Without the name of the witness who claimed Jenny had been run down by a Porsche, I had nothing to go on. So I was left with the hunt for Mio. Madeleine and I parted with a promise to be in touch again soon. We smiled and hugged each other warmly. But when she turned and walked away I knew that something had changed. Madeleine was (and is) a loyal friend, and would do whatever she could to help me. But seriously – how relaxing is it to spend time with someone suspected of having committed two murders?
Madeleine didn’t think she’d have any trouble getting hold of both the name of the witness and a photograph of Mio. But I was more doubtful.
‘There must be a picture of the boy,’ she said. ‘How else would the police have been able to look for him?’
I’d been wondering that too. All I knew for certain was that there wasn’t a single photograph of him in the material I’d been able to check for myself. The boy was like a ghost. I could sense his presence somewhere close to me, but I couldn’t reach him. And that bothered me. Or rather, it frustrated me. Because I’m not the sort of man who believes in fairy tales, nor ghosts either, for that matter. The fact that I still didn’t know what he looked like was starting to annoy me more and more.
Jeanette Roos, Mio’s maternal grandmother, didn’t want anything to do with me. His aunt, Marion, did eventually reply to the message I’d left on her phone. She didn’t have any photographs of her nephew, she said in a text message. Of course not. She hadn’t cared a damn about her sister, so why would she have any pictures of her child?
I only have two personal photographs on my desk. They’re both of Belle. But that certainly wasn’t the case when my sister and brother-in-law were still alive. I blushed when I realised that if Belle had gone missing while my sister had been alive and someone had asked if I had a picture of her, the answer would have been no. Belle had been a baby when my sister died. She was of no interest to me. My sister and I used to meet up occasionally, for dinner or a drink. There was nothing wrong with my sister, but her husband was a different matter. If it hadn’t been for him, we’d have seen far more of each other. But I wouldn’t have had any photographs of Belle. In that regard I wasn’t the slightest bit better than Marion.
I thought about Sara’s brother, Bobby. He had genuinely loved her, and wanted to clear her name. He ought to have had some pictures of his nephew. On his phone, if nowhere else. But I had no idea how I was supposed to get hold of that. I have to admit that I was starting to feel disheartened. Bobby had been based in Switzerland when he died. That was where he lived and worked, and that was where he had a girlfriend. Maybe I could get hold of her, ask her to dig out some old family photographs from whatever he had left behind? But in order to do that, I needed to know what her name was, and how to get hold of her. And I didn’t.
I snatched up my phone and called Marion Tell again. This time she answered at once.
‘I thought I made it clear that I don’t have any photographs,’ she said.
‘You don’t, but Bobby’s girlfriend might,’ I said. ‘How do I find her?’
‘Goodness, I’ve got no idea. But perhaps she’ll be moving back home now that Bobby’s dead.’
‘Home? So she’s not from Switzerland?’
‘No, certainly not. They moved down there together. He went to work as a lorry driver, she as a hairdresser.’
It was difficult to imagine a more unlikely move. Statistically speaking, they had to be pretty much unique. No one moves to Switzerland to drive lorries or cut hair. No one. Yet that was precisely what they had done.
‘Why?’ I said. ‘Why in God’s name did they move?’
‘Bobby claimed he’d earn more money there. And there was all the fuss about Sara. I don’t think he was feeling that great.’
I toyed with a pen on my desk. Sara’s family didn’t know I was suspected of having murdered Bobby (even if Bobby’s mother already held me responsible). So in that respect there was nothing odd about Marion being so unguarded when she spoke to me. But Marion was also a woman who had lost both her brother and her sister in the space of a year. Her only siblings. Regardless of whether she’d been close to them or not, their deaths ought to have left some sort of mark on her.
‘How do you mean, “all the fuss about Sara”?’ I said. ‘I thought she got her act together when she became a mother?’
Marion sighed.
‘I suppose she held it together, more or less. But there was still something chaotic about her life. If you ask Mum, she’d say Bobby moved after Sara died, but that’s just her getting mixed up. He moved some time before that. I kept out of the way, didn’t want to get involved in all that nonsense. I assume it had something to do with her old friends. Those violent thugs.’
Something chaotic about her life. Yes, that was certainly one way of putting it. I bit my lip to stop myself blurting out what I knew. That Sara had managed to have a child with Satan himself, and that he hadn’t given her a moment’s peace after she fled with his unborn child in her womb.
‘I want to get in touch with Bobby’s girlfriend,’ I said. ‘What’s her name, and how do I reach her?’
‘Her name’s Malin,’ Marion said. ‘I don’t know how you could contact her. I have absolutely no interest in helping you.’
I ignored her comment.
‘You never met her?’
A stupid question, but one that was worth asking.
‘No. But I assume we’re likely to meet tomorrow.’
I was surprised.
‘So soon? Could you tell her from me that—?’
‘No, no, and no. I’m not going to pass on any messages from you. Tomorrow is Bobby’s funeral. And you know what? I think you should come.’
‘Er . . .’ I began.
‘Yes, come along,’ Marion said. ‘You seem to have been much closer to Bobby than I was. Come along to the funeral and feel like a member of the family.’
Her voice was dripping with sarcasm and made me squirm.
There was no way I could go to Bobby’s funeral, was there?
My grandmother once said that before you turn sixty you attend less than five funerals, and then a countless number of them after that. She wasn’t a nice person, my grandmother. So I didn’t go to her funeral. Nor did my mum, Marianne, or my sister. What would we have been doing there? Celebrating the fact that the old bag was dead?
Before I decided to go to Bobby’s funeral, I’d been to three in the past. A friend’s, my brother-in-law’s, and my sister’s. The last one was the toughest. Someone had heard my sister say that if she died, she wanted everyone to wear bright clothes at her funeral. So I showed up in my best summer suit and a pale blue shirt. There was a big photograph of my sister on top of the coffin. The contrast between us couldn’t have been more pronounced. In the picture she was so blonde that her hair looked almost white. She had a fetching suntan. On her lap sat little Belle, just as fair as her mother. And there I sat, in the front pew. Her black half-brother. A man hardly anyone recognised because my sister and I preferred to meet up alone or not at all.
It was a fantastic, beautiful summer’s day, and the singing of the children’s choir had almost raised the roof. My brother-in-law had a separate funeral. It rained then. My mother couldn’t stop crying as she buried her only daughter. Lucy was the same. But I just sat there staring at the white coffin and trying to understand how such a young person could just cease to be from one day to the next. I still haven’t got to grips with that. Or else I simply haven’t accepted it. I hate the fact that life is finite.
‘Are you crazy?’ Lucy said when I told her of my plan later that evening. ‘Surely even you can see that there’s no way you can attend the funeral?’
‘You mean because the police think I was the person who ran him down and killed him?’
‘Duh, yes.’
‘Lucy, no one knows about that stupid theory. Thank God.’
‘What if the police are there?’
‘The police? Why the hell would they be at Bobby’s funeral?’
She shrugged.
‘Maybe to see if the murderer shows up?’
‘But Lucy . . .’
I couldn’t help laughing. I ought to have been screaming, though. Yet another night at home with Lucy. We had now reached a – to my mind – dizzyingly large number of them.
I became serious.
‘They only do that in films,’ I said.
We ate in relative silence. Relative, because Belle was playing at being a one-man band on her side of the table. She ate a surprising amount, and Lucy and I had to restrain ourselves from bursting out in celebration in front of her.
‘How did you get on with the preschool staff today?’ Lucy said as we were clearing the table. ‘You said you were going to check them out?’
I admitted that I hadn’t got very far. And then I told her about Madeleine Rossander. Lucy listened attentively.
‘Good move,’ she said. ‘She’s trustworthy as well as very useful.’
Madeleine and Lucy are very different. Something to do with maturity. I always think of Madeleine as being older than me and Lucy, even though she isn’t. We were actually born in the same year. But she has a depth, a solidity that neither Lucy nor I possess.
I checked the mobile in my left pocket. No missed calls from Madeleine. Nor from the mysterious Susanne. In the other pocket was my other mobile. My normal one. The one I used to use before my life turned into an adult version of musical chairs.
I put the plates in the dishwasher. Lucy rinsed the saucepans. Belle was feeding her doll with water. Then my old phone rang. Lucy and I both started. I took it out from my pocket. I recognised the start of the number on the screen instantly.
‘Hello, Martin, how are you?’
Didrik Stihl’s voice exuded hearty common-sense. Even so, hearing it made me feel nervous. Any contact with Superintendent Stihl could only mean problems, or more bad news.
‘Fine, thanks.’
‘That’s good to hear. Listen, can you come in tomorrow?’
I felt my heart lurch. Up to that point my visits to Police Headquarters hadn’t exactly contributed anything of great value to my life. And I had other plans for tomorrow. Because I was going to a funeral.
‘What am I suspected of doing now?’
‘Another murder.’
I practically stood to attention.
‘Sorry?’
But Didrik ignored me.
‘So we’ll see you tomorrow? Ten o’clock?’
‘Not a fucking chance,’ I said. ‘What the hell are you playing at? You can’t behave like this. Calling here and . . .’
And what? Unsettling me. Getting me off balance. Making me panic. I forced myself to think sensibly. Didrik would never have called and said what he had if they had anything solid to go on. He wanted to scare me, trick me into saying or doing something stupid. He wasn’t going to win that easily.
‘Who’s dead?’ I said.
‘We can take that tomorrow,’ he said.
‘Wrong. We can take that now.’
‘Ten o’clock tomorrow morning,’ Didrik said. ‘Try not to be late.’
I tried – as quickly as I could – to work out whose turn it was. Who else knew too much? Who else had to die?
A name popped into my head: Elias Krom. The guy who had come to my office pretending to be Bobby. The guy who dragged me into this whole mess.
‘It’s Elias Krom, isn’t it?’
I said it so fast that I just managed to get it out before he ended the call. I heard Didrik breathing down the line. He wasn’t going to get away with what he’d just done. Making nuisance calls to someone suspected of murder.
‘See you tomorrow,’ he said.
And hung up.