The Gallows Bird

by Camilla Lackberg

  ‘How old were the children then?’ Patrik asked.

  Hedda turned her gaze on him for the first time. ‘Children, what children?’ She looked confused.

  ‘The twins,’ said Gösta and got her to turn back towards him. ‘How old were the twins then?’

  ‘They were two, almost three. Two really wild kids. I could only handle them with Gottfrid’s help. When he . . .’ Her voice died out again and Hedda looked round the kitchen, as if searching for something. Her gaze stopped at one of the cupboards. She got up with an effort and shuffled over to the cupboard, opened the door, and took out a bottle of Explorer.

  ‘Would you like a snort?’ She held out the bottle to them, and when they both shook their heads she laughed. ‘That’s good, because I wasn’t offering.’ Her laugh sounded more like a cackle, and she brought the bottle over to the table and sat down again. She didn’t bother with a glass, she just put the bottle to her lips and guzzled. Patrik could feel his throat burning just looking at her.

  ‘How old were the twins when they drowned?’ Gösta asked.

  Hedda didn’t seem to hear him. She stared unseeing into space. ‘She was so elegant,’ she muttered. ‘A pearl necklace and coat and ever’thing. She was a fine lady.’

  ‘Who’s that?’ said Patrik, feeling a stab of interest. ‘What lady?’ But Hedda had already lost her train of thought.

  ‘How old were the twins when they drowned?’ Gösta repeated, even more clearly.

  Hedda turned to him with the bottle raised and halfway to her lips. ‘The twins didn’ drown, did they?’ She took another gulp from the bottle.

  Gösta glanced significantly at Patrik and leaned forward. ‘Didn’t the twins drown? Where did they go?’

  ‘Whaddaya mean they didn’ drown?’ Hedda suddenly had a scared look in her eye. ‘Of course the twins drowned, sure, they did . . .’ She took another drink and her eyes got even more glazed.

  ‘Which was it, Hedda? Did they drown or not?’ Gösta could hear the desperation in his own voice, but it simply seemed to drive Hedda even further into the fog. Now she didn’t answer but just shook her head.

  ‘I don’t think we can get much more out of her,’ Gösta said apologetically to Patrik.

  ‘No, I don’t think so either, we’ll have to try some other way. Maybe we should look round a bit.’

  Gösta nodded and turned towards Hedda, whose head was on its way down towards the table again.

  ‘Hedda, can we look around a bit at your things?’

  ‘Mmm,’ she replied and drifted off to sleep.

  Gösta moved his chair next to hers so that she wouldn’t tumble to the floor, and then began looking through the house with Patrik.

  An hour later they hadn’t found anything. There was nothing but junk, junk, junk. Patrik wished he’d brought some gloves along, and he thought he felt his whole body itching. But there were no signs that children had ever lived in the house. Hedda must have thrown out everything that had belonged to them.

  Her words about a ‘fine lady’ rang in his head. He couldn’t let it go, but sat down next to Hedda and tried gently shaking some life into her again. Reluctantly she sat up, but her head fell backwards before she managed to stabilize it in an upright position.

  ‘Hedda, you have to answer me. The fine lady, does she have your children?’

  ‘They were so much trouble. And I just had to run a little errand in Uddevalla. I had to buy some more booze too, was all out,’ she slurred and looked out of the window at the water glinting in the spring sunshine. ‘But they just kept making such a fuss. And I was so tired. And she was such a fine lady. She was so nice. She could take them, she said. So she did.’

  Hedda turned her gaze towards Patrik, and he saw for the first time genuine emotion in her eyes. Deep inside there was a pain and a guilt so incomprehensible that only alcohol could drown it.

  ‘But I regretted it,’ she said with tears clouding her eyes. ‘But then I couldn’t find them. I searched and I searched. But they were gone. And the fine lady too. The one with the pearl necklace.’ Hedda scratched her throat to show where she’d seen the necklace and said, ‘She was gone.’

  ‘But why did you say they had drowned?’ Out of the corner of his eye Patrik saw Gösta listening from the doorway.

  ‘I was ashamed . . . and maybe they’d have a better life with her. But I was ashamed . . .’

  She looked out over the water again, and they sat like that for a while. Patrik’s brain was working in high gear to take in what he had just been told. It wasn’t hard to work out that the ‘fine lady’ had been Sigrid Jansson, and for some reason she had taken Hedda’s children. Why, they would probably never know.

  When he slowly got up and turned to Gösta, with legs that felt shaky from all the misery, he saw that Gösta was holding something in his hand.

  ‘I found a photograph,’ he said. ‘Under the mattress. A snapshot of the twins.’

  Patrik took the photo and looked at it. Two small children about two years old, sitting on the laps of their parents, Gottfrid and Hedda. They looked happy. The picture must have been taken just before Gottfrid drowned. Before everything came crashing down. Patrik studied the children’s faces. Where were they now? And was one of them a murderer? Neither of the round faces of the children revealed a thing. At the kitchen table Hedda had fallen asleep again, and Patrik and Gösta went out and breathed the fresh sea air deep into their lungs. Patrik carefully slid the well-thumbed photo into his wallet. He would see to it that Hedda got it back soon. In the meantime they needed it to help find a murderer.

  During the boat ride back they were as silent as on the way out. But this time the silence was marked by shock and sorrow. Sorrow about how frail and small human beings sometimes were. Shock at the scope of the mistakes that people were capable of making. In his mind’s eye Patrik could see Hedda wandering about in Uddevalla. How she searched for the children whom, in an attack of despair, exhaustion and need for booze, she had given away to a total stranger. He felt the panic that she must have experienced when she understood that she couldn’t find the twins. And the desperation that drove her to say that they had drowned, instead of admitting that she had handed them over to a stranger.

  They didn’t speak until Patrik had tied up the old boat to one of the pontoon wharves at Badholmen.

  ‘Well, now we know at least,’ Gösta said, and his face revealed the guilt that he still felt.

  Patrik patted him on the shoulder as they walked towards the car. ‘You couldn’t have known,’ he said. Gösta didn’t answer, and Patrik didn’t think that anything he said was going to help. This was something that Gösta would have to work out for himself.

  ‘We have to find out soon where the children ended up,’ Patrik said as he drove back to Tanumshede.

  ‘Still nothing from social services in Uddevalla?’

  ‘No, and it’s probably not easy to find information from so long ago. But they must be somewhere. Two five-year-olds can’t just disappear.’

  ‘What a miserable life she has led.’

  ‘Hedda?’ Patrik said, although he understood that’s who Gösta meant.

  ‘Yes. Imagine living with that guilt. Your whole life.’

  ‘No wonder that she’s tried to numb herself as best she can,’ said Patrik.

  Gösta didn’t reply. He just looked out of the window. Finally he said, ‘What are we going to do now?’

  ‘Until we find out where the children went, we’ll have to keep working on what we’ve got. Sigrid Jansson, the dog hairs from Lillemor, trying to find a connection between the murder locations.’

  They turned into the car park at the police station and walked towards the entrance, their expressions grim. Patrik stopped at reception for a moment to tell Annika what had happened, and then went to his office. He couldn’t bear to repeat the whole story to the others yet.

  Carefully he took the photo out of his wallet and studied it. The eyes of the twins stared back at him, rev
ealing nothing.

  Chapter 9

  Finally she had given in. Just a short ride. A little expedition out into the big, unknown world. Then they would come back home. And he would stop asking.

  He had nodded eagerly. Could hardly contain himself. And a glance at sister showed that she was just as excited.

  He wondered what he would get to see. How it looked out there. Beyond the forest. One thought left him no peace. Would the other one be out there? The woman with the harsh voice? Would he smell that smell that was like a memory in his nostrils, salty and fresh? And the feeling of the boat rocking, and the sun over the sea, and the birds circling, and . . . He could hardly sift through all the expectations and impressions. A single thought was buzzing round in his head. They would get to take a ride with her. Out to the world beyond. It was no problem for him to promise in turn never to ask again. One time would be enough. He was quite convinced of that. One time, just so he could see what was there, so that he and sister would know. That was the only thing he wanted. Just once.

  With a stern expression she had opened the car door for them and watched them scramble into the back seat. She carefully fastened their seat belts and shook her head as she got behind the wheel. He remembered that he had laughed. A shrill, hysterical laugh, when all the pent-up tension was finally allowed to come out.

  When they turned onto the road he had glanced briefl y at sister. Then he had taken her hand. They were on their way.

  Patrik sat with the list of dog owners on the screen and went through it carefully one more time. He had informed Martin and Mellberg about what he and Gösta had learned out on the island, and he asked Martin to ring Uddevalla again and try to get more information on the twins. There wasn’t much they could do. He had been given access to all the documents regarding the accident in which Elsa Forsell killed Sigrid Jansson, but nothing seemed to lead any further.

  ‘How’s it going?’ said Gösta as he looked in the doorway.

  ‘It’s not,’ said Patrik, flinging down the pen he had in his hand. ‘We’re in a holding pattern until we know more about the children.’ He sighed, ran his hands through his hair, and then clasped them behind his neck.

  ‘Is there anything I can do?’ said Gösta tactfully.

  Gobsmacked, Patrik gave him a look. It wasn’t like Gösta to come in and ask for work. Patrik thought for a moment.

  ‘I’ve gone over this list of dog owners a hundred times, it seems. But I can’t find any connections to our case. Could you check through it again?’ Patrik tossed him the disk, and Gösta caught it in mid-air.

  ‘Of course,’ he said.

  Five minutes later Gösta came back with an astonished look on his face.

  ‘Did you delete a line by any chance?’ he said.

  ‘Delete? No, what do you mean?’

  ‘Because when I put together the list there were a hundred and sixty names. Now there are only a hundred and fifty-nine.’

  ‘Ask Annika; she was the one who matched up the names with the addresses. Maybe she deleted one by mistake.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Gösta said sceptically and went to see Annika. Patrik got up and followed him.

  ‘I’ll check,’ said Annika, searching for the Excel chart on her computer. ‘But I remember that there were a hundred and sixty rows. It was such a nice round number.’ She looked through her folders until she found the file she was looking for.

  ‘Aha, a hundred and sixty,’ she said, turning to Patrik and Gösta.

  ‘I don’t get it,’ said Gösta, looking at the disk in his hand. Annika took it and put it into her disk drive, opened the same document and put the two windows next to each other so they could compare them. When the name that was missing on the disk turned up, Patrik felt something click in his head. He turned on his heel, ran down the corridor to his office, and stood staring at the map of Sweden. One by one he looked at the pins marking the home towns of the victims. What had previously been an indecipherable pattern now became clearer. Gösta and Annika had followed him to his office and now looked utterly perplexed as Patrik began pulling out papers from his desk drawer.

  ‘What are you looking for?’ said Gösta, but Patrik didn’t answer. Paper after paper was pulled out and tossed to the floor. In the last drawer he found what he was looking for. He stood up with an excited expression and began reading the document carefully, sometimes sticking new pins into the map. Slowly but surely each marked location got a new pin placed close to the old one. When he was done he turned round.

  ‘Now I know.’

  Dan had finally taken the plunge. There was a firm of estate agents right across the street, and finally he decided to ring the number he saw from his kitchen window every day. Once the wheels were set in motion everything had gone surprisingly fast. The young man who answered had said he could come over immediately and take a look, and for Dan that was perfect. He didn’t want to drag things out unnecessarily.

  And yet selling the house didn’t feel like such a big deal anymore. All the conversations he’d had with Anna, everything he’d heard about the hell that Lucas had put her through, all of it had made his attempt to hang on to a house seem so . . . ridiculous, to put it bluntly. What did it matter where he lived? The main thing was that the girls came to visit. That he could hug them, nuzzle their necks, and hear them tell him about their day. Nothing else mattered. And as for his marriage to Pernilla, it was definitely over. He’d realized it long before, but hadn’t been ready to accept the consequences. Now it was time to make sweeping changes. Pernilla had her own life, and he had his. He only hoped that one day they could patch up the friendship that had formed the whole basis for their marriage.

  His thoughts wandered further to Erica. There were only two days left until she would be married. That also felt so right. She was taking a step forward just as he was doing. He was sincerely happy for her. It was so long since they’d been a couple; they were young then, completely different people. But their friendship had endured through the years, and he had always wished for something like this for her. Children, togetherness, a church wedding, which he knew she’d always dreamed of – although she never would have admitted it. And Patrik was perfect for her. Earth and air. That’s how he thought of them. Patrik was so solidly anchored to the ground he stood on, stable, smart, calm. And Erica was a dreamer, with her head always in the clouds, yet still with a courage and an intelligence that stopped her from floating too far away. They really suited each other.

  And Anna. He had thought a lot about her lately. The sister that Erica had always overprotected, whom she had regarded as weak. The funny thing was that Erica saw herself as the practical one and Anna as the dreamer. During the past few weeks he had got to know Anna well and realized that just the reverse was true. Anna was the practical one, the one who saw reality as it was. If nothing else, she had learned that much during her years with Lucas. But Dan realized that Anna let Erica maintain the illusion. Maybe she understood Erica’s need to feel like the responsible one.

  Dan got up to fetch the phone and the telephone book. It was time to start looking for a flat.

  The mood was sombre at the station. Patrik had called a meeting in the chief’s office. Everyone sat quietly staring at the floor, unable to take in the incomprehensible. Patrik and Martin had dragged in the video trolley. As soon as Martin was informed, he realized what it was that had eluded him when he watched the videotapes from Lillemor’s last evening alive.

  ‘We’re going to have to go through these step by step. Before we do anything,’ Patrik said when he finally broke the silence. ‘There is no room for mistakes.’ Everyone nodded in agreement.

  ‘The first penny dropped when we discovered that a name had been deleted from the list of dog owners. There were originally a hundred and sixty names, both when Gösta put together the list and when Annika matched them up with current addresses. By the time I got the list there were only a hundred and fifty-nine. The name that was missing was Tore Sjöqvist, with an address i
n Tollarp.’

  Nobody reacted, so Patrik continued. ‘I’ll come back to that. But it caused one piece of the puzzle to fall into place.’

  Everyone knew what was coming, and Martin buried his face in his hands and closed his eyes, with his elbows resting on his knees.

  ‘I had thought that the places where the victims were murdered seemed familiar. And when I finally understood, it didn’t take long to confirm the connection.’ He paused and cleared his throat. ‘The sites of the victims correspond one hundred per cent with places where Hanna has worked,’ he said quietly. ‘I had seen them in her application documents before we hired her, but . . .’ He threw out his hands and let Martin take over.

  ‘Something that I saw on the video from the evening Lillemor died kept bothering me. And when Patrik told me about Hanna . . . Well, we might as well just show you.’ He nodded to Patrik, who pressed ‘play’. They had already advanced to the right spot, and it took only seconds before the scene of the violent argument appeared on the screen, followed by the arrival of Martin and Hanna. They could see Martin talking with Mehmet and the others. The camera then followed Lillemor who ran off towards town, confused and unwittingly running towards her own death. Then the camera zoomed in on Hanna, who was talking on her mobile. Patrik froze the picture there and looked at Martin.

  ‘That was what bothered me, although I didn’t realize it until now,’ Martin said. ‘Who was she calling? It was almost three in the morning and we were the only ones working, so she couldn’t be ringing any of you.’

  ‘We got a list of her calls from her operator, and it was an outgoing call. To her own home. To her husband Lars.’

  ‘But why?’ said Annika, and the bewilderment on her face was shared by all the others.