Chapter 26
Hanna is sitting in a quiet corner of the restaurant when she calls Daniel.
She doesn’t want Henry to overhear her conversation; she made an excuse to go off on her own.
He is in their room, having an afternoon nap.
He wasn’t exactly pleased when she suggested they should go back to the hotel earlier than planned, even though he did give in quite quickly.
It is almost two o’clock, and Hanna tells herself that the sun will be going down in half an hour. It’s not as if they’ve lost a whole day on the mountain, just a few hours.
She has to find out what is going on in ?re.
When Daniel answers on the second ring, relief floods her body. And another feeling, warm and familiar, that she can’t put into words.
“Hi, it’s me. I saw the news flash about another murder in ?re. What’s going on?”
“We don’t know yet if it’s a murder.”
Daniel explains the circumstances around the young woman’s death: the lack of clothing when she was found, the group of friends who had come to the mountains for a week’s skiing, the wild partying that seems to have taken place the previous evening.
“There are no signs of external violence,” he says in conclusion.
“So she was just lying there dead in the snow when they found her? Surely it can’t be anything but murder, even if the body doesn’t have any visible injuries.”
“People do strange things when they’re drunk,” Daniel points out.
“Who gets so drunk that they walk out barefoot when it’s minus twenty and simply lie down in the snow?”
“That’s what Carina said,” Daniel concedes.
Hanna’s gut instinct tells her that this is no accident.
“Do we know if she’d taken drugs?” she asks. “It’s easier to imagine her wandering off in the middle of the night if she was under the influence of ecstasy or something similar, something that messes with the brain.”
“None of her friends mentioned drugs, but of course they could have agreed among themselves to keep quiet about it. We’ll see what the autopsy shows—Grip has asked for priority.”
Hanna leans back in the leather armchair, crossing her legs as she thinks. An inviting fire is burning at the other end of the room, sparks shooting up above the logs that are slowly being consumed by the flames.
The icy temperature should have sobered the girl up, however much alcohol she had consumed.
And she wasn’t far away from a source of warmth.
If Hanna has understood Daniel correctly, she was found only about thirty yards from the main house, and even closer to the guest cabin.
There must have been doors on the lower level too, maybe access in and out for skiing as well.
“Have you done a background check on the friends?” she asks. “Are any of them in our databases, or with a tendency to violence? Could there be a jealous boyfriend in the picture?”
Hanna spent many years working in the Domestic Violence Unit with the City Police in Stockholm. She has no illusions about the violence men can perpetrate against women, even those as young as this particular group.
“We’ve opened a preliminary investigation, but like I said, it could have been an accidental death.”
Hanna glances over at the window, where the sun is going down. The sky has been transformed into a mosaic of pink and orange shades. The mountaintops to the west look as if they are on fire.
The decision is obvious.
“I’m coming in.”
She can’t possibly stay here if they are facing a brutal murder. The only thing she will be able to think about is the case.
“But you’re supposed to be off until Tuesday,” Daniel protests. “You don’t need to interrupt your break for this.”
“It’s no problem. I can take some time off later. There will be plenty of other opportunities.”
There is a brief pause, as if Daniel is wondering whether he ought to try to persuade her to stay.
“Where are you, by the way?”
The question puts Hanna in a difficult position. She can’t possibly tell Daniel where she is, because he would immediately realize that she is with a man.
A man who can afford to stay in a place like this.
A man like Henry Sylvester.
Daniel met Henry during the investigation into the murder at Copperhill last Easter.
Hanna recalls the case with a shudder. Right from the start, Daniel had seemed suspicious of Henry.
Hanna could never bring herself to ask whether it was because of Henry’s wealth or because he initially kept crucial information to himself.
She finds it difficult to imagine what Daniel would say if he knew that she and Henry were a couple, but it probably wouldn’t be positive.
“I’ll tell you when I see you,” she says to avoid giving him an answer. “I have to go—I’ll be in touch as soon as I’m back.”
Henry won’t be pleased that she is interrupting the break that he had planned so carefully, but it can’t be helped. Under these circumstances she cannot stay in a luxury hotel to go skiing with her secret lover.
Her intuition is telling her one thing and one thing only.
There has been another murder in ?re.