‘No, I’m afraid not. Seems like he saw too little of her. Which might be interesting in itself. I mean, she seems to have been careful to hide her appearance.’
Jeanette sighs. ‘Yes, it sounds like it. I wonder why. Well, that’ll have to do for now. Thanks.’
?hlund disappears through the door again, and Jeanette decides to call Prosecutor Kenneth von Kwist.
The prosecutor sounds tired when Jeanette shares her suspicions that Viggo Dürer organised bribes for Annette Lundstr?m and probably Ulrika Wendin. To Jeanette’s surprise, he isn’t as intractable as she had expected.
She sits and stares at the phone in bemusement. What’s happened to von Kwist? When the phone rings her mind is somewhere else altogether. She answers absent-mindedly, and the receptionist tells her that a Kristina Wendin wants to talk to her.
Wendin? she thinks, and perks up.
The woman introduces herself as Ulrika’s grandmother, and says she’s worried because her granddaughter hasn’t been in touch for several weeks.
‘Perhaps she’s gone away?’ Jeanette suggests. ‘Who knows, she might have saved up a bit of money and simply gone on holiday?’
The woman coughs drily. ‘Ulrika hasn’t got a job. Where would she get the money to go on holiday?’
‘Most people who go missing usually turn up within a few days. But that’s not to say we won’t take this seriously. Do you have keys to Ulrika’s home?’
‘Yes, I do,’ Kristina Wendin says.
‘OK, this is what we do,’ Jeanette concludes. ‘I’ll head out to Ulrika’s apartment this afternoon with one of my colleagues. Can you meet us there with the keys?’
Should I be worried? she thinks. No, not yet. Stay rational.
Worrying at such an early stage is just a waste of energy, seeing as she knows what usually happens. At best they might find something that could give them a clue as to where Ulrika is, and at worst they’ll find something to indicate that she disappeared against her will. But usually the result is somewhere in between. In other words, nothing. When the phone rings again she feels a tingle in her stomach and lets it ring a few times because she doesn’t want to seem too eager.
‘Jeanette Kihlberg, Stockholm police,’ she says with a smile on her lips, briefly forgetting Ulrika Wendin.
‘Good morning,’ Sofia Zetterlund says. ‘Have you got a moment?’
A moment? she thinks. I’ve got all the time in the world for you.
‘Good morning? It’s almost lunchtime.’ Jeanette laughs. ‘It’s lovely to hear from you, but I’m snowed under with work.’
She isn’t really lying. She looks at the mess on her desk. All the information they have on Hannah ?stlund and Jessica Friberg is squeezed into about three hundred pages of A4 paper, a series of Polaroid pictures, a bouquet of yellow tulips and the forensics officer’s photographs of the two dead dogs in the basement.
‘OK, I haven’t got much time myself,’ Sofia says. ‘Just let me speak, and you can listen while you get on with your work. After all, everyone knows that women have two brains.’
‘OK. Fire away …’
Jeanette opens the folder marked J. FRIBERG, and can hear Sofia drawing breath, as if she is filling her lungs with air for a lengthy monologue.
‘Annette Lundstr?m was admitted into the hospital three days ago,’ she says. ‘Acute psychosis, brought on by her daughter Linnea’s suicide. Annette found her hanged in her room in their home in Edsviken. Her nurses told me –’
‘Stop,’ Jeanette says, closing the file instantly. ‘Tell me that again.’
‘Linnea’s dead. Suicide.’ Sofia breathes out.
The Lundstr?m family, wiped out by itself. Jeanette thinks of the last time she saw Annette. A piece of human wreckage. A ghost. And Linnea …
‘Are you still there?’
Jeanette closes her eyes. Linnea’s dead, she thinks. That didn’t have to happen. So fucking unnecessary.
‘I’m listening. Go on.’
‘Annette Lundstr?m managed to get out of Rosenlund Hospital yesterday. When I was on my way back from lunch I found her out in the street, realised she wasn’t too well and took her back to my office. She told me that Viggo Dürer had paid a large sum of money to silence both her and her daughter. That’s why Linnea stopped her sessions with me.’
‘I was afraid of that. Well, at least we’ve got it confirmed.’
‘It looks like an unofficial settlement,’ Sofia goes on. ‘I’d bet that if you were to check Annette Lundstr?m’s bank account, you’d find a few irregularities.’
‘Already done,’ Jeanette says. ‘But we can’t trace the account that the money was transferred from. I’m not surprised by what you’re saying, but I’m genuinely sorry to hear about Linnea.’
And Ulrika, she thinks. What’s happened to her?
Ulrika made a double impression on Jeanette, strong and brittle at the same time. For a moment she wonders if the girl is capable of killing herself. Like Linnea.
‘So …’ Jeanette goes on. ‘We’ve already got what Linnea said in her sessions with you, and her drawings, Karl Lundstr?m’s letter and now what Annette has told you. How is she? Could she be a witness in a trial?’
Sofia snorts. ‘Annette Lundstr?m? God, no. Hardly. Not in her current state. But if the fever subsides, then …’
Jeanette thinks Sofia’s tone sounds rather too playful considering what she’s just said. ‘Fever? What do you mean by that?’
‘Well, psychosis is a fever of the central nervous system. It’s an illness that can break out if there’s a sudden change in a person’s life, and in this instance both Annette’s husband and daughter have died within a short space of time. It’s not unusual for treatment to take ten years.’
‘I see. Did she say anything else?’
‘She said she wanted to go to Karl and Viggo in Polcirkeln, and build a temple. From the look in her eyes, she’s already there. Far off in eternity, if you know what I mean?’
‘Maybe. But that business about Polcirkeln isn’t actually too far from reality.’
‘No?’
‘No. I’ll tell you something you might not know. Polcirkeln is a real place in Lapland. Annette grew up there, and Karl was her cousin. They both belonged to a breakaway sect of Laestadians who called themselves the Psalms of the Lamb. The police received reports of sexual abuse involving the sect. And their lawyer, Viggo Dürer, lived in Vuollerim for a while as well, not far from Polcirkeln.’
‘OK, now it’s my turn to stop you,’ Sofia says. ‘Cousins? Karl and Annette were cousins?’
‘Yes.’
‘The Psalms of the Lamb? Sexual abuse? Was Viggo Dürer involved?’
‘We don’t know. It never went to court. The sect dissolved and everything was forgotten.’
Sofia falls silent, and Jeanette presses the phone closer to her ear. She can hear heavy breathing, close and distant at the same time.
‘It sounds like Annette Lundstr?m wants to return to the past,’ Sofia says, in a darker voice. She laughs.
That voice again, Jeanette thinks. A shift in tone, often followed by a change in Sofia’s personality.