Camilla Läckberg - The Ice Princess

‘I believe it. She looks like she’s getting along fine. Is Erica sleeping?’

‘Yes, she sounded so tired when we talked on the phone this morning that I offered to step in.’

‘And with gusto, obviously.’

‘Yes, although it’s got a bit messy. I hope Erica won’t get mad when she wakes up and sees the way I’ve totally sabotaged her living room.’

Anna found his concern quite charming. It seemed that Erica had already whipped him into shape.

‘I’ll help you clean up. But first I need a cup of coffee, I think. Would you like one?’

They drank coffee and talked like old friends. The way to Anna’s heart was through her children, and the adoration in Emma’s eyes was unmistakable when she climbed all over Patrik, who only waved off Anna’s attempts to tell her daughter to leave him in peace for a while. By the time Erica came down with bleary eyes about an hour later, Anna had quizzed Patrik about everything from his shoe size to why he got divorced. When he finally said that he had to go, all the girls protested, and Adrian would have too if he hadn’t been taking his afternoon nap.

As soon as they heard his car drive off, Anna turned to Erica with eyes wide.

‘God, what a mother-in-law’s dream. He doesn’t have any younger brothers, does he?’

Erica just laughed happily in reply.

Patrik had been given a few hours’ reprieve from the task he knew he had to deal with-something that had made him toss and turn all night. He had seldom dreaded anything as much as he did this, but he knew it was an unavoidable part of the profession he had chosen. He now knew the solution to one of the two murders, but it didn’t make him happy.

Patrik drove slowly from Sälvik down towards the centre of town. He wanted to postpone this as long as possible, but it wasn’t far and he got there sooner than he wanted to. He parked the car in the lot by Eva’s Foods and walked the rest of the way. The house stood at the top of one of the streets that sloped steeply down towards the boathouses along the water. It was a fine old house, but it looked as though it had been neglected for many years. Before he knocked on the door he took a deep breath, but as soon as his knuckles touched the wood he was the consummate professional. He couldn’t let his personal feelings be involved. He was a cop and as such was bound to do his job, no matter what Patrik the private citizen might feel about the task.

Vera opened the door almost immediately. She gave him a questioning look but stepped aside at once when he asked to come in. She preceded him into the kitchen and they sat down at the kitchen table. Patrik was struck by the fact that she didn’t ask him what he wanted, and for a moment he thought it might be because she already knew. Regardless of the reason, he somehow had to present what he wanted to say in as considerate a way as possible.

She calmly rested her eyes on him, but he saw dark circles under them, a sign of her grief after her son’s death. On the table lay an old photo album, and he guessed that if he opened it he’d see pictures of Anders from his childhood. It was hard for him to come here, to visit a mother who was grieving for a son who had only been dead a few days. But once again Patrik had to push aside his natural protective instincts and instead concentrate on the job he had come to do. To find out the truth about Anders’s death.

‘Vera, the last time we met it was under very sad circumstances, and I just want to start by saying that I’m truly sorry about your son’s death.’

She merely nodded in reply, then waited silently for him to go on.

‘But even though I understand how difficult this is for you, it’s my job to investigate what happened to Anders. I hope you understand.’

Patrik spoke slowly and clearly, as if to a child. Why, he didn’t know, but he felt that it was important for him that she really understood what he was saying.

‘We’ve investigated Anders’s death as a murder, and we’ve also searched for a connection with the murder of Alexandra Wijkner, a woman with whom we know he had a relationship. We haven’t found any traces of a possible killer, nor have we found evidence as to how the murder itself was committed. This has really put us in a quandary, to be honest. No one has been able to come up with any really good explanation as to how the course of events may have unfolded. But then I found this at Anders’s flat.’

Patrik placed the photocopy of the piece of paper on the kitchen table in front of Vera, with the text facing her. An expression of astonishment passed over her face and she looked several times from the paper to Patrik’s face and back. She picked up the paper and turned it over. She ran her fingers over the letters and then put the paper down on the table again, still with an expression of shock on her face.

‘Where did you find this?’ Her voice was hoarse with sorrow.

‘At Anders’s place. You’re surprised because you thought that you took the only copy of this letter, isn’t that right?’

She nodded.

Patrik went on, ‘You did, actually. But I found the notepad that Anders wrote the letter on, and when he pressed the pen into the paper it also left an impression on the sheet underneath. That’s how we were able to retrieve the message.’

Vera gave him a wry smile. ‘I didn’t even think of that, of course. It was clever of you to work it out.’

‘I think I know approximately what happened, but I’d really like to hear you tell it in your own words.’

She fingered the paper for a moment, feeling the words with her fingertips, as if she were reading Braille. A deep sigh, and then she complied with Patrik’s friendly but firm request.

‘I went over to Anders’s place with a bag of food. The door was unlocked, but it almost always was, so I just called out and then went in. It was calm, completely quiet. I saw him at once. I felt like my heart stopped that instant. That was exactly how it felt. As if my heart stopped beating and there was only stillness in my chest. He was swaying a little. Back and forth. As if there were a wind inside the room, which of course I knew was impossible.’

‘Why didn’t you call the police? Or an ambulance?’

She shrugged her shoulders. ‘I don’t know. My first instinct was to run up and get him down somehow, but when I entered the living room I saw that it was too late. My boy was dead.’

For the first time since she started talking he heard a slight quaver in her voice, but then she swallowed hard and forced herself with uncanny calm to go on.

‘I found this letter in the kitchen. You’ve read it, you know what it says. That he couldn’t go on living. That life was one long torment for him and now he couldn’t fight it anymore. All his reasons to continue were gone. I must have sat there in the kitchen for an hour, maybe two, I don’t really know. In an instant I stuffed the letter in my purse, and then I only had to take the chair he used to climb up to the noose and put it back in its place in the kitchen.’

‘But why, Vera? Why? What purpose did it serve?’

Her gaze was steady but Patrik could see from her trembling hands that her outward calm was a sham. He couldn’t even imagine what horror it must have been to see her son hanging from the ceiling, with a thick blue tongue and eyes popping out. It had been hard enough for him to look at Anders, and now his mother would have to live the rest of her life with that image in her mind.

‘I wanted to spare him more humiliation. For all these years people have looked at him with contempt. People pointed and laughed. Put their noses in the air when they walked past, feeling superior. What would people say when they heard that Anders had hanged himself? I wanted to spare him that shame, and I did it the only way I could think of.’