Still Waters (Sandhamn Murders Book 1) (14 page)

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31

The sun was blazing down in spite of the fact that it was only eleven in the morning. Even the cry of the gulls sounded more tired than usual in the heat. The boys had spread out their buckets and spades and had started to build a sandcastle down by the water.

Nora had positioned herself so she could keep an eye on them while reading her book. It was by an English author and was about combining life as a professional woman working full-time with bringing up young children. She was completely absorbed by a hilarious chapter where the mother discovers late one evening that her daughter is supposed to take mince pies into school the following day for a bake sale. In desperation she buys a batch from the supermarket and bashes them with a rolling pin to make them look homemade.

Nora understood exactly how she felt. She stretched in the sun, enjoying the heat. Then she shaped the sand under her towel to provide better support for her neck. Little piles of fine sand had already accumulated in the towel’s creases, in spite of the fact that she had only been lying there for a short while.

Simon came rushing over with his bucket. “Come and help us build a sandcastle!” He threw his sandy arms around her neck.

Nora smiled and kissed his forehead. “Why not?” she said. She put down her book and picked up a spare bucket and spade. She adjusted her bikini and walked down to the water, glancing out across the waves. In the distance she could see an odd shape, a long, dark lump, floating some distance offshore. It looked like an old, rotten log, bobbing awkwardly with the movement of the water.

Something wasn’t right.

“Hang on, I’m just going to look at something,” she shouted to the boys. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

She waded out a little way, but it was difficult to see because of the bright sunshine reflected on the water. She tried to shade her eyes with one hand as she moved farther out. The light was so intense that it dazzled her, however much she screwed up her eyes. Soon she was a good thirty yards from the shore and was able to make out more than a vague outline.

Then she realized what it was.

Her hand flew to her mouth in horror.

“This can’t be happening,” she whispered. “Not again.”

She took a deep breath and cautiously moved closer. A man’s body was floating facedown in front of her. He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, and had longish brown hair. She couldn’t tell whether he was dead or not, but she started to run through the water as fast as she could. It was hard work, and it felt as if it was taking an eternity to cover those last few strides.

When she reached the body she grabbed an arm. Touching it felt strange, but it was surprisingly easy to turn the body over. Once it was on its back, she recognized the man immediately.

Jonny Almhult, Ellen’s son.

Jonny who had mended their fence and lived just a short distance away.

Nora felt the cold sweat break out on her forehead. It was the first time she had touched a dead body. It was almost like a film, but this was real.

She fought off the impulse to throw up and bit her lip hard. Jonny’s body must be brought ashore. The police must be informed immediately.

She glanced over at Adam and Simon. They were still playing and didn’t seem interested in what she was doing.

They mustn’t see the body.

Nora tried to wave to some people on the beach to show she needed help, but none of them noticed. She didn’t yell, because she didn’t want to frighten the children. Instead, she took ahold of Jonny’s T-shirt and started dragging him toward the shore. It took all her strength, and her arms began to ache after only a couple of minutes. She ended up nudging the body along, as far away from the boys as possible. When she finally got him to the water’s edge, both sweat and tears were pouring down her face.

“Don’t come over here,” she shouted to the boys, waving them away. “Stay where you are.”

She ran to her bag and grabbed her phone. She called Thomas as quickly as she could. “It’s Nora. I’m on Trouville beach. I’ve just found Jonny Almhult. He was floating in the water. Like a lump of wood. He’s dead.” She started giggling hysterically and pinched her arm to stop herself. “Sorry. It was just so horrible. I’m here with the boys. I don’t know what to do.” The last sentence ended in a sob. She felt dizzy and could hardly stay on her feet.

Thomas’s familiar voice was a relief. It was the first time she had encountered him in a professional capacity. Just talking to him calmed her down.

“Listen to me, Nora. Take deep, slow breaths. You’re starting to hyperventilate; you need to calm down.”

“OK.” Nora could hear her own voice as if it were coming from a distance. It sounded weak and breathless.

“Sit down on the sand. Are you going to faint?”

“I don’t know,” Nora said.

“Put your head down, and try to slow your breathing.”

Nora did as she was told, and after a few minutes she started to feel better.

“You need to stay there until I get to you,” Thomas said. “Can you do that?”

“I’ll try.”

“I’m already in the village. I just need to borrow a bike. You can do this. I know you can. Just stay calm. I’ll be there in no time.”

Nora tucked her legs beneath her on the warm sand. It was unreal, seeing a dead body just a few feet away.

In the distance she could see Adam looking anxiously in her direction. He probably thought her blood sugar was low because of her diabetes. Which was better than him finding out what had really happened.

She waved at him.

“Play with Simon,” she shouted. “I’ll be there soon.”

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In the afternoon, Jonny’s body was taken to the forensic pathologist in Solna. After that, Thomas spent a few hours at the local station, which by this time was starting to feel like home. He settled down in the small interview room on the first floor, which had been transformed into a temporary office. He did all the necessary paperwork and called both Persson and Margit to inform them that Jonny Almhult was no longer missing.

Dead. Probably drowned.

With some difficulty he persuaded Persson to allow him to remain on the island, rather than travel back to the mainland to attend the press conference, which had been arranged for seven o’clock that evening—just in time to make the evening bulletins.

Thomas insisted that someone had to inform Ellen Almhult that her son was no longer alive. He wasn’t looking forward to the task, but common decency dictated that it couldn’t be entrusted to anyone else. Besides which, the idea of participating in a press conference wasn’t remotely appealing, and there were plenty of others who enjoyed that kind of thing.

Persson raised objections but eventually gave in after complaining about all the idiots who kept asking him for information he didn’t have. The chief constable wanted to be kept up to date daily, while at the same time making it clear that he wasn’t happy about the fact that
his
vacation was being interrupted.

What was he complaining about? At least he was having a vacation!

Persson didn’t have much time for bureaucrats within the police service who spent their time breathing down the necks of officers in the field. They must be allowed to carry out their investigations without interference; that was his mantra, which he repeated to anyone who tried to meddle.

Thomas stared at the calendar on the beige wall. Eighteen days had now passed since the bright summer morning when Krister Berggren’s body had been found on Sandhamn’s western shore. Eighteen days, which meant it was four hundred and thirty-two hours since the first body turned up. If his minicalculator was working, they’d had 25,920 minutes at their disposal to work out why first Krister Berggren and then his cousin had lost their lives.

If they had succeeded, perhaps Jonny Almhult would have been alive today, instead of having been found floating facedown off Trouville beach.

And Ellen Almhult, who was already a widow, would not have lost her only son.

Deep down Thomas firmly believed all three had been murdered by the same person. His instincts told him that the deaths were linked and that someone who had no hesitation about killing those who stood in his way was hiding in the shadows.

But how were they going to find him?

Thomas clenched both fists so tightly that his fingers ached. He hadn’t a clue why someone had taken the lives of three people. The only thing he did know was that there was a murderer on the loose on Sandhamn.

And that the police had no idea who it was or how to prevent the next murder.

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The atmosphere in the station was subdued and oppressive. Routine matters were dealt with unenthusiastically. Most people sat around talking in small groups after their shift; even those who had finished for the day stayed on and chatted.

Everyone knew Ellen and her family.

Jonny’s father, Georg Almhult, had been a part of the village community, an islander born and bred on Sandhamn. He might have had a few too many drinks now and again, but he had never been violent or unpleasant. Ellen Almhult had had a sharp tongue when she was younger, so there had been a certain amount of sympathy when her husband occasionally turned to the bottle. She had fallen out with various people over the years, but at a time like this, all the old grudges were forgotten.

The sorrow at losing a villager was mixed with fear over what had happened—and could happen again. Anxiety seeped through every façade and was reflected in the eyes of all those present. Some of the women were weeping as they talked. No one would be leaving the front door unlocked tonight.

“Thomas,” said Åsa, one of the girls who worked at the station. She had moved to the island a few years ago when she had gotten together with a man who lived there. “Come and have some fresh coffee. Should I make you a sandwich? You look worn out.”

Thomas smiled at her. “Thanks. That would be great. I don’t think I’ve eaten much today.”

Thomas went upstairs to the break room, and Åsa soon arrived with a substantial cheese sandwich and a cup of coffee. The room was sparsely furnished; there was a plain wooden table and two chairs by the window, and at one end of the room someone had managed to squeeze in a bed, which barely fit.

This was where Thomas used to spend the night when he was with the maritime police and couldn’t get back to Harö or the mainland.

He attacked the sandwich while gazing out at the old sandpit where sailing ships had collected sand as ballast for hundreds of years at the price of two öre per ton. It had been abandoned and fenced off long ago, and only an angular, unnatural sandy slope bore witness to its past.

Åsa broke the silence. “Is your sandwich OK?”

Thomas took another bite. “It’s delicious, thank you. I feel much better. That was just what I needed.”

They both fell silent. Åsa looked upset; it was obvious that she had been crying. “I just can’t understand why anyone would want to kill poor Jonny,” she said. “You couldn’t find a more harmless soul. I don’t think he’s done a bad thing in his life.”

“I don’t know, Åsa. Sometimes things happen, and we just can’t understand them.”

“And I can’t work out what he had to do with those cousins. I’ve never even heard of them before. They weren’t exactly familiar faces here.” She let out a small sob.

“I think there has to be a link we’re just not seeing,” Thomas said. “Jonny and Kicki Berggren somehow bumped into one another, but right now we don’t know how or why.”

“I don’t see how there can be a link. Jonny didn’t have many friends, particularly outside Sandhamn. He hardly ever left the island unless he had to. He hated going over to the mainland. He used to say he couldn’t breathe in the city.” She shook her head.

Thomas stretched his weary muscles and gazed out at the sandpit once more. It must have been a hard life, loading sand onto the passing ships that moored at the huge anchors that had been buried in the harbor way back in the eighteenth century. Many of the workers died young, worn out by their labor.

He finished the sandwich and wiped his mouth with a napkin. “Thanks again. I’d better make a move; I’ve still got a few things to do.” He paused in the doorway. “Listen, I might grab a few hours of sleep here if it gets too late to travel back to Harö. I probably won’t make it to the city tonight.”

Åsa nodded and managed a little smile. “That’s no problem. You can have the room overnight if you need it. You’ve got a key, right?”

Thomas suddenly felt a rush of nostalgia as he thought of all those late nights when he was with the maritime police. “I do. It’ll be just like the good old days, when we only had drunk teenagers and the odd stolen boat to worry about.” Thomas tried to muster an encouraging smile, but it turned into more of a grimace. He didn’t want to let Åsa see how worried he really was. It was difficult to maintain a positive approach in the face of the anxious expressions around him.

They had to find a pattern, or they would never be able to track down the murderer. Somewhere there was a clue they had missed. There had to be.

When Thomas left the center he took the narrow lane to the right leading down to the promenade, which passed between two yellow wooden houses built at the end of the nineteenth century.

He stopped at the kiosk and looked at the newspaper placards; they were designed to attract maximum attention.

“Extra,” they said in thick black letters. “Another Murder on Sandhamn! Second Man Found Dead!”

It was incredible how quickly the press found out about what had happened. They’d only just got the body to Solna, and the stories were already in print.

One thing was certain: Persson wouldn’t be pleased about the fresh speculation in the media.

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By the time Thomas knocked on Nora’s door and walked in, she was feeling a little better. She had curled up in a wicker chair on the veranda with a blanket wrapped around her. On the table next to her were a big cup of tea and a pastry, which she had crumbled into tiny pieces.

Her parents had taken the boys down to the harbor to give her some space and the chance to recover from the shock of finding Jonny’s body.

Nora really wished Henrik were home, but he was still out sailing. The regatta wouldn’t end until about five o’clock, and the idea of calling him on his cell phone when he was in the middle of a competition was out of the question.

She was so sick of his sailing that she could have screamed. Where was he when she needed him?

Even though there was brilliant sunshine outside, Nora was so cold she couldn’t stop shaking. Her brain registered the fact that it was warm inside the house, but the goose bumps on her arms and legs told another story.

She couldn’t get the image of the dead body in the water out of her mind. Those unseeing eyes staring at her when she turned him over. A thin strand of hair bobbing up and down with the movement of the sea. A limp arm floating on the surface.

Who would dare to visit Sandhamn after this? Who would be next? What if a child were killed? She shuddered again.

When Thomas and his colleague had arrived in Trouville, they had quickly taken charge of the situation.

The other people on the beach had been asked to leave. An area covering half the shore had been cordoned off with police tape—a familiar sight to many residents of Sandhamn by this time.

Shortly after, a police launch appeared and moored by the rocks. The same rocks from which Nora had once dived for her bronze and silver medals.

The launch dropped off an investigative team that quickly went to work. When photographs had been taken from every possible angle and any piece of available evidence had been secured, they respectfully prepared the body for transportation to Stavsnäs, where a hearse was waiting.

Thomas called Nora’s parents, who cycled over to pick up the children. Lars and Susanne looked around with horrified expressions but did their best to remain calm. The boys didn’t want to go. There were far too many exciting things going on. There were police officers everywhere by this stage, and Adam could hardly wait to tell his friends at swimming lessons about the big police launch.

In the end, Thomas spoke to them in his most authoritative police officer’s voice in order to get them to cooperate; the fact that they were also promised big ice cream cones probably helped, too.

Once the boys had gone off with their grandparents, Thomas gently asked Nora a few questions. Then he told her to go home and rest. Quietly think over everything that had happened.

They agreed that Thomas would stop by later so she could tell him in more detail about how she had found the body and what she had seen.

While she was waiting for Thomas, she fell asleep and dreamed that she was desperately swimming to reach the shore, while unattached legs and arms floated around her. The water was red with blood, staining her bikini.

“Can you tell me what happened?” Thomas began.

He had made a fresh pot of tea and settled down in a white wicker chair next to Nora on the veranda. The only sound was the gentle ticking of the kitchen clock. He waited patiently for her to find the right words.

After a while she began a hesitant account of the whole course of events, from seeing the odd, motionless shape in the water to the moment Thomas arrived.

“Did you notice whether the body was floating from a particular direction?” he asked.

Nora closed her eyes, her expression uncertain. “He was just lying in the water. There was hardly a breeze.”

“Was there anyone else on the beach who could have thrown him in?”

“There was hardly anybody there when we arrived. I noticed two or three people over toward the little beach but nobody on the side where he was floating.”

“And you didn’t see any boats that could have dumped the body in the water?”

Nora looked doubtful. “It was really quiet. I remember thinking we were early, because there were so few people on the beach.”

She fell silent, as if she were trawling through her memory. Then she told him about the bright sunshine that had almost dazzled her as she tried to make out the shape. “I didn’t really see anything else.”

“Do you remember anything unusual, anything that seemed out of place?” Thomas leaned forward. “Try to remember everything you can. Someone you didn’t recognize, or someone behaving oddly.”

Nora plucked at the Kleenex in her hand. Little bits of white fluff were starting to come off; it wilted immediately in the face of Nora’s despair.

In his mind’s eye Thomas could see Kicki Berggren sitting opposite him just a couple of weeks earlier, shredding a paper tissue in exactly the same way as she learned of her cousin’s death.

“I’m sorry,” Nora said, “but I can’t remember anything special. Nothing that might explain how Jonny ended up in the water.” She started to cry again, clutching the teacup with both hands. “It just feels so unreal. I can’t believe Jonny’s dead.”

Thomas patted her hand. “I know. This sort of thing just shouldn’t happen. If I knew who was behind it I’d put a stop to it, I can promise you that.” He sank back in the chair and linked his hands behind his head. He was worried about Nora. She looked pale and frozen beneath her tan. The shock was clear in her slow movements. Her eyes were crimson from crying, and her nose was swollen.

“When will Henrik be back? I don’t want you to be alone.”

Nora shrugged. “I expect he’ll be back in a few hours. But I’ll be fine—don’t worry. The boys are with Mom and Dad. I can easily go over there if I need some company.” She grabbed a fresh tissue and blew her nose. “I think I might try to get some sleep, actually. You go—I know you’ve got things to do.”

Thomas gave her an encouraging nod. “A few hours of sleep will do you good. Call me if you think of anything or if you just need to talk. I’ll keep my phone on. If I don’t hear from you, I’ll call you in the morning.”

Thomas stood on the steps for a moment, weighing his phone in his hand as he wondered whether to call Henrik or not. He was always pleased to see Henrik and Nora, but right from the start Thomas had been aware of a kind of resistance on Henrik’s part, something that stopped Thomas from feeling relaxed in his company. It was as if Henrik couldn’t quite come to terms with the solid, understated friendship between Nora and Thomas. Thomas didn’t think Henrik was jealous; it was more as if their friendship somehow encroached on the private territory that Nora’s husband believed should be reserved for a marriage.

There was an underlying distance between the two men that never quite disappeared in spite of the fact that they had known each other for a long time. Henrik’s upper-middle-class background and deeply conservative values didn’t exactly improve matters.

On top of that, Henrik was a doctor and was used to everyone listening to him whenever he had something to say. There was an element of authoritativeness in him that sometimes annoyed Thomas. And the way in which Henrik would interrupt Nora in the middle of a sentence or the irritation that was apparent when she didn’t always agree with him made Thomas wonder occasionally about the balance within their relationship.

He decided that he would call Henrik and leave a message, so he would know what had happened before he got home. With a bit of luck he might realize that his wife needed him.