In the Name of Love (30 page)
Read In the Name of Love Online
Authors: Patrick Smith
DB: I was attracted to her but I knew how foolish it was. She was younger than my son. I was troubled. I knew I must break off with her.
LN: Yet you didn’t. That night, when she was with you, you made no effort to end the relationship?
DB: No.
LN: But you took Sune Isaksson’s boat and crossed to Svartholm after her.
DB: No! I’ve told you what I did. I took the boat and searched along the coast as far as the fuel would allow.
LN: And nobody heard you? Nobody saw you? Until you docked the boat below the restaurant?
DB: Evidently not.
LN: You saw nothing and nobody that might corroborate your story?
DB: It was early in the morning. The summer guests had gone for the season. The coast was deserted.
LN: It still seems odd that you would walk all the way to Isaksson’s jetty, take his boat and set off at once.
DB: I saw the boat by chance. He had asked me to help him move it to the restaurant jetty. I’ve told you that. Since I was there and the boat was there I thought I’d use it to search quickly along the coast. When the fuel got low I turned back and tied it up at the restaurant jetty. That was what he had asked me to help him do.
LN: On what occasion did he ask your help in moving the boat?
DB: The date? I don’t remember. The last time I saw him. A few weeks before. He was going down to Copenhagen for a week and then to Stockholm. We said we’d do it when he came back.
LN: You didn’t wait for him to come back?
DB: I happened to be passing and saw the boat. Why don’t you ask him? I told your colleague to ring and ask him.
LN: You said to ring Isaksson at his flat in Stockholm.
DB: Yes.
LN: You knew he would be there?
DB: He said he was going there on his way back from Copenhagen.
LN: Did he tell you what he was going to do there?
DB: Yes. Clear out his belongings and give notice to the landlord.
LN: And then?
DB: Then he’d return to Blidö, I suppose.
LN: Why did you suppose that?
DB: I don’t know. What does it matter?
LN: It matters a great deal. Isaksson had the flat cleared out and his belongings transported to a charity. He was found yesterday in the bath. He had cut both wrists. We don’t yet know how long he had been like that.
DB: Oh God! God!
LN: You didn’t know he was going to kill himself?
DB: No.
LN: Yet he told you everything else he was going to do. Going to Copenhagen to say goodbye to his children. Clearing out his flat. Giving notice. You must surely have had some suspicion of finality in all that?
DB: It didn’t occur to me. Not just then.
LN: But at another time?
DB: I was aware that he might eventually decide to put an end to what was left of his life. But I didn’t think of it just then.
LN: On the night when Lena Sundman left your bed and went to meet another man, a man a good deal younger than you, you surely felt some jealousy?
DB: Maybe. I don’t know.
LN: You don’t know if you felt jealous or not?
DB: I was confused.
LN: Yet you got up at what? Around five o’clock you said. Why so early?
DB: I was having difficulty sleeping.
LN: I understand. Under the circumstances it was difficult to sleep. You went out and walked directly to where Isaksson’s boat was tied up.
DB: I went there to see if he was back yet.
LN: Let’s move on to Svartholm. I’m a little puzzled by how you found the hut so quickly if you had never been there before.
DB: Lena described it to me once. She used to go there with Fritjof Backlund when he laid out his nets.
LN: At the reconstruction carried out last Monday you went there directly from the place where you had tied up the boat. You never hesitated.
DB: I had already gone there and come back. I remembered the way.
LN: And you had never been there before the morning of Sunday, 27 September?
DB: No.
LN: We carried out a test of our own after the reconstruction. We gave a police officer, who had never been on the island, the same description that you said Lena Sundman gave you. There are in fact three huts on the island. And there are no paths. It took him almost an hour and a half to find the correct one.
DB: I caught a smell of smoke. That was what made me go in the right direction.
LN: You haven’t mentioned this smoke before.
DB: I forgot it.
LN: You smelled smoke. From how far away?
DB: Not very far. I walked into the forest at the southern tip and within half an hour or so I caught the smell of smoke.
LN: The report from the police who went there that afternoon to examine the crime scene makes no mention of smoke.
DB: There must have been a fire in the stove earlier. A whiff of the chimney smoke blew towards me when I approached it.
LN: Gabriel Rabban made no mention of a fire.
DB: Maybe Lena lit it after he had gone. It must have begun to get cold there.
LN: Nor did the crime-scene officers make any mention of the stove being warm.
DB: The fire may not have lasted. There may have been very little to burn. Maybe some old newspaper or magazine.
LN: So you now alter your testimony to include a fire in the stove and the smell of smoke in the forest near by?
DB: Yes.
LN: It is a great pity you did not recall this earlier. While there would still have been time for the crime-scene officers to check the veracity of your claim.
DB: I didn’t think of it then. There wasn’t any question then about my finding the hut more quickly than your colleague.
LN: Yet we did remark earlier that you went there without hesitating during the reconstruction.
DB: The way to and from that hut is burnt into my memory.
LN: So you consider that Rabban killed her?
DB: I’ve never said that!
LN: It’s either one or the other of you. No one else was out there.
DB: I never said Gabriel killed her!
LN: You have nothing to add to what you have said?
DB: No. When can I leave?
LN: We still have a way to go.
DB: The three days will be up at twelve tomorrow.
LN: Tomorrow morning the prosecutor will ask the court to remand you in custody. We need to get to the bottom of this.
DB: I’ve answered every question you have asked.
LN: Not satisfactorily. The fact that you insisted on going there in front of witnesses complicates matters. Otherwise everything ties you to the scene of the crime. Your sperm in the victim’s vagina. Your blood on her clothes. Both Nahrin and Josef Selavas have stated that it was you who suggested rowing over there. You had been inside the stable previously, you could easily have seen that there was an old rowing boat there. Hours before that you had surreptitiously borrowed Isaksson’s motorboat. It makes a very troubling pattern.
DB: I want a lawyer.
LN: Very well. Do you have one in mind or do you wish the court to appoint one?
DB: I want to speak with Johan Ek. I want to speak with him now, today.
LN: We’ll see if that can be arranged. This interrogation is now concluded. The time is 15.20.
Dearest Dan,
I’ve just heard the news on the radio and I’m overjoyed that this nightmare is over for you. No one who knows you could dream for a moment that you had anything to do with that poor girl’s death. The police wouldn’t let me talk to you but I hope you got my letter. Since then Mother has passed away. She suffered terribly at the end but, being a Christian Scientist, she refused all medication. I’m not a believer but I must say I was impressed by her stoicism and her depth of faith. I took the baby (her name is Kajsa) with me and stayed at the house in Mariefred until the end. I thought of you often while I was there.
Anders has sold the boat. We’ve used the money to get a second car which we need now. I’d love you to meet Kajsa. May I drive out and see you one day?
Yours affectionately
Madde
~
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In the Name of Love
A young woman is brutally murdered on an island near Stockholm – a haunt of wealthy retirees and arty weekenders. Suspicion falls first on a family of Iraqi refugees, initially welcomed into the community but gradually feared and shunned. But then, as the victim’s story unfolds, suspicion begins inexorably to fall elsewhere.
Lena Sundman was rude, dysfunctional, and very young. Everything a fastidious man like Dan Byrne disliked. Taking refuge on the island after the sudden death of his wife, Dan finds himself strangely drawn to the troubled girl, starting from the moment he reluctantly rescues her in the teeth of a gathering snowstorm.
This is a taut, elegantly chilling drama in the tradition of Scandinavian masters from Ibsen to Larsson.
Born in Ireland, Patrick Smith has spent most of his life as a translator in Sweden and, having published novels and short stories in Swedish, began his first novel in English at the age of seventy.
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First published in the UK in 2015 by Head of Zeus Ltd