Камилла Лэкберг – The Hidden Child (страница 22)
For the moment, he had more pressing things to deal with. He sighed again. Over the years he’d made sighing into an art form. Maybe he should wait until Martin came back, that way he’d be able to share the workload. Better still, it would give him an hour to himself, maybe two if Martin and Paula decided to stop for lunch before heading back to the station.
But on second thought he decided it might be better to get it out of the way instead of having it hanging over him. Gösta grabbed his jacket, told Annika where he was off to, took one of the cars from the garage, and headed for Fjällbacka.
Not until he rang the doorbell did it occur to him what a stupid decision he’d made. It was just past noon: the boys would be in school. He was just about to leave when the door opened and a snuffling Adam appeared, his nose red and his eyes glazed.
‘Are you sick?’ Gösta asked.
The boy nodded, and as if corroboration were necessary, he sneezed loudly and then blew his nose on the handkerchief he was holding. ‘I’ve got a cold,’ he said, in a voice that clearly demonstrated how stuffed up his nose was.
‘May I come in?’
Adam stepped aside. ‘Okay, but it’s at your own risk,’ he said, sneezing again.
Gösta felt a light shower of virus-bearing saliva strike his hand, which he calmly wiped on the sleeve of his shirt. A couple of days sick leave wouldn’t be so bad. He’d gladly suffer a runny nose if he could stretch out on the sofa at home and watch a DVD of the latest Masters tournament. He had been waiting for a chance to study Tiger’s swing in slow motion.
‘Babba isn’t ’obe,’ Adam snuffled.
Gösta frowned as he followed the boy into the kitchen. Then he worked it out. Adam must have meant to say ‘Mamma isn’t home.’ It crossed Gösta’s mind that he shouldn’t really be interviewing a minor without a legal guardian present, but he quickly dismissed the thought. Had Ernst been here, he would have given Gösta his full support – as in Ernst his former colleague, rather than the dog. Gösta chuckled at that, drawing a puzzled look from Adam.
They sat down at the kitchen table, which still bore traces of that morning’s breakfast: breadcrumbs, dabs of butter, and a little puddle of O’Boy chocolate drink.
‘So,’ said Gösta, drumming his fingers on the table and instantly regretting it when his fingers came away covered in sticky crumbs. He wiped them on his trousers and started again.
‘So. How … are you taking this whole thing?’ The question sounded odd even to him. He wasn’t particularly good at talking with kids or with so-called traumatized people. Not that he really went along with any of that nonsense. Good Lord, the old man was dead when they found him, so how bad could it have been? He’d seen a few stiffs in his years on the force, and it had never made him feel traumatized.
Adam blew his nose and then straightened his shoulders. ‘Er, okay, I suppose. Everybody at school thinks it’s cool.’
‘How did the two of you happen to go there in the first place?’
‘It was Mattias’s idea.’ Adam mumbled the name, but by now Gösta was used to the way the boy’s cold was affecting his speech, and he could decipher what he said.
‘Everybody around here knows that those old guys are weirdos who are obsessed with World War II and stuff like that, and somebody at school said they had a load of cool stuff at their house, so Mattias thought we should go in and check it out …’ His torrent of words was suddenly cut off by such a big sneeze that Gösta actually jumped.
‘So it was Mattias who thought you should break in?’ said Gösta, giving Adam a stern look.
‘I don’t know if I’d call it “breaking in” …’ Adam squirmed. ‘We weren’t going to steal anything, we just wanted to take a look. And we thought they were both away, so they probably wouldn’t even notice that we’d been there.’
‘Well, I suppose I’ll have to take your word for it,’ said Gösta. ‘Had you ever been inside their house before?’
‘No, word of honour,’ said Adam earnestly. ‘That was the first time we went there.’
‘I’m going to need to take your fingerprints so I can verify what you’re telling me. And so we can rule out your prints. Do you have a problem with that?’
‘No, not at all,’ said Adam, his eyes shining. ‘I always watch
‘Exactly. That’s exactly how we work,’ said Gösta with a solemn expression. Inside, he was having a good laugh. Put all the fingerprints in the computer. Oh, sure.
He got out the equipment he needed to take Adam’s fingerprints: an ink pad and a card with ten squares in which he carefully pressed the boy’s fingers, one after the other.
‘That’s it,’ he said with satisfaction. ‘We’re done.’
‘Do you scan them in, or how do you do it?’ asked Adam.
‘Right, we scan them in,’ said Gösta, ‘and then we run them through the database you were talking about. We have every Swedish citizen over eighteen in the database. And a number of foreigners too. Via Interpol, you know. We’re connected with them. Interpol, I mean. Via a direct link. And with the FBI and CIA, too.’
‘Awesome!’ said Adam, looking at Gösta with admiration.
Gösta laughed all the way back to Tanumshede.
He set the table with great care, using the yellow tablecloth that he knew Britta liked so much. The white china with the raised pattern. The candleholders they’d received as a wedding gift. And a few flowers in a vase. No matter what the time of year, Britta had always had flowers in the house. She was a regular customer at the florist’s, or at least she used to be. These days it was usually Herman who bought the flowers. He wanted everything to be the way it had always been. Maybe if everything around her remained unchanged the downward spiral might at least be slowed, even if it couldn’t be stopped altogether.
The worst was in the beginning. Before they received the diagnosis. Britta had always been so meticulous about things. None of the family could understand why she suddenly couldn’t find her car keys, or why she would call a grandchild by the wrong name, or find it impossible to remember the phone numbers of friends she’d known most of her life. They’d blamed it on fatigue and stress. She’d started taking multivitamins and drinking
The diagnosis had rendered them both speechless. Then Britta had let out a sob. That was all: one sob. She’d given Herman’s hand a squeeze, and he’d squeezed back. They both knew what it meant. The life that they’d shared for fifty-five years was about to change inexorably. The disease was slowly going to break down her mind, cause her to lose more and more of herself: her memories, her personality. The abyss gaped wide and deep before them.
A year had passed since then. The good moments were now few and far between. Herman’s hands shook as he folded the paper napkins. Britta had always formed them into fans, but even though he’d watched her countless times he couldn’t manage it himself. After the fourth attempt, anger and frustration surged up inside him, and he tore the napkin to shreds that floated down on to the plate. He sat down on a chair and tried to pull himself together as he wiped a tear from his eye.
They’d had fifty-five years together. Good years. Happy years. Of course they’d had their ups and downs, just like in every marriage. But the foundation had always remained solid. They’d become adults together, he and Britta. Especially after they’d had Anna-Greta. He’d been so proud of Britta. Before their daughter was born, he had to admit that he’d sometimes found his wife to be rather shallow and superficial. But from the first day she held Anna-Greta in her arms, she’d changed. It was as if becoming a mother had given her a foundation that she’d lacked until then. They’d had three daughters. Three blessed daughters. And his love for his wife had grown with each birth.
He felt a hand on his shoulder. ‘Pappa? What’s wrong? You didn’t answer when I knocked, so I decided to come in.’
Herman quickly wiped his eyes and put on a smile when he saw the worried expression on his eldest daughter’s face. But he couldn’t fool her. She wrapped her arms around him and pressed her cheek against his.
‘Is this one of the bad days, Pappa?’
He nodded and for a moment allowed himself to feel like a child in his daughter’s arms. They’d brought her up well, he and Britta. Anna-Greta was a warm and considerate person, and a loving grandmother to two of their great-grandchildren. Sometimes he couldn’t understand how things had happened so fast. How could this grey-haired woman in her fifties be the daughter who had toddled about the house and wrapped him around her little finger?
‘Time passes, Anna-Greta,’ he said at last, patting her arm as it lay across his chest.
‘Yes, Pappa, time passes,’ she said, hugging him even harder. She gave him an extra little squeeze and then let him go.