Camilla Lackberg - The Preacher

Her anger seemed to be ebbing away, and in its place came tears. Gabriel didn’t know which was worse. For a moment he had seen in her wrath a brief glimpse of the old Solveig. The lovely beauty queen that he had been proud to have as his fiancée, before his brother came and took her, precisely the way he had taken everything else he wanted. When her anger was replaced by tears, Solveig deflated like a punctured balloon, and he once again saw the fat, slovenly wreck who spent her days wallowing in self-pity.

‘May you burn in hell, Gabriel Hult, along with your father.’ She whispered the words and left as abruptly as she’d come. Then Gabriel and Laine were alone. Gabriel felt shell-shocked. He sat down heavily on his desk chair and stared mutely at his wife. They exchanged a complicit look. They both knew what it meant that old bones had resurfaced.

With great zeal and confidence Martin took on the task of finding out all about Tanja Schmidt, which was the full name in her passport. Liese had turned in all of Tanja’s things at their request, and he had gone through her backpack with a fine-toothed comb. At the very bottom he had found her passport looking practically unused. There was actually only one stamp from when she entered Sweden from Germany. Either she had never been outside Germany before, or the passport was new.

The photo was surprisingly good, and he decided that she had been nice-looking though a bit plain. Brown eyes and brown hair, a little longer than to her shoulders. Height five foot five, normal build, whatever that meant.

Otherwise her backpack had produced nothing of interest. Changes of clothes, some worn paperbacks, toiletries, and some wrappers from sweets. Nothing personal, which he found rather odd. Wouldn’t she at least have a photo of her family or boyfriend with her, or an address book? Although they had found a handbag near the body. Liese had confirmed that Tanja owned a red handbag. Apparently that’s where she had kept her personal belongings. Now they were gone, in any case. Could it have been a robbery? Or had the killer taken her personal items as souvenirs? Martin had seen a programme on the Discovery Channel about serial killers, that apparently it was common for them to save things from their victims, as part of the ritual.

Martin checked himself. There was nothing to indicate that they were looking for a serial killer, not yet. He did his best not to get stuck in that line of thinking.

He began writing down notes about how he was going to handle the investigation into the Tanja case. First, contact the German police authorities, which he had been about to do when he was interrupted by the call from Tord Pedersen. Then he had to talk with Liese again, and finally he thought he’d get Gösta to drive out to the campground with him and ask around. See whether Tanja might have spoken to anyone there. Or perhaps it would be better to ask Patrik to assign that task to Gösta. In this investigation Patrik, not Martin, had the authority to give orders to Gösta. And things had a tendency to go much more smoothly if protocol was followed to the letter.

Once again he began to dial the number of the German police, and this time he got through. It would have been an exaggeration to say that the conversation flowed smoothly, but by the time he hung up he was relatively sure he had succeeded in laying out the relevant details correctly. They promised to get back to him as soon as they had more information. At least that’s what he thought the person on the other end had said. If there was going to be a lot of contact with their German colleagues they would have to bring in an interpreter.

Considering the time it might take to get information from abroad, he sincerely wished that he had an internet connection in front of him that was as good as the one he had at home. But because of the risk of being hacked, the police station didn’t even have a lousy dial-up modem. He made a mental note to do a search for Tanja Schmidt in the German telephone directory, if it was accessible on the Net. Although if he remembered correctly, Schmidt was one of the most common German surnames, so there was little chance that it would produce anything.

Since he couldn’t do much else than wait for information from Germany, he decided to get started on the next task. He had got hold of Liese’s mobile number, and he rang her first to make sure that she was still in town. Actually she had no obligation to stay, but she had promised not to leave for another couple of days so that they would have a chance to talk to her again.

Her trip must have lost all of its charm by now. According to her testimony to Patrik, the two girls had grown very close in a short time. Now she sat alone in a tent at the Sälvik campground in Fjällbacka knowing her travelling companion had been murdered. Maybe she was in danger too. That was a scenario that Martin hadn’t thought of earlier. Maybe it would be best to talk to Patrik about it as soon as he came back to the station. It could be that the murderer had seen the girls at the campground together and had then focused on the two of them for some reason. But how did Mona and Siv’s bones fit into the picture? Mona and possibly Siv, he corrected himself at once. One should never regard anything as certain if it was merely almost certain, as an instructor at the police academy had once said. It was a maxim that Martin tried to live by in his police work.

On closer reflection he did not believe that Liese was in any danger. Once again they were dealing with probabilities, and the odds were that she had been drawn into something simply because of an unfortunate choice of travelling companion.

Despite his previous misgivings, Martin decided to do some fast talking to rope Gösta into a little concrete police work. He walked down the hall to his office.

‘Gösta, may I interrupt?’

Still waxing poetic about his hole-in-one, Gösta was talking on the phone. He hung up guiltily when Martin stuck his head in the door.

‘Yes?’

‘Patrik has asked us to drive down to Sälvik campground. I have to meet with the victim’s travelling companion, and you’re supposed to ask questions around the campground.’

Gösta uttered a grunt but didn’t question the validity of Martin’s statement as to how Patrik had assigned the tasks. He grabbed his jacket and followed Martin out to the car. The downpour had changed to a light drizzle, but the air was clear and fresh to breathe. It felt as though weeks of dust and heat had been flushed away, and everything looked cleaner than usual.

‘Let’s hope that this rain isn’t here to stay, or else my golf game is going to go to hell,’ Gösta muttered crossly as they sat in the car. Martin thought that he was the only person who didn’t think it was good to have a little break from the summer heat.

‘Well, I think it’s quite nice. That sweltering heat was about to kill me. And just imagine Patrik’s wife. It must be rough to be eight months pregnant in the middle of summer. I could never handle it, that’s for sure.’

Martin chattered on, well aware that Gösta had a tendency to be a bit taciturn when there was talk of anything other than golf. And since Martin’s knowledge of golf was limited to the fact that the ball was round and white and that golfers were usually identified by checked clown trousers, he decided to carry on the conversation all by himself. That’s why he hardly heard Gösta’s muttered comment.

‘Our boy was born in early August, one hot summer like this.’

‘Do you have a son, Gösta? I didn’t know that.’

Martin searched his memory for comments about Gösta’s family. He knew that his wife had died a couple of years ago, but he couldn’t recall hearing anything about a child. In surprise he turned to look at Gösta seated next to him.