Guiltless

by Sten, Viveca

  “Things will get better soon,” she said, sounding far from convinced. “It’s her first baby; she just needs time to get used to life as a mother. It doesn’t come naturally to all women. It will sort itself out, you’ll see—both for her and little Thorwald.”

  Gottfrid missed his mother. Oh God, he missed her so much. She would have known how to deal with Vendela.

  He would often get home from work to find his wife staring blankly into space. She could sit like that for hours on end. She didn’t even bother with the baby, who eventually stopped yelling.

  She hardly uttered a word. She’d sunk into a mute trance where he was unable to reach her, no matter how hard he tried.

  On many occasions she had actually gone to bed when Gottfrid arrived home from the Customs House; he would find the house in darkness, the fire out. There was rarely any supper left out for him, and he got used to eating bread and cheese with no one to keep him company.

  Vendela stopped doing her chores. The dirt Gottfrid brought in on his shoes joined bread crumbs and bits of food that had fallen on the floor. The sand, the endless sand that came creeping in through the windows, was never swept up. One evening Gottfrid saw a mouse scuttling away as he lit the kerosene lamp.

  The mess really bothered him. They may have been poor when he was growing up, but his mother had always kept the place neat and clean. He was a tidy person by nature and found it difficult to cope with the dirt and disorder.

  Gottfrid felt helpless. He had no idea what to do with a wife who wouldn’t speak to him and a baby who screamed for attention.

  Before long, out of despair came rage. Life wasn’t easy, every single person in the archipelago knew that. You simply had to carry your burden, get by as best you could. Vendela was his wife, and they were joined together before God for the rest of their lives. It was her duty as a woman and a mother to look after the boy and keep the house in order.

  He sought refuge at sea. The weather was irrelevant; he spent hour after hour in his boat. He laid his nets in distant places, unprotected by rocks or skerries, then labored at dawn to pull them up. He rowed the skiff until his shoulders ached and he was drenched in sweat.

  When his hands were stiff with cold and his knuckles chapped and red, he contemplated them with grim satisfaction. Resolutely he dealt with any damage to the nets, as if every meticulously mended net would bring him redemption.

  But things didn’t improve. Nothing improved.

  One evening he had had enough. It was after six, and he’d had a particularly trying day at work. He was hungry and thirsty, and all he wanted was to sit down and fill his belly.

  When Gottfrid walked in, Thorwald was crawling around on the sandy floor in a dirty diaper. Vendela was on the kitchen sofa, staring blankly at a fly on the windowsill. From time to time she wiped her eyes with a grubby handkerchief that she kept tucked up her sleeve. The fire had gone out, and the room was cold.

  At first he spoke pleasantly to her. Asked how long it would be before supper was ready. The boy started screaming, but Vendela took no notice.

  Gottfrid repeated his question, and she looked at him without answering. He asked yet again, but still she said nothing.

  He ran out of patience.

  He couldn’t really explain how it happened, but he raised his arm and slapped her hard across the face. The blow made her nose start bleeding. When that vacant expression didn’t change, he hit her again.

  The image of his father’s enraged face came into his mind, but he quickly suppressed the memory.

  The child was still screaming. Vendela got to her feet, still without a word, and picked him up. Then she went to the stove with the baby in her arms.

  From that day on, there was always a hot meal waiting when Gottfrid came home from work.

  CHAPTER 12

  Monday, February 26, 2007

  Breakfast was over, and Nora had cleared the table. Simon had shot over to Fabian’s house like greased lightning the second they finished eating.

  She heard the front door open, and a quick glance down the hall told her Adam was home. He took off his hat and coat and hung them on one of the brass hooks, then kicked off his heavy boots and left them in the middle of the floor.

  Nora smiled. He already came up to her shoulders; before long he would pass her by. He would probably end up at least six inches taller than her.

  Nora’s little boy. A few years ago he was a two-year-old toddling around; now he was almost a teenager. She wondered how it would all play out. Adam could be temperamental, but he was also sensitive and something of a dreamer. He was closer to Henrik than he was to her, and she knew the divorce would hit him hard.

  “Do you want something to eat?” she called. “Cereal? Yogurt?”

  “I had breakfast at Filip’s,” Adam muttered, setting off up the stairs.

  Nora went into the hallway, reached out a hand, and stopped him. He looked tired, like he’d slept badly. His blond hair curled down over the back of his neck; he refused to have it cut, even though Nora had been nagging for months. Short hair wasn’t cool anymore. All the boys in his class had long hair. He didn’t care what she thought. Another sign of the onset of puberty.

  “Just a minute—there’s something I want to ask you.”

  He looked at her curiously but accompanied her into the living room. Nora sat down on the striped sofa and patted the cushion beside her.

  “I was talking to Simon last night about the forest. What actually happened?”

  Adam’s face was closed. He didn’t say a word, but the corner of his mouth started twitching.

  “I don’t want you scaring your brother like that,” Nora went on. “I’d like you to tell me exactly what happened when you were playing in the forest.”

  Adam shuffled uncomfortably, refusing to meet her eye.

  “Answer me, Adam,” Nora said, more sharply than she’d intended. “Simon told me a very strange story. He said you found something—” She broke off, searching for the right words.

  Her son’s reaction came as a complete shock. Without warning, Adam’s mouth twisted and he burst into tears. He hid his face in the crook of his arm, his shoulders shaking. Nora immediately felt guilty.

  “Oh, sweetheart, surely it can’t be that bad. I was just upset because you put silly ideas into Simon’s head. It’s OK, honey.”

  She tried to give him a hug, but his thin body was rigid with tension.

  “But it’s true, Mom,” Adam said. “It was lying there in the hole.”

  The sobs got the better of him.

  “Where?”

  “Deep inside the forest.”

  His eyes were huge; there was no mistaking how frightened he was. The tears poured down his cheeks, and Nora gently wiped them away.

  “Can you show me the place?”

  “Yeah,” he said feebly. “I think so.”

  “Why didn’t you say anything yesterday when you got home?” Nora pulled him close, and for once he didn’t object.

  “I thought if we didn’t tell anyone, it would just go away. Like it didn’t happen. I didn’t want to talk about it, because that would make it real,” he mumbled into her shoulder.

  Nora hugged her son as her stomach contracted into a hard lump.

  They passed the Mission House and entered the pine forest behind the chapel. Nora had pulled her hat down over her ears, and she was wearing a thick jacket, but that didn’t stop her from shivering, even though they hadn’t been out very long. The bitterly cold air found its way in beneath her scarf.

  Adam was leading the way along the narrow, well-trodden track. He kept looking back as if to check that she was really there. Dry yellow pine needles were clearly visible against the white snow, and a dark patch suggested that a dog had recently passed this way.

  They had been walking for almost fifteen minutes when Adam stopped and glanced around uncertainly.

  “I think this is where we were yesterday. There,” he said, pointing with a blue-gloved hand.
“Over there by the bushes.”

  They were roughly in the middle of the island, Nora thought. The children had gone much farther from home than they should have. The trees were very close together here, and the thick covering of snow spread in all directions. Several boulders a few yards away had no doubt provided excellent cover when the children were hiding. In front of a group of low-growing pines she could see tracks left by little boots.

  “Come on, Mom,” Adam said, taking her hand and squeezing it hard. His face was ashen.

  Nora felt a stab of pain when she saw how scared he was. She gave him an encouraging smile, in spite of feeling a little nauseous herself.

  They walked on until they reached a spot where the snow was all trampled. A hollow showed where Adam had fallen the previous day. He started to brush the snow aside with his foot, and soon a hole appeared. Nora guessed it was around three feet deep. She could just make out a black plastic bag on the sandy bottom, with something beside it—something grayish-white with a hint of green. It seemed to be attached to a long object, bent at an angle. On the pale surface she saw black dots, like tiny, crawling creatures.

  Nora’s stomach turned over as she realized what she was looking at. Summoning all her willpower, she forced herself not to vomit; Adam was shaken up enough already. Throwing up right in front of him wouldn’t exactly help matters.

  Breaking out in a cold sweat, she leaned forward. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe it was something completely different, lying there at the bottom of that dark hole.

  Adam had backed away and was now standing behind her. She could hear his breathing, shallow and frightened. She turned and met his terrified eyes, pleading with her to tell him it was all a mistake, there was nothing to worry about.

  But it was horribly clear to Nora that her sons had found part of a human body buried in the forest.

  This was no game—this was serious.

  CHAPTER 13

  It took Nora almost ten minutes to give Thomas a reasonable account of the children’s discovery. While she was on the phone, Adam and Simon were squabbling in the background, and she had to shush them several times as she tried to explain.

  Thomas realized the gravity of the situation, and quickly informed Göran Persson, chief of police in Nacka Municipality, better known as the Old Man. It was decided that Thomas and his colleague Margit Grankvist should head over to Sandhamn as soon as possible.

  Fortunately one of the police helicopters was available to fly them out there with a CSI technician and the forensic pathologist. Uniformed officers from the maritime police would join them by boat.

  Nora waited for them at the helipad in the harbor to show them the way. It was late afternoon by then, but they arrived surprisingly quickly. No one on the island could miss the blue-and-white police helicopter as it landed outside the Sandhamn Inn.

  The area had been cordoned off, and the forensics team was doing their best to preserve any evidence they could find, given the circumstances. Nora had gone back home to be with the boys; she and Thomas would speak later. At the moment the police were fully occupied examining the site in the forest before it got too dark to see anything.

  “Not very pleasant,” Margit said, stamping her feet to try and keep warm in the biting cold. The icy sea air got right into your bones. She was freezing, even though she’d put on extra layers when she found out where they were going. She remembered how cold she had been back in the fall when they were searching for the missing girl.

  “No,” Thomas said. He contemplated the scene before them. A white tarpaulin had been spread out on the snow, and after a preliminary assessment the CSI technicians had carefully removed the black bag and its contents from the hole and placed them on the tarp.

  In spite of the icy winter air, Thomas thought he could detect a faint stench, a revolting smell that made him instinctively wrinkle his nose. It was all in his mind, of course, but he still wanted to take a step back. Instead he forced himself to stop thinking about it and leaned forward to get a closer look.

  A hand, a half-decayed left hand lay in front of them. The fingers were outspread, and the nails still bore traces of what appeared to be purple nail polish. There was also a forearm, its pallid gray skin smeared with dirt. Bizarrely, a watch with a large gold-and-silver face was still on the slender wrist.

  Margit shook her head sadly.

  “What kind of lunacy makes a person do something like this?” she murmured. “Wasn’t killing her enough?”

  “Hm?”

  “Nothing, just talking to myself.” Margit made a face and stepped back. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “That it’s the missing girl?”

  “Yes. Has to be, doesn’t it?”

  “Probably.”

  “What are the odds of finding parts of another female body only four months after a young girl vanished without trace?”

  “Very slim, I’m guessing.”

  Margit sighed as she shifted from foot to foot. Her short hair, streaked with angry shades of red, was barely visible beneath her black wool hat. A few strands poked out around her ears, which were almost as red as her hair.

  “Do you think her parents might be able to identify the watch?” she said. “It would save a lot of time if we didn’t have to wait weeks for the DNA analysis.”

  Thomas bent down and peered at the watch. It was an impressive model that looked both sporty and expensive. The wide bracelet shone against the rotting skin; it didn’t seem too badly affected by being buried in the ice-cold earth.

  “Maybe, if we show them a photo.” He ignored the automatic feeling of distaste, and went on: “I don’t like doing that to them, but the sooner we know for sure . . .”

  He was interrupted by a piercing scream. He turned around to see a woman running through the forest, ignoring the police tape. Her blue jacket was open, and panic was written all over her face. A uniformed officer tried to stop her, but she pushed past. Thomas realized it was Marianne Rosén, Lina’s mother.

  He had spoken to her many times during the fruitless investigation in the fall. For a while they had been in touch almost every day, and he had felt the deepest sympathy for her.

  Back then she had been quite plump, her desperate expression underlining her refusal to accept that her daughter had vanished. Now she was gaunt, with dark shadows under her eyes. The uncertainty of the past few months had cost her dearly.

  “They said you found something,” she gasped. “My neighbors said you came because you found something. Is it Lina? You have to tell me if it’s Lina. Is it my little girl?”

  Thomas grimaced. The sight of human remains was difficult enough for a police officer with many years’ experience. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like for a parent to see a beloved child defiled in this way.

  He exchanged a glance with Margit, who tried to put herself in Marianne’s way, but before Thomas had the chance to speak, Marianne dodged around them with a surprising burst of speed and caught sight of the objects on the ground.

  She stopped dead, then swayed and fell to her knees.

  “Lina,” she whispered. “My darling little Lina, what have they done to you?”

  Tears poured down her cheeks. She opened her mouth as if to scream, but only a heartrending whimper emerged.

  It would have been easier if she had screamed, Thomas thought. He had dealt with hysteria before, in many different forms, but the grief emanating from Marianne Rosén was so bottomless he could barely breathe. It seemed to suck in all the oxygen around them.

  He knew what it was like to lose a child, but he had no idea what to do right now. He gazed helplessly at the devastated woman kneeling on the snowy ground.

  Margit crouched down beside her and put her arm around Marianne’s shaking shoulders. Gently she moved her away from the tarpaulin.

  “OK, let’s go,” she said. “It might not even be Lina; we don’t know anything yet. Come away.”

  “It’s her,” Marianne whispered.


  She looked straight at Thomas, her voice heavy with pain.

  “That’s Lina’s watch. We gave it to her for her eighteenth birthday. She never took it off. That’s my daughter’s arm.”

  Sandhamn 1919

  The war years had been difficult for the islanders. The steamboat traffic had more or less stopped, which meant no summer visitors from Stockholm.

  Many of the villagers depended on renting out rooms, and the widow Wass looked more worried with every week that passed. No one ordered her stewed perch or her veal with gherkins anymore; then again, everything was in short supply during those challenging times.

  It was difficult to find out what was going on in the world, and the lack of news gave rise to all kinds of rumors. One day an old man announced with authority that a peace treaty was due to be signed, and that this would involve the Russians taking over the archipelago. No one really believed him, but what if he was right?

  Gottfrid had gotten used to the silence at home. Vendela did her chores and looked after the boy. She kept the house clean, more or less, and made sure her husband’s uniform was washed and starched. Thorwald no longer screamed with hunger, and his clothes were neither ragged nor dirty.

  Gottfrid did his job at the Customs House with extreme conscientiousness and minute attention to detail. Night after night he stayed behind to make sure that all information had been entered into the ledger. Every customs inspection must be correctly carried out, no matter how many vessels were in the harbor. In his office, pens and papers were arranged with military precision. No one could complain about his work—just the opposite. He was often praised by his superiors.

  However, he didn’t understand Thorwald at all.

  There was no doubt that the boy was his son; he could see the similarities between the two of them. They had the same coarse, fair hair, the same deep-set eyes that contemplated the world somewhat warily.

  But he felt nothing for the fruit of his loins.