The Preacher (34 page)

‘Be-e-ertil!’ The woman tore herself loose and ran over to Mellberg, who froze in his tracks like a deer in the headlights. Since she was twenty centimetres taller than he was, it looked funny when she pressed him close in an embrace. Ernst’s jaw dropped open. Feeling like sinking through the floor, he decided to start writing his letter of resignation at once. Before he got the boot. In horror he realized that several years of steady kissing-up to the chief had been ruined by one unfortunate act.

The woman released her hold on Mellberg and turned to point at Ernst, who stood sheepishly holding her handbag.

‘This brutal man put hands on me! He say I steal! Oh, Bertil, you must help your poor Irina!’

Mellberg awkwardly patted her on the shoulder, which meant that he had to lift his hand about to the level of his own nose. ‘You go home, Irina, okay? To house. I come later. Okay?’

His English could be termed halting at best, but she understood what he said and did not appreciate it.

‘No, Bertil. I stay here. You talk to that man, and I stay here and see you work, okay?’

He shook his head firmly and began shooing her out ahead of him. She turned anxiously and said, ‘But Bertil, honey, Irina not steal, okay?’

Then she strutted out on her high heels after casting one last spiteful look of triumph at Ernst. For his part he was still staring down at the carpet and didn’t dare meet Mellberg’s gaze.

‘Lundgren! In my office now!’

In Ernst’s ears this sounded like doomsday. He slouched obediently after Mellberg. In the corridor heads were still sticking out, with mouths agape. Now at least they knew the cause of all the mood swings.

‘Now would you please tell me what happened?’ said Mellberg.

Ernst nodded feebly. Sweat broke out on his brow. This time it wasn’t because of the heat.

He told his boss about the commotion at Hedemyr’s and how he saw the woman involved in a tug-of-war with the shop assistant. With a quavering voice he also recounted how he had dumped out the contents of the handbag, and how a number of items had not been paid for. Then he fell silent and waited for the judgement. To his surprise Mellberg leaned back in his chair with a deep sigh.

‘It’s a hell of a mess I’ve landed in.’ He paused for a moment, then leaned down and pulled out a drawer. He took out something that he tossed on the desk towards Ernst.

‘This is what I expected. Page three.’

Curious, Ernst picked up what looked like a class catalogue and turned to page three. The pages were full of photos of women, with brief descriptions of height, weight, eye colour and interests. He suddenly realized what Irina was: a ‘mail-order bride’. Although, there was not much similarity between the actual Irina and the portrait of her in the catalogue. In the description she had deducted at least ten years, ten kilos and a kilo of make-up. In the pictures she was beautiful and innocent, staring into the camera with a broad smile. Ernst looked at the portrait and then at Mellberg, who threw his arms wide.

‘You see, that was what I expected. We exchanged letters for a year, and I could hardly wait to get her here.’ He nodded at the catalogue in Ernst’s lap. ‘And then she arrived.’ He sighed. ‘It was a hell of a cold shower, I have to tell you. And it started immediately: “Bertil, darling, buy this and buy that.” I even caught her going through my wallet when she thought I wasn’t looking. I swear, it’s a hell of a mess.’

He patted the nest of hair on top of his head, and Ernst noticed that the Mellberg who was so careful about his appearance was gone. Now his shirt was once again stained, and the sweat rings under his arms were as big as salad plates. It felt reassuring somehow. Things were back to their natural order.

‘I’m counting on you not to go babbling about this.’ Mellberg wagged his finger at Ernst, who shook his head vigorously. He wouldn’t say a word. Relief washed over him; he wasn’t going to get the sack after all.

‘Could we forget about this little incident, then? I’ll see to it that it’s taken care of. The first plane home is what it’s going to be.’

Ernst got up and backed out of the office with a bow.

‘And you can tell everyone out there to stop whispering and start doing an honest day’s work instead.’

Ernst broke out in a wide grin when he heard Mellberg’s gruff voice. The chief was back in the saddle.

If Patrik had any doubt about the correctness of Annika’s advice, it disappeared as soon as he walked through the door. Erica flung herself into his arms, and he saw the exhaustion like a veil covering her face. His guilty conscience immediately started gnawing at him. He should have been more sensitive, more attentive to Erica’s state of mind. Instead, he had buried himself in work even more than he did normally and let her wander about the house with nothing interesting to occupy her time.

‘Where are they?’ he whispered.

‘Out in the garden,’ Erica whispered back. ‘Oh, Patrik, I can’t stand it if I have to put up with them another day. They’ve been sitting on their bums all day and expecting me to wait on them. I can’t take any more.’

She collapsed in his arms and he stroked her hair. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll take care of this. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have worked so much the past week.’

‘You asked me whether it was all right and I said okay. And you didn’t really have a choice,’ Erica murmured against his shirt front.

Despite his guilty conscience, Patrik was inclined to agree. How could he do otherwise when a girl was missing, perhaps held captive somewhere? At the same time, he needed to put Erica and the baby and their health first.

‘I’m not the only one at the station. I can delegate a good deal. But first we have a more urgent problem to solve.’

He detached himself from Erica, took a deep breath and went out in the garden.

‘Hello, all. Have you been having a good time?’

Jörgen and Madde turned their neon-coloured noses towards him and nodded happily. I bet you’ve had a good time, he thought – with full service all day long, thinking that this is some fucking hotel.

‘Listen, I’ve solved your dilemma. I called round and checked it out. There are vacancies at the Grand Hotel, because so many people have left Fjällbacka, but since you seem to be travelling on such a tight budget perhaps that wouldn’t be appropriate?’

Jörgen and Madde, who at first looked nervous, eagerly agreed. No, it was not appropriate.

‘But don’t worry,’ said Patrik, seeing to his gratification the furrows on their brows appear once again. ‘I also rang the youth hostel on Valö, and would you believe it? They have a vacancy! Great, isn’t it? Cheap and clean. Couldn’t be better!’

He clapped his hands in exaggerated delight, anticipating the objections he saw forming on his guests’ lips. ‘So it’s probably best if you start packing right away. The boat leaves in an hour from Ingrid Bergman’s Square.’

Jörgen started to say something, but Patrik held up his hands. ‘No, no, there’s no need to thank me. It was really no trouble. All it took was a couple of phone calls.’

With a grin he went back to the kitchen, where Erica was eavesdropping from the window. They high-fived each other and had to restrain themselves to keep from giggling.

‘Nice,’ Erica whispered with admiration. ‘I didn’t know I was living with a master of such Machiavellian calibre!’

‘There’s a lot you don’t know about me, darling. I’m a very complex person, you see …’

‘Indeed, you are. And here I always thought you seemed rather one-track,’ she teased him with a smile.

‘Well, if you didn’t have that big belly in the way, you’d see exactly how one-track I am,’ Patrik flirted back. He felt the tensions begin to melt away with their affectionate banter.

He turned serious. ‘Have you heard any more from Anna?’

Erica’s smile vanished. ‘No, not a peep. I went down to the pier to check but the boat wasn’t moored there.’

‘Do you think she went home?’

‘I don’t know. Either that or they’re sailing further up the coast somewhere. But you know what? I just don’t have the energy to worry about it. I’m so damned sick of her touchiness and the way she turns sour as soon as I say anything wrong.’

She sighed and started to say something else, but they were interrupted by Jörgen and Madde sweeping past them to go pack up their things.

A while later, after Patrik had given the reluctant holiday-makers a lift down to the boat for Valö, they settled down on the veranda to enjoy the silence. Eager to please and still with a feeling of having a good deal to make up for, Patrik massaged Erica’s swollen feet and calves as she sighed with pleasure. He pushed away any thoughts of the murdered girls, and the missing Jenny Möller. Sometimes his soul had to get a little rest.

The call came in the morning. As a part of his decision to take care of his wife a little better, Patrik had decided to take the morning off. They were sitting eating breakfast in the peace and quiet of the garden when Pedersen rang. With an apologetic look at Erica he got up from the table, but she just waved him away with a smile. She already looked much more content.

‘Have you come up with something interesting?’ said Patrik.

‘You might say that. If we start with the cause of death for Johannes Hult, my first observation was correct. Johannes did not hang himself. If you tell me that he was found on the floor with a noose round his neck, then the noose was placed there after death had occurred. The cause of death was actually a powerful blow to the back of the head with a hard object, but not a blunt one. Something with a sharp edge. He also has a crushing injury to his jaw, which could indicate a blow from the front.’

‘So there’s no doubt that we’re talking about murder?’ Patrik had a tight grip on the phone.

‘No, it would have been impossible for the wounds to be self-inflicted.’

‘How long has he been dead?’

‘It’s hard to say. But he’s been in the ground a long time. My guess is that the time of death corresponds quite well with the time he was assumed to have hanged himself. So he wasn’t buried at some later date, if that’s what you’re after,’ said Pedersen in an amused tone.

A moment of silence followed as Patrik pondered what Pedersen had told him. Then a thought occurred to him. ‘You indicated that you found something more when you examined Johannes. What was it?’

‘Oh yes, you’re going to like this. We have a summer intern here who’s a real go-getter, and she got the idea of taking a DNA sample from Johannes, since he’d been dug up anyway, and compare it with the semen sample that was found on Tanja Schmidt.’

‘Yes?’ Patrik could hear himself breathing hard, tense with anticipation.

‘The devil take me if there isn’t a close similarity! The person who murdered Tanja Schmidt is definitely related to Johannes Hult.’

Patrik had never heard the very proper Pedersen swear before, but now he was inclined to echo his sentiments. Well, I’ll be damned, he thought. He paused to collect his wits and then said, ‘Can you tell how they’re related?’ His pulse was pounding in his chest.

‘Yes, and we’re looking at it now. But we need more reference material, so your task now will be to gather blood samples from all known members of the Hult family.’

‘All of them?’ said Patrik. It made him tired just thinking about how the clan would react to that incursion into their privacy.

He thanked Pedersen for the information and went back to the breakfast table, where Erica sat like a madonna, with her white nightgown billowing and her blonde hair flowing. She still took his breath away.

‘Go on,’ she said, waving him away, and he kissed her gratefully on the cheek.

‘Do you have anything to do today?’ he asked.

‘One advantage of having demanding guests is that I look forward to spending a day relaxing. In other words, I’ve decided not to do a thing today. Just lie outside and read, and eat a little good food.’

‘That sounds like a plan. So I’ll see to it that I get home early today. I’ll be here by four at the latest, I promise.’

‘Do the best you can. I’ll see you when I see you. Run along now, I can tell that your shoe soles are burning.’

She didn’t have to say it twice. He hurried off to the station.

When he came in twenty minutes later. the others were sitting in the lunchroom drinking their morning coffee. Guiltily, he saw that it was later than he thought.

‘Hi, Hedström, did you forget to set your alarm clock today or what?’

Ernst, whose self-confidence had now been fully restored, sounded as overbearing as usual.

‘Just taking a few hours off to make up for all that overtime. My wife needed some TLC too,’ said Patrik, winking at Annika, who’d just popped in from her place at the reception desk.

‘Well, that’s probably one of the perks of being chief investigator, to sleep in a few extra hours when he pleases,’ Ernst couldn’t help retorting.

‘I am in charge of this investigation, of course, but I’m not the chief,’ Patrik pointed out mildly. The look Annika gave Ernst was not as friendly.

Patrik went on, ‘And as the head of the investigation I have some news – and a new assignment.’

He told them what Pedersen had said, and for a moment the mood felt triumphant in the lunchroom of the Tanumshede police station.

‘So, now we’ve rapidly narrowed the field to four possible suspects,’ said Gösta. ‘Stefan, Robert, Jacob and Gabriel.’

‘Yes, and don’t forget where Tanja was seen last,’ said Martin.

‘According to Stefan, that is,’ Ernst reminded them. ‘Don’t forget that it’s Stefan who claims to have seen her. Personally, I’d like to find a witness who’s a bit more reliable.’

‘But Linda also says that they saw someone when they were there that evening, so – ’

Patrik interrupted Ernst and Martin. ‘It may be a moot point. As soon as we’ve brought in everyone in the Hult family and done a DNA test on them, we won’t need to speculate any longer. We’ll know. On the way over here, I rang to request the permissions we’ll need. Everyone knows why this is urgent, so I’m expecting a go-ahead from the prosecutor’s office any time now.’

He poured himself a cup of coffee and sat down with the others. He placed his mobile in the centre of the table, and nobody could help glancing at it.