The Intruder

by Hakan Ostlundh

  “But we had to be prepared to sue for the money,” Malin added.

  “Yes, exactly.”

  Henrik sank against the back of the couch as if the story tired him out.

  “Did that happen?” asked Fredrik.

  “They completed the estate distribution without paying any attention to our viewpoints,” said Henrik.

  “So you got nothing?”

  “Yes, I did get my lawful inheritance. A third of half of Mother’s assets. But that was only a few thousand she had in the bank. All property was registered either to Ernst or to Elisabet, and the personal property … well, I had no desire to go in and root around in that. As you can see I was not exactly welcome.”

  “And where do you stand now?” asked Fredrik.

  “For a while I thought about forgetting about it all. I hate these sorts of conflicts. The risk is that you lose more than you gain, even if you win the case in the end. It takes so much energy … But in the end I decided to sue them. And, well…”

  He slowly raised his hand in a tired gesture.

  “There we stand now.”

  “So at the moment it’s open?”

  “Yes, you might say that,” said Henrik.

  Malin leaned forward over the coffee table and looked firmly at Fredrik and Sara.

  “The money is only one side of the case. They have a guilty conscience, and they would rather not be reminded of Henrik. And now they are trying to scare us away from here.”

  “We don’t know that,” said Henrik.

  Malin turned argumentatively toward him, but did not say anything.

  Fredrik was prepared to agree with Malin. At least in her suspicion. The Vogler family would surely heave a sigh of relief if Henrik moved away from here with his family.

  “We will have to check up on this, then we’ll see what it leads to,” he said. “Elisabet and Alma Vogler, was that right?”

  Henrik nodded.

  “And the dad’s name is Ernst,” Malin added.

  Fredrik wrote down the names and addresses.

  “There are no other names that come up when you think along these lines?” Sara asked. “Any ex-boyfriend or ex-girlfriend, perhaps someone you’ve quarreled with about money?”

  “No,” said Henrik. “We’ve thought along those lines, of course—”

  “Really,” Malin chimed in.

  “Customers, colleagues, models … No, nothing like that. And we’ve been together for thirteen years, so a jealous ex doesn’t feel quite relevant,” said Henrik, quickly stroking his hand over Malin’s knee.

  “And you haven’t witnessed any crimes?” asked Sara. “Or a traffic accident? Sometimes people get threatened in such contexts.”

  “In that case, we were witnesses without having realized it ourselves,” said Malin.

  “You can think some more, and if you come up with anything then give us a call. We will start following up on the tenants and this inheritance dispute with your sisters in the meantime, then we’ll see.”

  “And the photo?” Malin asked, nodding toward Sara.

  “Our technicians will have to look at it,” answered Sara. “But it’s rare that you find fingerprints on threatening letters.”

  “I see,” said Malin, looking a little disappointed.

  She brushed back her bangs. The forehead that was glimpsed was paler than her suntanned face.

  “Do you feel worried?” asked Fredrik.

  Malin and Henrik looked quickly at each other. Malin tipped her head a little and wrinkled her nose.

  “Of course you get worried,” she said, “but I don’t think some lunatic is going to rush in here and … well, I don’t know.”

  Fredrik moved a little forward in the chair, took hold of the rental contracts with both hands, ready to conclude the interview, but Malin continued.

  “It’s so personal, so aggressive to go after our private family pictures,” said Malin. “I can’t stop thinking about it.”

  “I understand that,” said Fredrik. “And we take this extremely seriously. At the same time, it can’t be ruled out that the person who did this perhaps sees it as a kind of joke.”

  “Strange sense of humor, in that case,” said Henrik, sounding a little offended.

  “I really don’t mean to trivialize this,” said Fredrik, “but it may have been some bored teenagers on vacation with their parents.”

  “Fine by me,” said Malin. “It would make everything feel a lot better if it turned out to be pure stupidity. But I have a feeling that this is something else. Something much worse.”

  7.

  Malin watched through the kitchen window as the two police officers walked up the rise toward their car. For a moment she felt silly. Could it be so simple that everything was a twisted joke? Some young people egging each other on to cross a boundary?

  No. They had been threatened. They had come home after a four-week vacation and been met by a family portrait with poked-out eyes. No one could blame her for doing what she could to find out who was behind it. They lived isolated and unprotected, a slow-moving ferry between them and civilization.

  It would have been easier to shrug and blame foolish adolescents if they were still living in Stockholm. In a building full of neighbors who heard and saw things. The police a few minutes away.

  She felt Henrik behind her. He put his hands on her shoulders and pulled her backward. She let herself fall into his cautious embrace and got a different image in her head, a different family portrait: she and Henrik proud outside the new studio; the photographer’s fill flash on a tripod part of the picture, to underscore the subject.

  “Do you think this could have anything to do with the article?”

  “This?” said Henrik.

  “Yes.”

  A reporter from Gotlands Allehanda had interviewed them early in the summer: the entrepreneurs on Fårö who would attract photographers and models from all over the world. The article had been published while they were on the mainland. Besides the picture that had been taken in front of the studio, it had also been illustrated with the picture of Henrik together with the model and the Elvis impersonator.

  “That might have provoked someone,” she said. “Someone who got an image of sin and naked photo models in their skull.”

  Henrik made a face as if she was out on a limb.

  “No, but seriously,” said Malin, with an edge in her voice. “Think about the production of Macbeth by the limestone pillars in Ljugarn. Some lunatic severed their electrical cable with an ax during the premiere. In the background there was a story about a porno film being made by the pillars ages ago.”

  Henrik laughed again. “What the hell, I’ve never heard that.”

  “It’s true. I even know someone who was there.”

  “And wielded the ax?”

  “Really nice.”

  She felt a growing irritation.

  “Okay,” said Henrik, turning serious. “But there is still a difference between running around in a nature preserve and running a company at home on your own property.”

  “Yes, but there is also a difference between a porno film and Shakespeare. Who knows what goes on in people’s skulls when they read that photo models are going to come here.”

  Henrik sighed.

  “Well?” said Malin.

  “No idea,” he said.

  “I intend to tell this to the police anyway. Anything against that?”

  “Not really. I think you should.”

  Malin saw that their car had already left.

  “I’ll have to call them.”

  Henrik’s hands slid down over her breasts. Heat spread quickly from his hands further into her body.

  “I have to go to Barcelona for a job,” said Henrik, letting one hand slip in under her blouse.

  “What? So for how long?”

  “It’s a two-day job plus travel, so I’ll be gone for three nights.”

  The heat that had filled Malin abruptly vanished.

  “So
when is that?”

  She tried to sound unperturbed. That was fairly successful, even though she felt completely empty and abandoned.

  “The thirtieth,” he said.

  “The thirtieth? But that’s this Sunday.”

  Henrik playfully swept his hand down toward the edge of her jeans. But Malin’s desire was gone. She could only think that she would be alone in the house for three nights. She carefully slipped out of his grasp.

  “We need the money,” he said. “Besides, I can’t say no to this client.”

  “I know.”

  He did not need to say that. She knew what it was like with the big, recurring customers. If you said no once, maybe they would call someone else the next time.

  Henrik reached out a hand and tried to draw her in, but she slipped away.

  “I have to get the week’s menus ready,” she said. “I should have done that yesterday.”

  Malin set a course to the study without turning around. She heard Henrik sigh behind her.

  8.

  Fredrik and Sara managed to find the nearest neighbor, which was also the only one if you didn’t count the farm over a mile away. The house was behind a carefully stacked stone fence only a few hundred yards from Malin and Henrik’s house.

  “Do you think Henrik Kjellander has any chance with that lawsuit?” said Sara as they got out of the car.

  Fredrik shut the door and shrugged his shoulders.

  “Not the foggiest. It sounded farfetched with that letter, but I really have no clue.”

  “We’ll have to check with Klint.”

  They walked slowly toward the opening in the stone fence.

  “But maybe it’s as Malin said, that the conflict is much bigger than the inheritance,” said Fredrik. “The suit was only the last straw.”

  “That made relatives start pooping in toy baskets?” Sara looked anything but convinced. “But what a story,” she said.

  “Only on Gotland,” said Fredrik.

  Sara laughed and put a guilty hand in front of her mouth. “But isn’t it a bit strange that he wanted to come back here after all that? It almost seems like he was looking for a confrontation, doesn’t it?”

  “Who knows,” said Fredrik. “People do strange things when their parents die.”

  They continued up the stone-paved path to the house, and Sara pressed the doorbell.

  The woman who opened the door was named Ann-Katrin Wedin. She was in her fifties, tall and thin with a raven-black braid that went far down her back. Dyed, Fredrik assumed. She lived in the house with Bengt Wedin, who was at work.

  Ann-Katrin Wedin knew that the neighbors’ house had been rented out over the summer. After some discussion back and forth about dates, she decided that the first tenants had been a family with a boy and a girl of elementary school age. They had a big black SUV parked outside the house, not so different from Malin’s Honda. After them had come a group of five or six people in their thirties. As far as she could tell they did not have any children with them. A thin, blond woman had passed the house several times—on her way down to Tällevika to swim, she presumed. The others she had not seen close-up. The last week she had not seen anyone at all. Then her vacation was over and she had been gone during the days, so that might be the explanation.

  Sara asked her in particular about observations on Saturday, but she had not seen anyone then, either. Possibly she had heard a car, but she was not quite sure that it was on Saturday.

  * * *

  “Shall we try the sisters?” said Sara when they were in the car again.

  “Yes, we can go and take a look at them anyway,” said Fredrik.

  They drove slowly the same way back, passed Henrik and Malin’s house, and came out on the better, but not much wider gravel road that led up to the main road. Fredrik increased speed and rolled over the first cattle guard.

  “So what do you think?” said Sara.

  “I believe more in the sisters than the tenants. If you want to threaten someone, there must be much simpler ways than renting a house for eight thousand kronor. Would you even pay eight thousand to someone you dislike that much?”

  “No, you do have a point there, but if you want to conceal your identity maybe it would be worth it anyway.”

  Fredrik slowed down and stopped completely. A dozen lambs had lain down in the middle of the road. He honked at them, without result.

  “That usually doesn’t work,” said Sara.

  Fredrik rolled down the window.

  “Usually?” he said. “Does this happen to you often?”

  He stuck his head out the window and hollered at the lambs.

  “Not anymore. But when I was little we had a summer place in Hälsingland. They had a lot of sheep there.”

  Sara unbuckled her seat belt.

  “I’ll take care of it,” she said, getting out of the car.

  She only needed to take a few steps toward the lambs before they quickly got to their feet and toddled away from the road. Sara got back in the car.

  “So you don’t think it’s one of the tenants?” she said when they were on their way again.

  “No, not if it really is a threat. If it is one of the renters who’s behind this it’s some teenager who did it.”

  “Sure,” said Sara. “Maybe it is some adolescents after all.”

  * * *

  They continued out on the eastern part of the island where Elisabet Vogler lived. She ran a farm along with her husband and they hoped to find her there. Her sister, Alma, on the other hand, worked at the technical college in Visby as an IT technician. They would have to question her when they were back in town.

  After fifteen or twenty minutes, they turned right and stopped in front of a big white stone house with a pantile roof and pink corners. It was an archetypal Gotland farmhouse with a low ceiling on the bottom floor, and an upper floor with more space, added on much later. It would not surprise Fredrik if a Vogler had hauled the first cornerstone there sometime in the fifteen hundreds.

  Right on the boundary between the yard and the garden two stately maple trees were growing. The house had dense forest at its back and a smaller, ochre-colored detached wing on the right side. On the left side, but farther away than the wing, was a big barn. In front of the two buildings, the landscape opened up in an expansive meadow where two horses stood completely still in the sun like bronze statues.

  The main building lacked a back addition and did not appear to have any other kitchen entrance, either, so Fredrik and Sara went up to the double door and knocked. There was a pair of child-size red rubber boots tossed in the gravel alongside the steps.

  There was movement behind a curtain, and shortly after one half of the door was opened by a man in his thirties dressed in gray work pants and green T-shirt. Probably Elisabet Vogler’s husband. He was shorter than Fredrik, broad and sturdy like a wrestler. His face under the sun-bleached hair was also broad and square. Fredrik asked for Elisabet and hoped that he could avoid further explanations, but that was obviously naïve. The man looked at him suspiciously.

  “What’s this about?”

  “It concerns her half brother, Henrik Kjellander,” said Fredrik.

  The man stood silently and looked at him a little longer than was completely natural.

  “One moment, I’ll go see,” he mumbled, shutting the door in Fredrik’s face.

  It did not sound obvious that they would get to see his wife. Fredrik stepped down from the big piece of limestone that served as a landing and looked out over the well-tended yard. A short distance away was a machine shop. The door stood open and you could make out the outlines of a tractor.

  The farm was too big to be on Fårö. The majority of the island’s farms were small, part-time operations.

  After more than a minute the door opened and Elisabet Vogler came out accompanied by her husband. Elisabet was not at all like Henrik. She was blond and a good bit taller. Her eyes were beautiful but cold, her cheekbones high.

  Elisabet
came down and took a couple of steps in the direction of Fredrik and Sara. Her husband remained standing, right by the door. Fredrik heard a sound behind them and glanced over his shoulder. An older man had come out from the detached wing, leaving the door ajar behind him. He stood looking at them, but made no attempt to come closer. Fredrik assumed that it was Ernst Vogler. Father and daughter each lived in their own house on the same property.

  “Yes?” said Elisabet when Fredrik and Sara had introduced themselves.

  She had crossed her arms, all claws out.

  “We need to ask a few questions in connection with an investigation that concerns your half brother Henrik Kjellander,” said Fredrik.

  Elisabet Vogler looked at Fredrik without saying anything. He assumed this meant that the ball was in his court.

  “What did you do last Saturday?”

  She made a surprised face and glanced over toward the older man outside the other building.

  “What was I doing? Do you want me to tell you what I did?”

  “Yes, just very briefly,” said Fredrik politely.

  “Why is that?” She laughed. It sounded scornful, or possibly nervous.

  “Unfortunately I can’t go into that right now.”

  “I see.”

  She shook her head almost imperceptibly, but then at last she answered.

  “I worked in the morning. We had lunch together, all three of us. In the afternoon I was at home with the kids.”

  “And in the evening?”

  “Yes, then, too. We watched TV with the kids.”

  “During the morning, when you were working, did you leave the farm then?” asked Fredrik.

  “No, I was here the whole time.”

  Both the younger and the older man nodded in agreement from their respective front steps, but said nothing.

  “Henrik Kjellander moved here to the island two years ago,” Fredrik continued.

  “Yes, I’m aware of that,” said Elisabet Vogler.

  “What did you think about that? That he settled down here with his family?”

  Elisabet looked at Fredrik, her mouth like a narrow streak.

  “I don’t understand what business he had here and I didn’t like it. But I’m not getting involved in that. This is a free world.”