ELLEN

2.00 P.M.

A week had passed since Liv Lind was murdered. A picture of the course of events was starting to emerge, with several different possibilities, all of which were fairly credible. The conclusions basically rested solely on information from the police. So far, no one Ellen had talked to had led her closer to the truth.

Hopefully Ahlvarssonskan would be able to give her some new information. She had stopped by his place earlier in the week, but no one had been home. This time, she’d called in advance and set up a time.

The motive part seemed unclear, and the DNA hits didn’t necessarily have to mean anything. Why would Patrik have killed his pregnant girlfriend? Perhaps because he was afraid that she would tell Hanna or Alexandra that he was expecting a child with someone else. Perhaps they hadn’t known that Liv existed? Or otherwise, did one of the women get overly jealous? The only deviant factor, if you could call it that, was that he lived with three women. Who in turn could have had a motive. She didn’t know if any of them had a mental disorder or suffered from drinking problems or something like that. But Patrik didn’t show up in any crime registry and hadn’t had contact with the healthcare system or psychiatry either. Other than in his profession, of course.

She hoped he wasn’t the police department’s solution to finding a guilty party as quickly as possible and at any price. She had to trust that they were doing a thorough job, but something wasn’t adding up.

How, for example, did they know that Liv had been raped? She could just as easily have had consensual sex with Patrik. Ellen still hadn’t gotten a sensible answer from Carola about how they were approaching this, but she would continue to press until she got one.

Why did Bea want to silence her? What clues pointed to Bea’s gang, besides the scratch marks on the car? And then the little girl who’d found the phone. Was that by chance, or had someone given it to her?

The general interest in the murder had increased since they’d released the picture of Liv and the interview with Sara. It had had the desired effect, and tips poured in — unfortunately nothing that usable, so far.

The big family had gone to ground and hadn’t responded when she’d tried to reach them for a comment, and she didn’t want to press too much.

Jimmy had gone back to Stockholm. Ellen couldn’t stop smiling when she thought about him and what had happened earlier that morning. There were so many emotions circulating.

When she turned into the farmyard, an older man got down from a tractor. He was dressed in a T-shirt and jeans with suspenders. She assumed that it was Mr Ahlvarsson and got out of the car to go over and greet him.

He was slender, and if he didn’t do something about his posture, he would soon end up with a hunched neck — though it might have already been too late, she noted as she got closer. He had an unkempt beard and snuff between his teeth. Even though it was over thirty degrees Celsius, he was wearing boots, and sweat beaded on his forehead.

‘Hi, I’m the one who called before,’ said Ellen. When she’d spoken to him on the phone earlier to see if she could ask a few questions about the murder of Liv Lind, he’d grumbled at first. But when Ellen had told him that she wasn’t just a journalist at TV4, but was also from the area and had grown up at Örelo, he’d finally agreed she could come by.

‘Ah yes. As it is, I really need to be working — we’re in the middle of harvest season, and the drought is hanging over us like a menace. But let’s go in.’ The flies were flocking around him. ‘It’s so typical that there’s nothing to do all summer, then just when the heat hits, you have to work for days on end. I just want to crack open a beer and watch the sun go down, that’s the life.’

‘Why do the roads get salted in the summer?’ Ellen asked.

He stopped in the hall and looked at her seriously. ‘You have to be careful when driving in the heat. The lime in the asphalt melts and makes the roads slippery. You know, when it’s thirty degrees in the air that means it’s fifty, sixty degrees on the road surface. It’s like the road is bleeding. These are new roads, so I have to take care of them. It’s part of my contract with the Road Administration, and it’s best to salt early in the morning. Would you like anything?’

‘I’m fine, thanks,’ she said. ‘Maybe a glass of water.’

‘Don’t worry about taking your shoes off,’ he said, stomping into the kitchen in his boots.

Ellen gratefully did as he said and weaved her way between newspapers, tools, and other junk that was lying on the worn old wooden floor.

‘Yes, I have a hard time throwing things out — I collect everything. Hoarder. Who knows when one might need this again.’ He picked up a dirty old piece of cloth. ‘Maybe sometime I’ll dress up as a ghost.’ He grinned.

She nodded and smiled.

He pulled out a chair, which Ellen sat down on. Then he took two cans of light beer from the fridge and gave one to Ellen.

‘Thanks,’ she said, carefully opening the can. ‘Do you live alone?’ She was breathing through her mouth to avoid the stale smell in there.

He nodded. ‘Yes, it worked out that way, but you don’t need to look concerned. My brother lived with me, and we ran the farm together. Sadly, he died two years ago.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Thanks. It’s tough, but I’m used to it now. It’s me and the dogs and the cat,’ he said, leaning against the kitchen counter with his arms crossed.

‘Hottest on TV?’

‘Huh?’ He looked down at the print on his T-shirt. ‘Ah yes, that’s right. Yes, I got it from some friends who thought I should apply to Farmer Wants a Wife. I’m too old for such things, but I like the T-shirt. Someone told me that grain farmers are the hottest. Women don’t want pig farmers or dairy farmers because they smell so much from the animals.’ He laughed. ‘I’ve never even watched the show. I know, I’m sorry, you’ll have to excuse my sinful ignorance.’

‘You would do well on that show, you should definitely apply.’

‘You look a lot like your mother.’

‘Do you think so?’ She was surprised.

‘Oh, yes. To be honest, I’ve always had a little crush on her.’ He laughed and looked down at the floor. ‘She was a few years below me at school. I see her sometimes. She’s still nice-looking.’

Ellen smiled. It was sweet. Like a little schoolboy talking about his crush. She wondered if he’d ever been in a relationship. ‘I just wanted to ask a few questions about the woman you found dead.’

‘Ugh, yes,’ he said, rubbing his face with his hand. ‘I can’t get rid of the image of her. I’ve had a hard time sleeping the past few days. You work with this stuff, so maybe you’re used to seeing corpses, but I’ve only seen my brother and my parents dead. This was so horrible. Pure, utter evil.’

‘Maybe you get used to death, but not to evil?’

‘I found it so horrible, the way she was lying there completely naked, the woman. Her dress was pulled up over her head, so I pulled it down to cover her private parts.’ He turned red as he said it. ‘But I regret it. I wish I hadn’t had to see her beat-up face. And of course, the police haven’t been entirely happy with it, either. I had to submit one of those samples with a swab in your mouth and fingerprints.’

‘Did you stay there and wait for the police to arrive?’

‘Yes. They probably got there in about thirty minutes or so, I would say, but it was awful. I tried to make the time pass, and I couldn’t just let her lie there like that. Do you know what I mean? I have a hard time with death. My brother got stuck under our combine. It was an accident, but I couldn’t understand it. He’d been driving combines his whole life. He was alone, and somehow, he got crushed or run over by the wheels of the combine. I wondered where he was and looked out at the field and saw it standing there, but didn’t think any more of it. When it was still standing there an hour later, I ran over and found him. By then it was too late.’

‘Maybe it was already too late the first time you looked,’ tried Ellen, who still couldn’t remember if she had seen Elsa dead.

Ahlvarssonskan lifted his eyes. ‘You can’t hang your life on false truths. It doesn’t change anything. I know it wasn’t my fault, but what if …’

‘Yes, what if …’ She took a sip of the beer and tried not to grimace. She didn’t like beer, but it was so warm and stuffy in there, and her mouth was parched. ‘Did you touch anything else at the crime scene, or notice anything in particular?’

‘It looked like there’d been a struggle. Animal in some way. Like when two rams fight.’

‘Did it look like the dead woman had fought for her life?’

‘Yes, but in vain.’

It became so easy to picture, almost horribly sharp. Ellen held the cold, damp can against her forehead. ‘Did you see anyone, or did you hear anything that night?’

‘Nothing. Though actually I did hear some cars. It’s so rare that people drive on this road, and I usually wake up.’

‘Did you recognise her? Had you seen her before?’

He shook his head. ‘I didn’t recognise the car, and her face was so battered that it wasn’t possible to make out who it was.’

She shuddered. ‘Just one last question, and then I’ll go so you can get back to your work. Who came to the scene? Which police officers? Did you get their names?’ Ellen wanted to check with the police that what Ahlvarssonskan had just told her tallied with their version.

‘There was just one policeman. Börje, I think his name was. He seems to be a big shot at the police — you see him in the newspaper sometimes.’

‘Börje Swahn.’ Ellen raised her eyebrows. ‘Was he alone?’

‘Yes. Apparently he was in the vicinity when the alarm came, and he said that a patrol car was on its way.’

‘What time was it then?’

‘Almost six, I think. He asked a few questions and took those finger-tests, and then I drove off.’

Ellen said goodbye and drove back out from Ahlvarssonskan’s farm and towards Stentuna. She rolled down the window to let in a little air. At the crime scene, she slowed down and drove slowly past the pile of flowers, which was still noticeably modest. Then she happened to think of the apology note she’d seen there earlier in the week, the one that had so clearly been written by a child. She wondered whether there was any connection to the police investigation.

As she passed through Solbyn, Hanna Andersson came running out, waving her arms. Ellen stopped.

Hanna was out of breath and sweaty, but looked quite pale as she leant forward and supported herself against the car.

‘Hi, sorry to bother you. Do you have a moment? I need to talk to you about something.’ She looked around. ‘Can you come in, please?’