The Ice Princess

by Camilla Lackberg

  Eilert thought for a moment, using the time to stuff his pipe carefully from a packet of tobacco marked with three anchors. He didn’t speak until he had lit the pipe and puffed a couple of times.

  ‘Now let’s see. I found her on a Friday. I always used to go there on Fridays to check on everything before she arrived in the evening. So the last time I was there was the Friday before that. No, actually, we had to go to our youngest son’s fortieth birthday party on Friday, so I went there on Thursday evening instead.’

  ‘How was the house then? Did you notice anything unusual?’ Patrik had a hard time concealing his eagerness.

  ‘Anything unusual?’ Eilert puffed slowly on his pipe as he thought. ‘No, everything was fine. I did a round through the house and the cellar, but everything looked good. I locked the house carefully when I left, as always. She’d given me my own key.’

  Patrik felt compelled to ask straight out the question that was gnawing inside him. ‘And the furnace? Was it working? Was there heat in the house?’

  ‘Oh yes, certainly. There was nothing wrong with the furnace then. It must have gone out some time after I was there. I don’t understand what importance that has. When the furnace went out?’ Eilert temporarily took the pipe out of his mouth.

  ‘To be quite honest, I don’t know if it is important. But thank you for your help. It might be important.’

  ‘Just out of curiosity, why couldn’t you have asked me that on the phone?’

  Patrik smiled. ‘I suppose I’m a bit old-fashioned. I don’t think I get as much out of phoning as by talking with someone face to face. Sometimes I wonder if I should have been born a hundred years ago instead, before all these modern inventions.’

  ‘Nonsense, boy. Don’t believe all that rubbish that it was better in the old days. Being cold, poor, and working from eight o’clock till sunset is nothing to envy. No, I use all the modern conveniences I can. I even have a computer, hooked up to the Internet. I’ll bet you wouldn’t believe that of an old man like me.’ He pointed knowingly at Patrik with his pipe.

  ‘I can’t say that I’m surprised, actually. Well, now I must be going.’

  ‘I hope I was of some use, so you didn’t have to drive here for nothing.’

  ‘Not at all, I got exactly the information I wanted. And I got to taste your wife’s excellent pastries too.’

  Eilert gave a reluctant snort. ‘Yes, she certainly can bake, I can say that for her.’ Then he sank into a silence that seemed to encompass fifty years of hardship.

  Svea, who had undoubtedly been standing with her ear to the door, could stand it no longer and came into the room. ‘So-o-o, did you find out everything you needed?’

  ‘Yes, thank you. Your husband has been quite accommodating. And I’d like to thank you for the coffee and the excellent pastries.’

  ‘Think nothing of it. I’m glad you liked them. So Eilert, if you’ll start clearing the table I’ll show the constable to the door.’

  Obediently Eilert began collecting the coffee cups and plates as Svea accompanied Patrik to the front door under a constant stream of words.

  ‘Close the door hard after you. I can’t stand a draught.’

  Patrik heaved a sigh of relief when the door closed behind him. What a frightful woman. But he had got the confirmation he wanted. Now he was quite sure that he knew who had murdered Alex Wijkner.

  At Anders’s funeral the weather was not as nice as for Alex’s burial. The wind tore at exposed skin and made everyone’s cheeks blossom with the cold. Patrik had dressed as warmly as he could, but it wasn’t enough against the relentless chill. He shivered as he stood by the open grave when the coffin was slowly lowered down. The ceremony itself had been short and dreary. Only a few people had come to the church, and Patrik had sat discreetly on the pew in the back. Only Vera was sitting up in front.

  He had been dubious as to whether he should follow along to the burial site, but decided at the last second that it was the least he could do for Anders. Vera hadn’t changed expression the whole time he watched her, but he didn’t think her grief was any less for it. She was simply a person who didn’t like to show her feelings in public.

  Patrik could understand and sympathize with that. In a way he admired her. She was such a strong woman.

  After the burial ceremony was over, the few guests in attendance went their separate ways. With her head bowed, Vera walked slowly up the gravel path towards the church. The cold wind was whipping hard, and she had tied her scarf like a kerchief over her head. For a second Patrik hesitated. After an internal struggle that increased as the distance grew between him and Vera, he made up his mind and hurried to catch up with her.

  ‘Lovely ceremony.’

  She smiled bitterly. ‘You know as well as I do that Anders’s funeral was just as pathetic as most of his life. But thanks anyway. It was nice of you to say so.’

  Vera’s voice bore the mark of many years of fatigue. ‘I probably should be grateful, really. Not so many years ago he wouldn’t have even been allowed to be buried in the public churchyard. He would have been given a spot off to the side, outside church-sanctified ground, a spot specially reserved for suicides. There are still many of the older folks who think that suicides don’t go to heaven.’

  She fell silent for a moment. Patrik waited for her to continue.

  ‘Will there be any legal consequences from what I did to cover up Anders’s suicide?’

  ‘No, I can guarantee that there will not. It was regrettable that you did what you did, and certainly there are laws about it, but no, I don’t think there will be any consequences.’

  They passed the parish house and walked slowly in the direction of Vera’s home, which was only a couple of hundred yards from the church. Patrik had worried all night about how he should proceed, and he had reached a cruel but he hoped successful solution.

  Nonchalantly, he said, ‘What I think is most tragic in this whole story with Anders’s and Alex’s death is that a child also had to die.’

  Vera turned vehemently towards him. She stopped and grabbed hold of his sleeve.

  ‘What child? What are you talking about?’

  Patrik felt thankful that, against all odds, a lid had been kept on that particular piece of information.

  ‘Alexandra’s child. She was pregnant when she was murdered. In her third month.’

  ‘Her husband…’

  Vera stammered, but Patrik continued with forced coldness. ‘Her husband had nothing to do with it. They had clearly not had any relations in several years. No, the father seems to be someone she used to meet here in Fjällbacka.’

  Vera was holding so hard onto his sleeve that her knuckles turned white.

  ‘Good Lord. Good, good Lord.’

  ‘Yes, it’s certainly cruel. To kill an unborn child. According to the autopsy report it was apparently a little boy.’

  He was grimacing inside but forced himself not to say any more. Instead he waited for the reaction he was counting on.

  They were standing under the big chestnut tree, fifty yards from Vera’s house. When she suddenly exploded in motion he was taken by surprise. She ran surprisingly fast for her age, and it took a couple of seconds for Patrik to recover from the shock and run after her. When he reached her house the front door was wide open and he cautiously stepped inside. Sobbing sounds were heard from the bathroom down the hall, and then he heard her violently throwing up.

  It felt wrong to stand there in the hall and wait with cap in hand, listening to her vomiting, so he took off his wet shoes, hung up his coat, and went in to the kitchen. When Vera came out a few minutes later the coffee-maker was bubbling and there were two cups on the kitchen table. She was pale, and for the first time he saw tears. Only a hint, like a glitter in the corner of her eye, but it was enough. Vera sat down stiffly on one of the kitchen chairs.

  In a few minutes she had aged many years, and she moved slowly, like a much older woman. Patrik let her have a few more minutes’ respite
as he poured coffee for them both. But the moment he sat down he let her know with a stern look that the moment of truth had arrived. She knew that he knew, and there was no turning back.

  ‘So I murdered my grandson.’

  Patrik took it as a rhetorical question and didn’t reply. If he did he’d be forced to lie. Once he’d come this far he couldn’t back up. In time she would find out the truth. But first it was his turn.

  ‘I knew it was you who murdered Alex when you lied about being there the week before she died. You said that you sat in her cold house freezing, but the furnace didn’t break down until the week after that, the week she died.’

  Vera was staring into space, and it seemed that she didn’t even hear what Patrik had said.

  ‘It’s strange. It’s only now that I actually realize that I took another person’s life. Alexandra’s death was never very real to me, but Anders’s child…I can almost see him before me…’

  ‘Why did Alex have to die?’

  Vera held up her hand. She would tell him everything, but at her own pace.

  ‘There would have been a scandal. Everyone would have pointed at him and talked about him. I did what I thought was right. I didn’t know that he would still be the object of everyone’s ridicule. That my silence would eat him away inside and strip him of everything of value. It was so simple. Karl-Erik came to me and told me what had happened. He had talked with Nelly before he came to me, and they had reached an agreement. Nothing good would come of having the whole town know about it. It would be our secret, and if I knew what was best for Anders, I would keep my mouth shut. So I shut up. I kept quiet for all those years. But each year robbed Anders of more than the one before. Each year he kept wasting away in his own private hell, and I chose not to see my role in it. I cleaned up after him and supported him as best I could, but the only thing I couldn’t do was to make what happened go away. Silence can never be taken back.’

  She had drunk her coffee in a few greedy gulps and raised her cup to Patrik. He got up and fetched the pot and poured her some more. It seemed as though the habit of drinking coffee was what helped her keep a grip on reality.

  ‘Sometimes I think the silence was worse than the assaults. We never talked about it, not even inside these four walls, and only now do I understand what it must have done to him. Maybe he interpreted my silence as a reproach. That’s the only thing I can’t stand. That he might have thought I was blaming him for what happened. I never thought that, not even for a second, but I’ll never know now whether he knew that.’

  For a second the façade looked as if it might crack, but then Vera straightened up and forced herself to go on. Patrik could only imagine what an enormous effort it took.

  ‘Over the years we found a sort of equilibrium. Even though life was miserable for both of us, we knew what we had and where we stood with each other. Naturally I knew that he still saw Alex occasionally and that they had some sort of strange attraction for one another, but I still believed that we could go on as we had always done. Then Anders told me that Alex wanted to expose what had happened to them. She wanted to clean all the old skeletons out of the closet, I think was what he said. He sounded almost indifferent when he mentioned it, but for me it felt like an electric shock. That would change everything. Nothing would be the same if Alex dragged up old secrets after so many years. What good would it do? And what would people say? Besides, even if Anders tried to pretend that it hadn’t affected him, I knew him better than that. I believe that he didn’t want her to make it public any more than I did. I know—knew, my son.’

  ‘So you went to visit her.’

  ‘Yes. I went there that Friday evening hoping to talk some sense into her. Make her understand that she couldn’t single-handedly make a decision that would affect us all.’

  ‘But she didn’t understand.’

  Vera gave a bitter smile. ‘No, she didn’t.’

  She had finished her second cup of coffee before Patrik had even finished half of his first one, but now she set the cup aside and folded her hands on the table.

  ‘I tried to appeal to her. I explained to her how difficult it would be for Anders if she made public what had happened, but she looked me straight in the eye and claimed I was only thinking of myself, not Anders. He would be glad if it finally came out, she said. He had never asked us to keep quiet, and she also told me that I, Nelly, Karl-Erik and Birgit hadn’t considered them when we decided to keep the whole thing secret. We were only interested in keeping our own reputations unsullied. Can you imagine such cheek!’

  The rage that a moment before had been ignited in Vera’s eyes was extinguished just as quickly as it appeared and was replaced by an indifferent, dead look. She continued in a monotone.

  ‘Something burst inside me when I heard her make such an outrageous claim. When I had done everything with Anders’s best interests at heart. I could almost hear a click in my head, and I simply acted without thinking. I had my sleeping pills with me in my purse, and when she went into the kitchen I crumbled a few tablets into her cider glass. She had poured a glass of wine for me when I arrived. When she came back from the kitchen I pretended to accept what she’d said and offered to drink a toast as friends before I left. She seemed grateful for that and drank her cider to keep me company. After a while she fell asleep on the sofa. I hadn’t really thought out what I should do next. The sleeping pills were an impulse on the spur of the moment, but I got the idea that I would make it look like a suicide. I didn’t have enough sleeping pills to force a fatal dose into her. The only thing I could think of was to slit her wrists. I knew that many people did it in the bathtub, so it felt like a feasible idea.’

  Her voice was toneless. It sounded as if she were relating a completely normal everyday event, not a murder.

  ‘I took off all her clothes. I thought I could probably carry her, since my arms are strong from all those years of cleaning, but it was impossible. Instead I had to drag her into the bathroom and manoeuvre her into the tub. Then I slit her arteries in both arms with a razor blade I found in the medicine cabinet. After cleaning the house once a week for several years, I was familiar with everything about it. I washed off the glass I drank out of, turned off the lights, locked the door and put the spare key back in its place.’

  Patrik was shaken, but forced his voice to remain calm.

  ‘You understand that you’ll have to come with me now, don’t you? I won’t have to call for reinforcements, will I?’

  ‘No, you don’t have to do that. May I just gather up a few things to take with me?’

  He nodded. ‘Yes, that will be fine.’

  She got up. In the doorway she turned round.

  ‘How was I to know she was pregnant? Of course, she didn’t drink any wine, I thought of that, but I had no idea that was why. Maybe she only drank in moderation, or had to drive somewhere. How should I know? It was impossible for me to know, don’t you think?’

  Her voice was pleading, and Patrik could only nod mutely. In time he would tell her that the child wasn’t Anders’s, but for the time being he didn’t want to disturb the balance of trust they had established. There were several more people she would have to tell her story to before they could close the case on Alexandra Wijkner for good. But something was bothering him. His intuition told him that Vera still hadn’t told him everything.

  Later, when he got into the car he took out his copy of the letter that Anders had left behind, as his last message to the world. Slowly he read through what Anders had written, and once again Patrik felt how strong the pain was behind those words on the page.

  6

  The irony of my life has often struck me. How I have the ability to create beauty with my fingers and my eyes, while in everything else I’m only able to create ugliness and destruction. That’s why the last thing I’m going to do is destroy my paintings. To obtain some kind of consistency in my life. Better to be consistent and only leave shit behind than to appear to be a more complex person than I
deserve.

  Actually, I’m very simple. The only thing I ever wanted to do was to erase a few months and events from my life. I don’t think that would have been too much to ask. But perhaps I deserved what I got in life. Perhaps I had done something terrible in a previous life that made me have to pay the price in this one. Not that it really makes any difference. But if so it would have been nice to know what I was paying for.

  Why am I now choosing this particular moment to leave a life that has been meaningless for so long, you may ask? Yes, go ahead and say it. Why does anyone do something at a certain point in time? Did I love Alex so much that life lost any and all meaning? That’s probably one of the explanations you’ll be grasping for. I don’t actually know if that would be entirely true. Death is a friend that I’ve lived with for a long time, but only now do I feel that I’m ready. Perhaps it was precisely the fact that Alex died that made my own freedom possible. She was always the unattainable one. It was impossible to make the slightest dent in her shell. The fact that she could die suddenly opened wide the possibility that 1 might go in the same way. I have long been packed and ready, all that remains is to climb aboard.

  Forgive me, Mamma.

  Anders

  He had never managed to shake off the habit of getting up early, or in the middle of the night as some might say. It was something that in this case proved to be useful. Svea didn’t react when he got up at four a.m., but for safety’s sake he sneaked cautiously down the stairs with his clothes in his hand. Eilert dressed silently in the living room and then took out his suitcase which he had carefully hidden in the very back of the pantry. He had planned this for months, and nothing had been left to chance. Today was the first day of the rest of his life.

  The car started on the first try despite the cold, and at twenty past four he left behind the house where he had lived for the past fifty years. He drove through a sleeping Fjällbacka and didn’t step hard on the gas before he passed the old mill and turned off towards Dingle. It was a good 125 miles to Göteborg and Landvetter Airport, and he could take it easy. The plane to Spain didn’t leave until around eight o’clock.