Buried Angels (41 page)

She had spent the first days with Inez in a state of shock. Then she found Nanna, blessed and wonderful Nanna, who lifted from her shoulders all responsibility for the baby and allowed her to go on with her own life. Nanna immediately moved into the house, and her room was next door to the nursery, so she could quickly tend to Inez in the night or whenever she needed attention. Nanna took over her care completely, and Laura was then free to come and go as she pleased. Usually she would stop by the nursery for a short visit, and on those occasions she was able to enjoy being with her daughter. By the time Inez was eighteen months old, she could be charming and sweet, as long as she wasn’t crying because she was hungry or needed to be changed. But such matters were Nanna’s concern, and Laura thought that everything had been arranged so well, in spite of the unexpected turn that her life had taken. She wasn’t fond of changes, so the less the birth of the baby altered her life, the easier it was for her to accept her daughter.

Laura straightened the framed photos on the bureau. There were pictures of her and Sigvard and of Sigvard’s two sons with their families. They still hadn’t managed to frame any photographs of Inez, and she would never dream of displaying a picture of her mother. She preferred to forget all about her mother and grandmother.

To Laura’s relief, her mother now seemed to have disappeared for good. It had been two years since she’d last communicated, and no one in the area had seen hide nor hair of her. Yet their last meeting was still fresh in Laura’s mind. Dagmar had been released from the mental hospital a year earlier, but she hadn’t dared turn up at the house where Laura and Sigvard lived. People said that she was often seen staggering around town, exactly as she’d done when Laura was a child. When Dagmar finally stood on their doorstep – toothless, filthy, her clothes in rags – she was as crazy as always, and Laura couldn’t understand why the doctors had discharged her. At least in the hospital Dagmar had been given medicine, and they hadn’t let her touch any booze. Much as Laura would have liked to tell her mother to get lost, she let her into the house, moving quickly so that the neighbours wouldn’t see.

‘What a fancy lady you’ve become,’ said Dagmar. ‘Looks like you’ve come up in the world.’

Laura clenched her fists behind her back. Everything that she’d chased away, everything that now appeared only in her dreams, had suddenly caught up with her.

‘What do you want?’

‘I need help.’ Dagmar sounded on the verge of tears. She moved in a strange, lurching fashion, and her face twitched.

‘Do you need money?’ Laura reached for her purse.

‘Not for me personally,’ said Dagmar, fixing her eyes on the purse. ‘But I need money so I can go to Germany.’

Laura stared at her. ‘Germany? What are you going to do there?’

‘I never had a chance to say goodbye to your father. I never said goodbye to my Hermann.’

Dagmar started to cry, and Laura glanced around nervously. She didn’t want Sigvard to hear something and come out to the hall to find out what was going on. He mustn’t see her mother here.

‘Shh! I’ll give you the money. But calm down, for God’s sake!’ Laura held out a bundle of bills. ‘Here! This should be enough for a ticket to Germany.’

‘Oh, thank you!’ Dagmar flung herself forward and seized the money. Then she grabbed her daughter’s hands and kissed them. Disgusted, Laura yanked her hands out of Dagmar’s grasp and wiped them on her skirt.

‘Go now,’ she said. The only thing she wanted was to get her mother out of the house, out of her life, so that perfection would reign once again. After Dagmar left, she sank with relief on to a chair in the hall.

Now a couple of years had passed, and it seemed likely that her mother was dead. Laura doubted that the money would have taken her very far, especially in the chaos after the war. And if Dagmar had raved about saying goodbye to her Hermann Göring, she probably would have been seen as the crazy woman that she was and been stopped somewhere along the way. It was not a good idea to speak of knowing a man like Göring. The brutality of his crimes was not diminished simply because he had killed himself in prison a year after the war ended. Laura shuddered at the thought that her mother had continued to tell people in the area that he was the father of her child. It wasn’t a matter for boasting. Laura had only a vague memory of visiting his wife in Stockholm, but she did remember the shame, and the look that Carin Göring had given her. Carin’s eyes had been filled with sympathy and warmth, and it was undoubtedly because of Laura that she hadn’t called for help, even though she must have been terrified.

Well, that was all in the past now. Her mother was gone, and no one talked any more about Dagmar’s deranged fantasies. And Nanna saw to it that Laura could live her own life, as she was used to doing. Order had once again been restored and everything was perfect. Exactly as it should be.

Gösta looked at Patrik, who was drumming his fingers on the steering wheel, his eyes resolutely fixed on the cars in front of them. The traffic was practically gridlocked, and the narrow country roads weren’t made for such a crush, so he had to stay close to the verge.

‘You weren’t too hard on her, were you?’ Gösta turned his head to gaze out the window on his side of the car.

‘I think both of you have behaved stupidly, and I’m not about to change my mind about that,’ said Patrik, but he sounded significantly calmer than he had the day before.

Gösta didn’t reply. He was too tired to argue. He’d been up most of the night, going through the files. But that wasn’t something he wanted to tell Patrik, who probably wouldn’t appreciate anyone doing anything on his own initiative at the moment. He put up his hand to hide a yawn. He was still feeling disappointed at the lack of results from his night’s work. He hadn’t discovered anything new, and nothing had stirred his interest. At the same time, he couldn’t shake off the feeling that the answer was there, right in front of his nose, hidden somewhere in that pile of documents. Initially it had been curiosity, possibly combined with professional pride, that had motivated him to keep going. But now it was a sense of unease that was driving him. Ebba was no longer safe, and her life depended on the police finding out who was responsible for these attempts on her life.

‘Take that exit on the left.’ He pointed to a side road a short distance ahead.

‘I see it,’ said Patrik, making a death-defying swerve to the left.

‘Apparently you never passed the driver’s test,’ muttered Gösta as he gripped the handle above the passenger door.

‘I’m an excellent driver,’ said Patrik.

Gösta snorted. He motioned with a nod of his head at Junk-Olle’s place.

‘His kids are going to have a lot of trouble cleaning up when he dies.’

It was more like a junkyard than a home. Everyone who lived in the area knew to call Olle if they wanted to get rid of something. Happy to be of service, he would come to fetch whatever it was, which meant that now there were cars, refrigerators, trailers, washing machines, and everything else imaginable piled up around a couple of outbuildings and warehouses. Gösta even spotted a hairdryer from a beauty salon as Patrik parked between a discarded freezer and an old Volvo Amazon.

A skinny old man wearing bib overalls came out to greet them.

‘It would have been better if you could have come earlier. Half the day is already gone.’

Gösta glanced at his watch. It was 10.05 in the morning.

‘Hi, Olle. I hear you’ve got some things for us.’

‘You sure took your sweet time about it. I don’t understand what you do over there at the police station. Nobody ever asked about these things, so I just held on to them. They’re over there with the stuff belonging to the crazy duke.’

They followed Junk-Olle into a dark barn.

‘The crazy duke?’ queried Patrik.

‘I don’t know whether he’s really a duke, but he had some sort of noble name.’

‘Do you mean von Schlesinger?’

‘That’s right. He was notorious around here because he sympathized with Hitler, and his son went off to fight on the side of the Germans. The kid no sooner arrived down there than he took a bullet in the head.’ Olle started rummaging through all the rubbish. ‘And if the old man wasn’t crazy before, that did him in. He thought the Allies were going to come out to the island and attack him. You’d never believe me if I told you all the weird things he was doing out there. Finally he had a stroke and died.’ Junk-Olle paused and peered at them in the dim light as he scratched his head. ‘That was in 1953, if I remember right. After that there was a series of owners until Elvander bought the place. Good Lord, what a thing to do! Opening a boarding school out there and attracting all those toffee-nosed boys. Anybody could see that it was bound to end badly.’

He went back to rummaging around as he muttered to himself. A cloud of dust rose into the air, and both Gösta and Patrik started coughing.

‘Here we are. Four boxes of stuff. The furniture stayed in the house when it was rented out, but I was able to pick up a lot of loose items. You shouldn’t just throw things out and besides, nobody knew whether they might come back. Although most people, me included, thought they were probably dead.’

‘And it never occurred to you to contact the police to say that you had the family’s belongings?’ asked Patrik.

Junk-Olle straightened up and folded his arms. ‘I told Officer Henry about it.’

‘What? You mean Henry knew that these things were here?’ said Gösta. In fact, it wasn’t the first time that Henry had neglected to pass on vital information, but there was no use getting angry with someone who was no longer alive to defend himself.

Patrik examined the boxes. ‘There should be enough room in the car for them, don’t you think?’

Gösta nodded. ‘If necessary, we can fold down the back seats.’

‘All I can say is, it’s about time,’ laughed Olle. ‘It’s taken over thirty years for you to come and fetch this stuff.’

Gösta and Patrik glared at him but refrained from replying.

‘What are you going to do with all these things you’ve got here, Olle?’ Gösta couldn’t help asking. Personally, he felt almost panic-stricken at the sight of so much stuff. His small house might not be particularly modern, but he was proud of keeping it neat and clean. He was not about to turn into one of those old hoarders who wade around through a lot of rubbish.

‘You never know what might come in handy one day. If everybody was as thrifty as me, the world would be a different place. You can count on that.’

Patrik leaned down and tried to lift one of the boxes but gave up with a groan.

‘We’re going to have to carry it together, Gösta. It’s too heavy.’

Gösta gave him an alarmed look. A pulled muscle could ruin his entire golf season.

‘I’m not supposed to lift anything heavy. Because of my back.’

‘Come on, give me a hand.’

Realizing that further excuses would be pointless, Gösta reluctantly bent his knees and picked up one side of the box. Dust tickled his nose and he sneezed several times.

‘Bless you,’ said Junk-Olle, smiling broadly and revealing that three of his upper teeth were missing.

‘Thanks,’ said Gösta. Muttering complaints, he helped Patrik place the boxes in the boot of the car. At the same time he was filled with anticipation. Maybe there was something in the boxes that would give them a much-needed lead. Even better was the thought of telling Ebba that they’d found her family’s belongings. If he hurt his back, it would be worth it.

For a change he and Carina had decided to sleep in. He’d worked late the night before, and he felt he deserved a few extra hours in bed.

‘My God,’ said Carina, putting her hand on his shoulder. ‘I’m still sleepy.’

‘Me too, but who said we had to get up?’ Kjell snuggled closer, pulling her towards him.

‘Mmm … I’m too tired.’

‘I just want a hug.’

‘Oh right. And you think I’d believe that?’ she said, but she began sensually stroking his neck.

Kjell’s mobile rang shrilly from the pocket of his trousers, which were hanging at the foot of the bed.

‘Don’t answer that.’ Carina pressed closer to him.

But the mobile kept on ringing, and finally he couldn’t stand it any longer. He sat up, grabbed his trousers, and took out the phone. The display said ‘Sven Niklasson’ and he fumbled with the buttons to take the call.

‘Hello? Sven? No, not at all, I wasn’t asleep.’ Kjell glanced at the clock. It was past ten. He cleared his throat. ‘Did you find out anything?’

Sven talked for a long time, and Kjell listened with growing astonishment. His only comment was an occasional mumbled ‘uh-huh’. He could see Carina studying his face as he lay down on his side, resting his head on one arm.

‘I can meet you at Malöga,’ he finally told Sven. ‘I appreciate the fact that you’re letting me in on this. Not every colleague would be so accommodating. Have the Tanum police been informed? Göteborg? Well, that’s probably better, considering the situation. Yeah, they held a press conference yesterday, and they’ve got their hands full with that investigation. I assume you’ve heard most of the details from your reporter who was there. We’ll talk more when I pick you up. See you soon.’