The Hidden Child (6 page)

A feeling of panic overtook her. Where was Herman? Was he going to be away for long? He hadn’t gone off on a trip, had he? Leaving her here? Maybe even leaving her for good? Was that what his lips had said in the vague memory that had crossed her mind? She needed to make sure that wasn’t the case. She had to go look and make sure his things were still here. Britta sprang from the sofa and dashed upstairs. Panic pounded in her ears like a tidal wave. What exactly had Herman said? A glance in the wardrobe reassured her. All his things were there: jackets, sweaters, shirts. Everything was there. But she still didn’t know where he was.

Britta threw herself on to the bed, curled up like a little child, and wept. Inside her brain, things kept on disappearing. Second by second, minute by minute, the hard-disk of her life was being erased. And there was nothing she could do about it.

‘Hi! That was quite a walk the two of you took. You’ve been gone a long time.’ Erica came to greet Patrik and Maja, who gave her mother a sloppy kiss.

‘Uh-huh. Shouldn’t you be working?’ Patrik avoided looking Erica in the eye.

‘Yes, well . . .’ Erica sighed. ‘I’m having trouble getting started. I sit and stare at the screen, eating chocolates. If this keeps up, I’ll weigh fourteen stone by the time the book is finished.’ She helped Patrik take off Maja’s outer garments. ‘I couldn’t resist having a look at Mamma’s diaries.’

‘Anything interesting?’ asked Patrik, relieved that he wasn’t going to have to answer any more questions about why they’d taken such a long walk.

‘Not really. It’s mostly about day-to-day life. But I only read a few pages. I need to take it in small doses.’

Erica went out to the kitchen and, as if to change the subject, she said, ‘Shall we have some tea?’

‘That’d be great,’ said Patrik, hanging up his coat and Maja’s. He followed Erica out to the kitchen, watching her as she busied herself putting on the water and getting out the teabags and cups. They could hear Maja playing with her toys in the living room. After a few minutes Erica set two steaming cups of tea on the kitchen table, and they sat down across from each other.

‘Okay, let’s hear it,’ she said, studying Patrik. She knew him so well. The expression in his eyes under the shock of hair, the nervous drumming of his fingers; there was something he either didn’t want to tell her or didn’t dare.

‘What do you mean?’ he asked, trying to look innocent.

‘Don’t you go blinking those baby blue eyes at me. What aren’t you telling me?’ She took a sip of the hot tea and waited with amusement for him to stop squirming and get to the point.

‘Well . . .’

‘Yes?’ said Erica helpfully, acknowledging that part of her was taking a sadistic delight in his obvious discomfort.

‘Well, something happened while Maja and I were out on our walk.’

‘Really? You’re both back home in one piece, so what could it be?’

‘Er . . .’ Patrik sipped his tea to buy some time as he pondered how best to explain. ‘We were walking over towards Lersten’s mill, and then Martin and the team turned up to check out a call they’d received.’ He gave Erica a cautious look. She raised one eyebrow and waited for him to go on.

‘Someone had phoned in a report of a dead body in a house on the road to Hamburgsund, so they were heading over there to take a look.’

‘I see. But you’re on paternity leave, so that really has nothing to do with you.’ Suddenly she gave a start, her cup halfway to her lips. ‘You don’t mean that you . . .’ She stared at him in disbelief.

‘Yes,’ said Patrik, his voice sounding a bit shrill and his eyes fixed on the table.

‘Don’t tell me you took Maja to a place where a dead body was found?’ Her gaze was riveted on him.

‘Um, yes, but Martin watched her while I went inside to have a look. He took her over to see the flower bed.’ He ventured a slightly conciliatory smile but received only an icy glare in return.

‘Inside to have a look?’ The ice cubes in her voice were clinking mercilessly. ‘You’re on paternity leave. The key words here are “on leave”, not to mention “paternity”! How hard can it be to say “I’m not working right now”?’

‘I just went inside to take a look,’ said Patrik lamely, but he knew Erica was right. He was on leave. Paternity leave. His colleagues could run the show. And he shouldn’t have taken Maja anywhere near a crime scene.

At that instant he realized that there was one more detail Erica didn’t know about. He felt a nervous twitch on his face as he swallowed hard and added:

‘It turned out to be murder, by the way.’

‘Murder!’ Erica’s voice rose to falsetto. ‘It’s not enough that you take Maja to a house where a body was discovered – it turns out to be homicide.’ She shook her head. The rest of the words she wanted to say seemed to have stuck in her throat.

‘I won’t do it ever again.’ Patrik threw out his hands. ‘The team will just have to solve the case on their own. I’m on leave until January, and they know that. I’m going to devote myself one hundred per cent to Maja. Word of honour!’

‘You better mean that,’ snarled Erica. She was so angry that she wanted to lean across the table and shake him. Then curiosity overcame her:

‘Where did it happen? Have they found out who the victim was?’

‘I’ve no idea. It was a big white house a few hundred metres down the road on the left-hand side, on the first turnoff to the right after the mill.’

Erica gave him a strange look. Then she said, ‘A big white house with grey trim?’

Patrik thought for a moment and then nodded. ‘Yes, I think that’s right. It said “Frankel” on the letter box.’

‘I know who lives there. Axel and Erik Frankel. You know, the Erik Frankel that I went to see about the Nazi medal.’

Patrik looked at her, dumbstruck. How could he have forgotten that? Frankel wasn’t exactly the most common name in Sweden.

From the living room they could hear Maja babbling happily.

It was late afternoon by the time they finally made it back to the station. Torbjörn Ruud, head of the crime tech division, and his team had arrived, made a thorough job of it, and then left. The body had also been removed and was on its way to the forensics lab where it would undergo every imaginable and unimaginable examination.

‘Well, that was a hell of a Monday,’ said Mellberg with a sigh as Gösta parked the car.

‘Sure was,’ said Gösta, never one to waste words.

As they entered the station, Mellberg barely had time to register something approaching at high speed before a shaggy form jumped on him and he felt a wet tongue licking his face.

‘Hey! Hey! Cut that out!’ Mellberg pushed the dog away in disgust. Ears drooping, the disappointed animal shambled over to Annika, knowing that at least there he would be welcome.

Gösta fought the urge to laugh as Mellberg wiped off the dog spit with the back of his hand and fussily restored his comb-over to its rightful place, muttering irritably all the while.

Shoulders heaving with mirth, Gösta was turning into his office when the cry of ‘Ernst! Ernst! Come here, now!’ stopped him in his tracks. It had been quite a while since his colleague Ernst Lundgren had been given the axe, and there’d been no talk of him returning to the force.

Gösta stepped out into the corridor and saw Mellberg, his face beet red, pointing at something on the floor. ‘Ernst, what’s this?’

As the dog slunk into view, head hanging with shame, Mellberg bellowed for Annika, who arrived a moment later.

‘Oops, it looks like we’ve had a little accident here.’ She cast a sympathetic look at the dog, who gratefully moved closer to her.

‘A little accident? Ernst has shit on my floor.’

‘What’s going on?’ asked Martin, entering with Paula close behind.

Gösta, who by this time had completely lost the battle to contain his laughter, could barely get out the words: ‘Ernst . . . has shit on the floor.’

Martin looked from the little pile on Mellberg’s floor to the dog pressed close to Annika’s leg. ‘Don’t tell me you named the dog Ernst?’ he said, and then he too dissolved into giggles.

‘All right, all right,’ said Mellberg. ‘Get this cleaned up, Annika, so we can all go back to work.’ He stomped over to his desk and sat down. The dog looked from Annika to Bertil then, having decided that the worst was over, wagged his tail and went over to join his new master.

The others exchanged surprised glances, wondering what the dog saw in Bertil Mellberg that they had apparently missed.

Erica couldn’t stop thinking about Erik Frankel. She hadn’t known him well, but he and his brother Axel had always been an integral part of Fjällbacka. ‘The doctor’s sons’, they were called, even though it had been fifty years since their father had practised medicine in Fjällbacka, and forty years since he’d died.

She recalled her visit to the house which had once belonged to their parents and had become home to both brothers. It had been her only visit. The elderly bachelors shared a fascination with Germany and Nazism, each in his own way. Erik, a former history teacher, collected artefacts from the Nazi era. Axel, the older brother, had some sort of association with the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, if Erica remembered correctly, and she also had a vague memory that he’d run into some sort of trouble during the war.

She’d phoned Erik and told him what she’d found, describing the medal to him. She’d asked if he could help by researching its origins and maybe explain how it might have ended up among her mother’s possessions. His immediate reaction had been silence. She’d said ‘Hello’ several times, thinking he might have hung up on her. Finally, he told her in a strange-sounding voice to bring over the medal and he’d have a look at it. His long silence and odd tone of voice had bothered her, but she hadn’t mentioned anything about it to Patrik. She convinced herself that she must have been imagining things. And when she went over to the brothers’ house, she didn’t notice anything odd. Erik received her politely and ushered her into the library. With a guarded expression, he had taken the medal from her and studied it carefully. Then he asked whether he might keep it for a while in order to do some research. Erica had agreed.

He’d gone on to show her his collection. With a mixture of dread and interest, she’d looked at the artefacts so intimately connected with that dark, evil period. She couldn’t resist asking why someone like him, who was so opposed to everything that Nazism had stood for, would collect and surround himself with things that would remind him of that awful time. Erik had hesitated before answering. He’d picked up a cap bearing the SS emblem and held it in his hand as he formulated his reply.

‘I don’t trust people to remember,’ he’d said at last. ‘Without having things that we can see and touch, we so easily forget what we don’t want to remember. I collect things that will serve as reminders. And part of me probably also wants to keep these things out of the hands of people who might see them with other eyes. Regard them with admiration.’

Erica had nodded. She sort of understood, and yet she didn’t. Then they shook hands and she’d left.

And now he was dead. Murdered. Maybe not long after her visit. According to what Patrik had told her, Erik had been sitting in the house, dead, all summer long.

Again she thought about the strange tone of Erik’s voice when she’d told him about the medal. She turned to Patrik, who was sitting next to her on the sofa, channel surfing.

‘Do you know if the medal is still there?’

Patrik gave her a surprised look. ‘I have no idea. It didn’t even occur to me. But there weren’t any indications that he’d been murdered as a result of a robbery. Besides, who would be interested in an old Nazi medal? They’re not exactly rare. It seems to me there are quite a lot of them . . .’

‘Yes, I know, but . . .’ Erica said. Something was still bothering her. ‘Could you ring your colleagues tomorrow and ask them to check on the medal?’

‘I don’t know about that,’ said Patrik. ‘I think they’ve got better things to do than spend time looking for an old medal. We can talk to Erik’s brother later on. Ask him to find it for us. It’s probably still in the house somewhere.’

‘Oh right, Axel. Where is he? Why didn’t he discover his brother’s body?’

Patrik shrugged. ‘I’m on paternity leave, remember? You’ll have to ring Mellberg yourself and ask him.’

‘Ha ha, very funny,’ said Erica. But she still felt uneasy. ‘Don’t you think it’s odd that Axel didn’t find him?’

‘Sure, but didn’t you say he was off somewhere when you went over to their house?’

‘Well, yes. Erik told me that his brother was abroad. But that was back in June.’

‘Why are you worrying about this?’ Patrik shifted his gaze back to the TV.
Home at Last
was just about to start.

‘I don’t really know,’ Erica said, staring blankly at the TV screen. She couldn’t explain even to herself why this feeling of anxiety had come over her. But she could still remember Erik’s silence on the phone and hear that slight catch in his voice when he asked her to bring over the medal. He had reacted to something. Something having to do with the medal.

She tried to put it from her mind and focus on Martin Timell’s woodcarvings instead.

‘Grandpa, you should have seen it. That black bastard went to cut in line and – Pow! One kick and he keeled over like a tree. Then I kicked him in the nuts and he lay there whimpering for at least fifteen minutes.’

‘And what good did it do, Per? Aside from the fact that you could be charged with assault and sent off to a juvenile institution, you’re not going to win any sympathy that way. You’ll just have everybody ganging up on you even more. And instead of helping our cause, it’s going to end with you mobilizing even more opposition.’ Frans stared at his grandson. Sometimes he didn’t know how he was going to curb all the teenage hormones surging through the boy. And he knew so little. In spite of his tough demeanour, with his army camouflage trousers, heavy boots, and shaved head, he was nothing more than a fearful child of fifteen. He knew nothing. He had no idea how the world operated. He didn’t know how to channel the destructive impulses so that they could be used like a spear point to pierce right through the structure of society.