The Double Silence (28 page)

And then there was Sam Dahlberg. The director had made his breakthrough five years ago with a film that attracted a great deal of attention. But after that, nothing. Only now had he started shooting another feature film. Dahlberg had studied at drama school and then done an internship with Swedish TV. After that he’d spent several years working as an assistant for one of the great directors, Bo Widerberg. Sam didn’t seem to have had any major difficulties in life. He came from a culturally involved family in Visby. His mother was a librarian, and his father ran the Roxy Cinema in town. Maybe that was where Sam had got his interest in film. When he was a little boy, he started going to work with his father, helping out at the cinema. He had grown up with movies. Both of Sam’s parents were still alive, and he had two sisters. He seemed to have had strong ties
to his family. What a tragedy for them to see their son fall victim to a murderer, thought Knutas.

Then he moved on to Beata and John.

John had left the United States with Beata, who was a native Gotlander from a stable middle-class family in Klintehamn. After a brief modelling career in New York and Los Angeles, she had met John Dunmar, a bartender from San Diego, who fell head over heels in love with the beautiful Swede. Beata soon became pregnant, and they decided to settle down in Sweden. John received both a residence and a work permit relatively quickly, and he learned Swedish so well that after only a year he was able to open his own bar in Visby. His business was thriving, and he was well liked by his colleagues and customers. Beata continued to work in the fashion world, as the buyer for a large clothing company. They’d had three children in quick succession and were the happy, proud owners of one of the biggest houses in Terra Nova. Knutas had found nothing noteworthy about them whatsoever.

Finally he came to Andrea. Without a doubt, she was the most complex and interesting of the lot. She was also the one who seemed to have the most secrets. Knutas studied the picture of the dark-haired woman with the sharply etched features. Her expression was inscrutable, impossible to interpret.

Knutas needed to get in touch with Jacobsson.

But before he picked up the phone, he leaned back and read through all the material one more time.

THE POLICE HAD
gone to Andrea Dahlberg’s home, but she was away, visiting her children who were staying with their grandparents in the Stockholm archipelago. They had gone on a sailing expedition, and no one knew exactly where they were at the moment. The police got hold of a cousin who said that they’d planned to be away at least a week, and it would be hard to track them down.

Jacobsson tried numerous times to get through on the mobiles belonging to various family members, but without success.

Then she discovered that she had missed several calls from Knutas. She tried to ring him, but the line was busy. Oh well, it could wait. Right now she was fully occupied with the investigation, looking into this whole business about the swinger parties and what the significance might be. In addition, there was the discovery that Stina Ek had been pregnant, in her third month. DNA samples had been sent to the lab to determine who the father was, but Jacobsson was not at all convinced it was Håkan.

The first person they managed to get hold of was Beata, and half an hour later the woman was sitting in an interrogation room at police headquarters. Her red hair was swept up in a loose knot on top of her head, with decorative ringlets framing her face. She was casually dressed in a denim skirt and an especially low-cut T-shirt. She looked self-conscious as she sat at the table across from Jacobsson.

‘Why am I here again? You’ve already questioned me numerous times. I was in the middle of baking. We’re having a big family party tomorrow.’

‘I’m sorry we had to interrupt your housewifely duties,’ said Jacobsson without a trace of sympathy.

Beata Dunmar pursed her lips.

‘You’ve been asked to come here because some new information has come to light in the case, and we want to talk to you about it. We’ve learned that you and your group of friends have held swinger parties. Is that right?’

Beata opened her eyes wide. She stared at Jacobsson for a long time, apparently feverishly trying to work out how to respond to what she’d just heard.

Jacobsson remained silent, her eyes fixed on Beata, waiting for her to say something.

‘What do you mean?’ she finally managed.

‘Exactly what I said. We’ve heard that you and your friends have held swinger parties. You, John, Stina, Håkan, Sam and Andrea, along with another couple who moved away from the area. Sten and Monica.’

Beata seemed to realize that the game was up. It would do her no good to deny the claim. She stared in shame at the table as she answered.

‘That’s true,’ she said in a low voice. ‘But only a few times.’

‘How many times exactly?’

‘Three.’

‘What happened during these parties?’

Beata fidgeted a bit before replying.

‘The first time it started out as an ordinary party at Sam and Andrea’s house. Their children weren’t home, so we had the place to ourselves. We drank an awful lot of wine at dinner and everyone got very drunk. We went on drinking afterwards as we sat in front of their big fireplace in the living room. They have big, comfy sofas and armchairs, and we ended up sprawled all over them. Somebody started talking about a film they’d seen. I think it was
Ice Storm
. It took place in an American suburb, rather like our own, with educated and established people who knew each other well, much as we do. They held parties where they put their house keys in a bowl in the hall when they arrived. Later, after dinner, all the women would take out a set of keys and go home and have sex with the
man whose keys they’d chosen. They had worked out some sort of system so that nobody would ever get her own husband.’

‘I see. So what happened then?’

‘First we joked about it. What if we did the same thing? Then someone started teasing John because he’s American. Saying things like: Is that how you do things where you’re from? And John jumped in and said that he’d always had the hots for Stina and wouldn’t mind exchanging keys with her. At first we were all a little shocked, but at the same time there was an excitement in the air, because it was obvious that he really meant what he’d said.’

‘And how did you react to that?’

‘I pretended this was news to me, even though I’d noticed it long before. He tried to hide it, but it was perfectly clear that he thought Stina was super sexy. Whenever we had a party, he would always dance with her. Preferably all night long.’

‘What did you think about that?’

‘It didn’t really bother me. John and I have an open marriage. We’ve agreed that we can have sex with other people as long as we don’t expose each other to any diseases or feel compelled to report on our escapades. Neither of us believes in the illusion that people can stay together for a whole lifetime without being attracted to anyone else. And why shouldn’t a person be allowed to act on his or her desires? We’ve got only one life, at least as far as we know. Why should you have to deny yourself a lot of pleasurable experiences? For whose sake? For what reason? Because of an unrealistic, romantic and naive notion that there’s only one love in your life? Neither of us believes in that sort of shit.’

‘So you thought it was OK for John to have sex with Stina?’

‘Yes. I would like to have been there, sitting in a corner of the room. I’ve often fantasized about making love to a woman.’

Jacobsson took a sip of water. She knew that Wittberg, sitting at the back of the room in his role as witness to the interview, was thoroughly enjoying this unexpected turn in the questioning. He also probably found it terribly amusing that Jacobsson was the one conducting the interview. He’d always accused her of being a prude.

‘Let’s go back to that first evening. What happened?’

‘Well, after John said that about Stina, the mood changed. There was an unusual tension in the air. You could see by the way everyone was moving about that they weren’t averse to the idea of experimenting, so to speak. Then Stina did something incredibly surprising.’

‘What did she do?’

‘She asked John what he thought was so sexy about her.’

Without being aware of what she was doing, Jacobsson leaned closer.

‘He told her that it was mainly her breasts. They were so different from mine. Small and pointed. Then Stina went a step further. She got up, went over to John, and unbuttoned her blouse. Everyone was so surprised that they didn’t say a word. Håkan sat there, stunned. John stroked her breasts and that’s when it really got started. New pairs formed, and little by little one couple after the other disappeared. I ended up with Sam in their bedroom upstairs.’

‘Oh,’ said Jacobsson, taking another sip of water.

‘We had great sex, Sam and I. I’ve always found him bloody attractive. When we were done, we joked about the whole thing. It was a wonderful feeling, very natural, at least between the two of us. Then I went home, but John wasn’t there. I fell asleep, and in the morning he was lying in bed next to me. We didn’t talk about it. As I said, we have an unwritten rule not to discuss our sexual adventures, so we didn’t in this case either, even though we both knew what had happened. I think we wanted to protect each other. No one wants to hear that his or her partner has had amazing sex with somebody else. Even we draw the line there.’

‘So what happened when you met the others again?’

‘It was still exciting. Everyone seemed a bit on edge, as if we were all just waiting for the next party.’

‘And what happened then? The next time you had a party?’

‘Everybody drank more than usual, as if to avoid taking responsibility. And since the boundaries had already been breached, things moved faster than before. We were at Sten and Monica’s house.’

‘Why did you stop having these parties?’

‘The third time we were again at Sten and Monica’s house, and it was
very clear that Sten only wanted to be with Andrea. He was after her right from the start, as if he took it for granted that they would have sex later on. At the first two parties, everybody had gone through the motions in the beginning. We had aperitifs and dinner and carried on conversations, putting on a good show until everyone was sufficiently drunk to lose their inhibitions. But that night Sten showed an interest in Andrea right from the start, kissing her and stroking her thigh and making sexual references throughout dinner. I could tell that Monica was getting really annoyed because he wasn’t following the rules of the game.’

‘What about Andrea? How did she react?’

‘She seemed flattered, laughing and flirting with him as if it were the most natural thing in the world.’

‘So they both went too far? Is that it?’

‘Yes, you could say that, even though I didn’t think Sam cared very much.’

‘What happened then?’

‘Well, after dinner everyone helped to clear the table, so there was a lot of commotion. A few people went outside to have a smoke; some stood around talking and drinking wine. And suddenly we noticed that Andrea and Sten had gone.’

‘And?’

‘The laundry room was right next to the kitchen, and I remember standing in the hallway between the kitchen and the living room, and suddenly I heard somebody screaming. It was Monica. She had opened the laundry-room door and found Andrea and Sten going at it.’

‘So they’d jumped the gun, so to speak?’

‘Yes, and Monica was furious. Obviously this was too much for her, and she really flipped out. She started punching both of them, hitting and biting and acting like a crazy woman. By that time she’d had a lot to drink. I remember noticing her guzzling down the wine all evening. She was probably cross about how Sten had been behaving ever since Andrea arrived, so when she caught them, she went out of her mind. I’ve never seen anybody get so hysterical.’

‘What did the rest of you do?’

‘At first everyone was totally shocked, and it took a few minutes before we fully grasped what was going on. Monica was a tall, stout woman, so it wasn’t easy to overpower her. I know that Håkan and John and Sam had to work hard to get her out of there. They were forced to wrestle her to the ground. The rest of us stayed out of their way. I don’t really know how it all ended.’

‘Did you ever talk about this afterwards?’

‘No. It was as if everyone was embarrassed and found it too unpleasant. We took the easiest way out by keeping silent. John and I did talk about it with each other, of course, right after it happened. He told me that Monica finally calmed down. Or rather, her anger gave way to despair, and she sobbed for several hours. She thought she’d made a fool of herself, and after that she and Sten stayed away. Just a few weeks later, they moved. That didn’t upset the rest of us. They’d only lived here a short time, they had no children, and we really hadn’t got to know each other very well.’

‘Yet you had group sex with them! How was that possible?’

‘I’ve wondered about that too. I mean, we’re such a close-knit group that we really don’t need to let anyone else into our inner circle. There are a lot of people living in the area. Everybody spends time together, having dinners, and crayfish parties, and Midsummer celebrations. But our small group is especially close; we have our own circle inside of the larger social circle, so to speak. And now that I think about it, in hindsight I wonder why we let those two in so easily.’

‘So what’s your theory?’

‘I don’t really have one. I know that Sten somehow became friends with Håkan, and he was the one who decided to include Sten and Monica. They came to a few dinners and were terribly nice, and I suppose that’s how it happened. Maybe we felt a little sorry for the two of them. They were such outsiders, with no children, working here on a trial basis, and only renting their house. Maybe we saw them as temporary visitors who wouldn’t threaten or change our friendships. And so we were more generous towards them.’ Beata looked pensive as she stared at the opposite wall. Jacobsson chose to change tack.