Chapter 67
He drove home to Marb?ck, got a few hours’ sleep, then woke up and kissed Patricia, who was dozing in one of the loungers in the yard.
They had met when they were young and had one child, Amadia, who had moved out several years ago now and would be starting an architecture program at the university down in Lund in the fall.
Until then, she was living in town, which meant Vidar and Patricia had their big house in Marb?ck all to themselves.
Most of the time it was cozy and quiet there, but Vidar would have loved to start days like this one by hugging his daughter.
Instead, he sat down on the lounger next to Patricia’s and spent some time just relaxing in the sunshine.
“How’d it go yesterday?” she asked.
“Iffy. We’re going to have our work cut out for us.”
She reached out and stroked his cheek with a gentle smile. “You’ll figure it out. You always do.”
He smiled back and took her hand.
“Yeah, maybe. But I don’t really feel like it.” He took a good look at his wife, who was stretched out in a bikini and sunglasses, bearing an astonishing likeness to her twenty-five-year-old self. “You look outrageously hot.”
“I know. I love you too.”
“I love vacation,” Vidar muttered, bending over her for another kiss before he took off with exhaustion hanging like shadows under his eyes.
—
When Vidar pulled into the farmyard, it was lunchtime.
Someone, maybe a customer, was just taking off in an old Volvo station wagon with rusty spots all over its grille and hood.
At the wheel, a glimpse of an elderly man with a furrowed face; Vidar thought for a moment he looked familiar, but the context escaped him.
The house was in Nydala, near the nature reserve in F?berga.
It was a two-story building made of weatherbeaten wood that had turned gray over the years.
Vidar passed a black mailbox and parked next to a big white Mercedes SUV.
A gravel path led to a small studio in a remodeled old barn, where, according to her minimalist website, the woman he was looking for did all her work.
The barn was trimmed with white and the double doors were heavy and black but currently open.
In one corner of the vast yard was a swing set, and colorful outdoor toys were scattered on the lawn.
The sun burned the back of his neck, warmed the ground. Gravel crunched beneath his shoes. He yawned and heard dull thuds coming from the studio, rhythmic and somehow pleasant. A radio blared summery music. All manner of wooden furniture crowded alongside raw materials and workbenches inside.
Vidar stepped into the studio. Patches of sun on the concrete floor led him to a tiny woman crouching in front of a bureau.
In her hand was a hammer the size of her forearm, and she turned her head when she noticed him.
Vidar had expected her to be alarmed, or at least surprised, but she simply put down the hammer and came to greet him with a cool distance, as though Vidar were just another customer, one she didn’t really have time to deal with.
“I apologize for showing up unannounced,” he said, offering his free hand. “I’m Vidar Jorgensson.”
Her eyes dropped quickly to the binder in Vidar’s other hand before she accepted the greeting.
“Siri Bengtsson,” she said, gazing steadily at him with clear brown eyes.
She was about his age, he knew that much.
They’d met in the rubble out in Skavboke.
Her thick, dark hair was streaked with gray these days, and time had left its mark at the corners of her eyes, but that was all.
She was tough and tenacious, he could tell from her shoulders and arms. She was wearing a sleeveless top and work overalls, clogs.
“Nice studio. Did he buy anything?”
“Who?”
“The man who was just here.”
“Oh. No, he was just looking. Most of them are.”
She went back to the bureau, bent down, and gently ran her hand over the wood as if to examine it.
“Studio,” she echoed. “That’s a nice way of putting it. But it’s really just a barn.”
The ceiling was open to the roof and the walls were lined with well-maintained tools that Vidar recognized from the barns of his childhood in Marb?ck.
“I don’t have a barn, but my dad did. I have to say, it didn’t look like this. Aside from the tools. You’re a cop, right?”
“Definitely not.”
He could tell that Siri Bengtsson had guessed from the start that he had come to talk about that portion of her life.
“But you used to be.”
“A long time ago, and it was a very short stint. I’m betting you want to talk about Filip Soderstrom. I’ll warn you right now that I’ve forgotten most of the details.”
Vidar gave her a long stare. “We haven’t released his name to the public.”
“What you did release was plenty.”
They’d tried to anonymize the information, but it was hard.
Modern media was a lot faster than the old kind.
A middle-aged man, originally from the area in which he had been found, background of petty crime and drug abuse.
And Skavboke. His name and photo had already popped up in the murkier corners of the internet, alongside details of the misfortunes that had befallen his family once upon a time and wild speculation about what was going on now.
“Actually, it’s Filip’s brother I most want to talk to you about. Or hear you talk about, rather.”
Something new appeared in Siri’s gaze, what was it, pain of some kind? A distasteful memory returning back to her? Maybe he was seeing things. It disappeared just as swiftly, a spark of something he couldn’t identify.
Siri’s phone was on the bureau. She picked it up and checked something. “You think the murders are related.”
“I think they might be.”
“You quit the force too, I heard,” she said.
“That’s right.”
“But then you came back.”
As if the man in front of her were a riddle she wanted to solve.
“Yes. Which I regret, on days like these.”
She tilted her head and smiled for the first time since his arrival.
“No, you don’t.” She looked around like she might see something in the barn that could help her make up her mind. “What I’d really like is for you to leave, but I realize you’re not going to. If I answer your questions as honestly and thoroughly as I can, will you be satisfied?”
“Honestly and thoroughly. Then I’ll leave. Agreed.”
She nodded.
“Go ahead.”