Mari Jungstedt - The Dead Of Summer

‘What are you doing here?’ asked the leader.

‘Just checking on things,’ said Knutas. ‘Purely routine.’

‘On a Sunday?’

All three men regarded him dubiously. Close up, they didn’t seem particularly hostile. Two of them were standing on either side of Knutas, holding on to his arms. They immediately started up a lively discussion in their own language.

‘Where are you from?’ Knutas ventured.

The leader glared at him without replying, and the discussion grew more heated. Suddenly they were in a big hurry. They yanked Knutas to his feet and made him hold out his arms while the leader frisked his pockets. Wallet, car keys, pipe tobacco – he took everything. Then he yelled something to the others, who hustled Knutas back inside the house. He tried to pull himself out of their grasp and resisted as best he could, but he found it impossible to get away. He was terrified at the thought of what lay in store for him.

‘What are you doing?’ he yelled, in English. ‘Let me go! I’m a police officer.’

With resolute expressions, they dragged him towards the front door.

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ Now Knutas had switched to Swedish. ‘I’m a police officer, damn it!’

Were they going to kidnap him? Kill him? Cut his throat, or shoot him and throw his body off the cliff? Or maybe lock him in the boot of his own car so he’d die of suffocation?

Knutas thought his last hour was near when the leader opened the door to a clothes cupboard in the hall and signalled to his companions to throw him inside.

‘We are very sorry!’ Knutas heard him say before the door slammed shut with a bang.

FORTY MINUTES LATER, Martin Kihlgård and Thomas Wittberg roared up the drive, closely followed by several more police vehicles. There was no one to be seen. The front door of the house stood open.

From inside they could hear a dull pounding. Wittberg was the first to run in. The sound was coming from a room in the hall. A board had been nailed across the door.

He found a crowbar on the ground outside the house and with some effort finally got the door open.

‘What the hell?’ he panted when he peered inside.

They had found Knutas.

JOHAN SAT WITH his head in his hands, staring down at the dust-covered gravel. He was much too upset to drive, so he’d started walking along the road from Emma’s house and continued on towards the football pitch. It was deserted. He sat down on a bench and smoked one cigarette after another until his throat was burning. He had no idea how long he’d been sitting there when he noticed a woman with a pram coming closer. His stomach turned over when he saw who it was. There was Emma, with Elin, his daughter. He wanted to rush over and yank the handle of the pram out of her hands, but he restrained himself.

Then she turned her head and glanced in his direction. For several seconds he wondered whether she would come over to him or just keep going, pretending not to have seen him. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her approach. He froze.

‘Oh, look, here’s Pappa,’ she cooed in a cheerful voice, holding Elin out towards Johan.

Johan raised his head, and all of a sudden his little daughter was so close he could smell the scent of her. Those little brown eyes, that heart-shaped little face, the dimple on her chin. His dimple.

He made an effort to smile at her as he held out his hands. The next moment he was holding her warm, chubby little body close to him. That’s when he fell apart. Johan hugged his daughter tight and wept so that his shoulders shook.

At a loss, Emma sat down next to him without saying a word.

KNUTAS WAS TAKEN to the hospital. He wasn’t injured, but Kihlgård still insisted that he go, if nothing else to talk with somebody about what had just happened. Knutas submitted to a medical examination and then recounted the entire course of events to a kindly doctor in the psychiatric emergency unit he happened to know quite well. Lina and the kids came back from the summer house, and Lina urged him to take it easy and stay home for the rest of the day, but Knutas refused. By two o’clock that afternoon, he was back at police headquarters.

The entire team was on the job, as the investigation had now picked up steam. There was no time to lose.

Knutas had barely sat down at his desk before Jacobsson stuck her head in the door.

‘Hi. How are you doing?’

She came over to give him a quick hug.

‘What a thing to happen. I’m glad it turned out well.’

Knutas smiled wanly.

‘I heard you got locked inside a clothes cupboard, but then what happened?’

‘They went back to emptying the house of everything that wasn’t nailed down. I’d probably been sitting there for half an hour when I heard the van drive off. I wasn’t really worried, since I’d already managed to contact Kihlgård. And it wasn’t more than ten or fifteen minutes later that they showed up.’

‘Could you tell what language those guys were speaking?’

‘I’m not much of a linguist, as you know, but I think it was one of the Baltic languages, probably Estonian.’

‘Do you think they were the same guys who beat up Vendela Bovide?’

‘It seems highly likely.’

‘Have you gone through the book of mug shots?’

‘Yup. That was the first thing I did when I got back from the hospital. I’ve already been debriefed and looked at photos of plenty of ex-cons. Nothing, unfortunately.’

‘How well does Vendela’s description of the men match what you saw?’

‘It seems likely that two of them were the guys who beat her up. But there was also a third guy out on Furillen.’

‘So now everything seems to indicate that the murder of Peter Bovide did have something to do with his illegal workers.’

‘It seems so,’ Knutas agreed. ‘At the same time, I don’t think they were the killer type.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘At first I was scared, of course, thinking they might be the ones who shot Bovide. For a few seconds I really thought it was going to be the end of me. But then what happened? They locked me in a clothes cupboard, and even apologized for doing it.’

‘What?’

‘The last thing I heard them say was “We’re sorry!” Can you believe it?’ Knutas gave her a wry smile.

‘That doesn’t exactly sound like a cold-blooded murderer.’

‘No, it doesn’t.’

‘But if the murder isn’t connected with the illegal workers, what the heck is this all about?’

‘That’s the very question I’ve been asking myself over and over again.’

KNUTAS WOKE UP in his bed at home on Bokströmsgatan and found himself staring at Lina’s freckled back. She was taking deep, calm breaths. Cautiously, he kissed her shoulder, and she grunted softly.

They’d had a marvellous time. He and Lina had sat out on the porch in the warm summer evening, sipping cold white wine and talking the way they used to. They discussed what had happened out on Furillen. When he spoke the words aloud, it was as if he finally realized what a serious episode he’d been through.

They talked about how lucky he’d been, since the whole drama had ended well, even though the three men had escaped with all the appliances and everything else. Knutas was reminded of what he and Lina actually had together. What did it matter if their sex life was going through a lull when he thought about the camaraderie and intimacy they shared? They had fun together, laughed a lot and he loved her bold outlook. It was so easy living with Lina.

He needed to make more of an effort, do more to rekindle their love. It really wouldn’t require such major changes to improve things. He’d already made a start the previous evening by making sure they went to bed long before they were too tired to do anything but fall asleep.