Stone Coffin Part 19

He loved her. Why, she could never understand. She wasn't particularly attractive. Not like his wife.

It was in the garden that she appeared at her best. Her body was delicate but with wide hips made to rest seed boxes against and with muscular legs and shoulders from digging, from loosening dirt, from crouching in dirt. Her arms were so slender that he could easily encircle them with his hands.

She had become a new person the day she had bought the house. Years of desperation, of searching for a life of meaning, had been replaced with a deeply felt sense of peace. Her period on disability after the accident that had cost her husband his life had been long, and she had feared for her life. Not physically-the doctors had fit her back together well-but her equanimity had been shaken. She found herself b.u.mping against life, having to take detours and lean on pills, on sleep. She never woke up feeling happy.

And then she bought the house. It was by instinct, as if her body and soul were in charge. Dazed, she signed the sales contract and loan doc.u.ments. Already after only a couple of days-that was also at the time the bedstraw was blooming-she felt her body slowly start to work again, as if her limbs were regrowing. Things she held in her hands took on a sense of weight and meaning. She fumbled for the poker, opened the door to the wood-burning fireplace in the kitchen, saw the glowing embers, and drew in the heat.

She stood there for a long time in the doorway of the old shed, peering into the half darkness, picking up raw and earthy smells. Then she stepped inside and found some rusty shovels, a garden fork, a wheelbarrow with a punctured tire.

The birds, enlivened by their guest, flew in wide arcs between the bushy thickets, chirping and tending to their little ones. A cat turned up after a couple of days, first keeping to the edge of the property, slinking around the shed and hiding in the nettles, but creeping closer.

The creaking doors were greased, the paths cleared, the firewood that had stood stacked for years received her with muted voices. She stood on the sawdust-strewn floors of the woodshed and smiled at the sawhorse and the chopping block.

Slowly but surely she had floated up to the surface, grown more beautiful and stronger, and taken up her place in the house, the garden, and the landscape.

She hired carpenters, painters, and electricians. The money from her husband's insurance was enough to make a lovely home out of the old cottage with its addition. Contact with the workers energized her. She looked forward to their voices and hands. She became the perfect client who baked, cooked, and brought home cases of beer. Rarely had they been as well looked after on a job. They thought of her as a jolly woman, eager and honest.

The fact that they were men-a couple of them attractive-meant that she gave more attention to her appearance. Not that she wanted anything to happen, but she noticed that they looked at her, that they probably made comments about her and her appearance. All men do, she thought, and in spite of herself she liked the fact that she could attract their gaze and innocently flirtatious comments.

Then Sven-Erik came along. He had known her husband, had found out that she had moved to Rasbo, and had called her. There were some photos he wanted to show her. He had found them in a box when he was cleaning up and throwing away some old junk. The photos were taken some fifteen, sixteen years ago by a guy in the group of boys he a.s.sociated with as a teen. Nils, her husband, was also in that gang.

Sven-Erik had thought she might want a couple and that was why he had called. After the first visit, he had returned, and Gabriella had seen him change each time. She started to long for him to come by.

Now he was gone and she didn't know how she would be able to live. The memories of him were everywhere. He spoke to her in the darkness of the night, he caressed her in her dreams, and she wept with grief and sorrow when she woke up.

She knew that he could never have killed his wife and child. Not that he still loved Josefin, but he was not a murderer. He wanted to divorce her-that was something he had talked about with increasing frequency over the past year-but not in that way. And then there was Emily, his greatest love. He had talked a great deal about Emily and had shown her pictures. Never.

She had followed the reports in the papers. Each line pained her, but she had to read everything in order to understand what had happened. She had seen the obituary. She would visit the grave too, but later.

At first she had accepted the idea that he had become confused, committed the murders, and then taken his own life. There was no other explanation. After a couple of days she had spoken with Jack Mortensen, who had supported this theory and told her about Sven-Erik's worsening temper. He had asked her not to reveal her ident.i.ty. He thought of Sven-Erik's family, he said. Things were bad enough as they were.

She had promised him that. He had called her several times, and in some way that was a comfort, to have someone who knew, someone who could acknowledge her grief.

After another couple of days her doubt had started to grow. Sven-Erik couldn't possibly have done this, not the man she loved and had come to know as a sensitive person whose values were changing during the time they spent together. He had become critical of his work, complained of the stress, of the constant need for money for the development of the company, of the demand for quick results from the Spanish investors. Most of the time he didn't want to talk about work, but sometimes it came up, and she sensed that he would soon break free of it. There was no other way. Sven-Erik was not the type of person who could take things lightly, simply push concerns aside and go on for the sake of his career or the money.

It was clear he enjoyed spending time in the house with her. He had peace here. Laughed. They played, they weeded the beds together. He had never gardened before. Isabella, the dog, lay in the shade and watched them.

And now he was dead. Disgraced in the memories of those who lived. She was the only one who could still speak of him with love. Not even his parents, whom she had called in order to offer comfort and perhaps to win the confidence of, could see anything to redeem their son. They had rejected her, had been merciless in their judgment.

It was when she called them for a second time that she received the information that had convinced her of his innocence. It was a relief, but also so sensational and upsetting that she couldn't quite grasp it. She had not been able to continue the conversation with his sobbing mother and had had to put the phone down.

It took two days before she resurfaced, before she realized the enormity of what she had been told.

She rested her hand on the handle. The door that was normally so stiff had dried out in the heat and slid open. She had forgotten what she was planning to get, but remembered as she stood there that it was strawberry jam.

She had called the police and spoken with the woman who was in charge of the investigation. She had read her name in the papers. She had sounded upset and unfocused and, which surprised her the most, angry. Gabriella was extremely attuned to other people's tone of voice. She could be reduced to tears by a single remark, lose her steam, retreat. She had not been able to continue the conversation, but she knew that she had to call again.

The jar was cool and she held it up to her forehead, following the narrow path back to the house. She glanced at the vegetable garden. She feared the worst. She had not watered it for two days and now she couldn't bring herself to go there. Much of it would have died, she knew that. Especially the cabbages and perhaps the lettuce. She had to pull herself together in the afternoon.

Seventeen.

The prosecutor hesitated but finally gave in. If it had been anything else, he would never have approved the warrants for the seven people. There was no clear indication of criminal activity other than the fact that they were vocal animal rights activists, and even that information was rather shaky.

Media had made a big thing of the attack on TV4. This news dominated the local and national channels. The TV4 morning news had been broadcast direct from the studio and included interviews of its own staff. The morning broadcasts of the daily news program Rapport had fixated on the terrorist angle and run a series of pieces on earlier attacks on researchers, stealth releases of foxes and minks, slaughter trucks set on fire, as well as various interviews with Security Service officers and terrorism experts.

The station was bombarded with calls and surrounded by reporters. The fact that their media colleagues were targeted had made them particularly insistent. The prosecutor yielded to this pressure.

The seven were brought in during a coordinated operation at eleven o'clock in the morning. Five were at home and two at work. Everything went calmly. It was as if they had been expecting company. All, however, protested the legality of the warrants.

They were led into private holding cells and led to understand that there were others. None of them were questioned until late that afternoon. They had to spend the intervening time in the cells in total isolation, checked on two times an hour through a window in the door. Nothing else. No human contact, no offers of food or coffee.

Sammy Nilsson felt a pang of conscience when the first one was brought in for questioning. She was a young woman, Erika Mattson, nineteen years of age. She had just finished high school and had a summer job at a supermarket.

"Do you know why you're here?" Sammy asked.

Normally he would take it easy, chat a little and try to establish a connection. Now he adopted a purely formal stance, turning on the tape recorder without further comments.

"May I call my mother?" the girl asked.

"You can do that later. Do you know that one of the reporters will probably have to spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair?"

Sammy looked at the girl, who gazed wide-eyed back at him.

"I don't have anything to do with that," she said.

"We think you were there."

There was no basis for this claim, but Lindell, Berglund, and Haver had decided to take a tough line. Possibly one of the youngsters would become uncertain and start to talk.

"You are vegan," Sammy went on.

"Is there anything wrong with that?"

"Your room is covered with posters, magazines, and pamphlets that address the same thing: that animal experimentation is cruel and should be stopped."

The girl didn't answer. Her gaze was fixed on her hands, which were clasped in her lap.

"Should animal experiments be stopped at any cost, is that it? Even if people end up hurt? You were questioned about an attack on a kennel in Norduppland last year. Now you are sitting here again. That time you were only making threats. Now you are playing at being a terrorist and actually hurting people."

"Stop talking about hurting people! I have nothing to do with this. I want to call my mother!"

Sammy sat quietly for a couple of minutes.

"What did you do yesterday?"

"I was home almost all day. I went out for a coffee in the afternoon."

"Where?"

"At Hugo's."

"Alone?"

"No, with friends."

"Do they have names?"

The girl gave him three names. He recognized one of them. Haver was in the process of questioning him.

"When did you leave Hugo's?"

"At around five maybe. I went home. I had to do laundry."

"Were you alone?"

"Yes, my mom was working. She came home at ten. She's a nurse."

"Home alone. Are you sure you didn't take a trip to TV4?"

The girl started to cry. Sammy turned off the tape recorder.

Haver met with steelier resistance. Erik Gustavsson was smirking at him, answering the questions quickly and with nonchalance. He leaned back in his chair, to all appearances completely unconcerned.

He had been home during the day and gone into town at around three in the afternoon to buy a record and have a coffee.

"I take it that isn't a crime?" he said.

"Go on," Haver said.

"I went to Hugo's, if you know where that is. I hung out there for a couple of hours, and then I biked home again."

"I see. What did you do at home?"

"Went online, talked a bit with a friend on the phone, and in the evening I went to Katalin and had a beer. Great alibi, don't you think?"

"I think you knocked down a reporter at TV4 at a quarter past six yesterday. Then maybe you had a beer to celebrate."

"Prove it."

Haver leaned back and flipped through some papers that lay in front of him on the table and appeared to have lost all interest in the young man. After a while he reached for the phone.

"Can you come get a guy who's with me? He should go back now."

He turned off the tape recorder, did not look at Erik Gustavsson, and glanced at his watch.

"Now I'm going to go home and have a steak," he said and stood up.

A guard stepped into the room.

"You know what," Haver said as Erik stood up, "I talked to your dad on the phone. He's p.i.s.sed. Isn't it a bit of a quandary for a vegan to be the son of a butcher?"

Erik Gustavsson stared back at Haver with an amused smile.

It was eight o'clock. There was a certain amount of tiredness among the a.s.sembled officers. Berglund was making faces, lost in thought. Sammy Nilsson went to get some coffee and returned with a tray.

"No, not for me," Lindell said when he offered her a cup.

Haver looked thoughtful. Wende was almost asleep, his head cradled in his hands.

"Maybe we took the wrong tactic," Lindell said as she began the review of the day's events.

No one said anything.

"What we have turned up so far is not particularly significant. Everyone seems to have fairly decent alibis, even if the two Hugo-goers could very well have fit in a brief visit to TV4. The girl's appearance matches the description of the one who had blood on her face. We'll test that further tomorrow. We're going to see if Anna Sundmark, the studio manager, can pick out Erika Mattson. We're also going to run voice tests on all seven and play them for the TV4 staff. They may be able to identify one of them."

Lindell was exhausted after this short review. She was tempted by the smell of the coffee but thought she would throw up if she had any.

"We'll have to let them go tomorrow," Berglund said.

"Have the searches of their homes given us anything?" Wende asked.

"Two complaints lodged with the parliamentary ombudsman, a gaggle of crazed parents, and numerous letters to the editor expected for the next few days," Sammy said. "We'll probably find that it isn't to everyone's taste that we go turn seven people's homes upside down."

"But public opinion should be in our favor," Wende said.

Lindell felt even weaker. Since when did they modify what they did to fit public opinion?

She said this too and was immediately contradicted by Berglund. As always when he talked, she listened carefully. Her older colleague rarely spoke nonsense.

After hearing his objections, she had to agree at least in part. If people didn't believe in the validity of their procedures, public trust in police and prosecutors would quickly be whittled away.