The Preacher (41 page)

He didn’t ask where she was going. It didn’t make any difference. Nothing made any difference.

They had concealed their encroachment well. She and the children had hardly seen any signs that the police had been there. At the same time something had changed. Something she couldn’t quite put her finger on, but it was there. A feeling that their home was no longer the safe place it had always been before. Everything in the house had been touched by the hands of strangers, turning things over and scrutinizing them. Searching for something evil – in their house! Naturally the Swedish police showed a great deal of consideration, but for the first time in her life Marita thought she could understand how life must be in one of those dictatorships or police states she’d seen on the TV news. She’d always shaken her head and felt sorry for the people who lived under the constant threat of incursions into their homes but had never really grasped how dirty a person would feel afterwards, or how great the fear would be about what might happen next.

She had missed Jacob in their bed at night. She had wanted to have him next to her, his hand in hers, reassuring her that everything would be the way it was before. But when she’d rung the station the police told her that his mother had come to collect him, so she assumed he was sleeping over at his parents’ house instead. Of course he could have called her, but then she scolded herself for having such thoughts, telling herself that it was presumptuous. Jacob always did what was best for them. If she was upset that the police had been in her home, she couldn’t even imagine how it must have been for her husband, locked up and bombarded with impossible questions.

Marita slowly cleared off the table after the children’s breakfast. Hesitantly she picked up the phone and began to dial her in-laws’ number, but changed her mind and put the receiver down. Jacob must be sleeping in today, and she didn’t want to disturb him. Just then the telephone rang, and she jumped in surprise. On the caller ID she saw that it was from the manor and she picked up eagerly, expecting Jacob.

‘Hi, Marita, it’s Gabriel.’

She frowned. She hardly recognized her father-in-law’s voice. He sounded like an old man.

‘Hi, Gabriel. How are things with you two?’

Her cheerful tone masked her apprehension, but she waited tensely for him to continue. It suddenly occurred to her that something had happened to Jacob, but before she could ask Gabriel he said, ‘Look, is Jacob at home by any chance?’

‘Jacob? But Laine fetched him from the station yesterday. I was sure he was staying with you.’

‘No, he hasn’t been here. Laine dropped him off outside your house last night.’ The panic in his voice coincided with what she was feeling.

‘Good Lord, where is he then?’ Marita clapped her hand to her mouth, struggling not to dissolve in her fear.

‘He must have … he must be …’ Gabriel couldn’t finish his sentences, which only increased his anxiety. If Jacob wasn’t at home and he wasn’t at their house either, there weren’t many other alternatives. A horrible thought occurred to him.

‘Stefan is in hospital. He was attacked and beaten up at home yesterday,’ Gabriel said.

‘Oh, good heavens, how is he doing?’

‘They don’t even know whether he’ll live. Linda is at the hospital, and she was going to ring when she knew more.’

Marita sat down heavily on one of the kitchen chairs. Her chest was cramping up, making it hard to breathe. Her throat felt as if it were in a noose.

‘Do you think that …’ she began.

Gabriel’s voice was scarcely audible over the phone as he said, ‘No, that’s not possible. Who would …’

Then they both realized at once that all their worries had to do with the fact that a killer was on the loose. A heavy silence followed.

‘Call the police, Marita,’ said Gabriel. ‘I’m coming over.’ Then she heard the dial tone.

Perplexed, Patrik was once again sitting at his desk. He forced himself to try and find something to do rather than just sit and stare at the telephone. He was overwhelmed with impatience as he waited to get answers about the blood tests. The clock ticked relentlessly. He decided to try to catch up with some administrative matters and took out the relevant papers. Half an hour later he still hadn’t done anything with them; he just sat and stared into space. The exhaustion from too little sleep was making itself felt. He took a swallow of coffee but pulled a face at once. It was cold. With the cup in hand he got up to refill it when the telephone rang. He threw himself on the receiver so fast that some of the cold coffee sloshed onto his desk.

‘Patrik Hedström.’

‘Jacob has disappeared!’

He had been so prepared to hear from Forensics that it took a second before his brain could switch gears.

‘Pardon me?’

‘This is Marita Hult. My husband has been missing since last night!’

‘Missing?’ He still wasn’t quite with it. Fatigue was making his thoughts move sluggishly and reluctantly.

‘He never came home last night. And he didn’t sleep at his parents’ house, either. Considering what happened to Stefan …’

Now he was really lost.

‘Hold on, take it a little slower. What happened to Stefan?’

‘He’s in hospital in Uddevalla. He was beaten up and they don’t know whether he’ll live. Imagine if the same person attacked Jacob. He might be lying injured somewhere.’

The panic in Marita’s voice rose, and now Patrik’s mind finally caught up. They hadn’t heard about the beating of Stefan Hult; their colleagues in Uddevalla must have taken the report. He had to get in touch with them right away, but the most important thing right now was to calm down Jacob’s wife.

‘Marita, I’m sure nothing has happened to Jacob. But I’ll send someone over to talk to you, and I’ll contact the police in Uddevalla and find out what they know about Stefan too. I’m not taking this matter lightly, but I don’t think there’s any reason to worry yet. We often see this kind of thing happen. For one reason or another, a person chooses to stay away from home for a night. And Jacob may have been upset after we spoke with him yesterday. Maybe he needed to be alone for a while.’

In frustration Marita said, ‘Jacob would never stay away without telling me where he was. He’s much too considerate for that.’

‘I believe you, and I promise that we’ll get busy on it at once. Someone will come out and talk with you, all right? If you could call your in-laws and ask them to come over too, then we could talk with them at the same time.’

‘It’s probably easier if I go over to their house,’ said Marita, who seemed relieved that concrete measures were being instigated at once.

‘Then that’s what we’ll do,’ said Patrik. He urged her again not to believe the worst, and hung up.

All of a sudden his previous passivity was gone. Despite what he’d told Marita, he was inclined to believe that there was something out of the ordinary behind Jacob’s disappearance. And if Stefan had been subjected to a beating, or attempted murder or whatever it was, there was real reason for concern. Patrik started by ringing his colleagues in Uddevalla.

A couple of minutes later he had found out everything they knew about the attack, which wasn’t much. Someone had beaten Stefan to within an inch of his life last night. Since Stefan himself was unable to tell them who did it, the police still had no leads. They had spoken with Solveig and Robert, but neither of them had seen anyone near the cabin. For an instant Patrik suspected Jacob, but the idea soon proved to be groundless. Stefan’s beating had taken place at the same time they had Jacob under interrogation at the station.

Patrik wasn’t sure how he should proceed. There were two tasks that demanded action. First, he wanted someone to drive to the hospital in Uddevalla and talk with Solveig and Robert to find out whether they knew anything. Second, he needed to send somebody to the manor to talk with Jacob’s family. After a few moments of hesitation he decided to drive to Uddevalla himself and send Martin and Gösta to the manor. But just as he got up to leave, the phone rang again. This time it was Forensics.

With trepidation he steeled himself to listen to what the lab had to say. Maybe they would finally have the piece of the puzzle they were looking for. But never in Patrik’s wildest imagination could he have predicted what he heard next.

By the time Martin and Gösta reached the manor they had spent the whole drive discussing what Patrik had told them. It didn’t make sense to either of them. But more pressing matters prevented them from dwelling on the conundrum. The only thing they could do now was to put their heads down and plough stubbornly ahead.

At the foot of the stairs leading to the front door they had to climb over a couple of big suitcases. Martin wondered who was going on a trip. It looked like more luggage than Gabriel would need for a business trip, and the bags also had a feminine touch that made him guess they belonged to Laine.

This time they were not shown into the living room but led down a long hall to the kitchen at the other end of the house. It was a room that Martin liked immediately. The living room was beautiful, of course, but had a rather impersonal air about it. The kitchen overflowed with comfort, with a rustic simplicity that flouted the elegance that otherwise lay like a suffocating veil over the manor. In the living room Martin had felt like a yokel, but here he felt like rolling up his sleeves to start stirring the big pots with their steaming contents.

Marita sat at an enormous, rustic kitchen table, squeezed in at the end against the wall. It looked as though she were seeking security in a situation that was frightening and unexpected. From a distance Martin could hear the sound of children yelling, and when he craned his neck and looked out of the windows facing the garden he saw Jacob and Marita’s two children running about and playing on the huge lawn.

Gösta and Martin merely nodded to the people in the kitchen. Then they sat down with Marita at the table. Martin thought a strange mood prevailed, but he couldn’t put his finger on what it was. Gabriel and Laine had sat down as far apart as they could get, and he noticed that they were both very careful not to look at each other. He thought about the luggage at the front door. Then he realized that Laine must have told Gabriel about her affair with Johannes, and what the result had been. No wonder the mood was so impenetrable. The only thing still keeping Laine at the manor was their shared concern over Jacob’s disappearance.

‘Let’s start from the beginning,’ said Martin. ‘Which of you saw Jacob last?’

Laine gave a small wave of her hand. ‘I did.’

‘And when was that?’ Gösta took up the questioning.

‘Around eight o’clock. After I collected him from the station.’ She nodded at the officers facing her at the table.

‘And where did you drop him off?’ said Martin.

‘Just by the drive to Västergården. I offered to drive him all the way up, but he said that wouldn’t be necessary. It’s a little hard to turn round at the end of the drive, and it’s only a couple of hundred metres to walk, so I didn’t insist.’

‘What was his mood like?’ Martin continued.

She glanced furtively at Gabriel. They all knew what it was they were really talking about, but no one wanted to say it straight out. It struck Martin that Marita probably didn’t know yet about Jacob’s altered familial relationships. But unfortunately he couldn’t make allowances for that now. They had to get all the facts and couldn’t sit there worrying about niceties.

‘He was …’ Laine searched for the right word, ‘pensive. I would even say that he seemed in a state of shock.’

Marita looked in bewilderment at Laine, and then at the police.

‘What are you talking about? Why would Jacob be in shock? What did you do to him yesterday? Gabriel said that he was no longer a suspect, so why should he be upset?’

A slight twitch was visible on Laine’s face, the only sign of the emotional storms whirling round inside her, but she calmly put her hand on Marita’s.

‘Jacob got some upsetting news yesterday, dear. I did something many, many years ago that I’ve been carrying around inside for a long time. And thanks to the police,’ she cast a spiteful glance at Martin and Gösta, ‘Jacob was told about it last night. I’d always intended to tell him, but the years rolled by so quickly and I suppose I was waiting for the right moment.’

‘The right moment for what?’ asked Marita.

‘To tell Jacob that Johannes, not Gabriel, is his father.’

At each word in the sentence Gabriel grimaced and flinched, as if each syllable were a stab at his heart. But his shocked expression was gone. His psyche had already begun to process the information, and it was no longer as difficult as hearing it for the first time.

‘What are you saying?’ Marita looked at Laine and Gabriel with eyes wide. Then she collapsed. ‘Oh good Lord, it must have crushed him.’

Laine flinched as if she’d been slapped. ‘What’s done is done,’ she said. ‘The important thing now is to find Jacob, and then …’ she paused, ‘then we’ll have to work out all the rest.’

‘Laine is right. No matter what the blood test showed, in my heart Jacob remains my son,’ said Gabriel, putting his hand on his chest, ‘and we have to find him.’

‘We will find him,’ said Gösta. ‘It’s not really so odd that he might want to stay away and think things over for a while.’

Martin was grateful for the reassuring tone that Gösta could turn on when he wished. Right now it was perfectly suited to calming everyone’s nerves, and Martin calmly resumed his questions.

‘So Jacob never came home?’

‘No,’ said Marita. ‘Laine rang me when they left the station, so I knew he was on the way. But later, when he didn’t show up, I thought he must have driven home with her and slept over there. That wasn’t like him, of course, but on the other hand he and the whole family have been under such stress lately, so I thought he might need to spend some time with his parents.’

As she said the last word she cast a furtive glance at Gabriel, but he simply gave her a wan smile. It would take time before they could work out how to handle the new situation.

‘How did you hear what happened to Stefan?’ asked Martin.