‘As you know, Disa was a midwife and Ingela became pregnant again during our time at Lothorp Farm,’ Brandon says. ‘Disa was the one who helped her give birth. Going to a hospital was out of the question, for several reasons.’
‘Such as?’
‘Well, partly because everyone in the commune had strong feelings about women giving birth at home, without drugs that could harm the baby. But also because we weren’t part of the community; none of us was born here, none of us had roots on the island. Well, except for Anne-Marie, but since she’d grown up in Sweden and had never even met her grandfather, she was considered an outsider, too. We had no contact with the authorities and I honestly don’t even know if they would have helped Ingela if she’d gone to the hospital.’
They would have, Karen knows. No one would have turned away a woman in labour, not even back then. Out loud, she says:
‘Then she must have helped with Anne-Marie’s birth as well, I assume? Susanne was born in April of seventy-one; they must have been pregnant at roughly the same time, right?’
‘Anne-Marie was never pregnant,’ Brandon says quietly. ‘Susanne was Ingela’s child.’
He leans back in his chair with a heavy sigh and gestures for Janet to take over. She strokes her husband’s cheek, then leans forward and puts her elbows on the table.
‘We all knew Per and Anne-Marie were unable to have children. She’d had several miscarriages in Sweden; the last one almost killed her. It was one of the reasons she and Per moved here, to get a fresh start, to find a kind of community that wasn’t built around the nuclear family.’
Janet reaches for the honey jar and lets a heaped spoonful trickle into her cup. Karen has declined the offer of tea, determined to keep this visit short. She now realises she’s been wrong. Again.
‘At first it worked,’ Janet continues. ‘Anne-Marie could be a supplementary mother to both Disa’s daughter Mette and Tomas and Ingela’s boys, but it clearly pained her that none of the children was hers.’
Janet pauses and sips her tea.
‘The irony of it was that among us, Anne-Marie was, maybe with the exception of Disa, the one who loved children the most. The truth is she looked after the boys more than Ingela did; playing, comforting, getting up in the night. Ingela gave birth and breastfed, but that’s sort of where her involvement ended. The rest was Tomas’ job, with Anne-Marie’s help.’
‘And then Ingela got pregnant again,’ Karen says. ‘While Anne-Marie was still childless. And that’s what caused her depression.’
‘Not just that, I’m afraid,’ Janet says, glancing quickly at her husband, as though seeking support. But Brandon’s eyes are fixed on the table top. Janet sighs and spreads her hands in a gesture of resignation.
‘This time, Per was the father.’
Karen feels her stomach contract and nausea rising in her throat. The combined grief of not being able to conceive, of children coming into the world unwanted and of children belonging to someone else. Not to mention the grief when children die. Children who were both welcome and loved, but who were snatched away, between one breath and the next. Those people who have child after child without any feeling of wonder at the miracle of it. And the ones who are left without.
Anne-Marie had not only been forced to accept that her husband had been unfaithful. He was having a baby with another woman. While she struggled with her own grief at never becoming a mother, her husband was going to be a father. And it had all happened right in front of her in the house that was supposed to be her safe haven.
‘Go on,’ Karen says flatly.
Janet shoots her a quick look, then pushes the teapot and an empty cup toward her guest and continues.
‘Like Brandon said, we’d left the farm by the time Ingela gave birth, so what we’re telling you now is what Disa told us when she visited last summer. Before then, we didn’t know; she never breathed a word until Tomas passed away.’
Karen nods.
‘So Ingela left Susanne with Per when they moved back to Sweden? Well, he was her father, so maybe that’s not entirely surprising,’ she says.
I’d rather rip my own arm off than leave my child, she thinks inwardly.
‘They left one child. Ingela and Tomas brought the other one with them back to Sweden.’
71
The kitchen is dead silent. Two children. Not one. And yet, it’s not the revelation that Susanne had a sister that shakes Karen. She fumbles desperately for any kind of logic in what Janet just told her. To split up siblings, keeping one and giving up the other. To choose one and reject the other.
‘Apparently, they had to leave quickly,’ Janet says. ‘One of the children was weak from the first and needed more care than Disa could provide. Ingela was in a bad state and unable to bond with either child. They tried to get her to breastfeed, but it wasn’t working and the weaker girl kept losing weight, despite attempts to feed her formula. In the end, they decided to leave the farm and go back to Sweden. I think they made the decision within days of the birth.’
‘Without Susanne?’
Janet nods.
‘Without Susanne. Or Melody, as they called her back then. Melody and Happy.’
With a pleading look, Janet asks her husband to take over. Betraying Disa’s confidence is clearly distressing for both of them. That she’s a police officer is obviously making it even more difficult for these old hippies, Karen realises. She gives Brandon an encouraging nod and he presses on, reluctant but determined.
‘They had no right to remain here and didn’t want to get the authorities involved, so their best option was to go back to Sweden,’ he says. ‘The idea was probably to return as soon as the little girl had been given the care she needed and grown a bit stronger.’
‘But they never did?’
‘Apparently, they joined some kind of religious cult after returning to Sweden. Some kind of quasi-Hindu shit, I think. Tomas left pretty quickly, but Ingela stayed. The birth of the twins triggered some kind of psychosis, according to Disa, but I don’t think that’s the whole story.’
‘Drugs?’
Brandon chuckles.
‘I mean, we all smoked pot, but Ingela was very . . . how to put it . . . unworldly. Well, we all were, in a way, or pretended to be at least. For us, it was a deliberate struggle to break with convention, but in her case . . . let’s just say she was in a league of her own. Either way, Ingela went off to India with that cult and took the boys with her. According to Disa, Tomas spent over a year trying to find them, but in the end, he gave up. Closed the door on that part of his life. And formally he had no rights, of course; the children weren’t his.’
‘Whose were they?’
‘No idea. Tomas and Ingela were a couple when they were young, but they spent a few years apart. Ingela had Orian and Love while they were separated. But we never really talked about who the father was. Tomas and Ingela got married right before we moved to the commune, so even though he never legally adopted the boys, we honestly never gave it much thought.’
‘And you’re saying she took the boys? What about the girl? Happy.’
‘She left her with Tomas.’
Karen feels her cheeks flush with anger. Ingela had abandoned first one girl then the other. And yet, both girls were likely better off than their brothers. Had either boy survived a childhood in a religious cult in India with a mum who had likely stoned herself into a psychosis?
And the girls, who had been taken in by others, true, but never loved by their mother. Melody and Happy. What tragic irony.
‘Eventually, Tomas renamed Happy Anne,’ Janet says, as though she’d read Karen’s mind. ‘He was a different person after Ingela left. He changed course completely and took over his father’s company. Formally, he was Anne’s father, since he and Ingela were married and she had been conceived in wedlock. I don’t know if he ever had the marriage annulled or if Ingela’s still alive, but he never heard from her again.’
Anne, Karen thinks to
herself. It must be her. She resists the urge to hurry them along, to jump to when Happy, who grew up as Anne Ekman, eventually took the surname Crosby.
‘So Tomas never remarried?’
‘No, apparently not. He and Disa kept in sporadic contact for a few years; she kept trying to persuade him to tell Anne about her half-brothers and twin sister, but he refused. That was a closed chapter, he’d say, and he told Anne her mother was dead. And Disa kept her promise and said nothing; that’s just the kind of person she is.’
‘And she obviously realised she could get Per and Anne-Marie in trouble, too, if she stirred the pot,’ Janet adds.
Don’t stir the pot, Karen thinks. Leave the past in the past. No, successful businessman Tomas Ekman hardly stood to gain from the affair becoming public knowledge. He would have risked losing Anne, as well. It probably wouldn’t have been good for Per and Anne-Marie Lindgren either. The people of Langevik already looked at them askance; if it came out that Susanne was the result of an affair between Per and one of the women in the commune, they would have found it difficult to stay.
‘So she kept everything to herself all these years?’
‘Yes, until Tomas passed away. Then she decided to tell both girls the truth. Anne had moved to the US and got married, but she came home for the funeral, of course, and Disa sought her out.’
‘And Susanne? How did she get in touch with her?’
‘As a matter of fact, we helped her find out where Susanne worked, and then the rest was pretty straightforward.’
‘But why?’ Karen asks. ‘Why was it so important to Disa to have it all out? Surely it would have been a lot easier to stay quiet?’
‘That’s exactly what we wanted to know,’ Brandon said. ‘But Disa very firmly believed a twin robbed of its sibling will always feel a sense of loss. And in this particular case, the girls had been torn apart on her recommendation. And Anne, who always believed her mother was dead. I think Disa walked around with a sense of guilt she wanted to assuage before she died.’
‘Before she died?’ Karen says doubtfully.
The old lady’s apparently spry enough to ramble about the Spanish countryside, she notes.
‘Disa was diagnosed with breast cancer six months ago. An aggressive form, unfortunately. Apparently, there’s nothing to be done.’
72
Karen starts the audio recorder and monotonously recites the date and time, who is present in the room and in what capacity. She senses what’s coming; some kind of admission, a desperate attempt to demonstrate a willingness to cooperate now that a bold-faced denial is no longer possible. Linus Kvanne is very likely going to admit to being in Langevik for Oistra but reiterate that he had nothing to do with the murder of Susanne Smeed. No one’s going to believe him. The question is if even Karen herself does anymore? And a forbidden voice inside her says she’s on the brink of not giving a toss.
She glances down at her papers, then tries to catch Linus Kvanne’s eye, to no avail. He’s sitting with his head bowed and seems completely absorbed in picking at the cuticle of his right middle finger. With a sigh, she turns instead to Kvanne’s lawyer, Gary Brataas.
‘Right, you requested this interview,’ she says. ‘I take it your client has something he wants to share.’
Gary Brataas gives Linus Kvanne a quick look and puts a hand on his shoulder before turning to Karen.
‘My client has remembered certain circumstances that may be useful to the investigation. But I would like to take this opportunity to point out that these circumstances in no way changes my client’s position with regards to his innocence. Linus had nothing whatsoever to do with the murder of Susanne Smeed.’
‘Nothing whatsoever?’ Karen says, her eyebrows raised. Fancy that, she adds under her breath.
But apparently not quietly enough, she realises when Gary Brataas opens his mouth to protest. Karen beats him to it.
‘All right, Linus, let’s hear it, then.’
Without taking his eyes off his cuticle, Linus Kvanne mutters something inaudible.
‘I think you’re going to have to speak up if you want us to hear what you’re saying.’
‘I was in Langevik. That night, I mean.’
‘Were you now? Well, that’s hardly news to us. As you know, we’ve already established that your phone was there. And since you’ve not reported it stolen or lost, we’ve concluded you were there with it. Which you have previously denied. Why did you deny it, come to think of it?’
‘Why do you think?’
Kvanne finally looks up. He stares belligerently at Karen, who calmly meets his eyes.
‘You’re trying to frame me for murder. I haven’t fucking killed anybody.’
‘Yes, Linus, you have. On New Year’s Day six years ago, to be exact.’
Kvanne quickly withdraws and opens his eyes wide.
‘Yes, but that was self-defence,’ he says.
His tone is resentful, like a schoolboy trying to explain that it was actually the tall boy in class 5b who started the fight in the corridor.
‘So you claimed. Stabbed him five times, if I remember correctly. Four times after he he’d already dropped his weapon.’
Kvanne launches across the table. His face ends up so close to Karen’s, she can smell his sour chewing tobacco.
‘Fuck you, you fucking—’
‘Calm down, Linus,’ Brataas interjects and puts a hand on Kvanne’s shoulder. ‘There’s no need to provoke my client when he’s cooperating,’ he adds, turning to Karen.
Linus Kvanne seems to have calmed down as quickly as he flared up. He subsides back into his chair, glaring at Karen.
‘The prick tried to stab me when I was saving my girlfriend from being raped,’ he mutters. ‘You can’t bloody well hold that against me, can you? This is fucking pointless, you’ve got it in for me no matter what . . .’
He spreads his arms in a gesture of resignation and falls silent. Karen waits without comment and hears Gary Brataas clear his throat.
‘As my client points out, that matter is unrelated to the case at hand.’
‘So what is it you want to tell us, Linus? Are we going to keep wasting time or are you going to let us in on what really happened in Langevik the morning after Oistra?’
73
‘What do you think?’
Dineke Vegen puts her coffee mug down on her desk along with the interview transcript.
‘I don’t know anymore,’ Karen replies. ‘Do I have to answer that?’
The news that Susanne Smeed had a twin sister had been met with shrugs from both Viggo Haugen and the prosecutor. Not even Karl Björken had shown much interest.
‘I guess that explains why she and Susanne were in touch,’ he’d said. ‘But there’s nothing to suggest Anne Crosby wanted to kill her sister. Quite the contrary, I reckon. I think you’re going to have to drop this and just accept that it was Kvanne.’
Maybe they’re right, Karen ponders. Why would Anne Crosby kill her sister? Financial motives are out of the question and while revenge and envy might be a factor, they feel distinctly flimsy next to Kvanne’s proven habit of breaking and entering. The only thing left is blackmail; Susanne was hardly the type to forego a chance to turn a profit when presented with an opportunity. But in the short time they’d known about each other’s existence, what could Susanne possibly have found out about her sister that would have made it necessary for Anne Crosby to off her? No, Karl’s probably right; it’s time to drop it.
*
The prosecutor leans back in her chair with a smile.
‘No, not really,’ she replies. ‘We’re very likely going to press charges against Kvanne; we have enough to move on that. He was in Langevik at the time of the murder, which is to say he had both motive and opportunity. And he’s been caught lying about things. Moreover, he’s already proven he’s prepared to use violence if it benefits him in the moment.’
‘You mean the manslaughter? Surely that wasn’t for his own benefit, mo
re like revenge. Or to defend his girlfriend, if you want to take a generous view.’
‘True, but it also demonstrates a lack of boundaries. According to Arild Rasmussen, Linus Kvanne was drunk and disorderly when he threw him out of the pub; probably high, too, if you ask me. He broke into Susanne Smeed’s house – either to steal valuables or just to have somewhere to sleep.’
‘He should have realised someone might be home. The car was parked in the driveway.’
Dineke Vegen shrugs.
‘It’s not uncommon for the owners to be home when a burglary takes place. We have several examples of people waking up to find a burglar in their room.’
‘Sure, but in those cases there’s usually more than one offender.’
‘Maybe Kvanne wasn’t making entirely rational decisions. And don’t forget he set the house he broke into on fire on at least two occasions.’
‘And you don’t think he would have taken the silver?’
Dineke shrugs.
‘Maybe he was interrupted or maybe he just overlooked it. No, I don’t think it could be a coincidence that good old Kvanne was in Langevik that particular morning. The only real problem is the car.’
Karen nods. No DNA other than Susanne’s was found in the Toyota and only Susanne’s fingerprints have been identified. There was another set of prints on the passenger-side door handle, the same unidentified prints that were found at the house. Unfortunately, they don’t belong to Kvanne.
‘He claims he hitchhiked. That could be true,’ Karen says without conviction.
She thinks how empty the roads were the morning after Oistra. Even if a car did pass – in itself by no means a given – Kvanne would have been extraordinarily lucky to have it stop to pick him up.
Dineke Vegen quickly flips through the transcript, then reads aloud: ‘I waited for about thirty minutes, then some geezer stopped. A Volvo, I think. Black, or maybe dark blue.’
‘How convenient,’ Karen says. ‘After just half an hour. And a Volvo, of course, what else?’
The prosecutor shrugs again.
‘Yes, I suppose that’s the part I’m dubious about, too. The most likely scenario is that he drove away in Susanne’s car,’ she says. ‘I guess he simply made sure not to leave any prints.’
Fatal Isles Page 35
