The Gallows Bird (43 page)

They walked slowly up to the cabin that stood on the highest spot on the island. It was obvious that no repairs had been made in a very long time, and weeds had sprouted up around the patch of lawn surrounding the house. Otherwise there was only granite as far as the eye could see, although a closer examination revealed signs of plants that were waiting for the warmth of spring to come and wake them up. The house was white, with the paint peeling off in big flakes that exposed the grey, wind-battered wood underneath. The roofing tiles were hanging crooked, and here and there one was missing, like in a mouth with missing teeth.

Gösta took the lead and knocked cautiously on the door. No answer. He knocked harder. ‘Hedda?’ He pounded his fist even harder on the wooden door, then tried to see if it would open. The door wasn’t locked and it swung open.

When they stepped inside they automatically put their arms over their noses because of the stench. It was like walking into a pig-sty strewn with rubbish, food scraps, old newspapers, and above all empty bottles.

Gösta advanced cautiously into the hall and called out. ‘Hedda?’ Still no answer.

‘I’ll go round and look for her,’ Gösta said, and Patrik could only nod. It was beyond comprehension how anyone could live like this.

After a few minutes Gösta came back and gestured to Patrik to come with him.

‘She’s lying in bed. Knocked out. We’ll have to try and get some life into her. Will you put on some coffee?’

Patrik looked around the kitchen at a loss. Finally he found a jar of instant coffee and an empty pot. It seemed to be mostly used for boiling water, since it was relatively clean compared to the other kitchen equipment.

‘All right, come on now.’ Gösta came into the kitchen dragging a wisp of a woman. Only a dazed murmur issued from Hedda’s lips but she did manage passably to put one foot in front of the other and make it to the kitchen chair that Gösta was aiming for. She tumbled onto the chair, put her head on her arms on the table and began to snore.

‘Hedda, don’t go to sleep again, you have to stay awake.’ Gösta shook her shoulder gently but got no response. He motioned with his head towards the pot on the stove where the water was now boiling. ‘Coffee,’ he said, and Patrik hurried to pour some in the cup that looked the least filthy. He had no desire for any coffee himself.

‘Hedda, we need to talk with you a bit.’ Only a mumbled reply. But then she slowly sat up, weaving a little on the chair, and tried to focus her eyes.

‘We’re from the police in Tanumshede. Patrik Hedström and Gösta Flygare. You and I have met several times before.’ Gösta was speaking extremely clearly, hoping that at least some of his words would sink in. He motioned Patrik to take a seat, and they both sat down at the kitchen table facing Hedda. The oilcloth on the table had once been white with tiny roses, but now it was so covered with food scraps, crumbs, and grease that the pattern was barely visible. It was equally hard to guess how Hedda might have looked before alcohol had destroyed her appearance. Her skin was leathery and wrinkled, and there was a thick layer of grease all over her body. Her hair had probably been blonde, but now it was grey and pulled sloppily into a ponytail. It didn’t look as though it had been washed in a long time. The cardigan she was wearing was full of holes and had obviously been bought long ago when her body was much smaller. It was tight across her shoulders and breasts.

‘What the . . .’ The words died out and were replaced by a slurred mumble, as she weaved back and forth on the chair.

‘Drink some coffee,’ said Gösta, sounding surprisingly gentle. He pushed the cup over to her so that it landed within her field of vision.

Hedda obeyed docilely, taking the cup in trembling hands. She drank every drop of the coffee. Then she abruptly swept the cup aside, and Patrik caught it just as it was tipping over the edge of the table.

‘We want to talk about the accident,’ said Gösta.

Hedda raised her head with an effort and squinted in his direction. Patrik decided to keep quiet and let Gösta steer the conversation.

‘The accident?’ said Hedda. Her body seemed a bit more stable on the chair.

‘When the children died.’ Gösta kept his gaze fixed on her.

‘I don’ wanna talk about it,’ slurred Hedda, waving her hand.

‘We have to talk about it,’ Gösta insisted, but in the same kindly tone.

‘They drowned. Everybody drowns. You know,’ Hedda waved her finger in the air, ‘you know, first Gottfrid drowned. He was going out to catch some mackerel on the hand line, and they didn’t find him for over a week. I went out and waited for him for a week, but I knew by sundown of the same day he left that Gottfrid would never come back to me and the kids.’ She sobbed and seemed to be many years back in time.

‘How old were the children then?’ Patrik asked.

Hedda turned her gaze on him for the first time. ‘Children, what children?’ She looked confused.

‘The twins,’ said Gösta and got her to turn back towards him. ‘How old were the twins then?’

‘They were two, almost three. Two really wild kids. I could only handle them with Gottfrid’s help. When he . . .’ Her voice died out again and Hedda looked round the kitchen, as if searching for something. Her gaze stopped at one of the cupboards. She got up with an effort and shuffled over to the cupboard, opened the door, and took out a bottle of Explorer.

‘Would you like a snort?’ She held out the bottle to them, and when they both shook their heads she laughed. ‘That’s good, because I wasn’t offering.’ Her laugh sounded more like a cackle, and she brought the bottle over to the table and sat down again. She didn’t bother with a glass, she just put the bottle to her lips and guzzled. Patrik could feel his throat burning just looking at her.

‘How old were the twins when they drowned?’ Gösta asked.

Hedda didn’t seem to hear him. She stared unseeing into space. ‘She was so elegant,’ she muttered. ‘A pearl necklace and coat and ever’thing. She was a fine lady.’

‘Who’s that?’ said Patrik, feeling a stab of interest. ‘What lady?’ But Hedda had already lost her train of thought.

‘How old were the twins when they drowned?’ Gösta repeated, even more clearly.

Hedda turned to him with the bottle raised and halfway to her lips. ‘The twins didn’ drown, did they?’ She took another gulp from the bottle.

Gösta glanced significantly at Patrik and leaned forward. ‘Didn’t the twins drown? Where did they go?’

‘Whaddaya mean they didn’ drown?’ Hedda suddenly had a scared look in her eye. ‘Of course the twins drowned, sure, they did . . .’ She took another drink and her eyes got even more glazed.

‘Which was it, Hedda? Did they drown or not?’ Gösta could hear the desperation in his own voice, but it simply seemed to drive Hedda even further into the fog. Now she didn’t answer but just shook her head.

‘I don’t think we can get much more out of her,’ Gösta said apologetically to Patrik.

‘No, I don’t think so either, we’ll have to try some other way. Maybe we should look round a bit.’

Gösta nodded and turned towards Hedda, whose head was on its way down towards the table again.

‘Hedda, can we look around a bit at your things?’

‘Mmm,’ she replied and drifted off to sleep.

Gösta moved his chair next to hers so that she wouldn’t tumble to the floor, and then began looking through the house with Patrik.

An hour later they hadn’t found anything. There was nothing but junk, junk, junk. Patrik wished he’d brought some gloves along, and he thought he felt his whole body itching. But there were no signs that children had ever lived in the house. Hedda must have thrown out everything that had belonged to them.

Her words about a ‘fine lady’ rang in his head. He couldn’t let it go, but sat down next to Hedda and tried gently shaking some life into her again. Reluctantly she sat up, but her head fell backwards before she managed to stabilize it in an upright position.

‘Hedda, you have to answer me. The fine lady, does she have your children?’

‘They were so much trouble. And I just had to run a little errand in Uddevalla. I had to buy some more booze too, was all out,’ she slurred and looked out of the window at the water glinting in the spring sunshine. ‘But they just kept making such a fuss. And I was so tired. And she was such a fine lady. She was so nice. She could take them, she said. So she did.’

Hedda turned her gaze towards Patrik, and he saw for the first time genuine emotion in her eyes. Deep inside there was a pain and a guilt so incomprehensible that only alcohol could drown it.

‘But I regretted it,’ she said with tears clouding her eyes. ‘But then I couldn’t find them. I searched and I searched. But they were gone. And the fine lady too. The one with the pearl necklace.’ Hedda scratched her throat to show where she’d seen the necklace and said, ‘She was gone.’

‘But why did you say they had drowned?’ Out of the corner of his eye Patrik saw Gösta listening from the doorway.

‘I was ashamed . . . and maybe they’d have a better life with her. But I was ashamed . . .’

She looked out over the water again, and they sat like that for a while. Patrik’s brain was working in high gear to take in what he had just been told. It wasn’t hard to work out that the ‘fine lady’ had been Sigrid Jansson, and for some reason she had taken Hedda’s children. Why, they would probably never know.

When he slowly got up and turned to Gösta, with legs that felt shaky from all the misery, he saw that Gösta was holding something in his hand.

‘I found a photograph,’ he said. ‘Under the mattress. A snapshot of the twins.’

Patrik took the photo and looked at it. Two small children about two years old, sitting on the laps of their parents, Gottfrid and Hedda. They looked happy. The picture must have been taken just before Gottfrid drowned. Before everything came crashing down. Patrik studied the children’s faces. Where were they now? And was one of them a murderer? Neither of the round faces of the children revealed a thing. At the kitchen table Hedda had fallen asleep again, and Patrik and Gösta went out and breathed the fresh sea air deep into their lungs. Patrik carefully slid the well-thumbed photo into his wallet. He would see to it that Hedda got it back soon. In the meantime they needed it to help find a murderer.

During the boat ride back they were as silent as on the way out. But this time the silence was marked by shock and sorrow. Sorrow about how frail and small human beings sometimes were. Shock at the scope of the mistakes that people were capable of making. In his mind’s eye Patrik could see Hedda wandering about in Uddevalla. How she searched for the children whom, in an attack of despair, exhaustion and need for booze, she had given away to a total stranger. He felt the panic that she must have experienced when she understood that she couldn’t find the twins. And the desperation that drove her to say that they had drowned, instead of admitting that she had handed them over to a stranger.

They didn’t speak until Patrik had tied up the old boat to one of the pontoon wharves at Badholmen.

‘Well, now we know at least,’ Gösta said, and his face revealed the guilt that he still felt.

Patrik patted him on the shoulder as they walked towards the car. ‘You couldn’t have known,’ he said. Gösta didn’t answer, and Patrik didn’t think that anything he said was going to help. This was something that Gösta would have to work out for himself.

‘We have to find out soon where the children ended up,’ Patrik said as he drove back to Tanumshede.

‘Still nothing from social services in Uddevalla?’

‘No, and it’s probably not easy to find information from so long ago. But they must be somewhere. Two five-year-olds can’t just disappear.’

‘What a miserable life she has led.’

‘Hedda?’ Patrik said, although he understood that’s who Gösta meant.

‘Yes. Imagine living with that guilt. Your whole life.’

‘No wonder that she’s tried to numb herself as best she can,’ said Patrik.

Gösta didn’t reply. He just looked out of the window. Finally he said, ‘What are we going to do now?’

‘Until we find out where the children went, we’ll have to keep working on what we’ve got. Sigrid Jansson, the dog hairs from Lillemor, trying to find a connection between the murder locations.’

They turned into the car park at the police station and walked towards the entrance, their expressions grim. Patrik stopped at reception for a moment to tell Annika what had happened, and then went to his office. He couldn’t bear to repeat the whole story to the others yet.

Carefully he took the photo out of his wallet and studied it. The eyes of the twins stared back at him, revealing nothing.

Chapter 9

Finally she had given in. Just a short ride. A little expedition out into the big, unknown world. Then they would come back home. And he would stop asking.

He had nodded eagerly. Could hardly contain himself. And a glance at sister showed that she was just as excited.

He wondered what he would get to see. How it looked out there. Beyond the forest. One thought left him no peace. Would the other one be out there? The woman with the harsh voice? Would he smell that smell that was like a memory in his nostrils, salty and fresh? And the feeling of the boat rocking, and the sun over the sea, and the birds circling, and . . . He could hardly sift through all the expectations and impressions. A single thought was buzzing round in his head. They would get to take a ride with her. Out to the world beyond. It was no problem for him to promise in turn never to ask again. One time would be enough. He was quite convinced of that. One time, just so he could see what was there, so that he and sister would know. That was the only thing he wanted. Just once.

With a stern expression she had opened the car door for them and watched them scramble into the back seat. She carefully fastened their seat belts and shook her head as she got behind the wheel. He remembered that he had laughed. A shrill, hysterical laugh, when all the pent-up tension was finally allowed to come out.

When they turned onto the road he had glanced briefl y at sister. Then he had taken her hand. They were on their way.