Chapter 78
Two dead Soderstrom brothers and their equally dead friend Killian Persson, in the midst of a tough summer that never seemed to end.
More than twenty years had passed—it was such a long time, and even so it took nothing more than death to bring all three together again.
That was how Vidar saw them: three coins tossed into a vast darkness.
He sat in his office with Lillemor Soderstrom’s photo album on the desk before him. Pages of milestones and rites of passage: birthdays, last days of school, holidays, dinners. Ordinary moments. A boy, probably Mikael, beaming proudly atop a small motocross bike.
As he turned the page, his phone vibrated in his pocket. When he saw the name on the screen, he realized he hadn’t expected to hear from her.
“Hello there.”
“I’m calling about your binder,” said Siri’s cool voice in his ear, skipping the pleasantries. “I was just browsing through it. There should be documents from the investigation into the burglary at the Lindells’, but maybe you just haven’t gotten that far yet?”
Vidar went over to the boxes. “I don’t know, I didn’t see any.”
“They might be in a separate binder. Gerd and I combined the investigations, as I recall, because we suspected they were related, the homicide and the break-in. That’s all I wanted to ask. You can pick up your binder whenever, I—”
“Hold on.”
Vidar lifted a box onto the desk and began to search through it. Nothing in the first box.
Somewhere nearby, a truck engine revved to life. Siri was outdoors. The vehicle accelerated, coughing and loud, and slowly faded into the distance.
“Could you come get it today, do you think? Or should I bring it in?”
“They’re not here.” He turned to the next box. “Have you spoken to Isidor Enoksson recently, by the way?”
“Why do you ask?”
“I just wondered.”
“I haven’t seen him in years.”
Vidar was nonplussed.
“He didn’t visit you the other day?”
“No,” she said. It sounded genuine. “What’s up?”
The cogs turned slowly behind Vidar’s temples. He had stopped mid-motion and was staring at the material concerning the burglary.
“Here it is.”
The binder was labeled “Miscellaneous Investigation Documents” and contained transcripts from supplemental interviews and witness statements, random tips that had been received in the days following the murder. Ideas that led nowhere. Some of the names he recognized; others he didn’t know.
“Okay, here it is,” he said again. “Here we go.”
The burglary files were in a separate folder at the back of the binder.
“Look at the photographs. The ones Gerd and I took of the scene, after the burglary.”
There. He was looking at the Lindell family’s house in the winter of 1999, in a backwater part of Skavboke. It needed a fresh coat of paint; there were patches of snow on the ground and the trees were bare. He saw a life that reminded him of his own life, around the same time, back home in Marb?ck.
“There’s no spade hanging from the siding, is there?” Siri said. “You know, the way folks do, between two nails.”
“I don’t see one, anyway.” He turned the page. More photographs. A close-up of the broken glass, a smeared shoe print. “No. No, I see the nails, but no spade.”
Another prolonged silence.
“Listen,” Siri said. “I can’t…”
“It’s all right. I can pick up the binder later. But you need to tell me what I’m looking for.”
“A spade was hanging there just a few weeks earlier, according to Gerd. She was sure of it, although I don’t quite know how.”
Vidar didn’t respond. He was sweaty. Summer blazed mercilessly outside.
“Did she ever visit Lillemor Soderstrom?”
“Oh yes, she did. I think Gerd felt sorry for her. Filip hardly ever visited her during those rough years he had, if he came at all.”
Vidar went back to Lillemor Soderstrom’s album.
Inga-Lill Lindell’s birthday celebration in the foreground, the platter of meat arriving at the set table.
And there it was, the spade he recognized from Filip Soderstrom’s garage.
If it was possible to recognize a spade, that is—but it seemed like the same one.
It hung against the siding as though it was commonly used for work around the house, in the yard.
He pulled over the burglary report again, found Inga-Lill’s government identity number.
Its digits told him she was born in October of 1957.
She had turned forty-two in 1999. Just two months before the murder, the spade was there.
A knock at his door. Waiting outside he found Adrian al-Hadid in uniform, his cap in one hand and a piece of paper in the other, his eyes shining.
“What is it?”
“The spade,” he said, holding the paper out to Vidar, who read it as he stood with his phone still in hand.
“Siri, can you hold on quick?”
“I’d rather not.”
“Just for a second.”
The results had come in less than fifteen minutes ago. The fresh blood on the spade belonged to Filip Soderstrom. The older blood had come from his brother, Mikael.
“They were killed with the same tool,” Adrian said.
Siri said something in Vidar’s ear, but he couldn’t hear what. Adrian cleared his throat.
“What are you thinking?” he asked.
“That we don’t have much time.”
Adrian folded the paper in half. “Why is that?”
Exhaustion crept through Vidar’s head, making his thoughts sluggish.
“Filip spent time at Rasmusg?rden, I saw somewhere in the files. Get in touch with them and see if they’ll give you any material. When he was there, for how long, what he got up to, staff notes, all that.” He went back to his phone call. “Siri?”
But she had hung up.
—
A scenario: Jakob kills Mikael with the spade, likely for some reason connected to the fight at the party, or maybe the burglary that happened later that night.
Maybe both. Filip knows, and tries to confront Jakob after Sten’s funeral.
Jakob kills Filip to suppress the secret.
Or maybe not? The spade is found at Filip’s place. How long had it been there?
Or maybe: Filip kills his brother. After the funeral years later, he’s the one who is confronted by Jakob, not the other way around. Filip reacts as before, with violence, and Jakob is forced to defend himself. He kills Filip and thinks he needs to lie about it afterward.
Yes, that could be it.
But something chafed.
And then there was Isidor Enoksson. Why was Siri hiding the fact that he’d visited her? Because Vidar hadn’t been mistaken, right? No, he’d seen the priest at her place. Hadn’t he?
There was still so much he didn’t know.
And the storm cloud hovering above it all: if Vidar was right, Killian Persson was perfectly innocent.