Camilla Läckberg - The Stone Cutter

Martin didn't reply, thinking that it probably wasn't worth it to make any more requests of the prosecutor for a while.

Torbjörn Ruud came over to stand next to him. He couldn't help making a comment either. 'I suppose they'd better start putting elastic bands on the coffins here in Fjällbacka. Then all you have to do is pull them up when you want them.'

Martin couldn't resist a wry smile despite the unsuitable occasion, and they were both fighting to keep from laughing when Torbjörn's mobile rang.

'Yes, this is Ruud.' He listened, then punched off and said to Martin, 'They're going into the Florins' house now. We've assigned three men there and two out here, so we'll see whether we have to regroup.'

'What exactly do you need to do here, right now I mean?' said Martin curiously.

'There's not much we can do. Right now we're just watching to make sure that everything is removed with as little contamination as possible. Then we'll take some soil samples too. But mostly it's a matter of taking the body to the M.E. so that he can start taking the samples he needs. As soon as the coffin has been sent off we'll go over to the Florins' and help out with the search. You're going too, I assume?'

Martin nodded. 'Yes, I thought I would.' He paused for a moment. 'What a bloody mess this has turned out to be.'

Ruud nodded in turn. 'You can say that again.'

Their topics of conversation run dry, they stood in silence as they waited for the men at the gravesite to finish their work. A little while later the lid of the coffin came into view. Lennart Klinga was above ground again.

His whole body ached. Stig saw blurry shadow figures hovering around him and then vanishing again. He tried to open his mouth to speak, but no part of his body seemed to obey him. It felt as though he'd gone a round with Mike Tyson and lost big-time. For a brief moment he wondered if he was dead. Nobody could feel like this and still be alive.

The thought made him panic, and he used all the energy he had left to try and make his vocal cords work. Somewhere far, far away he thought he heard a croaking sound that might be his own voice.

It was. One of the shadow figures came closer and took on more solid contours. A female face came into view, and he squinted to try and focus.

'Where?' he got out, and he hoped that she'd understand what he meant. She did.

'You're in Uddevalla Hospital, Stig. You've been here since yesterday.'

'Alive?' he croaked.

'Yes, you're alive,' said the nurse with a smile. She had a round, open face. 'It was touch-and-go, I have to tell you, but now you're through the worst of it.'

If he could have laughed he would have. 'Through the worst.' Sure, sure, easy for her to say. She didn't know how every fibre in his body burned and how it hurt all the way down to his bones. But he clearly was alive, at any rate. With an effort he tried to shape more words with his lips.

'Ma'am?' He couldn't manage to get out her name. For a moment he thought that a strange expression passed over the nurse's face, but then it was gone. It was no doubt the pain playing a trick on him.

'Now you have to get some rest,' said the nurse. 'Soon you'll be able to have visitors.'

He let himself be content with that. Exhaustion washed over him and he willingly let it carry him along. He wasn't dead, that was the main thing. He was in hospital, but he wasn't dead.

With great care they went over every inch of the house. They couldn't take a chance on missing anything, but they didn't have all day either. When they were finished it would look like a hurricane had gone through the house, but Patrik knew what they had to find, and he was sure it was here somewhere. He didn't intend to leave until he found it.

'How's it going?' came Martin's voice from the doorway.

Patrik turned round. 'We've got about halfway through the downstairs rooms. Nothing yet. How about you guys?'

'Well, the coffin is on its way. A bloody surreal experience, I might add.'

'You can count on that scene popping up in some nightmare sooner or later. I've had a couple, with skeleton hands coming up through the coffin lid and the like.

'Stop it,' said Martin with a grimace. 'Haven't you found anything yet?' he said, mostly as a way to get rid of the images that Patrik had put into his head.

'No, not a thing,' Patrik replied in frustration. 'But it has to be here, I can feel it.'

'I always thought you had a strong feminine side, so it must be woman's intuition,' said Martin with a smile.

'Go make yourself useful instead of standing here insulting my manhood.'

Martin took him at his word and went off to find his own corner to search.

A smile lingered on Patrik's lips but then vanished. Before him he saw Maja's little body in the hands of a murderer, and the fury he felt was so strong that it made him see red.

Two hours later he began to feel downhearted. The whole main floor and the cellar were done, and they hadn't found a thing. But they were able to confirm that Lilian was an especially assiduous housekeeper. The techs had gathered up a number of containers they found in the cellar, but they would need to be taken to the lab and analysed. Maybe he was wrong after all. But then he remembered the contents of the videotape he'd played over and over last night, and he felt his determination return. He hadn't been wrong. He couldn't have been. It was here. The only question was where.

'Shall we continue upstairs?' said Martin, nodding towards the staircase.

'Yeah, you might as well. I don't think we could have missed anything down here. We've gone over every millimetre.'

The whole team moved upstairs. Niclas had gone out for a walk with Albin, and they could work undisturbed.

'I'll start in Lilian's bedroom,' said Patrik.

He went through the doorway to the right of the stairs and looked around the room. Lilian's bedroom was as well-kept as the rest of the house, and the bed had been made up so tightly that it would have passed inspection at boot camp. Otherwise the room was very feminine. Stig couldn't have felt much at home in there before he had to move to the guest room. The curtains and bedspread had flounces, and there were lace doilies on the night- stands and bureau. Small porcelain knick-knacks were everywhere, and the walls were covered with ceramic angels and pictures featuring angels. The colour scheme was overridingly pink. It was so sugar-sweet it almost made Patrik ill. He thought it resembled a room in a little girl's dollhouse. It was exactly how a five-year- old would decorate her mother's bedroom if given a free hand.

'Yuck,' said Martin as he stuck his head in the doorway. 'Looks like a flamingo puked in here.'

'Yeah, this room would never be featured in House Beautiful.'

'If it was, it would be the "before" picture. This place needs a make-over,' said Martin. 'Say, do you need some help in here? Looks like plenty of stuff to look through.'

'Hell, yeah. I don't want to be in here longer than I have to.'

They started at opposite ends of the room. Patrik sat down on the floor to go through the nightstand, and Martin worked on the wardrobes covering one wall.

They worked in silence. Martin's back gave a crack when he reached for some shoeboxes on the top shelf of one wardrobe. He set them down carefully on the bed and then stopped for a moment to massage the small of his back. All that strain from moving was still bothering him, and he realized he should probably pay a visit to the chiropractor.

'What have you got there?' said Patrik, looking up from his spot on the floor.

'Some shoeboxes.' He removed the lid from the first box, carefully inspected the contents, and then set it aside and replaced the lid. 'Just a bunch of old photos.' He lifted the top of the next carton and lifted out a worn blue wooden box. The lid was stuck, so he had to use a little force to open it. When Patrik heard him gasp he looked up at once.