by Håkan Nesser
She had hesitated for a moment.
‘I was the reason,’ she had answered.
For one second flat, he had failed to understand. Then he had understood beyond all doubt.
No, it hadn’t even taken a minute.
‘How did the two of you get the body out?’ he had not been able to stop himself asking.
‘There was a little fire-escape balcony. And a staircase. It was easy.’
He had decided not to press her on where they had buried the body. Not for now. It hadn’t even felt important.
More important was deciding how to deal with that excess information he had spoken to Backman about. The dark knowledge of what had been at the root of the whole story. Kristina and Henrik. The aunt and the nephew who had crossed the boundary into a forbidden land.
If you wanted to be poetic about it. Inebriation and lust, if you preferred plain prose. A great deal had been wrecked by their actions, but was it really necessary to shatter what little was left?
Good question. The secret currently rested with four people: him and Kristina, Kristoffer Grundt and his father. Couldn’t it be left at that? Did Gunnar Barbarotti – as a detective inspector and a human being – have some kind of duty to make sure everything was brought to merciless and universal light?
A crucial decision, undoubtedly, but in his present state he wasn’t prepared to tackle it, as he had tried to explain to Inspector Backman. Lying on his back in the soft hotel bed, the curtains closed and the game won, he did, however, feel a certain sense of urgency about contacting the conceivably extant Almighty.
To check the balance of their account and one thing and another – but there was not time even to do that before sleep sank over him like a warm and lazy summer’s day.
Rosemarie Wunderlich Hermansson was sitting in one of the bars at Málaga airport.
It was two hours since the plane Kristina and Kelvin were supposed to be on had landed. She had drunk three glasses of sweet wine and made twice that many phone calls to try to find out what was going on. She could get no answer anywhere. It was incomprehensible. Spoilt brat, she thought. Could at least get in touch and say she was catching a later plane. That really wasn’t asking too much.
Ringing with hardly any notice to say she’d left her husband and had to come down. And then not turning up. She’d thought the better of it, of course. Taken him back. And then completely forgotten a waiting mother who was worried sick.
She would have liked a bit of information from the airport staff about passenger lists and so on, but she knew how bad their English was. There were always misunderstandings. And it felt a bit off, somehow. A daughter who didn’t turn up as promised. They would think she must be a bit weird for something like that to happen to her. Rosemarie Wunderlich Hermansson was sick and tired of things happening to her.
And there was another plane, due to land in an hour and a half’s time. Coming via Copenhagen, admittedly, but still. Karl-Erik was out playing golf. It took between forty-five minutes and an hour by taxi to get from the airport to their urbanización. Depending on the traffic. She had nothing important to do. Might just as well sit here and wait for that plane, too – if Kristina really was on board, she couldn’t actually get in touch at the moment.
It was what it was, and she had never really warmed to that Jakob. There was something untrustworthy about him. Coming off the phone last night, she had felt quite exhilarated at the thought of having her daughter and grandson to live with her for a while.
Rosemarie Wunderlich Hermansson sighed and ordered another glass of wine. She enjoyed using the small amount of Spanish she had learnt, in spite of everything.
Håkan Nesser is one of Sweden’s most popular crime writers, receiving numerous awards for his novels featuring Inspector Van Veeteren, including the European Crime Fiction Star Award (Ripper Award) 2010/11, the Swedish Crime Writers’ Academy Prize (three times) and Scandinavia’s Glass Key Award. His books have been published in over twenty-five countries and have sold over fifteen million copies worldwide. Håkan Nesser lives in Gotland with his wife, and spends part of each year in the UK.
Also by Håkan Nesser
THE LIVING AND THE DEAD IN WINSFORD
The Van Veeteren series
THE MIND’S EYE
BORKMANN’S POINT
THE RETURN
WOMAN WITH A BIRTHMARK
THE INSPECTOR AND SILENCE
THE UNLUCKY LOTTERY
HOUR OF THE WOLF
THE WEEPING GIRL
THE STRANGLER’S HONEYMOON
THE G FILE
First published 2017 by Mantle
This electronic edition published 2017 by Mantle
an imprint of Pan Macmillan
20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR
Associated companies throughout the world
www.panmacmillan.com
ISBN 978-1-5098-0936-3
Copyright © Håkan Nesser 2006
English translation copyright © Sarah Death 2017
Photographs: Valentino Sani/Arcangel; Flaps: Shutterstock; Author: Cato Lein.
Cover design: Ami Smithson, Pan Macmillan art department
The right of Håkan Nesser to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Originally published in 2006 as Människa utan hund
by Albert Bonniers Förlag, Stockholm
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