Camilla Läckberg - The Gallows Bird

‘What the…’ The words died out and were replaced by a slurred mumble, as she weaved back and forth on the chair.

‘Drink some coffee,’ said Gösta, sounding surprisingly gentle. He pushed the cup over to her so that it landed within her field of vision.

Hedda obeyed docilely, taking the cup in trembling hands. She drank every drop of the coffee. Then she abruptly swept the cup aside, and Patrik caught it just as it was tipping over the edge of the table.

‘We want to talk about the accident,’ said Gösta.

Hedda raised her head with an effort and squinted in his direction. Patrik decided to keep quiet and let Gösta steer the conversation.

‘The accident?’ said Hedda. Her body seemed a bit more stable on the chair.

‘When the children died.’ Gösta kept his gaze fixed on her.

‘I don’ wanna talk about it,’ slurred Hedda, waving her hand.

‘We have to talk about it,’ Gösta insisted, but in the same kindly tone.

‘They drowned. Everybody drowns. You know,’ Hedda waved her finger in the air, ‘you know, first Gottfrid drowned. He was going out to catch some mackerel on the hand line, and they didn’t find him for over a week. I went out and waited for him for a week, but I knew by sundown of the same day he left that Gottfrid would never come back to me and the kids.’ She sobbed and seemed to be many years back in time.

‘How old were the children then?’ Patrik asked.

Hedda turned her gaze on him for the first time. ‘Children, what children?’ She looked confused.

‘The twins,’ said Gösta and got her to turn back towards him. ‘How old were the twins then?’

‘They were two, almost three. Two really wild kids. I could only handle them with Gottfrid’s help. When he…’ Her voice died out again and Hedda looked round the kitchen, as if searching for something. Her gaze stopped at one of the cupboards. She got up with an effort and shuffled over to the cupboard, opened the door, and took out a bottle of Explorer.

‘Would you like a snort?’ She held out the bottle to them, and when they both shook their heads she laughed. ‘That’s good, because I wasn’t offering.’ Her laugh sounded more like a cackle, and she brought the bottle over to the table and sat down again. She didn’t bother with a glass, she just put the bottle to her lips and guzzled. Patrik could feel his throat burning just looking at her.

‘How old were the twins when they drowned?’ Gösta asked.

Hedda didn’t seem to hear him. She stared unseeing into space. ‘She was so elegant,’ she muttered. ‘A pearl necklace and coat and ever’thing. She was a fine lady.’

‘Who’s that?’ said Patrik, feeling a stab of interest. ‘What lady?’ But Hedda had already lost her train of thought.

‘How old were the twins when they drowned?’ Gösta repeated, even more clearly.

Hedda turned to him with the bottle raised and halfway to her lips. ‘The twins didn’ drown, did they?’ She took another gulp from the bottle.

Gösta glanced significantly at Patrik and leaned forward. ‘Didn’t the twins drown? Where did they go?’

‘Whaddaya mean they didn’ drown?’ Hedda suddenly had a scared look in her eye. ‘Of course the twins drowned, sure, they did…’ She took another drink and her eyes got even more glazed.

‘Which was it, Hedda? Did they drown or not?’ Gösta could hear the desperation in his own voice, but it simply seemed to drive Hedda even further into the fog. Now she didn’t answer but just shook her head.

‘I don’t think we can get much more out of her,’ Gösta said apologetically to Patrik.

‘No, I don’t think so either, we’ll have to try some other way. Maybe we should look round a bit.’

Gösta nodded and turned towards Hedda, whose head was on its way down towards the table again.

‘Hedda, can we look around a bit at your things?’

‘Mmm,’ she replied and drifted off to sleep.

Gösta moved his chair next to hers so that she wouldn’t tumble to the floor, and then began looking through the house with Patrik.

An hour later they hadn’t found anything. There was nothing but junk, junk, junk. Patrik wished he’d brought some gloves along, and he thought he felt his whole body itching. But there were no signs that children had ever lived in the house. Hedda must have thrown out everything that had belonged to them.

Her words about a ‘fine lady’ rang in his head. He couldn’t let it go, but sat down next to Hedda and tried gently shaking some life into her again. Reluctantly she sat up, but her head fell backwards before she managed to stabilize it in an upright position.

‘Hedda, you have to answer me. The fine lady, does she have your children?’

‘They were so much trouble. And I just had to run a little errand in Uddevalla. I had to buy some more booze too, was all out,’ she slurred and looked out of the window at the water glinting in the spring sunshine. ‘But they just kept making such a fuss. And I was so tired. And she was such a fine lady. She was so nice. She could take them, she said. So she did.’

Hedda turned her gaze towards Patrik, and he saw for the first time genuine emotion in her eyes. Deep inside there was a pain and a guilt so incomprehensible that only alcohol could drown it.

‘But I regretted it,’ she said with tears clouding her eyes. ‘But then I couldn’t find them. I searched and I searched. But they were gone. And the fine lady too. The one with the pearl necklace.’ Hedda scratched her throat to show where she’d seen the necklace and said, ‘She was gone.’

‘But why did you say they had drowned?’ Out of the corner of his eye Patrik saw Gösta listening from the doorway.

‘I was ashamed… and maybe they’d have a better life with her. But I was ashamed…’

She looked out over the water again, and they sat like that for a while. Patrik’s brain was working in high gear to take in what he had just been told. It wasn’t hard to work out that the ‘fine lady’ had been Sigrid Jansson, and for some reason she had taken Hedda’s children. Why, they would probably never know.

When he slowly got up and turned to Gösta, with legs that felt shaky from all the misery, he saw that Gösta was holding something in his hand.

‘I found a photograph,’ he said. ‘Under the mattress. A snapshot of the twins.’

Patrik took the photo and looked at it. Two small children about two years old, sitting on the laps of their parents, Gottfrid and Hedda. They looked happy. The picture must have been taken just before Gottfrid drowned. Before everything came crashing down. Patrik studied the children’s faces. Where were they now? And was one of them a murderer? Neither of the round faces of the children revealed a thing. At the kitchen table Hedda had fallen asleep again, and Patrik and Gösta went out and breathed the fresh sea air deep into their lungs. Patrik carefully slid the well-thumbed photo into his wallet. He would see to it that Hedda got it back soon. In the meantime they needed it to help find a murderer.

During the boat ride back they were as silent as on the way out. But this time the silence was marked by shock and sorrow. Sorrow about how frail and small human beings sometimes were. Shock at the scope of the mistakes that people were capable of making. In his mind’s eye Patrik could see Hedda wandering about in Uddevalla. How she searched for the children whom, in an attack of despair, exhaustion and need for booze, she had given away to a total stranger. He felt the panic that she must have experienced when she understood that she couldn’t find the twins. And the desperation that drove her to say that they had drowned, instead of admitting that she had handed them over to a stranger.