Authors: Hakan Ostlundh
“What do you mean? Why haven’t you told me about her?”
Malin put her hands on her sides.
“I have told you about her,” said Henrik.
“I see. What’s her name?”
“Her name is Stina Hansson. It was a long time ago, but I have mentioned her.”
Malin had never heard about her, but she was bad at names. She might have forgotten it.
“And you were together in Stockholm?”
“Yes. It was when I was at the photography school. We met through some common acquaintances from Gotland. I knew her from here, but we didn’t really socialize then. It lasted less than a year. We broke up, or I broke up with her. It got really messy because she didn’t want to let go, kept on calling and that. But then suddenly she moved back to Fårösund and then … Well … Then we weren’t in touch anymore. She must have quit school. Or that was what they said anyway.”
“So what do you mean? That this Stina has carried off our daughter and stuck needles in our family pictures because you broke up with her … what will it be, fifteen years ago or something like that?”
Henrik looked at her in dismay. His hand was trembling as he brushed back the hair from his forehead.
“Good Lord, I don’t mean anything. You’re the one who saw someone staring at you outside the school. It’s probably not even her. I only said that I happened to think of her when you described her.”
Malin’s head was spinning. One moment she thought she was decisively on the trail, the next it seemed like paranoid fantasies. Nothing that had to do with reality.
“But you know that she still lives in Fårösund?” she said.
“Yes.”
“Have you seen her?”
“I’ve run into her a few times.”
“A few times…”
Malin fell silent and looked at him, felt cold and strange.
“Why haven’t you said anything?”
“Said? I’ve run into her a couple times in Fårösund. What should I say?”
Henrik’s voice had acquired an angry tone and one eyebrow was raised as if the question was a little stupid. Malin thought he looked like a liar.
“So where in Fårösund?”
“At the Bungehall grocery store.”
“And those are the only times?”
“I saw her once in town, but that was at a distance and she didn’t see me. Does that count?”
There was that ironic expression again, as if it was Malin who had done something wrong. She ought to get angry, but felt that instead she was sad. He remembered that he had seen her in town, even though they hadn’t even spoken. Extremely quickly he remembered that. It seemed like he was counting the times.
“I don’t understand that you didn’t say anything,” she said flatly.
“It’s not like we went out for coffee or anything. I’ve seen her at ICA and we stood and talked a little while.”
“About what?”
Henrik sighed demonstratively before he answered.
“What are you doing nowadays? Married, two kids, blah blah blah. You know. That kind of thing.”
“Is she married and has two kids?”
“No. I’m married and have two kids.”
He smiled a little, tried to get her in a good mood again. But it was too late now for that type of cheap charm.
“But not her?”
“No. She’s not married.”
“No husband, no children.”
“No.”
“Damn.”
“What do you mean, damn?”
Malin tried to look at him from a place far away, distant and superior, but was uncertain whether it succeeded.
“Was it nice with Stina?”
“Huh?”
Henrik tried to look offended, surprised.
“Yes. Did you have a nice time with her? Was it nice sleeping with Stina?”
“What the hell are you saying?”
“It’s not so strange that I wonder what she means to you, is it?”
Malin hoped that it would sound factual and a little cool, but to her disappointment heard her voice quiver a little on the final syllables.
“Malin, that was fifteen years ago. It lasted less than a year. I broke up with her. I hardly remember it.”
He walked slowly over to the table, sat down at the short end with his arms crossed.
“This is ridiculous.”
Malin did not reply.
“Excuse me, but it really is.”
Was it ridiculous? Was
she
ridiculous? She tried to think about how the conversation ended up where it did. One thing had led to another. She had followed her emotion. Had it really ended up completely wrong? An old girlfriend from fifteen years back. That was three years before she and Henrik met. Surely he had mentioned Stina Hansson in one of their childish run-throughs of old exes. She had forgotten that. She forgot names. She forgot a number of other things, too. Henrik used to say that it was practical. Every three years he could reuse old jokes and she would still think he was the most amusing guy in the world. That joke she remembered anyway.
“I’m from here,” he said. “I know people.”
“That’s not really the same thing.”
“Isn’t it?”
“No.”
Henrik sighed as if he was right and she was just silly to let her emotions run away with her. He looked at her seriously.
“Can’t we just concentrate on ourselves and get this alarm going?”
Malin swallowed. She did not intend to apologize anyway. Perhaps she had gone too far, but she still thought it was wrong that he hadn’t said anything. He ought to have told her that he had seen this Stina Hansson the same day he did. That was the kind of thing you did when you were in a relationship. Just to avoid suspicions and outbursts of this type.
“Sure,” she said. “But you have to call the police and tell them.”
“Yes, of course. I’ll do that.”
“Do it now.”
Stina Hansson lived in a two-room unit in an old villa that had been divided up into apartments. The house on Kalkugnsvägen in Fårösund was slightly shadowed behind a row of tall willows with ungainly root suckers. Stina Hansson normally worked at the register at the college restaurant in Visby, but today she was out sick.
In other words, Stina worked in the same building as Alma Vogler. Fredrik wondered whether they knew each other. At least by appearance they ought to. Stina Hansson must have taken payment for Alma’s lunch numerous times.
He had nothing against driving up to Fårösund again. After six months behind a desk he was just happy for any opportunity to get out and move around. Sara, on the other hand, had groused a little when Göran asked them to go. Not in front of her boss, of course, but in the corridor on the way down to the garage. Fredrik could understand, but unless something completely unforeseen were to happen, they ought to be back in Visby before Sara’s long-distance boyfriend got off the ferry.
Their first impression of Stina Hansson was of a healthy thirty-three-year-old woman. Beautiful blond hair fell down a little over her shoulders, and she met Fredrik’s gaze with a smile and determined ice-blue eyes when they met.
He explained briefly that they needed to ask a few questions due to an incident earlier in the day, and at Sara’s suggestion they sat down at the kitchen table.
She turned on the light over the table. The kitchen was dark, even though it was still completely daylight. It was presumably more pleasant in the mornings when the sunlight shone in through the crowns of the trees outside.
“You’re on sick leave,” said Fredrik. “Is this the first day?”
“Yes. I started feeling poorly last night.”
“In what way?” he asked.
“What do you mean? Did the insurance company send you?”
Stina smiled a little provocatively at Fredrik.
“No,” he answered. “Unless we discover some serious insurance fraud we aren’t going to coordinate our information with them.”
Sara gave him a look. Perhaps he had let himself be too sarcastic in his response. He made a more correct addition.
“No, we haven’t been sent out by the insurance company.”
The smile disappeared from Stina’s lips. She seemed to have liked the first answer better.
“I felt cold, I had pain in my joints. Typical flu symptoms, so I called my boss last evening.”
“Have you been at home in the apartment the whole day?”
“Yes.”
Stina’s eyes moved between Fredrik and Sara before she continued.
“Why are you asking me this? I don’t really understand.”
“If we ask our questions first, then perhaps we can answer yours later,” said Fredrik.
Stina raised her eyebrows and gave a barely perceptible nod.
“If that’s what you say.”
Fredrik had noticed a faint odor of cat pee when he came into the hall. Now he seemed to see a pair of yellow eyes gleaming under the couch in the living room.
“What were you doing between eleven thirty and twelve thirty today?” he asked.
“I was here,” Stina answered, as if she thought he was a bit dense.
“And doing what?”
“I was reading.”
She made a gesture toward a four-inch-high pile of newspapers and magazines. In the middle of the pile the edge of a book peeked out. Fredrik had noticed several piles of books and newspapers around the apartment.
“Did you read anything in particular?” asked Fredrik.
“No, I read the local paper and browsed in a few magazines. I got up really late.”
“I see, when was that?”
“Nine thirty.”
“And you sat here at the table?” he asked. “Between eleven thirty and twelve thirty, I mean.”
“Yes,” Stina answered, and with each question she got a more and more confounded expression.
“Are there any neighbors in the building or in the buildings nearby who can confirm that you’ve been at home here today? Someone who may have seen you?”
“Don’t think so,” said Stina Hansson. “But you can always ask. But can’t you at least tell me what this is about?”
“These are routine questions,” said Sara Oskarsson. “We’re questioning a number of people here in the area.”
“I see.”
Stina Hansson did not look convinced.
“Do you know Henrik Kjellander?” asked Sara.
There was silence for a moment. Stina leaned against the back of the chair.
“Yes,” she said lingeringly. “Or knew, at least. We went to the same school here in Fårösund. And one year at Säve.”
“You had a relationship? Is that correct?” asked Sara when Stina did not continue.
Stina laughed.
“Good Lord,” she sighed. “Yes, we did. But that was ages ago. I must have been nineteen or twenty and had just moved to Stockholm.”
The initial image of a healthy young woman was somewhat changed when Fredrik had been sitting across from her at the table for a while. For some reason he got a feeling that Stina Hansson did not go out much, or that in any event she kept to herself. He was not sure whether it was the dry skin, the piles of books, the cat odor, the complete seasons of
Friends
on the bookshelf that made him think that, or whether it was something completely different.
“Did you live together?” Sara continued the questioning.
“Yes, but only a few months. It was more for practical reasons. I had nowhere to stay for a while.”
“How long did the relationship last?”
“A year, approximately.”
“Who ended it?”
“He did. Henrik.”
The name sounded so domestic in her mouth, as if she was talking about someone close to her, thought Fredrik.
“Did you live with him then?” asked Sara.
“Yes, but I had just gotten a student apartment. Sometimes I wonder if he waited to break up until I had somewhere to live. To be nice.” Stina laughed lightly and looked at Sara with clear, unperturbed eyes. “Are you really interested in my relationship with Henrik Kjellander fifteen years ago?”
Sometimes I wonder,
thought Fredrik.
They heard the ferry departing. The metallic scraping from the ramp, the diesel engines picking up speed. It was five thirty.
“We are interested in Henrik Kjellander and everything that concerns him,” said Fredrik. “He is not suspected of anything, but for various reasons that we can’t go into right now this may be important.”
Stina looked at him with a curl on her upper lip.
“I guess I’ll have to be content with that,” she said.
“I guess you will, for the time being.”
It would probably not be long before the village gossip reached her, or she read about it in the newspaper.
Sara Oskarsson continued to probe into Stina Hansson’s relationship with Henrik. As they had already understood from the phone call with Henrik, she had taken it very hard when he broke up with her.
“In some way I got the idea that it had nothing to do with me as an individual,” she said, stroking her fingers over her cheek. “Instead it was that I didn’t fit into his life because I came from Fårösund.”
“But Henrik is from here, too, isn’t he?”
“Exactly,” said Stina with a crooked smile. “But he wanted to get away. Not only away from Fårösund and Gotland. He wanted to become a different person: successful photographer, someone who moved out in the world among significant, glamorous people. Something like that. Then he happened to meet me. I think he really liked me, got attached to me, but then it was like he suddenly thought that he was stuck in the past, in Gotland—through me. I became part of what stuck firmly to him and that he had to get rid of in order to get where he wanted. I had a hard time letting go. I was probably pretty annoying. But that was because I thought it was such a shame. I don’t really think he was tired of me, it was that other stuff that got in the way.”
She fell silent and looked out into the dark garden. Two pale roses were seen on her cheek. She had spoken calmly and collectedly, but it was still a revealing harangue to be about something that had ended fifteen years ago.
Fredrik wondered whether there really could be something in what Stina had said. Three years later Henrik met a waitress and started a family with her. Not exactly glamorous.
“And now he’s back. It did come as a surprise,” said Stina. “Especially that he chose Fårö.”
“What do you mean by that?” said Sara.
“I think it’s extremely strange after everything that happened with his family. Everyone probably thinks that.”