning the Klingbergs had been found dead in their car. The man’s name was Holmström, and he had previously worked for the Stockholm fire department. He was the one who had called Hirsch a week or so after the deaths to ask him to take a look at the case.
“The housemaid wanted to tell him something, he told me, but she changed her mind when the police patrol showed up.”
Hirsch told her about how he had tried to research the deaths out of sheer curiosity; partly, he said, because it involved such a well-known business family. He had asked Holmström to give a statement about what he’d observed at the crime scene, and he’d requested the autopsy report and the reports from the Sörmland police and had gone through those. The pathologist had written that the couple had been intoxicated when they committed suicide, and there was evidence that this was the case. Two empty bottles of cognac and an open but only half-drunk bottle of Château Lafite were found in the car.
Holmström, on the other hand, was an old fox who had seen and heard far too much during his long career in emergency services in Stockholm and thought it looked more like they had been drugged.
“But it didn’t really make a difference,” Hirsch said, as he poured more coffee in her cup. “Because even that matched the description of the Klingbergs. Both were alcoholics, and they abused sedatives.”
“How do you know that?”
“I asked around a little. Apparently, it started after they lost their elder son to abduction. Their sorrow made them fall deeper and deeper into abuse.”
“But that wasn’t what Holmström meant?”
“No . . . he thought the way they were sitting in the car looked unnatural. Arranged, somehow . . . and, according to him, they could have been moved to the car while they were unconscious.”
“But there were no signs to suggest it.”
“Impossible to say, because the police patrol took it for granted that it was a suicide and they tramped around the garage like elephants. If there was any evidence there, it was simply destroyed by accident.”
Hirsch continued his story. He had gone out to the family estate in Djursholm to talk to the next of kin. Everyone had been there. Pontus Klingberg and his wife at the time. The aging patriarch, Gustav. The maid, who had wanted to tell Holmström something but changed her mind. And Joel Klingberg.
“I felt so terribly sorry for that boy,” Hirsch said. “Twelve years old, and no amount of money in the world could comfort him. Just imagine, finding your own parents gassed to death. He was completely broken. It was impossible to get a rational word out of him. He just started crying as soon as I asked him what he’d seen that morning.”
They sat in silence for a moment. Hirsch looked out the small window toward the other wing of the building. It was as if his ninety years started to show themselves as he searched back through his memories. He suddenly looked tired and very old.
“I was wondering . . . those suck marks on their necks. Why didn’t anyone try to find an explanation for them?”
“I never saw the bodies,” said Hirsch. “Just the photographs, both from the pathologist and the police patrol. But I agree with you—what on earth were they doing there?”
“So you suspected foul play?”
“Well, it was impossible to rule out, let’s say that much.”
“But you weren’t allowed to move forward?”
He nodded. “People above me thought that my talents were needed in other areas. There quite simply wasn’t enough evidence for me to investigate further. None at all. In addition, Gustav Klingberg’s word had great weight in the matter. He knew people high up at police headquarters, and even higher up on a political level. He was completely overcome. First he lost a grandchild, then his younger son and daughter-in-law. He didn’t want anymore publicity, any more police investigations. He thought there had been enough. And he was also trying to protect his grandson—Joel Klingberg—from general curiosity. The boy wasn’t far from a mental breakdown, after all, and Gustav . . .”
He stopped talking, hesitating before he went on: “Gustav . . . had some sort of bizarre fantasy that his family had been struck by a curse. This included the abduction of his elder grandson nine years earlier . . . Anyway, he thought the best way to protect them against further accidents was to not talk about it, to stop giving out any more information about his family.”
“Was that what his maid wanted to tell Holmström?”
“I never found out. A mayse on a moshl iz vi a moltsayt on a tsimes . . . a story without a moral is like a meal without dessert, as they say in Yiddish. I was bothered for a long time afterward that I never found out what she wanted.”
“Did you talk to her?”
“Yes.”
“What did she say?”
“Nothing more than that Gustav thought there was a family curse. He even blamed his recurring nosebleeds on it. I suspected that she knew more, but I couldn’t force it out of her. Suddenly, she had no comment whatsoever.”
“Do you remember her name?”
“Sandra Dahlström. A young woman, at the time. After the Klingbergs’ death she was the one who raised Joel.”
She said good-bye to him in the hall, beside the aquarium of cichlids. There were more people around now; lunch was being served. Old men in kippahs were brought into the dining room in wheelchairs, along with elegant ladies with slightly exotic features. She heard people speaking by turns in Polish, Yiddish, and Swedish.
Visitors were on their way in—families with children there to visit their grandparents. One of the men reminded her of Katz.
She got into her car and turned the key in the ignition.
No sign of him yet. He was still at large. She couldn’t help feeling a certain amount of admiration.
He must have had help hiding somewhere. Maybe from Jorma?
According to the national registry, Jorma lived in Midsommarkransen. He had been released from Norrtälje Prison a few years earlier after a three-year sentence for aiding and abetting in an armed robbery.
She took out her phone and called Marianne Lindblom, a civilian investigator at EBM, asking her to take a closer look at Jorma’s file and see if anyone was keeping an eye on him at the moment. She ignored Marianne’s questions about when she would be back in the office and hung up.
Klingberg’s old maid, Sandra Dahlström. For some reason, she suddenly seemed more important.
Ormnäs Manor was situated in a nature reserve between Katrineholm and Vingåker. The property consisted of two thousand acres of forest, water, and farmland. The main building was a two-story stone house from the seventeenth century with one-story wings of timber, constructed in the Swedish Karoline style.
Surrounding the manor were several farm buildings: stalls, barns, guest houses, coach houses, a mill, and an old dairy.
The road that led to the main building was private, a kilometer of chestnut-lined avenue that appeared to end at a fountain in a courtyard.
Katz had checked the place out on Google Earth. In order to approach the main building unnoticed, one would have to come from the south, on foot.
It was past midnight when he parked Jorma’s car on a timber road a few kilometers from the property.
He stood still for a moment, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness, listening to the clicking of the warm engine, to the sounds of the forest—the light breeze moving through the trees and a nocturnal bird calling from a marsh.
Then he took his torch from his jacket pocket, turned it on at the dimmest setting, looked for a path that seemed to lead north, and started walking.
It took him half an hour to make his way through the first section of forest. Fault fissures and steep hills forced him to take detours. He crossed another timber road with old tracks left by forestry machines, rounded a small pond, and arrived at a fence. He followed it west until he realized that this part of the grounds was enclosed. He swore when he rea
lized that he had left his backpack with the wire cutters in the car.
Since it was too late to go back, he climbed the fence instead. The metal links cut into his fingers as he pulled himself up. He finally reached the top and rested, his arms over the fence. The cloud cover had lessened for the moment; starlight penetrated it. He could see better now. The manor was five hundred meters away, a black monolith where the forest opened up.
He climbed down the other side, jumped the last meter, and landed beside the roots of a fallen tree.
He looked in the direction of the buildings and kept moving. The going was easier now. This part of the forest was cultivated and not as thick. The ground was flat.
Then he came to the first field. There were a few hunting stands scattered along the edge, like gloomy wooden sculptures from a vanished hunter culture. He could smell fresh earth.
He closed his eyes, opening them again when the first raindrops fell. At least it would be harder to hear him now. The rain made a sort of background noise, blocking out all other sounds.
The manor was dark. There were no cars in the driveway. The buildings looked like set pieces in the hazy light from the night sky.
He followed the edge of the forest and came to the first barn. He was standing at a gravel road that ran eastward between the outbuildings, over to a hill.
The avenue to the courtyard was fifty meters away. Katz wondered what he should do. He thought he should just keep going up to the house, to see if anyone was there.
As he approached the courtyard, he discovered that the gravel was perfectly even. No sign of vehicles. The main building brooded in the darkness before him. Six rows of two windows, like rectangular black eyes. Piles of leaves covered the stairs.
Katz didn’t know what he’d been thinking. No one was there . . . and no one had been there for a long time. He had just taken for granted that Julin was at the Klingberg family’s estate in Sörmland. He’d driven here without thinking, desperately needing to do something, to make something happen, reverse their roles.
The rain was falling more heavily. He looked around to find shelter somewhere and discovered an overhanging roof on a building farther off; he went over to it. He sank down against the wall and blinked when he saw bright lights along the main road. A vehicle turned onto the avenue.
The car rolled past, only forty meters away from him; it was a silver-gray SUV. A lone man was in the driver’s seat.
But the car didn’t stop near the manor house. It rounded the courtyard and continued eastward, past the buildings and off toward the wooded ridge. The sound of the engine faded slowly. The headlights flickered through the trees, winding up a hill until they disappeared from sight.
He walked for twenty minutes before he found the car; it was parked outside a log cabin on the gravel road. Faint light came from the windows. He heard the mumbling of male voices.
He retreated into the forest in order to approach unnoticed.
There was a barrier across the road, and another fence started on the other side of it. The entire area seemed to be fenced in.
Katz walked parallel to the fence for twenty meters, into the forest, until he was level with the cabin. He fumbled in his pocket for Jorma’s phone to make sure it was turned off.
There was another car in the driveway, a black Volvo station wagon.
Katz sneaked closer and stopped a meter from the fence.
The cabin was made of black-tarred timber, and it was surrounded by forest in three directions. The gravel path widened outside the entrance in order to make room for cars. Farther off, there was a guest cabin with a veranda, and down the road the metal gates for driving in and out.
The adrenaline pumped through Katz’s body. He went on through a clearing where the path turned into a slope that led down to a lake. The fence was out of sight of the building here, and it was also a meter shorter. He climbed over it.
He was standing on the path below the crown of the hill, the Glock in his hand. He listened to something he realized was a dog barking. It was faint at first, but then, with no intermediate stage, it was much louder. It was as if it had shown up out of nowhere.
He sank down in a crouch and watched the dog approach from the top of the hill, very slowly, as if it wanted to prolong its task for fun.
The Ovcharka. This was where Julin had brought it. Apparently, it was the only breed in the world that could give a wolf or a bear an honest fight. It weighed eighty kilos, and it stood nearly a meter at the shoulders. Predators couldn’t hurt it, he had read somewhere; its pelt was too thick and there were no soft parts to bite.
He was on his knees, in a shooting position, watching the dog approach—it was much larger than he’d expected. Its jaws were wide open; its killing instinct was incredibly keen. It wasn’t even barking now, just concentrating on its prey. It was twenty meters away now, ten, five . . . Katz didn’t feel a thing, just cold concentration.
It stopped two meters away from him. He could smell the harsh scent of its fur. Its eyes looked like two black buttons. Its growl was like nothing he’d ever heard.
He shot in the same instant it attacked, two shots that, to his surprise, met their mark.
When he stood up a second later, he still had tunnel vision. He didn’t notice the person approaching from behind. He didn’t notice the violent blow coming to the back of his neck; he was only conscious of the world exploding into a red glow before he fell headlong to the ground.
She sat in the car in a parking lot in Mörby Centrum, looking over at the high-rises while she smoked. Loreen’s “Euphoria” was coming through the speakers. She was sick of hearing it. Her phone beeped just as she turned off the radio. It was a text message from Ola: Fuck you, you promised to come, the kids and I waited for half an hour, and finally we had to go in on our own, I want you to know that . . .
She exited the message without reading the rest. She looked in her calendar. She had missed the meeting with the family counselor. Or she had ignored it. Because she couldn’t handle such situations. Because she was self-destructive.
Two more messages from Ola, on the same theme. Plus four missed calls from work. They had started to wonder where she was.
She looked over at the high-rises again. Early ’60s. The dream of modernity had ended in veritable ghettos. The walls were covered in graffiti. There were cheap satellite dishes on the balconies. Just like in Hässelby Gård, the world she and Katz had come from.
She lit another cigarette. The taste was divine. It had been ten years since she’d quit. She didn’t understand how it could still be so good.
Her prosecutor’s ID seemed to make quite an impression; the woman let her in with no questions asked and led her through a dark hallway to a new-age-inspired living room. A golden Buddha sat on a table. There were pictures of Indian gods on the walls—a blue, dancing figure she guessed was Krishna; another that was probably Shiva. The scent of incense. An rolled-out yoga mat on the floor.
To the left, the door to a bedroom stood open. Kitschy Christmas lights were hung on the walls, there were pillows and blankets in a pile at the foot of the bed, and pictures of a woman in colorful clothing on the bedside table. She had a sudden sense of déjà vu, but it went away again before she could hook onto it.
So this was how she lived. Sandra Dahlström. Childless, according to the information in the registry. Born in 1951. On disability for six years now.
She seemed to be freezing. She had slippers on her feet and she was wearing a long-sleeved cardigan. Her gaze was empty. Perhaps she was on medication. Her nose seemed disproportionately tiny compared to her sensual mouth. There were small scars under the wings of her nose, apparently from plastic surgery.
The woman nodded at her to follow her to a glassed-in balcony.
“I’ve been expecting you,” she said softly.
She took a seat before a game of solitaire that seemed to have been interrupted. There were palms and ferns in pots on the floor. Herbs sprouted from a hotbed. It was
horribly warm. Eva couldn’t fathom how the woman could be sitting there in a cardigan.
“It’s about Joel, isn’t it?” she said. “I read the papers. He’s been kidnapped and his wife was murdered. Sooner or later, someone had to come and ask questions.”
Of her own accord—and, chronologically, besides—she began to tell the story, as if it were something she’d waited a long time to do.
“I started working for the Klingberg family in autumn 1969, when I was eighteen. I saw an ad in Svenska Dagbladet; they were looking for a new maid. I lived with my mother at the time . . . in this building, in fact, on the first floor. My dad had left us, so it was just the two of us. Mom worked hard as a cleaning woman in the city. I had left school—I didn’t even finish compulsory school. We needed the money. Djursholm isn’t that far away, of course; it’s just a few kilometers in the other direction, toward the water. And yet you can’t imagine a greater contrast.”
Sandra Dahlström had moved into servants’ quarters that were annexed to the house. She was essentially supposed to be at her employer’s disposal twenty-four hours a day. The pay was better than she’d expected.
“What was he like—Gustav?”
“He was pleasant to some and a pig to others. He got pleasure out of being cruel to people he didn’t like. It was worst for his older son, Pontus. He treated him as if he didn’t exist, and the more Pontus tried to please him the worse it got.”
“Was it the same with the younger brother?”
“No, Jan was the exception. The favorite . . . the lost son. He lived a bohemian life when he was young. He distanced himself from his capitalist father. Which just made Gustav love him even more. Gustav did everything for him . . . tried to buy his love, wanted to give him important positions in the company, but Jan refused. I think it had to do with his mother. The brothers had different mothers, you know. Jan’s mother was a black woman from the Dominican Republic, Marie Bennoit. The love of Gustav Klingberg’s life, the rumors went, but he ran out on her when the family moved back to Sweden.”
The Boy in the Shadows Page 15
