'Hello, this is Lars Kalfors from the Göteborg police.'
'Yes?' said Patrik. The man sounded as though he was supposed to recognize his name, but he couldn't recall hearing it before. And he had no idea why someone from Göteborg would be calling him.
'We just sent over some information regarding an ongoing matter to you. It was marked for your attention, I believe.'
'Oh yes?' said Patrik, even more puzzled. 'Offhand I can't recall seeing any message from Göteborg on my desk. When was it sent, and what was it about?'
'I got in touch with you over three weeks ago. I work in the division dealing with the sexual exploitation of children, and we're tracking a child pornography ring. We stumbled on a person from your district, and that's why I contacted you.'
Patrik felt like an idiot, but he had no idea what the man was talking about. 'Who did you talk to here?'
'Well, you seemed to be on parental leave that day, so I was referred to a… let me see…' It sounded like the man was paging through his notes. 'Here it is. I talked with an Ernst Lundgren.'
Patrik felt anger clouding his vision and making him see red. In his mind's eye he pictured himself putting his hands around Ernst's neck and slowly starting to squeeze. With forced calm he said, 'We must have had a communications glitch here at the station. Maybe you should give me the information instead. Then I can look into what's happened.'
'Of course, I can do that.'
Kalfors gave him a broad outline of what their work had involved, and how they came to be working on the child pornography case that was now high priority. When he came to the bit where the Tanumshede police station might be able to contribute something, Patrik gasped. He forced himself to listen to the whole account, then promised they'd give the matter immediate attention. After that he offered the usual polite phrases. But as soon as he hung up he was on his feet. He crossed his office in two strides and yelled out into the corridor, 'ERNST!'
Erica was sitting on the sofa, trying to sort out her thoughts when a knock on the door made her jump again. She guessed who it was and went to open the door. Charlotte stood outside. She had no coat on and looked like she'd run the whole way from her house. Sweat was running down her forehead and she was shaking uncontrollably.
'My God, you look awful,' said Erica, but instantly regretted her choice of words and swept Charlotte into the warmth of the house.
'Is this a bad time?' Charlotte asked pitifully, and Erica shook her head.
'Of course not. You're welcome here anytime, you know that.'
Charlotte just nodded, still shivering with her arms hugging her body. Her hair was plastered to her head from sweat and the damp air, and a stray lock hung into her eyes. She looked like a soaking wet puppy that had been abandoned.
'Would you like some tea?' asked Erica.
Charlotte had a frantic look in her eye, mixed with the haunted expression that had been there ever since she had gotten the news about Sara. But she nodded gratefully in answer to Erica's offer.
'Have a seat, I'll be right back,' Erica said and went into the kitchen. She checked on Maja in the living room, who seemed content and merely cast an interested glance at Charlotte as she walked past.
'I'll get your sofa wet if I sit down,' said Charlotte, as if that would be the end of the world.
'Don't worry, it'll dry,' said Erica. 'Look, I only have wild strawberry tea, is that all right, or do you think it's too sweet?'
'That'll be fine,' said Charlotte. Erica suspected she would have said the same thing if she'd been offered horse-flavoured tea.
Erica soon returned carrying a tray with two big cups of tea, a jar of honey and two spoons. She set it on the table in front of the sofa and sat down next to Charlotte.
Cautiously Charlotte raised her cup and sipped the tea. Erica sat quietly next to her and did the same. She didn't want to force Charlotte into talking, but she felt an almost physical need for her friend to confide in her. Maybe she just didn't know where to start. Erica wondered whether Niclas had told Charlotte that he'd been over to see her. After another long silence when Maja's babble was the only sound, Charlotte answered that question.
'I know that he's been here. He told me. So you already know that he's been seeing someone else. Again, I should add.' A bitter laugh escaped Charlotte's lips, and the tears that she had been holding back finally poured out.
'Yes, I know,' said Erica. She also knew what her friend meant by 'again'. Charlotte had told her about Niclas's recurring affairs. But also that she'd believed they'd stopped since they decided to start over in Fjällbacka. He had promised that it would be a new start in that respect as well.
'He's been seeing her for several months. Can you imagine? For several months. Here, in Fjällbacka. And nobody caught them. He must have incredible damn luck.' Her laugh now had a hint of hysteria to it, and Erica put a consoling hand on her knee.
'Who is it?' Erica said quietly.
'Didn't Niclas tell you?'
Erica shook her head, so Charlotte said, 'Some little bitch who's twenty-five years old. I don't know who she is. Jeanette something.' Charlotte waved her hand. The subject had shifted; it was Niclas's betrayal that mattered.
'I can't tell you all the shit I've taken over the years. All the times I've forgiven him, hoping he would change, and said I would forget about it and then promised to continue on. And this time it was really going to be different. We would get away from all the stuff that had happened, go live in a different town, become new people, or so I assumed.' Then that ominous laugh again. But the tears kept pouring out.
'I'm terribly sorry, Charlotte.' Erica stroked her back.
'We've been together so many years. We've had two children, we've gone through more than anyone could imagine. We've lost a child, and now this.'
'Why is he telling you now?' said Erica, taking a sip of tea.
'Didn't he say?' Charlotte asked in surprise. 'You're not going to believe this. But he told me it was because the police took him in for questioning today.'
'They did?' Not that Patrik told her everything about his work, but she had no clue that they were particularly interested in Niclas. 'Why was that?'
'He said he didn't really know. But they'd found out about his affair with this girl, and that may have been why they wanted to check him out. But it's all cleared up now, he said. They know he'd never hurt his own daughter; they just wanted him to answer a few questions.'
'Are you sure that's the only reason?' Erica couldn't resist asking. She knew enough about Patrik's job to realize that it seemed like a rather thin excuse for bringing somebody in for questioning. Especially the victim's father. At the same time she began to question Niclas's motive for visiting her. After all, she was not only his wife's friend, she was also living with the detective who was in charge of the investigation.
Charlotte looked confused. 'Well, that was what he said, at any rate. But there was something…'
'Yes?'
'Oh, I don't know, except it feels like he didn't tell me everything, now that you mention it. But I was so focused on what he said about his lover that I was probably deaf and blind to everything else.'
Charlotte sounded so bitter that Erica wanted to take her in her arms and rock her like a baby. But she always felt a little uncomfortable when she got too physical with other people, so she made do with continuing to stroke Charlotte's back.
'And you have no idea what other reasons there could be?' Was she imagining things, or did a shadow suddenly cross Charlotte's face? But it vanished so quickly that she was unsure.
Charlotte's reply at least was swift and confident. 'No, I have no idea what it could be.' Then she fell silent and took a little sip of tea. She was calmer than when she arrived, and wasn't crying anymore. But the expression on her face was bleak, and if a broken heart could be visible on the outside, then that was how Charlotte's heart looked at the moment.
'How did you and Niclas actually meet?' Erica asked, more out of curiosity than for any therapeutic r
eason.
'Well, that's a fine mess of a story, I have to say.' For the first lime her laugh sounded almost genuine. 'He was in the class ahead of me in gymnasium. I hadn't really paid too much attention to him, because I had a crush on one of his friends. But for some reason Niclas got interested in me and started to show it, so gradually I got interested in him too. We ended up going steady for a month or two, and then I was the one who actually got bored.'
'You broke up with him?'
'Don't sound so surprised, you might offend me.' She laughed and Erica joined in.
'Unfortunately I didn't stick to my decision for more than a couple of months. Then I went over to see him one evening, and the whole merry-go-round started up again. This time we were together all summer, and then he went off on a drinking trip with his mates. When he returned he came up with some story, in case I heard from the others about how he'd disappeared on the last night. He claimed he'd drunk too much and passed out behind a bar but the truth came out pretty quickly and our relationship was finished for the second time. After that I was honestly relieved that I got away with just a few tears. Niclas started going through all the girls in Uddevalla as if every day were his last, and you wouldn't believe some of the stories I heard. I'm ashamed to admit that on a few occasions I was weaker in the flesh than in spirit, but those episodes left me with quite a bitter aftertaste. Looking back, it probably would have been better if the story had ended there, and Niclas had remained a simple teenage mistake. But even though I loathed so much of what he had done and who he had become, he stayed in the back of my mind for a long time. A couple of years later we met by accident and the rest is history, as they say. I suppose I should have known what I was getting myself into.'
'People change. The fact that he cheated on you as a teenager doesn't mean you should automatically assume he would do the same as an adult. Most people mature with time.'
'Not Niclas, apparently,' said Charlotte, letting the bitterness take over again. 'But I can't really bring myself to hate him. We've been through too much together, and sometimes I see glimpses of his true self. On some occasions I've seen him vulnerable and open, and it's because of those times that I love him. I also know about his family life, and what happened with his father when he was seventeen, so I probably saw all of that as some sort of mitigating circumstance. And yet it's hard to comprehend why he would want to hurt me so badly.'
'What are you going to do now?' Erica asked. She glanced over at Maja and couldn't believe her eyes when she saw that her daughter had fallen asleep on her own in the bouncer. That had never happened before.
'I don't know. I can't face dealing with it right now. And in a way it feels like it doesn't matter. Sara is dead, and nothing Niclas does or says can hurt anywhere near as much as that does. Niclas wants us to start over, find our own place and move out of Mamma and Stig's house as soon as we can. But I have no idea what to do right now…'
She bowed her head. Then she abruptly got to her feet.
'I have to go home. Mamma has spent enough time watching Albin today. Thanks for letting me unload all this on you.'
'You're always welcome here, you know that.'
'Thanks.' Charlotte gave Erica a quick hug and then vanished as quickly as she'd come.
Erica wandered back into the living room. In amazement she stopped in front of the bouncer and looked down at her sleeping daughter. Maybe there was hope for her life after all. Unfortunately she didn't know whether Charlotte could say the same thing.
Morgan had come to his favourite part of the computer game he was working on. The part where the first blow of the sword fell. The man's head rolled, and according to the script there should be plenty of extreme effects. His fingers raced across the keyboard, and on the screen the scene emerged at lightning speed. He admired and envied the people who could write the stories, which he then was commissioned to transform into virtual reality. If there was anything he lacked in his life, it was the imagination that others had, allowing them to burst all boundaries and let ideas flow freely. Naturally he had tried. Sometimes he'd even been forced to give it a go himself. Writing compositions in school, for instance. Those had been a nightmare. Sometimes the pupils were given a topic, or just an image, and from that they were expected to spin a whole web of events and characters. He'd never got further than the first sentence. Then his mind just seemed to shut down. It was blank. The paper lay empty before him, absolutely screaming to be filled with words, but none came. The teachers had berated him. At least until Mamma went and talked to them, after his parents had received the diagnosis. Then the teachers merely regarded his attempts with curiosity, observing him as if he were an alien life-form. They didn't know how right they were. That was how he felt as he sat at his school desk, with the blank paper in front of him and the sound of his classmates' scratching pens all around. An alien life-form.
When Morgan discovered the world of computers he'd felt at home for the first time. This was something that came easy to him, that he could master. If he was an odd piece of the puzzle then he had finally found another piece that was a perfect fit.
When he was younger he had gone in for code languages just as manically. He had read everything he could find about the subject and could reel off what he'd learned for hours on end. There was something about numbers and letters being used in ingenious combinations that had appealed to him. But once his interest in computers took over, overnight he lost his fascination with codes. The knowledge was still there, and whenever he liked he could pull out everything he'd ever learned about the topic, but it simply didn't interest him anymore.
The blood running down the edge of the sword made him think of the girl again. He wondered whether her blood had congealed inside her now that she was dead. Whether it was just a dense mass filling her blood vessels. Maybe it had also turned the brown colour of dried blood; he'd seen it once when he'd tried cutting himself on the wrist. In fascination he'd stared at the blood trickling out, watching the way the flow gradually slowed, coagulated and began to change colour.
His mother had been shocked when she came into his room that time. He'd tried to explain that he just wanted to see what it was like to die, but without a word she'd shoved him into the car and driven him to the medical clinic. Although actually it wasn't necessary. It hurt to cut himself, so he hadn't made a deep cut and the blood had already coagulated. But his mother still got hysterical anyway.
Morgan didn't understand why death seemed to be such a scary concept for normal people. It was only a state of being, just like living. And sometimes death seemed much more tempting to him than life. So sometimes he envied the girl. Because now she knew. Knew the solution to the riddle.
He forced himself to concentrate on the computer game again. Sometimes thinking about death could make several hours vanish before he knew it. And that screwed up his schedule.
Looking surly, Ernst sat in front of Patrik, refusing to meet his gaze. Instead he studied his unpolished shoes.
'Answer me, damn it!' Patrik yelled at him. 'Did you get a call from Göteborg about child pornography?'
'Yes,' Ernst replied grumpily.
'And why didn't we ever hear about it?'
There was a long silence.
'I repeat,' said Patrik in an ominously low voice, 'why didn't you report it to us?'
'I didn't think it was that important,' said Ernst evasively.
'You didn't think it was that important!' Patrik's tone was ice- cold and he slammed his fist on the desk so hard that his keyboard jumped.
'No,' said Ernst.
'And why not?'
'Well, there was so much else going on at the time… And it felt a bit improbable, I mean, that's the sort of thing they're into in the big cities.'
'Don't talk nonsense,' said Patrik without being able to conceal his contempt. He'd got up from his chair and was now towering behind his desk. His rage made him look four inches taller. 'You know very well that child pornography has nothing to do with
geography. It happens in small towns too. So stop talking bullshit and tell me the real reason. And believe me, if it's what I think, you're going to be in serious hot water!'
Ernst looked up from his shoes and glared defiantly at Patrik, but he knew it was time to lay his cards on the table.
'I just didn't think it sounded plausible. I mean, I know the guy, and it didn't seem like something he'd be involved in. So I thought the Göteborg cops must have made a mistake, and an innocent person would have to suffer if I passed on the information. You know how it is,' he said, glaring at Patrik. 'It wouldn't change anything if they rang again after a while and said, "Oh, excuse us, but there's been a mistake here and you can forget about that name we gave you" - his name would still be mud in this town. So I thought I'd wait a while and see what happened.'
'You'd wait a while and see what happened!' Patrik was so furious that he had to force himself to enunciate each syllable to keep from stammering.
'Well, I mean, you have to agree this whole thing is unreasonable. He's well known for all the work he does with young people. He does plenty of good things, I have to tell you.'
'I don't give a shit what sort of good things he does. If our colleagues in Göteborg ring and say that his name came up in an investigation of child pornography, then we have to check it out. That's our fucking job! And if you two are best mates -'
'We aren't best mates,' Ernst muttered.
'… or friends or whatever the fuck, then it makes no difference at all, don't you see that? You can't sit there and make decisions about what's going to be investigated or what's not, based on who you know or don't know!'
'After all the years I've spent on the force -' Ernst couldn't finish his sentence before Patrik cut him off.
'After all the years you've spent on the force you should bloody well know better! And you didn't think to say anything when his name came up in a murder investigation? Wouldn't that at least have been a good time to tell us about the call?'
The Stone Cutter Page 26
