‘Was his body tossed into the water right afterwards?’

‘Impossible to know,’ replied Pedersen. ‘The only thing I can tell you is that he’d been in the water a long time, and it seems most likely that his body was dumped there soon after he died. But that’s based more on how the killer would most likely react, and not on any scientific evidence. So it’ll be hard to prove. I’ll fax over my report, as usual.’

‘What about Lisbet? What did you decide about her?’

‘She died of natural causes.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘I performed a very meticulous post-mortem on her body.’ Now Pedersen sounded insulted.

‘So you’re saying that she wasn’t murdered?’

‘That’s correct,’ replied Pedersen, still a bit miffed. ‘To be quite honest, it was a small miracle that she lived as long as she did. The cancer had spread to all the vital organs in her body. Lisbet Bengtsson was a very sick woman. She simply passed away in her sleep.’

‘So Kenneth was wrong,’ Patrik murmured to himself.

‘What did you say?’

‘It’s nothing. I was just thinking out loud. Thanks for giving our case priority. We need all the help we can get at the moment.’

‘It’s that bad?’ asked Pedersen.

‘Yes, it really is that bad.’

18

He and Alice had something in common. They both loved summertime. In his case, it was because he was out of school and free from his tormenters. For Alice, it was because she could go swimming in the sea. She spent every possible minute in the water. Swimming back and forth and tumbling about. All the awkwardness that her body displayed on land instantly disappeared as soon as she slipped into the water. There she could move about unhindered and with ease.

Mother would sit and watch her for hours, clapping her hands at her daughter’s tricks in the water and encouraging her to practise her swimming. She called Alice her mermaid.

But Alice didn’t care much about her mother’s enthusiasm. Instead, she would look towards him and call:

‘Watch this!’ Then she would dive off the rocks, and when she resurfaced, she would smile.

‘Did you see that? Did you see what I did?’ she’d ask eagerly, giving him that hungry look of hers. But he never answered. Just glanced up for a moment from the book he was reading as he sat on a towel that he’d spread out on the flat rocks. He didn’t know what she wanted from him.

Mother used to reply in his stead, after first casting an annoyed and astonished look in his direction. She didn’t understand it. She was the one who gave all her time and love to Alice.

‘I saw it, sweetie! That was wonderful!’ she would shout. But it was as if Alice didn’t hear her mother’s voice. Then she would call to him again:

‘Watch me now! Watch what I can do!’ And she would start swimming the crawl, heading towards the horizon. The movement of her arms was perfectly coordinated and rhythmic.

Mother would stand up, looking nervous. ‘Alice, sweetie, don’t go any farther than that.’ She held up one hand to shade her eyes.

‘She’s swimming too far out. Go get her!’

He tried to be like Alice and pretend that he hadn’t heard. Slowly he turned the page, focusing on the words, the black type on the white paper. Then he felt a burning pain on his scalp. Mother had taken a firm grip on his hair and was pulling as hard as she could. He sprang to his feet, and she let go.

‘Go get your sister. Move that fat arse of yours and make sure she swims back to shore.’

For a moment he remembered her hand holding his that time when they went swimming together – the way she had let go, and he had been dragged under. Ever since that day, he hadn’t liked to swim. There was something terrifying about the water. There were things below the surface that he couldn’t see, and didn’t trust.

Mamma grabbed hold of the roll of fat around his waist and squeezed hard.

‘Go get her. Now. Otherwise I’ll leave you here when we go home.’ The tone of her voice gave him no choice. He knew that she meant it. If he didn’t do as she said, she really would leave him here on this island.

With his heart pounding, he headed for the water. It took all his willpower to make his feet move forward and then jump in. He didn’t dare dive in head first, like Alice; he simply dropped feet first into the blue and the green. He got water in his eyes and had to blink so he could see again. He felt panic coming over him. His breathing was fast and shallow. He squinted. Far away, moving towards the sun, was Alice. Clumsily he started swimming in her direction. He could feel his mother watching, standing on the rocks behind him with her hands on her hips.

He couldn’t swim the crawl. His strokes were uneven and choppy. But he kept moving forward, the whole time aware of the depths beneath him. The sun dazzled his eyes, and he could no longer see Alice. He saw only the white, blinding light that brought tears to his eyes. All he wanted to do was turn around, but he couldn’t. He had to reach Alice and make her go back to Mother. Because Mother loved Alice, and he loved Mother. In spite of everything, he loved her.

Suddenly he felt something around his neck. Something holding on hard, pulling his head underwater. Now panic really set in, and he flailed his arms, trying to escape and get back up to the surface. Then the pressure around his neck was gone as swiftly as it had appeared, and he gasped for breath as he felt the air on his face.

‘It’s just me, stupid.’

Alice was treading water without any effort at all, looking at him with those bright eyes of hers. The dark hair that she’d inherited from Mother gleamed in the sun, and salt water glittered on her lashes.

He saw those eyes again. The eyes staring up at him from under the water. The body was limp and lifeless, not moving, just resting on the bottom of the bathtub. He shook his head, not wanting to see those images.

‘Mother wants you to come back,’ he said, out of breath. He couldn’t tread water as easily as Alice could, and his heavy body was being tugged downward, as if weights were attached to his limbs.

‘Then you’ll have to tow me in,’ said Alice in that special way of hers, as if her tongue couldn’t find the right place in her mouth when she spoke.

‘I can’t do that. Come on, now.’

She laughed and tossed back her wet hair.

‘I’ll only come if you tow me.’

‘But you swim much better than I do. Why should I have to tow you?’ But he knew that he’d lost the argument. He motioned for her to put her arms around his neck again. Now that he knew it was her, he didn’t panic.

He started swimming. It was slow going, but he managed. Alice’s arms felt strong around his neck. She had swum so much all summer that she had visibly developed muscles in her upper arms. She hung on to him, letting him tow her to shore like a little skiff. She rested her cheek against his back.

‘I’m your mermaid,’ she said. ‘Not Mamma’s.’

‘I don’t really know…’ Cia was staring at a spot behind Patrik’s shoulder, and he noticed that the pupils of her eyes were big. He assumed that she’d been given some sort of sedative that was contributing to her distracted air.

‘I know that we keep asking you the same questions over and over. But we need to find the connection between Magnus’s death and what happened today. It’s even more important now that we’ve determined that Magnus really was murdered. It might be something that you haven’t thought about before, some tiny detail that could help us move forward,’ Paula pleaded with her.

Ludvig came sauntering into the kitchen and sat down next to Cia. Presumably he’d been listening from outside the room.