Stone Coffin Part 10

"She understood immediately what I was talking about, but she is very loyal."

"So she didn't mention anything that could explain his confusion?"

"No, she said it could be due to his workload, but he's always worked very hard."

"Did he have a lover?"

Mortensen gave up his a.s.sertive stance and sank back against his chair; a new silence took hold. Is he thinking or is this acting? Lindell wondered, but she did nothing to speed up his answer.

"I don't know, maybe, but why leave someone like Josefin? A fantastic woman. She was beautiful, intelligent, and a wonderful mother. She gave everything to her family, she..."

He broke off and gave Lindell a pained look. She thought she could see the glint of moisture in his eyes.

"I've been thinking about it constantly," he went on, his head turned away. "Why kill them? What's happening in the world? Nothing is certain anymore. We have worked together for so long to ease people's suffering, to develop cures for the most painful diseases, so I have trouble grasping how he could be guilty of something like this."

His earlier ironic and worldly tone was replaced by a questioning and remarkably weak voice. His face was equally altered. The lines in his tanned forehead deepened and he looked around in bewilderment.

Lindell observed him. Keep talking, she thought, but the air was filled only with the chatter of birds. The sun had shifted during the course of their conversation and now peeked out from behind the corner of the house. Lindell pulled her hair out of her face and savored the warmth for a moment.

"Can Josefin have had another?"

Mortensen started. "Never," he said emphatically. "She was faithful."

"How can you be so sure?"

"I am sure," he said simply, and Lindell sensed that the conversation was starting to draw to a close. But she still had to ask some questions about Sven-Erik's habits. She had to get a better profile of the disappeared man if she was to have a hope in finding him.

Mortensen told her about the Cederen family's vacation travels and something about work at MedForsk, but after she asked him if he knew that Josefin was pregnant, he closed up like a sh.e.l.l. He denied any knowledge of it, and Lindell did not believe him. Why, she wasn't sure, but something about his reaction indicated that he knew more about the relationships in the Cederen household than he wanted to tell.

"Tell me about Spain," she said finally.

He responded with a verbose account of the daughter company. Much of the practical work took place in Mlaga. There were some fifty employees at the two facilities and this number was steadily growing.

They concluded the conversation as if on an agreed-upon signal. Mortensen stood up, gathered up the china, brushed the crumbs from the table, and replaced the lid of the jam.

Lindell closed her notebook. She hadn't written many words. The taste of the cornelian cherry lingered in her mouth.

"I would show you some of the textiles," he said, "but I'm a bit pressed for time. I have to leave. Perhaps you'll come back? I think you would appreciate the pre-Columbian pieces. They are so beautiful, preserved for centuries. I could also ask my mother to stop by. If she has an audience, she can hold forth for hours."

"Maybe I will."

"I hope so. I have more jam too."

Mortensen smiled, and now his smile looked more genuine. Lindell wanted to pat him on the cheek. He radiated loneliness. Or perhaps more a kind of helplessness before her, the cleared table and the ma.s.sive contours of the house-as if he didn't know where to go with his tray.

"I'll be in touch if I think of anything. Do I have your number?"

Lindell wrote down her home phone number and gave him her card, which he studied.

"You're young to be leading a murder investigation," he said, as if her age were listed on the card.

"You're also leading something akin to an investigation and we're about the same age."

He gave her a quick glance.

"Thanks for the appraisal," he said, and it sounded so absurd and innocent that Lindell had trouble holding back a laugh.

Lindell knew he watched her as she walked down the path and past the car and turned by the ma.s.sive granite post out onto the street.

Her face was warm and she felt that summer had really arrived. This did not cheer her up. In fact it was slightly unsettling. For the first time in several years she hadn't planned anything.

Last year she and Edvard had gone to Denmark, driven around Funen and Jutland, sometimes camping and sometimes checking into little inns or B and Bs along the road. They had gone swimming, seen art exhibitions, and eaten. She gained three kilos those weeks. Nothing had worried her. She had kept her cell phone turned off most of the time and had called home to deshog only a couple of times. Edvard had been unusually relaxed. She remembered his laughter and his playful mood as with a great deal of splashing they threw themselves into the icy waves of the North Sea. "Happiness" was the word that came to her as she took out her car keys.

What would she do this year? Go home to Mom and Dad, that was already decided, but she couldn't stay in deshog for four weeks. At most, three or four days. It struck her that no one had asked her what she was going to do over the summer.

She felt slightly disheartened as she slipped behind the steering wheel. The meeting with Jack Mortensen had brought something to life that she wished for all the world wouldn't bubble up. Definitely not during work. In the evening, at the kitchen table and in front of the television, or more often when she crawled into bed, she could take it. Then she could treat it, perhaps lessen it with a gla.s.s of wine or-with a ma.s.sive effort of will-plan the next day's work in order to repress the thought. It was the loneliness that Mortensen had displayed. He had his garden, his successful company, his collection of textiles, his mother-Lindell found the use of the word "Mother" depressing-but he could not conceal his loneliness. He breathed it. That was what she had sensed across the table.

She expected him to call-in fact she was almost certain of it-and was unsure of how she felt about that. Two lonely souls consumed by their jobs, what did they have to say to each other? Or else she was wrong. Perhaps his asking for her telephone number was genuinely motivated by the thought that he might come up with something of interest.

She was decent-looking, she knew that, and men looked at her. Mortensen had studied her left hand in order to determine that there was no ring. This was normal-she did the same thing herself-but now it irritated her. What was he thinking?

She turned the key and suddenly had the conviction that the car wouldn't start.

Nine.

Gabriella Mark knew a lot about fungi, at least the ones that plagued her vegetable garden, and yet she hesitated. The attack she saw before her was irreparable. These were her most beautiful plants of the new type of cauliflower with firm heads, relatively small but incredibly delicious. Now she had to remove them, but she hesitated.

Why hadn't she seen it earlier? Maybe some of the plants could have been saved. How she had worked: making careful preparations, moving seedlings and pots, working manure into the cleaned-up beds, acclimating plants, alternately airing them and covering them up with old rugs when an evening chill came creeping from the stream. And she had deceived that treacherous draft but not the fungus.

She pulled out the deformed heads with rapid movements. One by one they ended up in the plastic bag by her side. The bag would end up in the garbage can. The fungus was destined to burn up in the public furnaces and not contaminate her painstakingly maintained compost.

She stood up and grew dizzy. When she opened her eyes, stretching out her hand as if to find something to steady herself against, she knew that he wouldn't come. He should have come yesterday but hadn't even tried to contact her. With each pa.s.sing moment it grew more and more likely that he would never come.

She had proudly shown him the cauliflower. He had laughed, leaned over carefully-concerned for his suit-and said something about the vegetable counter at B&W. He liked to tease her, but she knew he loved her vegetables.

"b.u.t.ter," she said out loud.

An almost unnatural warmth lay over the earth. Spring conditions had been ideal, without a night frost since the third of April. Now came the heat. It steamed from the windows. The small wedges she used to prop the covers open for airing were pushed up all the way, which made the rows look like a sea of flat, clumsy, shiny creatures with their mouths ajar. They chirped like living things, exhaling and inhaling. The condensation from the gla.s.s dripped slowly over cabbages, onions, carrots, and turnips. The latter she had already harvested once, tiny tender goodies.

She knew it. He would not be back. The feeling of rejection stabbed her in the heart. He loved her, she knew it, as if that fact could console her. It made the whole thing even more idiotic.

She grabbed the bag and dragged it away. Her gaze was focused and she was taking calm breaths, just as the psychologist had said she should. "No flitting, just focus on what you are doing," he had said. "Take it in whatever order you like, but don't lose your grip."

Her leg muscles worked as the bag skipped across the gravel yard. Beads of sweat dropped from her brow. She understood that her gardening had a therapeutic function. All this systematic picking and sorting. She could never consume everything she produced. Especially now.

Emil, the squirrel who had kept her company for almost two years, was sitting by the flagpole. Mostly he was naughty. She knew that he raided the bird's nests, had caught him sitting on the nest under the dormer of the old laundry. So what, he came back, he was her friend.

Gabriella smacked her tongue a little at him as she usually did. Emil looked up and scrambled off.

She leaned the bag up against the garbage can. The guys would most likely take this one as well. She could pay them in radishes.

The lid of the mailbox was open. She realized that she hadn't brought in the morning paper. She immediately saw the photos on the first page, read the headline, and collapsed onto the low spirea hedge that surrounded the property.

When she returned to consciousness, blood was the first thing she saw. The dizziness returned and she had to struggle to maintain her bearings. A branch from the hedge had sliced a long cut into her arm. She stared stiffly down at the blood, which was beginning to clot.

To crawl to her feet, grab the detestable paper, and stand up took her half a minute. She walked toward the house, took the stairs in five slow steps, and pushed the door open with a whimper.

She washed her wound and saw that it was not as serious as she had initially thought. "I don't want to get a scar," she muttered and examined it more closely. Then she tied a cloth around her arm. The mirror was no comfort. She leaned over the basin and then backed out of the bathroom without looking at her reflection.

After having a gla.s.s of rhubarb juice, she sat down in the kitchen. The remains of her breakfast were still on the table and she shoved them aside with her uninjured arm.

"I have to take something," she thought but did not rise. The sweat came in waves, the heat rose in her body, and she felt as if she were being lifted out of the kitchen. She closed her eyes in order to ease her vertigo. Her mouth shaped itself into an O and she pushed the air out of her lungs, inhaled deeply, then breathed out again. Most of all she wanted to scream, but she continued the breathing until she found herself back at the table. Her fingers sc.r.a.ped the tablecloth. The crumbs from breakfast were still under her hands.

She opened the newspaper and in one sitting read the long article, which contained a description of the sight that had met the reporter and photographer. There were also comments from the police, residents in the area, and neighbors.

A drawn-out scream filled the house. It felt like a relief, but the scream also scared her.

"He's dead!" she screamed and realized that her love had not been enough, that he would never walk down to the water with her, never call out her name. Never again. When it struck her that she had not given a single thought to the dead woman and her child, she felt ashamed at first, but his image immediately rose again before her teary eyes.

"I don't want this anymore," she mumbled and made her way to the bathroom. At the very back of the cabinet were some old pills. She had kept them as a reminder, looked triumphantly at them, certain that the time in which she had needed them at night was over. Now she took one and then another. A couple of blue oxazepam slipped in along with them in her haste.

"He can't be dead," she whispered.

Ten.

Lindell took the route past the Savoy. It was an enormous relief to walk into the cafe. Her stomach was still full of scones and sweet jam, but she needed this time to think.

After a moment's deliberation she switched off her phone and sat down with a hot cross bun and a cup of coffee. A group of construction workers rolled in, but luckily they preferred to sit outside by themselves in the beautiful weather. Lindell had the room and her thoughts to herself. Left behind on her table was a copy of ret Runt magazine, which she flipped through listlessly.

She summed up for herself what Mortensen had said about Cederen. He had believed that Cederen had been responsible for killing his family. He if anyone should know his colleague and long-standing friend. Or were they friends? There had been a tone in his voice that she hadn't liked and couldn't interpret.

Was Cederen really capable of running over his own flesh and blood? Lindell felt increasingly doubtful about this. If he hadn't, where was he? She was sure that there was a connection between Uppsala-Nas and his disappearance. The women at MedForsk had also talked about the change in his mood, that he had tended to stay in his office and no longer took part in coffee breaks and that he had been abrupt and angry recently. Why? Was it Josefin's pregnancy? Problems with his lover?

Lindell took her first bite of the pastry and tried to imagine the scene in the Cederen household. Josefin pregnant and alone with Emily in the large, messy house; he unfaithful to her and preoccupied with a large amount of work. In addition, he had purchased land in the Dominican Republic. Riddles inside riddles.

She knew that the answers had to be found at MedForsk. "Money," she mumbled. The company was facing sweeping changes and was expanding. Perhaps there had been conflicts about the direction. But why Josefin and Emily?

Had Cederen simply not been able to manage the stress, privately and professionally, and become unhinged to the point of murdering his own family?

Lindell allowed herself half an hour at the cafe. An older woman with a walker came in, and the waiter brought her a cup of coffee and a shrimp sandwich. If the old woman had trouble walking, it was clear that her appet.i.te remained intact. She polished off the sandwich in a couple of minutes. Lindell watched the brief meal with fascination and then got up to leave. The woman concealed a burp behind her napkin and Lindell smiled at her.

Sammy Nilsson, Beatrice, and Wende were sitting in Ottosson's office.

"We tried to reach you," her boss said.

"I've been thinking," Lindell said and sat down.

Beatrice observed her from where she was sitting. Lindell felt her gaze and didn't like it.

"We think that MedForsk may have cooked their books," Sammy said. "Molin has found some inconsistencies. It seems like they may have transferred funds to Spain without paying taxes here in Sweden."

"How much are we talking about?"

"We think maybe three million, maybe more."

"Have you talked to the Financial Crimes unit yet?"

Sammy shook his head.

"Then we have a mysterious transaction with a company on some island somewhere, a tax haven."

"I see," Lindell said with a sigh. She had trouble with finance. It became too technical, too many numbers. She had problems interpreting her own pay stubs.

"We'll ask Molin to do a brief report," Ottosson said. "Then we'll have to evaluate how we proceed. It may not have anything to do with our investigation."

"Molin is never brief," Beatrice said.

Lindell was quiet. She didn't want to get stuck with a financial crimes investigation. The FC unit could do that.

"Maybe we should connect with Bosse Wanning in FC?"

Ottosson's question hung in the air.

"At least he's someone who's possible to understand," he added.

Lindell nodded.

"Let's put Bosse and Molin together and see where it leads."

She paused, glancing at the clock on the wall. She wanted to shower. And she wanted to eat again. She wanted to sleep. She wanted to call Edvard. Anything other than this airless and stuffy room, the sticky T-shirt, and the feeling of being behind on everything.

"Anything new on Cederen?" she asked.