The Double Silence (18 page)

For several seconds there was only silence on the other end of the line. He could hear her breathing. What was she doing? Trying to think of something to say? Knutas felt his temper rising.

‘But, Anders, we’ve already discussed this. You know that I’m going on a trip with Maria to make the documentary.’

‘What documentary?’

‘Come on. I’ve told you all about it. We’re going to Cape Verde to do a report on childbirth. It’s for the book that Maria is writing.’

Knutas frowned. Cape Verde? Didn’t that sound awfully far away? An image of the football player Henke Larsson flashed through his mind. Wasn’t his father from there? Why on earth were they going there, of all places? He’d barely even heard of the country. At the same time Knutas remembered that Lina had told him something about the trip. But he hadn’t realized that the plans had been finalized.

‘Yes, but do you really have to go there during the summer holidays?’

‘Yes, we do. What’s so strange about that?’

‘And why do you have to be the one to help her with this book?’ he continued stubbornly. ‘Is she paying you anything?’

‘Cut it out. I don’t want to listen to this.’

When Lina got angry or upset, her Danish accent was stronger than usual.

‘But why do you have to go there in August? Isn’t that the rainy season – loads of storms? Won’t it be miserable?’

‘Good God, Anders, we’re not off on holiday. We’re going to work, not lie on the beach. And by the way, I think the weather is good all year round. It’s in Africa, you know.’

‘But I still don’t understand why you have to go.’ Knutas couldn’t help hearing how plaintive he sounded.

Lina sighed.

‘Have you listened to anything I’ve said? The book is about childbirth in various parts of the world. I’m going along to help the author gather factual information and then make comparisons with the situation in Sweden. I’m really looking forward to the trip. End of discussion. Bye.’

She cut off the conversation with a click that echoed in his ears.

EARLY MORNING. HE
parked over by the gardener’s shed and set off on foot. The asphalt under the soles of his shoes was level and dry. His footsteps made no sound and left no prints. He was wearing shorts and a T-shirt, exactly like 90 per cent of the men who lived in the area. In a few hours they would wake in their comfortable beds and get up to have coffee. Then they would sit under the apple trees in the well-kept gardens or on the verandas that they’d built themselves. Everyone had seen enough of Martin Timell or Ernst Kirchsteiger promoting home carpentry projects on TV. They’re the manly role models who reign in a place like this, he thought with a snort. The people were entrenched in their lives here. The cars were parked in the drives with the morning sun reflecting off the windscreens. He passed house after house, noting that the people who lived there were either asleep or away. It was the summer holidays, after all. But for him no such concept existed. For him, the time of year didn’t matter; he lived outside the normal world. He’d left it behind long ago, although no one could tell just by looking at him.

The house was at the very end of the street, near the little turning circle. A double garage, a gravel path that led to the somewhat ostentatious entrance with the pillars on either side and curving steps. Blue-painted clay pots planted with flowers that draped perfectly over the sides. A neatly mown lawn. First he merely walked past the house, pretending not to show any interest. A car was parked in the drive. A newspaper was sticking out of the letterbox. So the newspaper boy had already been there. Good. Nice and quiet. He glanced at his watch. Six fifteen. He took a quick look
around before he slipped unnoticed on to the well-maintained property and crept around the corner of the house to the back, which faced the woods. Swiftly he surveyed the garden. A greenhouse that occupied the middle of the lawn revealed that football was not a priority here, but a trampoline stood in the far corner. A shed for gardening equipment, a covered bicycle rack, a group of patio furniture on the lawn, with more chairs up on the deck.

A low wooden fence surrounded the property, easy to climb over. He cautiously stepped on to the deck. It creaked loudly under his feet. At one end of the house a trellis had been put up to keep anyone from looking in. No neighbours from that direction would be able to see him. And, fortunately, the family that lived on the other side seemed to be away. There hadn’t been a car in the drive for several days. He would not be disturbed.

He moved forward and grasped the handle of the deck door. Locked, of course. He hadn’t expected anything different. He peered inside. The kitchen was modern and typically designed with an open floor plan facing the living room. The refrigerator and freezer and cooker hood were all made of stainless steel. Tiles on the floor. Shiny white kitchen cupboards. Hardly anything on the counters except for a gleaming coffee maker, kettle and mixer. No curtains or rugs; everything bright and shiny. Attractive but impersonal. Almost like in a furniture shop. Did these people spend as much time cleaning up after themselves as they did living? He discovered that he was breathing so hard on the windowpane that it had clouded up. He knew exactly what he had to do. He took off his backpack and got out his gloves and picklocks.

Then he set to work.

THE DARKNESS OF
night had faded, giving way to a hesitant morning light. A haze covered the sun. Janis Ullmanis was cycling as fast as he could over the bumpy cobblestone street lined with low, dilapidated brick houses on either side. The cramped inner courtyards were hidden behind tall wooden fences. The boy stopped so abruptly at the last house that his tyres shrieked. Then he knocked on the double window on the corner. The secret signal. Three quick raps, two slow, again three quick ones. He waited for thirty seconds as he caught his breath, then he repeated the same sequence. He’d barely finished the final rap before the door in the fence opened with a loud squeak. A pale boy’s face appeared. Two dark eyes under close-cropped hair. Bruno Lesinski was Janis’s best friend, and they were in the same class at school. But right now it was the summer holidays, with all that entailed, and school seemed far away.

‘Are you ready?’ asked Janis.

Bruno held his index finger to his lips and whispered, ‘Shh. My mother is such a light sleeper.’ Then he cast a glance over his shoulder before grabbing his bicycle, which was parked just inside the fence.

The next second they were on their way. They pedalled hard, riding along side by side since there were no cars on the road. Two skinny thirteen-year-olds with scraped knees, filled with anticipation. They’d fastened their nets and buckets to the bike panniers. They headed to the
shore just beyond the harbour. But it wasn’t fish that they were going to catch.

Ventspils was a rundown little town about 160 kilometres west of the capital of Riga, but its harbour was one of the biggest in Latvia. It was considerably oversized in comparison to the modest town with only fifty thousand inhabitants, but it was strategically located, close to both Sweden and Finland and right on the mouth of the Venta River, in the direct path of the Russian natural-gas pipeline. For that reason it had expanded rapidly and become one of the largest ports on the Baltic Sea. The town hadn’t kept up with its growth.

The boys passed the two piers that extended into the outer harbour like protective arms, breaking the waves and embracing visitors from the sea. At the end of each pier stood a lighthouse guarding the entrance. To the south a promenade had been built and it was very popular because it also provided a vantage point with an impressive view. At the moment nobody was there.

The long sandy beach began just beyond the south pier and stretched for several kilometres. The sand was coarse and the water quite murky. Rubbish was scattered about: ice-cream wrappers, plastic bottles and pieces of rusty old junk. But it was still a popular place for people to sunbathe in the summertime. The people who lived in Ventspils were not very particular.

When the boys reached the beach, they found it deserted except for a few seagulls strutting about in search of something to eat. The strong winds of the night had subsided, and the hesitant rays of the sun were growing stronger. It was just past seven o’clock, and the fishing boats that were usually moored at the dock had already gone out to sea.

Janis and Bruno knew that they had to get an early start if they were to have any luck at all. A few days earlier a woman from the area had found a piece of amber that weighed over a kilo at this very spot on the beach. And interest in looking for the amber had increased considerably.

They flung their bicycles down on the sand, picked up their buckets and nets, and squelched along the water’s edge in their ungainly sea boots. Sometimes it was possible to find several hectograms of amber in one day
after a strong wind. The amber was torn away from the sea floor or seaweed and tossed on to shore by the surging waves.

Eagerly the two boys searched the beach. Hunched over and with their eyes fixed on the ground, they scanned the shore, centimetre by centimetre. Every once in a while they talked about how they would spend the money they were going to get for the amber. If they were lucky.

A little later Bruno called to Janis, who assumed that he must have found some amber. He turned around expectantly to look at his friend, who had stopped some distance away. Bruno was pointing out towards the water.

‘Look at that!’ he yelled.

An empty rowing boat was bobbing on the waves. It looked old and leaky, with a rusty motor at the stern. The rowlocks were empty. It had obviously been drifting about, probably after the high winds of the night had torn it from its mooring.

‘Let’s bring it in,’ suggested Bruno. ‘Maybe we can keep it.’

‘It’d be great to have our own boat! Then we could go out fishing and put out nets,’ exclaimed Janis. He pictured the two of them setting out to sea. If they were lucky, nobody would lay claim to the boat. It had probably come from far away, drifting out of Riga Bay and continuing south along the coast. It looked so decrepit that the owner might not make much of an effort to track it down.

Bruno waded out into the water until it reached way over the tops of his boots. He reached for the prow and pulled on the boat. Janis hurried forward to help, but then stopped abruptly. Bruno heard his friend breathing hard.

In the bottom of the boat lay a gaunt old man, curled up in a foetal position. He was wearing a dark-blue woollen pullover and black trousers. His head was half hidden under one arm, but it was clear that he was badly injured. A huge gash was visible on his forehead, crusted with blood.

The man wasn’t moving.

DETECTIVE INSPECTOR MARTIN
Kihlgård of the National Criminal Police arrived early the following morning. Kihlgård had assisted the Visby police on several previous occasions, and it was obvious from the reception he received at police headquarters that he was more than welcome. Everyone seemed aware that the boisterous and popular colleague from Stockholm had arrived, because more and more people poured out of their offices to greet him. Knutas couldn’t help being impressed by the sheer number of friendships that Kihlgård had managed to make among the police during the time he’d spent on Gotland. He seemed to know more people than Knutas did, which was admittedly a bit annoying. He’d always felt slightly competitive towards Kihlgård, even though he tried to hide it. He actually found the effusive welcome rather pathetic, since it was exactly what was expected whenever NCP officers arrived in an out-of-the-way town to offer assistance. In spite of the island’s sixty thousand inhabitants, their district was small potatoes compared to Stockholm. But there was no denying that Kihlgård was a nice guy. In addition to his fun-loving personality and good humour, he was energetic, tenacious and fearless. He also possessed a sensitivity and empathy for others that he put to good use in his job as police interrogator. One of Kihlgård’s most distinguishing traits was his tremendous love of food. There was never any risk of too much time passing between meals whenever he was around. Knutas noted that a large basket of fresh cinnamon rolls had been ordered for their usual morning coffee, just so that Kihlgård would feel at home.

He’d brought along two colleagues, and as soon as the introductions were over, everyone sat down for the meeting.

Knutas began by giving a brief summary of the case and reporting on the latest developments.

‘Right now we’re putting all of our efforts into finding the woman who disappeared a week ago. Stina Ek.’

Kihlgård pushed his glasses up on to his forehead and leaned back in his chair.

‘As I understand it, you consider her a prime suspect. Is that right?’

‘Yes, at least the way things stand at the moment. But we’re not locking ourselves into any particular theory.’

‘That’s good. She could just as well be a victim. How are you going about searching for this Stina Ek? And by the way, do you have a photograph of her?’

‘Of course.’

Erik Sohlman got up and clicked on his computer to produce a picture on the screen at the front of the room. It was a photo of Stina Ek. She was a beautiful woman. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail. She wore a white blouse, a pink cardigan and jeans.

Kihlgård studied the photo thoughtfully.

‘And you said that she’s thirty-seven years old? Christ, she doesn’t look more than twenty.’

‘The picture is a couple of years old,’ muttered Sohlman. ‘But she does look awfully young.’

‘Nobody has seen her since she left for a bicycle ride on Fårö, except for a crew member on the Stora Karlsö ferry,’ said Jacobsson. ‘He thinks that he saw her, but he’s not sure.’

Kihlgård shook his head, but didn’t take his eyes off the photo.

‘We did find a few traces of her,’ Knutas reminded the others. ‘Her bag, plus what was found on Stora Karlsö.’

‘The last person to see Stina Ek was her husband Håkan. On Fårö, on the afternoon of Saturday, the twenty-eighth of June. Just before she left for her bike ride. After that no one has seen either her or her bicycle. In my opinion, that’s where we need to start. Where did Stina go? Who did she
meet? What happened? Who is the man that she claimed to have met, the old classmate of hers?’ Kihlgård gave Knutas an enquiring glance. ‘Have you talked to him?’