Approaching through the woods, little more than a five-minute walk, the deserted property looked even more forlorn. Apart from being in good order, it was as if it had been empty for years, not just a couple of weeks. It somehow looked both aesthetically perfect and yet totally devoid of personality. Even their little cabin seemed to have more to say for itself than this house.
They stopped at the top of the wooden steps and turned to look out at the small clearing in which the house was set, the woods beyond already gathering up the darkness of the evening ahead. The stillness had an intensity about it that was unsettling, as if it was unsustainable, as if something dramatic or violent would surely have to happen here before long.
“I guess he didn’t get lonely,” said Inger as she looked up at the bleached-out blue of the sky.
“I hope not,” said Dan, knowing he’d go insane himself living in a place like this, no matter how strong the motive for running away from everyone.
Inger opened the door and they stepped into the even more profound silence of the house. Dan looked around, then opened a door down into the cellar.
“Okay, I guess we need to do our own search. How about I start in the cellar, you start upstairs, meet back on this floor?”
“It’s a good idea.”
He looked into the room that doubled as a library and said, “You think Per and his colleagues looked through all of those books?”
“I guarantee it. They should have looked inside any paintings as well, but it doesn’t hurt for us to look again.” Dan nodded and she said, “We’re looking for a passport, right?”
“That would be a break. Let’s just hope he hasn’t left it in a safe-deposit box somewhere.”
He smiled and set off down the steps into the cellar, but it only reinforced his existing conclusions—that this house had not been lived in, not in the way normal people lived. There was no junk, nothing that had once been useful or cherished but had now been discarded into storage limbo.
The cellar had been kept clean and tidy, but there was hardly anything in there. He moved around the walls, checking high or low for hollows or suggestions that there might be a hidden room or even a cubbyhole, but there was nothing. Once he’d finished, he stood looking at the half-lit gloom that surrounded him—it made him want to visit the morgue, just to see proof that there really had been a man calling himself Jacques Fillon.
He could hear the faint and indistinct sounds of Inger going through the upstairs rooms, and that spurred him on. He left the cellar and went into the room with the books. Before starting his search, he took in the room, imagining the places he might think of hiding something.
But as he stood there, he sensed a shadow or a change in the light beyond the window, and a second later a girl appeared, looking in. She was dressed in black, but was startlingly pale and blonde—spiked hair, leather jacket.
Dan felt himself jump slightly, but that was as nothing compared to her reaction on seeing him. She almost fell backwards, and was immediately on the move, turning, disappearing again.
“No, wait!”
The house was so desolate that any clue to its former inhabitant seemed worth holding onto, even if it was just a local kid being nosy. He ran back out into the hall, out of the front door. The girl was already walking quickly away, not running, but determined.
“Please, wait a minute!”
Dan heard a window open above him and then Inger’s voice calling out in Swedish, loud, authoritative, but not unfriendly. Whatever she’d said, it did the trick. The girl stopped and turned, then took a few steps back towards them, looking up at Inger and asking something.
Inger replied and the girl laughed, embarrassed, but she was walking towards the house now. The window shut again above and Dan could hear Inger crossing the floor and out onto the landing.
At the same time, the girl’s gaze came back to him and once she was closer, she said, “Sorry, you scared me.”
“Then I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.”
“There was no car, so I thought no one was here.” Her tone amused him, the perhaps unintentional suggestion that he was somehow at fault for not having a car, as if he’d deliberately set out to trick her.
“We’re staying just through the woods there, with the Eklunds, so we walked.” She nodded. Closer now, he could see traces of acne through the chalky-white concealer on her cheeks, but also that she would be a real beauty in time, the mixture of paleness and bone structure giving her an otherworldly quality. Inger came through the door behind him and he said, “I’m Dan, this is Inger.”
Inger spoke in Swedish again and the girl responded, then said, “I’m Siri.”
Dan made the connection easily, trying to remember now if the girl in front of him resembled the picture he’d seen in the paper, but Inger explained anyway, saying, “Siri is the girl he saved.”
“Yeah, I know. Do you mind if we ask you a few questions, Siri?”
“No.”
Quickly, Inger said, “We can come to your home sometime if it’s better. Maybe it is better, for your grandparents to be there.”
She smiled, old enough to find it funny that an adult might need to chaperone her in such situations.