Camilla Lackberg - Buried Angels

Dagmar stared at him. He was the most handsome man she’d ever seen. He didn’t seem to be as drunk as many of the other guests, and his gaze was unwavering as he looked into her eyes. For a long moment they stood there, staring at each other. Dagmar lifted her chin. She knew she was beautiful. She’d had this confirmed so many times by men who ran their hands over her body and panted words in her ear. But never before had she been so pleased with her own beauty.

Without taking his eyes off her, the pilot bent down and began picking up shards of glass from the broken bottles. Carefully he carried them over to a little grove of trees and tossed them to the ground. Then he set his finger to his lips, stepped into the root cellar and brought out two more bottles. Dagmar smiled gratefully as she went over to take the bottles from him. She happened to glance down at his hands and discovered that he was bleeding from a cut on his left index finger.

She gestured to show that she wanted to have a look at his hand, so he set the bottles on the ground. It was not a deep cut, but it was bleeding heavily. With her eyes fixed on his, she put his finger in her mouth and gently sucked away the blood. His eyes widened, and she saw the familiar look as they glazed over. She moved away and picked up the bottles. As she turned and walked back to the guests, she could feel his eyes following her.

Patrik had gathered his colleagues to discuss the case. It was important that Mellberg be brought up to date. He cleared his throat. ‘You weren’t here over the weekend, Bertil, so I’m wondering whether you heard about what happened.’

‘No, tell me,’ demanded Mellberg, looking at Patrik.

‘On Saturday there was a fire out at the summer camp on Valö. There are indications that it was started deliberately.’

‘Arson?’

‘We haven’t had it confirmed yet. We’re waiting for the report from Torbjörn,’ said Patrik. He hesitated for a moment before going on. ‘But there’s enough evidence to indicate that we should keep working on the case.’

Patrik pointed to Gösta, who was standing at the whiteboard, holding a marker in his hand.

‘Gösta has taken out the files on the family that disappeared on Valö. He—’ Patrik began before being interrupted.

‘I know the case you’re talking about. Everybody knows that old story. But what does it have to do with this?’ said Mellberg. He leaned down to pet his dog Ernst, who was lying under his chair.

‘We’re not sure.’ Patrik was already feeling tired. He always had to run things past Mellberg, who was officially in charge of the station, although in practice he was more than willing to let Patrik assume full responsibility. So long as he could take full credit when the case was solved. ‘We’re going into the investigation without any preconceived notions. But it does seem very strange that this should happen just as the sole surviving member of the family, the daughter, returns to the island for the first time in thirty-five years.’

‘They probably set the house on fire themselves. To get the insurance money,’ said Mellberg.

‘I’m looking into their finances,’ said Martin, who was sitting next to Annika. He seemed unusually subdued. ‘I should have something to report by tomorrow morning.’

‘Good. I’m sure that will solve the mystery. Most likely they found out it was going to cost too much to renovate that old eyesore, so they decided it would make more sense to burn it down. I saw a lot of that during my days in Göteborg.’

‘As I said, we’re not going to lock ourselves into any specific theory at the moment,’ said Patrik. ‘Now I think we should let Gösta tell us what he remembers.’

He sat down and nodded for Gösta to begin. What Erica had told him during their boat trip through the archipelago was fascinating. Now he wanted to hear what Gösta could tell them about the old investigation.

‘I’m sure that all of you are familiar with the case, but if you don’t mind I’ll start from the beginning.’ Gösta looked around, and everybody seated at the table nodded their agreement.

‘On 13 April 1974, the night before Easter Sunday, somebody rang the police in Tanum and told them to come out to the boarding school on Valö. The caller hung up before explaining what had happened. The old police chief took the call, and according to him, it was impossible to tell whether the informant was male or female.’ Gösta paused for a moment as in his mind he was carried back to that time in the past. ‘My colleague Henry Ljung and I were told to head out there and find out what was going on. Half an hour later we arrived on the scene and found something strange. The table in the dining room was set for Easter lunch and the food had been partially eaten, but there was no trace of the family that lived there. The only person present was a one-year-old girl, Ebba, who was toddling around all alone. It was as if the rest of the family had gone up in smoke. As if they’d stood up in the middle of the meal and vanished.’

‘Poof!’ said Mellberg. Gösta gave him a withering glare.

‘Where were all the pupils?’ asked Martin.

‘Since it was the Easter holiday, most of them had gone home to their families. Only a few were still on Valö, and they were nowhere in sight when we arrived, but after a while five boys turned up on a boat. They said they’d been out fishing for a couple of hours. During the following weeks, we questioned them intensely, but they didn’t know anything about what happened to the family. I talked to them myself, and they all said the same thing: they hadn’t been invited to the family’s Easter lunch, so they’d gone out fishing instead. When they left, everything was perfectly normal.’

‘Was the family’s boat still tied to the dock?’ asked Patrik.

‘Yes. And we went over the island with a fine-tooth comb, but there was no trace of them.’ Gösta shook his head.

‘How many people are we talking about?’ Against his will, Mellberg’s curiosity had been aroused, and he was leaning forward to listen.

‘There were two adults and four children in the family. One of the children was little Ebba, of course. So the adults and three children disappeared.’ Gösta turned to write on the whiteboard. ‘The father, Rune Elvander, was the headmaster of the school. He was a former military man, and it was his idea to establish a school for boys whose parents set high standards for education, combined with strict discipline. First-class teaching, character-building rules, and invigorating outdoor activities for well-to-do boys. That was how the school was described in the brochure, if I remember correctly.’

‘Jesus, that sounds like something out of the 1920s,’ said Mellberg.

‘There have always been parents who long for the good old days, and that was exactly what Rune Elvander offered,’ said Gösta, and then resumed his report. ‘Ebba’s mother was named Inez. She was twenty-three years old at the time of her disappearance, significantly younger than Rune, who was in his fifties. Rune also had three children from a previous marriage: Claes, who was nineteen; Annelie, who was sixteen; and Johan, who was nine. Their mother, Carla, died a year before Rune remarried. According to the five pupils, there seemed to be a number of problems in the family, but that was all we managed to get out of them.’

‘How many pupils were attending the boarding school when they weren’t away on holiday?’ asked Martin.

‘It varied a bit, but about twenty. In addition to Rune, there were two other teachers, but they’d gone home for Easter.’

‘And I assume they had alibis for the time the family disappeared, right?’ Patrik said, looking at Gösta.