The Ice Child. Camilla Lackberg

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ anxious for us to find out who did this. Just be as tactful as you can. We’re going to have to talk to a lot of people that we’ve already interviewed – her family members, friends, and anyone at the stable who may have seen something when she disappeared. Now that Victoria is dead, they might decide to tell us something they previously didn’t want to reveal. For instance, we ought to talk to Tyra Hansson again. She was Victoria’s best friend. Could you do that, Martin?’

      Martin murmured his acquiescence.

      Mellberg cleared his throat, reminding Patrik that, as usual, he needed to come up with some trivial task for Bertil. Something that would make him feel important without putting him in a position to do any significant damage. Patrik thought for a moment. Sometimes it was wisest to have Mellberg close by so he could keep an eye on him.

      ‘I talked to Torbjörn last night,’ Patrik went on. ‘And the forensic examination of the crime scene produced no results. It wasn’t an easy job, because it was snowing. They found no trace of where Victoria might have come from. Now they’ve run out of manpower, so I was thinking of summoning volunteers to help by searching a wider area. She might have been held prisoner in some old cabin or summer cottage in the woods. When she reappeared, it wasn’t too far from where she was last seen, so it’s possible she was somewhere in the vicinity the whole time.’

      ‘That’s what I was thinking too,’ said Martin. ‘Wouldn’t that indicate that the perpetrator is from Fjällbacka?’

      ‘Perhaps,’ said Patrik. ‘But not necessarily. Not if Victoria’s case is connected to the other disappearances. We haven’t found any clear link between the other towns and Fjällbacka.’

      Mellberg again cleared his throat, and Patrik turned to look at him.

      ‘I thought you could help me with this, Bertil. We’ll go out to the woods, and with a little luck, we may be able to find the place where she was being held.’

      ‘That sounds good,’ replied Mellberg. ‘But it’s not going to be much fun in this cold.’

      Patrik didn’t answer. Right now the weather was the least of his worries.

      Anna was listlessly gathering up the laundry. She was unbelievably tired. She had been on sick leave ever since the car accident. By now the physical scars on her body had begun to fade, but emotionally her injuries had not yet healed. She was struggling not only with the grief of losing the baby but also with a hurt for which she alone was to blame.

      Feelings of guilt churned inside her like a never-ending nausea. Every night she lay awake, going over and over what had happened and re-examining her motives. But even when she tried to give herself the benefit of the doubt, she still couldn’t work out what had made her sleep with another man. She loved Dan, and yet she had kissed someone else and allowed that man to touch her body.

      Was her self-esteem so weak and her need for acknowledgement so great that she had thought another man’s hands and lips would give her something that Dan could not? She didn’t understand it, so how could she expect Dan to understand? He was loyalty and security personified. People said it was impossible to know everything about a person, but she knew that Dan would never even think of being unfaithful to her. He would never have touched another woman. The only thing he wanted was to love her.

      After the initial outbursts of anger, the harsh words had been replaced by something much worse: silence. A heavy, suffocating silence. They tiptoed around each other like two wounded animals, while Emma, Adrian, and Dan’s daughters were like hostages in their own home.

      Anna’s dreams of running her own home-decorating business had died the moment Dan’s hurt gaze met hers. That was the last time he had looked her in the eye. Now, whenever he was forced to speak to her directly – about something concerning the kids or even something as banal as asking her to pass the salt – he would mumble the words with his eyes lowered. And that made her want to scream. She wanted to shake him, force him to look at her, but she didn’t dare. So she too kept her eyes lowered, not because she felt hurt, but out of shame.

      Naturally the children had no idea what was going on. They didn’t understand, but they were suffering from the effects. They went around in silence, trying to pretend that everything was normal. But it had been a long time since Anna had heard any of them laugh.

      Her heart was so filled with remorse that she thought it might burst. Anna leaned forward, buried her face in the laundry, and wept.

      This was where it all happened. Erica cautiously entered the house, which looked as if it might come crashing down at any moment. Abandoned and neglected, battered by the weather, it had stood here all these years until there was hardly anything left to remind people of the family that had once lived in this place.

      Erica ducked under a board hanging down from the ceiling. Pieces of glass crunched under the soles of her winter boots. Not a single windowpane remained intact. The floor and walls bore clear signs of random occupants, with scrawled names and words that meant something only to whoever had written them. Four-letter words and insults, many of them misspelled. Those who chose to spray-paint epithets in empty buildings seldom exhibited any great literary talent. Discarded beer cans lay scattered about, and a condom wrapper had been tossed next to a blanket that was so filthy it made Erica feel sick. Snow had blown inside, piling up in nooks and crannies.

      The whole house gave off an air of misery and loneliness. Erica pulled from her bag the folder of photographs she’d brought along to help her visualize the scene. They showed a different house, a furnished home where people had lived. Yet she couldn’t help shuddering because she thought she could see traces of what had happened in this place. She took a good look around. And then she saw it: dried blood, still visible on the wooden floor. And four marks where the sofa had once stood. Erica again glanced at the photos, trying to orient herself. She was starting to picture the room as it had looked back then. She saw the sofa, the coffee table, the easy chair in the corner, the TV on its stand, the floor lamp to the left of the easy chair. The whole room seemed to materialize before her eyes.

      She could also see Vladek’s corpse. His big, muscular body semi-reclining on the sofa. The gaping red gash in his throat, the stab wounds on his torso, his eyes staring up at the ceiling. And the blood gathering in a pool on the floor.

      In the photographs the police had taken of Laila after the murder, her eyes looked completely blank. The front of her jumper was soaked with blood, and there were streaks of blood on her face. Her long blond hair hung loose. She looked so young. Nothing like the woman who was now serving a life sentence in prison.

      It had been an open-and-shut case. It seemed to have a certain logic to it that everyone simply accepted. Yet Erica had a strong feeling that something wasn’t right, and six months ago she had decided to write a book about the crime. She’d first heard about the case when she was a child, listening to people talk about the murder of Vladek and the family’s terrible secret. The events that took place in the House of Horrors had grown into a legend as the years passed. The house became a place where children could test their mettle, a haunted house they used to scare their friends, where they could show off their bravery and defy their fear of the evil within those walls.

      Erica turned away from the family’s old living room. It was time to go upstairs. The chill inside the house was making her joints stiff, so she jumped up and down a few times to get warm before heading for the stairs. She carefully tested each step before proceeding upwards. She hadn’t told anyone that she was coming here, so she didn’t want to crash through a rotting step and end up lying here with her back broken.

      The stairs held, but she was equally cautious about deciding to cross the floor on the second СКАЧАТЬ