Karin Alvtegen - Missing

'You're in luck.'

He was muttering, not taking his eyes off the screen. 'Someone went in for a search just now, so all we need to do is hang on.'

He stopped keying and she sat upright again, looking at the wall. She didn't want to be caught out spying on him.

Would he recognise any of the names from the newspapers? Jorgen Grundberg's name had been used a lot, almost as often as her own.

When she heard him get up from the chair, she rose too. Then he come over, holding out one folded sheet of A4 paper. 'Done.'

She took the paper without taking her eyes off his face. 'You're sure it's the right person?'

He smiled, clearly never having heard such a stupid question before.

'Yes, don't worry.' He sounded soothing.

'Depends, of course. But he's the guy whose organs were transplanted into the names on your list.' He looked quizzically at her.

'Weren't they all murdered afterwards? By some character called Sibylla?'

She didn't answer. He smiled broadly.

'Just so that we know where we are, you know.'

She put the paper in her pocket, unafraid because he couldn't threaten to reveal her identity. If one on them talked, the other one would and they shared that knowledge.

She looked at him, reflecting on how his big muscles seemed matched by his brain. Just as she put her hand on the door-handle to leave, another thought occurred to her.

'Haven't you ever thought of getting a real job? You have all the qualifications for a good one, it seems.'

He was leaning against the door-frame to the main room, his bulging arms crossed over his chest. He was grinning openly at her now.

'No, I haven't. Have you?'

Then she left.

Thomas Sandberg. That was all it said on the note she showed Patrik. They were standing together in the street, reading the name over and over again, as if reading a long story rather than a sequence of fourteen letters.

'No address?'

'No.'

He looked disappointed. Obviously, he felt this was a poor show after an outlay of four thousand kronor.

'How many Thomas Sandbergs do you think there are in this country?'

She raised her eyebrows.

'No idea. All we do know is that there's one less now. Let's go.'

She started walking. She felt certain that what she was about to do next was the right thing, but even so she was troubled by the distance she would apparently callously create between them. If she kept walking she wouldn't have to look into his eyes, which would make it a little easier.

'Now what do we do?'

He had hurried to catch up with her.

That instance the alarm in the wristwatch went off.

'Christ! Sunday lunch!'

He turned off the signal.

'Mum forced me to set the alarm. She'll have a fit if I don't turn up.'

'Don't risk it. Off you go.'

'Do you want to keep hanging out in the attic?'

She didn't reply.

'Do you?'

'Maybe that's the best idea.'

She hadn't even lied. It almost certainly was the best idea if she stayed hidden in Patrik's attic for the foreseeable future, allowing him to feed her the leftovers from the family meals.

Be that as it may. It was too late now.

Somewhere a man or a woman existed, who had had an improbable stroke of luck when their paths crossed that night in the Grand Hotel. That person had stolen her name and exploited her outsider's isolation to further a purely personal vendetta.

She was not going to let that pass. The invisible one had almost succeeded in crushing her. Almost, but not quite.

When the large iron door leading to Patrik's attic had slammed behind her and Patrik's steps were disappearing down the stairs, she pulled the second sheet of A4 paper from her pocket.

She read it carefully, memorising the text.

Rune Hedlund. ID 46 06 08 – 2498 res. Vimmerby.

The cemetery was large and it took her the best part of an hour to find the tombstone. It was tucked away in the parkland set aside for urns, a rounded natural boulder with an inscription in gold lettering.

RUNE HEDLUND

8 june 1946

to

15 march 1998

Below was a space large enough for another name. An eternal flame was burning inside a white plastic cover. Yellow and purple crocuses were filling the area round the stone. Spring was earlier this far south.

She crouched down. Noticing some dry leaves caught between the spring flowers, she pulled them out and threw them to the wind.

'What are you doing here?'

The voice behind her startled her so much she lost her balance and sat down with a thump. She rose quickly, turning to look at the woman who had crept up behind her. Sibylla's heart was racing.

'Just removing some dead leaves.'

Their eyes met, fiercely, as if facing each other across a battle demarcation line. The woman's eyes were full of suspicion and dislike. Sibylla suddenly felt sure she had found her quarry.

They faced up to each other in hostile silence. Sibylla's adversary was dressed in white under her grey coat and she had brought along a green, funnel-shaped vase filled with multicoloured tulips.

'You're not to mess about with my husband's grave.'

Aha. Rune Hedlund's widow.

'I was just clearing some leaves away.'

The woman breathed heavily through her nose, as if trying to pull herself together.

'What have you got to do with my husband?' 'I never met him.'

The woman smiled suddenly, but there was no friendliness in her smile. Fear started creeping up on Sibylla. Had the woman recognised her? The police might have worked out the link between the killings and the organ transplant and asked Hedlund's wife to keep a look-out for Sibylla. They would be keen to find a link between them, to trace Sibylla's motive.

She glanced over her shoulder. Maybe they were here already?

'Don't you realise I know what you've been up to for ages?'

After a pause the woman spoke again.

‘I knew ever since the funeral, when I saw your flowers.'

She sounded outraged.

'What's going on in the mind of someone sending an anonymous bouquet of red roses to a funeral? What did you hope to gain by it? Can you tell me that? Did you think it would please Rune?'

The contempt in the woman's eyes was so searing that Sibylla had to look away.

'If he really wanted to live with you he'd have chosen you while he was alive. But he stayed with me. Not you. So was that why you had to produce the flowers – to humiliate me?'

The woman's face was twisted into a frown as if she was trying to make the revulsion she felt visible.

'Every Friday, week in and week out, one more bloody red rose on his grave. Do you want to punish me? Make me suffer because I was the one who got him in the end?'

Her voice was cracking but it was obvious that she had stored up more to say. Words had been piling up, waiting for an outlet.

Sibylla was shaken by her own miscalculation. The authorities would have had to ask this woman. She was one of the 'close relatives' whose informed consent must be sought. The answer was presumably that someone else out there was feeling abandoned and bitterly wanted to restore something of what had been lost. She had to make sure.

'Have the police contacted you?'

'What? The police? Why should they?'

Rune Hedlund's widow took a step forward, kneeled and jammed the sharp tip of her tin vase into the ground. The crocuses shied away in alarm.

Watching the other woman's back rising and falling with her heavy breathing, Sibylla was quite sure that she had been looking forward to this moment of confrontation. She had probably practised carefully what to say when she was finally face to face with her husband's unknown mistress.

Shame that she had wasted her ammunition.

Of course she was not to know that Rune's real lover had committed much, much worse acts than putting flowers on her man's grave. Sibylla wouldn't like to be the one who enlightened her.