The Stonecutter: A Novel (Pegasus Crime)

by Camilla Lackberg

  ‘Johan, Karl, calm down. Sit still in the cart, or else you can get off and walk,’ said Anders, turning halfway around to the boys. As usual, Agnes thought he was much too lenient with them. She thought they needed a box on the ears. But on that issue he was unwavering. No one would raise a hand to his boys. Once Anders had caught her slapping Johan, and he gave her such a talking-to that she never dared do it again. Often she could get Anders to do as she wanted, but when it came to Karl and Johan he had the last word. He had even chosen their names. If the names were good enough for kings, they were good enough for his sons, he’d said. Agnes had merely snorted. Such foolishness. But she didn’t give a damn what the boys were called, so if he wanted to name them she had no objection.

  Most of all it would be lovely to get away from that busybody Mrs. Jansson. Sure, it had been convenient that she took care of the boys, but that had been her own choice. Her reproachful glances got on Agnes’s nerves. As if Agnes were a bad person just because her life didn’t center around wiping the shit from kids’ bottoms.

  They couldn’t drive all the way up to the new house, which stood along one of the small, narrow lanes that led down to the sea. They had to carry their belongings the last bit. Anders would be making a couple more trips to fetch their rickety furniture. As charmingly as possible, Agnes said hello to the old man who would be their landlord, and then she stepped into their new home. She never thought she’d consider two small rooms in a tiny house to be a step up in life; but compared to the dark shack, the new dwelling looked like a castle.

  She swept over the threshold with her skirts rustling and was pleased to find the place clean and neat. She detested living in messy or dirty surroundings, but the company shack hadn’t seemed worth cleaning. But if she could wheedle her skinflint husband into buying some nice curtains and a rug, this house might be acceptable.

  The boys raced past her legs and chased each other around the empty room, tracking mud everywhere. Agnes nearly exploded with fury.

  ‘Karl! Johan!’ she yelled, and the boys froze in terror. She pressed her fists to her sides to stop herself from dealing out a resounding slap. Instead she settled for grabbing her sons by the arms and dragging them out the front door. She permitted herself to give each of them a little pinch, and saw with satisfaction how their tiny faces dissolved in tears.

  ‘Pappa!’ Karl began to wail, and Johan soon joined in the chorus. ‘I want Pappa!’

  ‘Shut up,’ Agnes hissed, looking around anxiously. A fine thing it would be to disgrace herself on the first day in their new home. But the boys were past the point where they could stop crying.

  ‘Pappa!’ they wailed in unison, and Agnes took deep, controlled breaths so she wouldn’t do anything rash. Then the boys raised the ante.

  ‘Karin, we want Karin,’ they shrieked, as they lay down on the ground and began pounding their little fists.

  To think that they had the nerve to prefer that rotten bitch to their own mother. She felt her foot start to twitch with an urge to kick them in the soft parts round their stomachs. Fortunately, at that moment Anders appeared at the top of the hill.

  ‘What’s going on here?’ he said, and at the sound of his voice the boys were up on their feet like bolts of greased lightning.

  ‘Pappa! Mamma’s mean!’

  ‘So what happened now?’ he said in resignation, giving Agnes a disapproving glance. She silently cursed him. He didn’t even know what had happened, and still he took his sons’ side. She couldn’t be bothered to explain, but turned on her heel and went into the house to gather up the bits of mud the boys had left behind. Behind her she heard them snuffling with their faces buried in Anders’s coat. Crybabies. Like father, like sons.

  Monica took a sick day on Monday. Only a week had passed since they’d found the girl, but it felt like years had been added to her life since then. She heard Kaj rummaging about in the kitchen and knew that it was only a matter of time. Sure enough, here it came.

  ‘Monica-a-a-a. Where’s the coffee?’

  She closed her eyes and answered with forced politeness, ‘In the tin in the cupboard above the stove. That’s where it’s been for the past ten years,’ she couldn’t help adding.

  She heard a muttered reply from the kitchen and got up with a sigh. She’d better go take care of it. She couldn’t understand how a grown man could be so helpless. How he’d been able to run a business with thirty employees was beyond her comprehension.

  ‘Let me,’ she said, snatching the tin of coffee from his hand.

  ‘What’s got into you?’ said Kaj, annoyed.

  Monica took a deep breath to calm herself down as she silently counted out spoonfuls of coffee. It wasn’t worth starting a fight with Kaj on top of everything else.

  ‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘I’m just a little tired. And I don’t like it that the police were here talking to Morgan.’

  ‘Well, what can we do about it?’ said Kaj, sitting down at the kitchen table and waiting for the coffee to be served. ‘He’s a grown man, even if you refuse to believe it,’ he added.

  ‘You of all people ought to know how difficult things are for Morgan. Where have you been all these years? Aren’t you part of this family?’ The irritation crept back into her voice, and she began slicing the Swiss roll with more energy than necessary.

  ‘I’ve been part of this family as much as you have, thank you very much. On the other hand, I haven’t been as inclined to coddle Morgan. Or drag him from one shrink to another. What good has that done? He just sits out there all day long, getting weirder and weirder with each passing year.’

  ‘I never coddled him,’ said Monica between clenched teeth. ‘I tried to give our son the best care he could get, considering what he’s had to deal with. The fact that you chose to ignore him is something you’ll have to live with. If you spent half the time with him that you spend on your exercise routines …’

  She practically slammed the plate of Swiss roll onto the table and then stood leaning against the counter with her arms crossed.

  ‘All right, all right,’ said Kaj, trying to placate her as he stuffed a piece of cake in his mouth. He was in no mood for a fight either, this early in the morning. ‘No need to drag that up again. At any rate, I agree with you that we don’t want the police running in and out. Why don’t they focus their attention on that damned bitch next door instead?’

  Now that he was onto his favorite topic again, he pulled the curtain aside and looked over at the Florins’ house.

  ‘Seems quiet over there. I wonder what all those cars were doing there on Friday? And all the boxes and equipment they carried in?’

  Monica dropped her guard reluctantly and sat down across from him. She took a piece of cake, even though she knew she shouldn’t. Her craving for sweets had already added some weight around her hips. But Kaj didn’t seem to mind, so why should she make an effort?

  ‘I have no idea, and it’s not worth worrying about. The main thing is that they leave Morgan alone.’

  The cold, sinking feeling in Monica’s stomach refused to subside. With each day it got worse and worse. The sugar in the cake calmed her nerves for a while, but she knew that anxiety would soon overpower her again. In despair she looked at Kaj across the table. She considered telling him everything, but it wouldn’t help. Thirty years together and they had nothing in common. He was contentedly chewing another piece of Swiss roll, unaware that his wife was being ripped apart inside.

  ‘Shouldn’t you be at work?’ said Kaj and stopped chewing.

  Typical. She should have left an hour ago, but he hadn’t noticed until now that she’d stayed home.

  ‘I called in sick. I’m not feeling well.’

  ‘You look okay to me,’ he said critically. ‘A little pale, maybe. Well, you know I keep telling you to quit that job. It’s crazy to keep slaving away there when you don’t have to. We don’t need your salary.’

  A violent rage flared up inside her. She jumped to her feet.

 
‘I don’t want to hear any more about that. I stayed at home for more than twenty years and did nothing but iron your shirts and fix dinner for you and your business associates. Don’t I have the right to my own life?!’

  She snatched up the plate of cake, went over to the rubbish bin and dumped in the last pieces on top of the coffee grounds and food scraps. Then she left Kaj gaping at the kitchen table. She couldn’t stand looking at him for another second.

  Mia parked the stroller in back of Järnboden hardware store and made sure that Liam was asleep. She was just going to run in and buy a few things, and she didn’t feel like dragging the stroller inside. The wind was blowing hard, but it was worse at the front of the shop, the side facing the water. In back, the shop was well protected against the wind by the stone mass of Veddeberget, and the baby would be fine there for the five minutes she planned to be gone.

  The bell over the door rang as she entered. The shop stocked everything between heaven and earth, it seemed, mostly aimed at do-it-yourself handymen and boat lovers. She checked the shopping list Markus had given her to see what she was supposed to buy. He’d promised to put up the rest of the shelves in the nursery this weekend if she picked up the necessary hardware.

  Mia was happy to be getting the nursery done at last. Months had flown by, and despite the fact that Liam was already six months old, his room was still half-finished, a far cry from the cozy, snug children’s room she had always dreamt of. The problem was that she was depending on her boyfriend to fix up the room, since she’d never held a hammer in her life. He was actually quite handy once he put his mind to it, but unfortunately that didn’t happen very often.

  Sometimes she wondered whether the rest of her life would be like this. When they first met, she’d thought his philosophy was wonderful: always make sure to have a good time and never do anything boring. She had latched on to his lifestyle, and for almost a year they had lived a marvelously carefree life with lots of partying and spur-of-the-moment decisions. But eventually she had grown tired of all that. She felt the responsibilities of adult life growing more insistent—especially since she’d had Liam. In the meantime, Markus kept on living in his little bubble; she felt like she now had two children to raise. He didn’t contribute anything toward food and rent either. If she hadn’t been living at home and getting money from her parents, they all would have starved to death.

  Markus was good at talking his way into jobs, that wasn’t the problem. No, the problem was that no job ever lived up to his expectations, or his demands that everything always had to be cool, so he usually quit after a couple of weeks. Then he would loaf about for a while, living off her parents’ generosity until he succeeded in charming his way into a new job. He slept most of the day as well, so he almost never helped out, either with the housework or with Liam. Instead, he stayed up all night playing computer games.

  To be honest, Mia had begun to tire of the way they were living. She was twenty years old and felt like forty. She kept hearing herself harping and nagging, and sometimes to her horror she sounded just like her mother.

  Mia sighed as she walked down one aisle of shelves. She looked at the list. Nails and some of the other things he needed she found quite easily, but she had to ask for help to find the screws. When she was finished at last and about to pay Berit at the checkout, she glanced at the clock. A quarter of an hour had flown by while she was ticking off the items on the list, and she felt sweat starting to trickle from her armpits. She hoped Liam hadn’t woken up. She hurried to the door with her purchases, and as soon as she stepped outside she heard his piercing screams, just as she had feared. But they sounded different from the way they were when he was angry, hungry, or upset. This was a scream of sheer panic, and it echoed shrilly off the rock wall of Veddeberget.

  She dropped her bags and ran to the stroller. Her heart stopped for an instant as she tried to understand what she was seeing. Liam’s face was black with something that looked like ashes, or soot. In his open, shrieking mouth she also saw a clump of ashes, and he kept sticking out his tongue in an attempt to get rid of the nasty stuff. The inside of the stroller was coated with the black substance, and when Mia lifted up her panic-stricken son and pressed him to her breast, her coat became covered with it too. With Liam in her arms, she ran back inside Järnboden. All she knew was that someone had done something to her son. As the clerk phoned for help, Mia tried desperately to get the ashes out of Liam’s mouth using a paper napkin.

  Only an insane person would have done something like this.

  By two o’clock, they had all the information they needed. Annika had done the legwork, and Patrik thanked her in a low voice as he gathered up all the pages that had come in by fax in a steady stream. He knocked on Martin’s door but walked in without waiting for him to answer.

  ‘Hello,’ said Martin, raising his voice in a question. He knew what Patrik and Annika had been working on, and he only needed to see Patrik’s face to know that their efforts had paid off.

  Without speaking, Patrik sat down in the chair in front of Martin’s desk and placed the faxes on his desktop.

  ‘I presume you’ve come up with something,’ said Martin, reaching for the stack of paper.

  ‘Yes, after we succeeded in getting a warrant, it was like opening Pandora’s box. There’s all sorts of information. See for yourself.’

  Patrik leaned back in the chair and waited for Martin to finish skimming through the printouts.

  ‘This doesn’t look good,’ said Martin after a while.

  ‘No, it doesn’t,’ said Patrik, shaking his head. ‘A total of thirteen times Albin has been taken to the clinic with some sort of injury. Broken leg, cuts, burns, and God knows what else. It’s like reading a textbook on child abuse.’

  ‘And you think it’s Niclas and not Charlotte who did all this?’ Martin nodded at the stack of faxes.

  ‘First of all, there’s no proof that it is child abuse. No one has found any reason to start asking questions before now, and theoretically he might just be the unluckiest kid in the world. That said, both you and I know that’s very unlikely. He’s only eight months old. It’s possible that someone has abused Albin on repeated occasions. Whether it’s Niclas or Charlotte, well, that’s impossible to say for sure. But at the moment Niclas is the one we have the most questions about, so I’m assuming he’s the more likely candidate.’

  ‘Could it be both of them? There have been cases like that, as you know.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ said Patrik. ‘Anything is possible, and we can’t rule it out. But considering the fact that Niclas lied about his alibi—and also attempted to get someone else to lie for him—I’d like to bring him in for a serious talk. Are we agreed on that?’

  Martin nodded. ‘Yes, definitely. Let’s get him in here and present this information to him and then see what he has to say.’

  ‘Good, that’s what we’ll do, then. Shall we head over there?’

  Martin nodded. ‘I’m ready if you are.’

  An hour later, they had Niclas sitting across from them in the interview room. He looked obdurate, but he hadn’t protested when they fetched him from the clinic. It was as though he had no energy to make any objections. At no time during the trip to the station had he asked why they wanted to talk to him. Instead, he had stared out at the passing landscape and let the silence speak for itself. For a brief moment Patrik felt a pang of sympathy. It looked as though Niclas’s brain had only now registered the fact that his daughter was dead, and for the present he was devoting all his energy trying to cope with that knowledge. Then Patrik remembered the contents of the physician’s reports, and his sympathy was quickly extinguished.

  ‘Do you know why we want to talk with you?’ Patrik began calmly.

  ‘No,’ Niclas replied, studying the tabletop.

  ‘We’ve received some information that is …’ Patrik paused for effect, ‘disturbing.’

  No response from Niclas. His whole body slumped forward, and his hands resting on
the table were trembling slightly.

  ‘Don’t you want to know what sort of information we have?’ said Martin kindly, but Niclas didn’t respond to that either.

  ‘Then we’ll tell you,’ Martin went on, glancing at Patrik to take over, who cleared his throat.

  ‘First of all, it turned out that the statement you gave us about where you were on Monday morning was not correct.’

  Here Niclas looked up for the first time. Patrik thought he saw a glint of surprise. In the absence of any verbal reply, Patrik continued.

  ‘The person who gave you an alibi has retracted her statement. Let me repeat: Jeanette has now told us that you were not with her at all, as you claimed, and she also says that you asked her to lie about it.’

  No reaction from Niclas. It seemed as though all emotion had drained out of him, leaving behind only a vacuum. He showed no anger, astonishment, consternation, or any of the feelings that Patrik had expected. He waited him out, but silence prevailed.

  ‘Would you like to comment?’ Martin coaxed him.

  Niclas shook his head. ‘If that’s her story …’

  ‘Perhaps you’d like to tell us where you were during the hours in question.’

  Niclas merely shrugged. Then he said in a low voice, ‘I have no intention of making any statement. I don’t even understand why I’m here and being asked these questions. It’s my daughter who is dead. Why would I have harmed her?’ He raised his eyes and looked at Patrik, who saw a suitable segue to the next question.