Frozen Moment (9 page)

    'You
have to breathe. In, out. In, out. That's it.'

    Beckman
stuck her head round the kitchen door without speaking, just to show that she
had arrived. Tell nodded briefly at her, then knelt down in front of Lise-Lott
Edell.

    'You're
in shock, and you shouldn't be left alone. Would you like me to ring someone?
A relative, a girlfriend?
Karin Beckman here will drive you
if you want to go to someone's house. Or we can drive you to the doctor's. You
might need something to calm you down, help you sleep.'

    She
shook her head, and he heard a sob.

    'No.
No, I don't need a doctor. My sister is a doctor. She only lives a few
kilometres from here.'

    Beckman
bent down and placed her hand gently on Lise-Lott's hand.

    'I'll
drive you over there as soon as you're ready.'

    With
a pang of sadness she noticed the pretty ring on the right hand.
A wedding band with a turquoise stone.
They hadn't had very
long to love each other for better or worse.

    'We're
going to need to talk to you as soon as possible, Lise-Lott. We can do it now,
but if you'd rather not, that's absolutely fine. A colleague and I can go with
you to your sister's and talk to you there. Or we can have a chat first thing
tomorrow morning. Or we can ring your sister and ask her to come over here.'

    Lise-Lott
shook her head violently.

    'No.
I don't want anyone coming over to Angelika's with me. I'd rather talk
now,
get it out of the way.'

    Beckman
glanced enquiringly at Tell; he shrugged almost imperceptibly. Carry on.

    'Thank
you, Lise-Lott. We appreciate it. The sooner we can sort out the circumstances
surrounding this tragic… death, the quicker the person who did it will get the
punishment they deserve. Just tell me if you want to stop.'

    'Could
I have a glass of water, please?'

    Her
teeth were clenched so tightly that her temples had turned white. The suntan
covered her face like a mask, and Tell realised how far away Puerto de la Cruz
must seem right now, the heat she had left behind only a few hours ago. Since
then her whole world had collapsed.

    'He
was planning a book of photographs of the area,' said Lise-Lott, nodding
towards a pile of prints. She had curled up in the corner of the sofa with a
blanket around her shoulders, her hands wrapped around the cup of tea Beckman
had produced. 'He was fascinated by the landscape around here, the fact that it
was so… untouched. That it's always looked like this, through the ages.'

    She
gazed out of the window.

    'I've
heard that the forest over by Kitjärn could be classed as primeval. It was an
old man on the council who told Lars; something to do with the fact that no
human hand has shaped it…'

    'I
believe Lars wasn't from this area.'

    'No.
I suppose you have to come from somewhere else to notice how impressive the
surroundings are out here. Lars comes from the city.
Came.
From Gothenburg.'

    Her
tears had dried up, but her expression was glassy. Tell suspected that she had
taken something to calm her down a little while ago and he couldn't blame her.

    'I
moved here with my parents when I was a teenager. Of course at the time I
thought it was the pits.'

    A
wry smile passed over her face, turning to a grimace a second later.

    'He
enjoyed life so much. It's dreadful… unthinkable that someone…'

    Tell
waited while she pulled herself together, but Beckman got in first:

    'That's
just what we've been wondering. I know it might be difficult to think about it
right now but can you think of anyone who might have wanted to hurt Lars?
Someone he's fallen out with, through work or… Do you know if he might have
been doing anything… suspicious? We have to ask,' she said quickly as Lise-Lott
looked at her in surprise.

    
'No, of course not.
Who would want to murder him? He was an
honest person, decent through and through.'

    'Take
a moment,' Tell interrupted. 'Even if you have no proof, even if it seems like
something completely banal. Has anyone threatened him? Has anything happened
recently that you thought was strange?
Anything out of the
ordinary?
Or has he met anyone new?'

    The
furrow between Lise-Lott's eyebrows indicated that she was trying to think, but
in the end she shook her head helplessly.

    'No,
I can't think of anyone he's quarrelled with. I suppose it would be a customer
who wasn't happy with the bill, maybe? I mean something to do with the
garage…?'

    She
shrugged her shoulders.

    'Lars
did have
an
… an argument is overstating it, but he did
have some differences of opinion with the person at the council in Lerum who
used to give him commissions. Per-Erik Stahre, his name is. Lars thought they
had agreed that he would be the first port of call for any photographic
commissions for the council, but Stahre seemed to think he had the right to
make decisions based on price, and last autumn he gave a big job to someone who
was cheaper. It involved taking photographs of a new residential area on the
outskirts of the town, and… well, it was going to pay quite well. Lars just
thought Stahre should have discussed the price with him before he gave the job
to someone else. We could have done with the money.'

    She
shook her head. Tell nodded and made notes, but he could feel his spirits
falling. You don't murder someone because of a garage bill or a minor dispute
at work.

    'We'd
like you to keep us informed if you think of anyone else who might be of
interest.'

    
'His ex-wife.
Lars got divorced when we met, and divorce is
never much fun. There's always one person who draws the short straw. She didn't
want to split up and there was a great deal of bitterness. He has two sons as
well - they're only just grown up, seventeen and nineteen.'

    In
Tell's experience people talked more if you asked fewer questions -
particularly in the unfamiliar and often frightening circumstances of a police
interview - so he let the silence have its effect.

    He
put down his pen and tapped a cigarette out of the packet.

    'Do
you mind?'

    'No,
carry on. It was the house too. She - his ex-wife, I mean - couldn't afford to
stay there and she became quite depressed. I can understand her in a way. At
her age - at our age - it isn't easy to be left alone.'

    She
laughed, a harsh sound that seemed to bury itself in her throat as she realised
she was now in the same situation. Tell lit the cigarette, ignoring Beckman,
who made a point of moving away from him on the big sofa.

    'When
you say depressed,' she began, 'do you mean in some way mentally unstable?'

    Lise-Lott
sighed.

    'No.
Well, she'd had problems with her nerves, as they say, for a while, but… There
was a time right at the beginning, when she found out where Lars was after he'd
moved out of the house. She would ring up during the night and… she didn't make
any sense. She turned up here once or twice and made a scene. But it passed.
After that any contact was mostly to do with things she was disputing legally,
their joint possessions. And this is a long time ago. I don't think Lars has
had any real contact with Maria for a few years.'

    
'And the sons?'

    
'Joakim and Viktor.
No, not much unfortunately. That was a
source of great sorrow for Lars. He did try, but… I suppose they thought he'd
let the family down. Their mother had convinced them that was how things were,
and they were loyal to her. Children usually are. Anyway, they refused to come
here, but they would meet up with their dad now and again.
At
a pizzeria or something like that.
Lars did feel guilty because of the
boys, it was painful to see. I don't have any - children, I mean.
Never had any with my first husband, although we did want them at
the beginning.
We never found out whose fault it was, and suddenly it
was too late.'

    Beckman,
who had had her first child when she was almost forty, wanted to protest, but
she bit her tongue and instead decided to try to stop Lise-Lott Edell from
exposing herself emotionally. It was quite normal for people in a state of
shock to start sharing their innermost thoughts and feelings with the police
during an interview. Only afterwards did they realise this made them feel even
more exposed. Of course it was a balancing act, since a large part of an
investigation involved getting people to reveal what they would prefer to hide.
But at the moment she didn't believe Lise-Lott had anything to do with her
husband's death, and they would soon know for sure once they had checked with
the travel agency.

    Just
as Beckman was about to ask if anyone wanted more tea, a woman in a red coat
appeared in the doorway. Her heels tapped across the parquet flooring, and in a
second she was by Lise-Lott's side, hugging her.

    
'Sweetheart!'

    She
rocked her sister back and forth, tears glistening on her thickly made-up
eyelashes. Tell closed his notebook and discreetly stubbed out his cigarette on
the sole of his shoe. He cleared his throat.

    'We'll
need to talk to you again, Lise-Lott, but that's enough for now.
My condolences once again.'

    He
met her sister's eyes above Lise-Lott's drooping head, and she nodded at him.
She would take care of her sister. They could go now.

    The
paint was peeling off in great lumps and the wood on the window- sill felt like
cold, soggy sponge beneath her fingers. The water must have been running down
the inside of the pane for years. In the mornings a thin layer of frost
obscured the view over the woodpile and the manure heap on the edge of the
glade. The windows definitely needed sealing, or replacing.

    Seja
sighed. She knew nothing about maintaining a house, having grown up in an
apartment. Behind her Lukas snorted in the box Martin had managed to build
before he disappeared. It was made of coarse, untreated pine with a green door.
It wasn't really a stable, but a storage shed in which old man Gren, who had
sold them the cottage, had installed his carpentry workshop. The workbench was
still there along one wall under sacks of oats and feeding pails. The heater
warmed up a radius of a couple of metres.

    After
a cold night like the last one Seja suffered from a guilty conscience when she
opened the door and revealed the flickering light bulbs and Lukas, shaking the
straw off the hugely expensive olive- green blanket she had bought at the
beginning of November. It was just as cold in the stable as it was outside.

    She
had spread a layer of straw inside for him, thick as a mattress, and put a rug
down outside the box despite the fact that Martin had said she was crazy. As Christmas
approached she had even placed a holder with Advent candles in the gloomy
little window of the shed. At least it looked cosy, she tried to convince
herself, and soon it would be spring again.

    Seja
slid her arms around Lukas's neck and hid her face in his coarse mane. She
didn't really know anything about horses either. Like many others she had
started riding lessons as a child, but after her mother had stopped teaching,
the family finances had been under pressure. Not that anyone ever came out and
said that the riding school was expensive; it was more a question of reading
between the lines, sensing the atmosphere when the bills had to be paid and
everything that was unnecessary had to go. She had given up riding and stuck to
the community piano school and the choir instead. Writing was free too, as was
the recreation centre.

    As
far as she remembered, she hadn't really suffered as a result of being deprived
of horses. The fact was that, as a child, the huge animals had frightened her,
as had the sharp elbows of the older stable girls. There had been a kind of
relief in not having to make the decision herself to step outside the equine
community.

    And
yet Lukas had become hers. Despite the fact that she'd got him cheap (he was
getting on a bit), he still took up all her savings and a large part of her
student loan each month, not to mention time and commitment, but she had never
regretted it.