Guiltless

by Sten, Viveca

  “Eventually.”

  “Good—that means they took control of the situation. By confiding in you, they refused to let themselves be overcome by fear. Do you understand?”

  “I think so.”

  “You need to keep a close eye on their behavior over the next few days. Are they sleeping badly, do they seem dull and listless, any sign of unprovoked outbursts of anger, that kind of thing. How have they been today?”

  Nora considered the question. The game of Monopoly had gone very well; even Adam, generally a sore loser, had played to the end without blowing up. Simon had shown no signs of agitation, but he was a lot less competitive than his older brother.

  “Pretty much normal, I’d say. Adam might possibly have been a little bit quieter than usual.”

  “Good. You’ll be around, of course, and ready to listen if either of them wants to talk, but don’t push them. Just be there.”

  “Should I take them back to town?”

  Nora hardly dared ask. She had no intention of returning to the house in Saltsjöbaden at this point, so she’d have to pay for a hotel, or else take them to stay with her parents. She reminded herself that the children’s well-being came before her own need for distance from Henrik.

  “I don’t think so. If you do that, you run the risk that the boys will associate Sandhamn with something horrible. It would be much better to stay for a few days, put this behind them. They should be able to regain the feeling of a normal midsemester break as the memory of what happened in the forest begins to fade.”

  Nora let out a long breath. Annie’s advice was ringing in her ears as she ended the call. The most important thing was to act natural, stick to everyday routines. A sense of security and a lot of love could work miracles.

  Sandhamn 1919

  “Not long now.”

  The midwife’s voice woke Gottfrid. He looked around in some confusion. From the bedroom he could hear Vendela’s whimpering voice. It had been going on for so long that he had gotten used to it.

  The midwife hurried back to her patient, and Gottfrid sat up and ran his hand through his hair. He was thirsty, and he drank a scoop of water from the bucket by the stove.

  The front door opened.

  “Father?” Thorwald’s frightened face appeared in the gap. “Can I come in? I’m freezing.”

  Gottfrid shook his head.

  “Not yet.”

  The door closed.

  Vendela had been in her sixth month when she told him she was pregnant. That was in June, and the child was due in September. Her bloated body had hidden the new life as she shuffled around in her black dress, but one evening, when she’d spilled hot porridge on him, and he’d raised his hand, she’d blurted it out.

  “But the child!” she shrieked, just as he was about to strike her.

  He stopped in midswing. Thorwald was sitting at the end of the table, staring with those scared eyes. Something in Vendela’s voice suggested that she wasn’t referring to her son. Gottfrid raised his eyebrows.

  “I’m pregnant,” she whispered.

  He contemplated her belly; maybe it was rounder than usual. Her breasts were swollen too; he just hadn’t noticed. Slowly he wiped the sticky porridge off his shirt.

  Another child. It wasn’t impossible; they were sometimes together as man and wife. But in the six years since Thorwald was born, Gottfrid had stopped thinking about extending his family. Vendela’s metamorphosis after Thorwald’s arrival had terrified him.

  He got up from the table, grabbed his coat, and opened the front door, all without saying a word. He needed peace and quiet; he needed to think.

  Once again his mother-in-law came over from Möja.

  Things weren’t quite so bad this time around; these days Vendela did her chores as best she could. No doubt because she didn’t dare not to, Gottfrid sometimes thought as he lay sleepless at dawn, his mind wandering.

  His mother-in-law was worried about little Thorwald; he was much too skinny, and he rarely laughed. On an island like Sandhamn, where were the playmates a boy of his age needed?

  Gottfrid couldn’t be bothered to answer her. Thorwald was fine, he was just a coward and a loner. The boy had continued to prove a disappointment. He took after his mother, and grew more like her with every passing day. When his father was around, he barely opened his mouth.

  Gottfrid couldn’t make any sense of it. When he was Thorwald’s age, he’d rushed off to play with other kids whenever he could. He had been sorry to leave his friends when he had to start fishing with his uncle and no longer had time for games and adventures.

  His few attempts to take the boy out to sea had ended in tears. Thorwald was frightened of the floundering, flapping fish, and he moaned constantly about the heavy nets and the cold water. When Gottfrid lost patience and gave him a smack, he cried even more and called for his mother.

  There was no strength in the child, Gottfrid thought. He needed a firmer hand. Otherwise, how would he get by in life?

  “You have a little girl.”

  The midwife appeared in the doorway, smiling. In her arms she held a little bundle, a crumpled pale-pink face only just visible among the blankets.

  Gottfrid stood there in front of his daughter. Her blue eyes were wide open. Still smiling, the midwife placed the newborn infant in his arms.

  “There—you hold her while I go and see to your wife.”

  The warmth of his daughter’s body spread into his own. The girl was motionless, her tiny mouth screwed up. Her gaze seemed to be fixed on his face, as if she wanted to remember her father’s features for the rest of her life.

  A strange feeling came over Gottfrid.

  She reminded him of his mother. The idea was ridiculous, and yet there was something about the eyes, the mouth, that evoked the image of his late mother.

  He could see her gently patting his cheek after one of those countless fishing trips with Uncle Olle. His love for his mother had been the one constant in his life.

  Gottfrid remained standing there with his new daughter in his arms. Those dark-blue eyes were still perfectly steady; she didn’t even appear to blink.

  He was completely taken aback as he let out a sob.

  “Kristina,” he murmured. “She will be named Kristina, after my mother.”

  CHAPTER 16

  “Coffee, anyone?”

  Hanna Hammarsten got up from the table and looked inquiringly at her husband and daughter. They had polished off the lasagna, and it was almost seven thirty. It was pitch dark outside the big window overlooking the shore at Trouville.

  “Charlie?” she asked as she began clearing the table.

  “Please, that would be good.” He reached for the remote.

  “Do you have to turn on the TV right now?”

  “It’s almost time for the news. We’re done with dinner—I just want to hear the headlines.”

  Hanna made a face; Charlie wanted the TV on all the time, while she preferred to leave it off, at least while they were eating. She started running water into the sink.

  “Could you give me a hand please, Louise?”

  “OK.”

  “Like now?”

  Reluctantly Louise got to her feet and picked up a plate.

  It wasn’t far from the table to the sink—no more than a couple of yards. They had bought the house in Trouville in the early nineties and had both renovated and extended the property. Only the shell of the old 1950s cabin remained; they now had a large, open-plan kitchen and living room, with a custom-built fireplace. New bifold doors faced southwest, leading out onto a wide wooden deck and the shore.

  Hanna loved the house; a good friend had tipped them off about it when they were searching for a summer place in the archipelago, not too far from Stockholm. Sandhamn was perfect. It only took an hour to drive from Bromma to Stavsnäs, where a regular ferry service ran year-round. Less than two hours from door to door.

  The only disadvantage of Trouville was the fifteen-minute bike ride into the villa
ge, with its shops and restaurants and, of course, the famous bakery. On the other hand, this gave them much-needed exercise; it was all too easy to put on a few pounds each summer with all those donuts, barbecues, and fresh berry tarts around.

  At this time of year, however, it was like living on a distant planet. Apart from the family, Hanna hadn’t seen a soul all day; she hadn’t had the energy to trudge down to the village in the gray, overcast winter weather, so she’d curled up with a book instead.

  “Fucking hell!”

  Hanna jumped. Charlie’s shout came out of nowhere, and she turned around, still holding the lasagna dish.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Charlie pointed the remote at the screen, where the latest headlines shone out in bold yellow letters: DEAD BODY FOUND ON SANDHAMN.

  Hanna was still staring at the words as the news anchor began to speak.

  “The police found human remains today on the island of Sandhamn in the Stockholm archipelago. A police spokesman was unable to confirm that this discovery is linked to the girl who disappeared without a trace on the island in November of last year, but stated that the possibility has not been ruled out.”

  Hanna quickly put down the dish and dropped onto a chair as her legs gave way.

  “Oh my God, what if it’s Lina.” She covered her mouth with her hand. “Poor Marianne—poor, poor Anders and Marianne,” she whispered.

  Charlie put a consoling arm around her, his face ashen. Louise hadn’t said a word. She sat facing the TV, stiff and unmoving, then she let out a little whimper.

  “Mom.” She turned, her face distorted, and the tears began to flow.

  “Sweetheart.” Hanna rushed over and pulled her close. “They haven’t confirmed it’s Lina; they don’t know anything for sure.” She turned to Charlie. “Switch it off.”

  Louise lay curled up in a ball. She had gone to bed early, still in shock after the horrific news.

  She thought about the police officers who had come to see her after Lina’s disappearance: a tall, friendly man and a short, intense woman in her fifties. Louise was the last person to see Lina that night, and she could still remember watching her friend cycle away in the darkness with a flashlight in one hand, wobbling slightly as she called “See ya!” over her shoulder.

  Then Louise closed the front door and never saw Lina again.

  They’d been best friends ever since they met at swim school when they were nine years old. The photograph that appeared on Crimewatch had been taken by Hanna on the deck outside their house; she’d made a copy for Lina’s mom. The girls had sleepovers at each other’s houses all the time.

  A tear ran down her cheek, and Louise buried her head in the pillow to smother a sob.

  It had to be Lina—who else could it be?

  On the news they’d talked about human remains and speculated about a killer who got a kick out of dismembering his victims. All at once Louise felt like a frightened little girl. She reached for her tattered old stuffed animal, a rabbit whose fur was more gray than white these days. She didn’t even know why she’d kept him all these years, but now she clung to him for dear life.

  At the beginning, when Lina first went missing, Louise had wondered if she’d killed herself. Lina had been so devastated after the accident in which Sebastian died, and she’d blamed herself. Perhaps the guilt had gotten too much for her, and she had done something stupid that night? It seemed like the only reasonable explanation, although Louise really didn’t want to believe that her friend was capable of such a thing.

  In spite of her doubts, she had told the police about her suspicions, and as time went by, she convinced herself that must be what had happened. Lina hadn’t gone home at all; instead she had thrown herself into the ice-cold water and drowned.

  Just like Sebastian.

  But the truth was even more terrifying: Lina had been murdered.

  Louise’s grip on the stuffed rabbit tightened as a thought brushed against her subconscious. She pushed it aside, but it refused to go away. She saw a familiar face in her mind’s eye.

  Jakob.

  She could hear his voice, yelling at Lina. The rage spilling over. The fear in Lina’s eyes.

  Jakob.

  CHAPTER 17

  At the station, Thomas and Margit settled into one of the smaller conference rooms to wolf down the pizza they’d picked up on the way back from Sandhamn.

  The oval table was covered with documents from the Lina Rosén investigation: reports, photographs, notes, witness statements, and transcripts of interviews held months ago. Much of November had been spent speaking to friends and relatives of the missing girl, but their efforts had led nowhere, and eventually fresh cases had claimed their attention.

  Over the course of the next few hours, they read back though everything. Meanwhile, their younger colleagues Erik Blom and Kalle Lidwall searched the database for similar crimes that might provide leads or ideas.

  A note had been waiting for them on their return from Sandhamn. The new assistant, a slender gray-haired woman in her fifties named Karin Ek, informed them that Oscar-Henrik Sachsen from the forensics lab in Solna had called. He promised to make the arm a top priority, and hoped to have something for them by the following day.

  “That would be good,” Margit said.

  Thomas nodded. “Do you remember when we went to Uppsala to talk to Lina’s classmates?” he asked.

  Margit clasped her hands behind her neck and leaned back. The place was almost deserted, and it was pitch dark outside the windows. The odd snowflake drifted down, and the temperature had dropped well below freezing. Margit still felt chilled to the bone after all those hours in the forest.

  “Sure. Some of her teachers, too.”

  “Several people mentioned that Lina seemed different when she came back after summer break.”

  Thomas looked down at the piles of paper and found the page he wanted.

  “She’d gone from being a model student to one who didn’t care about her work,” he went on, glancing through the notes. “She partied too much and bombed her exams. Only a month into the new semester, she took a leave of absence and moved back home.”

  “And broke with the guy she was seeing in Uppsala. He took it pretty badly, as I recall.”

  “Yes, but we eliminated him; he was with his parents in Härnösand the weekend Lina went missing. They confirmed he’d been there the whole time.”

  Margit picked up her cup of cold coffee and took a couple of sips as she gazed pensively at Thomas.

  “He mentioned the possibility that she might have taken her own life, just like Louise Hammarsten suggested. He said Lina had changed, that she was moody and sometimes burst into tears but refused to tell him why.”

  “And we accepted that explanation . . .”

  Thomas couldn’t help reproaching himself, even though he knew it was pointless. He could see from Margit’s expression that she shared his sense of failure.

  “I wonder if something happened to Lina that summer,” Thomas went on. “Something we didn’t pick up on when we interviewed everyone in the fall.”

  “Maybe. We need to speak to them again, especially Louise Hammarsten.” Margit yawned. “Sorry. Been a long day.”

  “Shall we call it a night?” Thomas said. “I’m wrecked, too. We’ll start fresh tomorrow morning.”

  Sandhamn 1922

  It started out as an ordinary cold. Thorwald caught it from a classmate and had to spend a few days in bed. Gottfrid snorted at his son’s feebleness but relented when he saw the boy’s cheeks, bright red with fever. Of the thirty children in the school, eight were already sick. The tiny schoolhouse was always chilly and crowded, and any infection spread rapidly.

  Then Kristina fell ill. She started coughing, and before long she had a dangerously high fever. Her blond curls hung lank and sweaty around her face, and the violent cough shook her little body. She coughed until she threw up, but still she couldn’t stop.

  Vendela sent for Gottfrid, who hu
rried home from the Customs House. Without taking off his coat he ran into the bedroom and knelt beside his trembling daughter.

  “Daddy’s here, sweetheart,” he murmured. “Daddy’s here.”

  The doctor was summoned, but the ice was neither solid enough to cross with a horse and cart nor loose enough to use a boat. It was the beginning of December; sometimes the temperature plunged below freezing, then rose sharply. It would be days before the doctor could get to Sandhamn.

  And who knew whether he would be able to do anything? It could be pneumonia, which carried off scores of young children. They coughed and coughed until death came as a kind of release. Many families in the archipelago had lost one or more toddlers to this terrible disease.

  Vendela boiled a chicken and tried to feed Kristina with the stock, but she refused to eat. The girl was wasting away before their eyes; it was as if her wrists grew thinner, her cheeks more sunken with each passing hour.

  Gottfrid was in agony. That cough terrified him. He remembered his own childhood, when the sight and sound of his father coughing up blood haunted his dreams, and he would wake in a cold sweat, afraid that he, too, would contract the dreadful illness.

  He sat beside his daughter for hours, patting her forehead with a damp cloth. The kerosene lamp on the chest of drawers was the only source of illumination in the sparsely furnished room. The light was soft, but it couldn’t hide the dark rings beneath Kristina’s eyes, or her ghastly pallor.

  It required a huge effort for her to swallow even a mouthful of water, and Gottfrid’s attempts to feed her were largely in vain. He neither ate nor slept. He couldn’t shake the recollection of his father’s final struggle; over and over again he recalled how hard his father had fought to force air into his lungs. Those blue lips, the battle for oxygen. The memories pushed their way in, particularly in the dawn when Kristina was at her lowest. His daughter must not meet the same fate as his father.

  Vendela had given up. She crept around the house like a silent shadow, and Thorwald did his best to stay out of the way.