‘Stop it. I can walk on my own.’ She glared at Patrik, who was holding her arm as they went up the front steps to the house. ‘You heard what they said. Everything looks okay. I don’t have a concussion, only a few stitches.’
Patrik opened the door.
‘Yes, I know, but …’ He fell silent when he saw the look Erica gave him.
‘When will the kids be home?’ She kicked off her shoes.
‘Mamma is bringing the twins over around two, and then I thought that we could all go and pick up Maja. She’s been missing you terribly.’
‘What a sweetie she is,’ said Erica, going into the kitchen. It felt strange to be home with no children around. She could hardly remember what that felt like.
‘Sit down and I’ll make some coffee,’ said Patrik, moving past her.
Erica was about to protest when she realized that she ought to make the most of the situation. She sat down at the kitchen table and with a contented sigh propped her feet up on the chair next to her.
‘Do you know what will happen with Badis?’ She felt as if she’d been living in a bubble at the hospital, so now she wanted to hear about everything that had been going on. She still couldn’t believe the rumours she’d heard concerning Vivianne.
‘The money and Vivianne are gone.’ Patrik was standing at the counter, making the coffee. ‘We found her car at Arlanda airport, and we’re in the process of checking the passenger lists from the weekend. Presumably she wasn’t travelling under her own name, so that makes things harder.’
‘What about the money? Can’t you track it down?’
Patrik turned around and shook his head. ‘It doesn’t look good. We’ve asked the fraud division in Göteborg for help, but there are ways of transferring funds out of the country that make it extremely difficult to track the money. And I’m guessing that Vivianne planned the whole thing very carefully.’
‘What does Anders have to say?’ Erica got up, wanting to get something out of the freezer.
‘Sit down. I’ll get the buns.’ Patrik took a bag of cinnamon buns out of the freezer and put several of them in the microwave. ‘Anders has admitted to taking part in the embezzlement scheme, but he refuses to tell us where his sister and the money are now.’
‘Why didn’t he leave with Vivianne?’ Erica had sat back down at the table.
‘Who knows? Maybe he got cold feet at the last second and didn’t want to spend the rest of his life away from Sweden, in exile.’
‘Hmm, I suppose that’s possible.’ Erica paused for a moment and then asked, ‘So how is Erling taking it? And what’s going to happen to Badis?’
‘Erling seems mostly … resigned.’ Patrik poured two cups of coffee and then took the warm buns out of the microwave and set everything on the kitchen table. ‘As far as Badis is concerned, nobody really knows what its future will be. Almost none of the suppliers or builders have been paid. The question is, which option would be more costly: to close the doors, or to continue operating the place. After the party on Saturday, reservations have been pouring in, so the town might try to run the spa and hope to make it profitable. At least that would be a way to recoup some of the money. I think it’s possible that they’ll decide to keep the place open.’
‘It would be a shame to close Badis after doing such a great job on the remodelling.’
‘I agree,’ said Patrik, taking a big bite of a cinnamon bun.
‘How did Matte know that something wasn’t right? You said that Annika’s husband Lennart didn’t find any irregularities. It does seem strange that no one from the town was the least bit suspicious.’
‘According to Anders, Mats wasn’t positive, but he’d started wondering if something was wrong. On the Friday before he went to see Nathalie, he dropped by Badis and had a talk with Anders. He asked a lot of questions. For instance, he wanted to know why so many of the suppliers’ invoices hadn’t been paid. He also wanted to know when the funds that Anders and Vivianne had promised to invest would be arriving. And where that money was coming from. He wanted the names of contacts so he could verify the funds. Anders was really worried. If Mats hadn’t been killed, he probably would have uncovered the true state of the Project Badis finances and exposed Anders and Vivianne for the swindlers they are.’
Erica nodded. She suddenly looked sad. ‘How is Nathalie?’
‘She’s going to be evaluated by a forensic psychiatrist, and I think there’s very little chance that she’ll end up in prison. She’ll probably be institutionalized. Or at least she ought to be.’
‘Why were we all so stupid? Why didn’t we realize what was going on?’ Erica put down the cinnamon bun. She had suddenly lost her appetite.
‘How were we supposed to know? Nobody knew that Sam was dead.’
‘But how did he die?’ She swallowed. Her stomach turned over at the thought of Nathalie living in that house for more than two weeks while her son’s body slowly decomposed. She was filled with both horror and compassion.
‘We don’t really know. And we may never find out. But I talked to Konrad last night, and apparently they discovered that another woman was booked on the flight to Italy with Nathalie’s husband and Sam. They talked to the woman and found out that the plan was for her to accompany Wester, while Nathalie would disappear out of the picture.’
‘Did she know how Nathalie’s husband was planning to accomplish that?’
‘He was going to use her cocaine habit to blackmail her. He threatened to make sure she would lose all custody rights if she didn’t voluntarily step aside.’
‘What a bastard.’
‘That’s putting it mildly. He probably confronted Nathalie with the plan the night before they were supposed to leave for Italy. The police found two blood types when they did an analysis of the blood in the double bed. It’s likely that Sam crept into the room and got into bed with his father. So when Nathalie sprayed the bed and her husband with bullets from his gun, well … she didn’t know that her son was there too.’
‘Imagine finding out that you’d shot your own son.’
‘I can’t think of anything worse. It was probably so traumatic for her that she completely lost her grip on reality and refused to accept that Sam was dead.’
Neither of them spoke for a moment.
Erica suddenly looked puzzled. ‘But why didn’t the mistress call the police when Wester didn’t show up?’
‘Fredrik Wester wasn’t exactly known for being reliable. So when he didn’t turn up, the woman assumed that she’d been dumped. According to Konrad, there are some furious messages from her on Fredrik’s voicemail.’
Erica had already moved on to another topic. ‘Matte must have found Sam.’
‘Yes. And the cocaine. Nathalie’s fingerprints are on the bag, and on the door to Mats’s flat. Since we haven’t been able to interview Nathalie, we don’t know for sure, but it seems likely that Mats discovered that Sam was dead and also found the cocaine in the early hours on Saturday. Then he forced Nathalie to come to Fjällbacka to contact the police.’
‘And she had to shoot him in order to protect her deluded belief that Sam was alive.’
‘Yes. And it cost Mats his life.’ Patrik looked out of the window. He too felt enormous compassion for Nathalie, despite the fact she had killed three people, including her own son.
‘Does she know now?’
‘She told the doctors that Sam is with the dead on Gråskär. She said she should have listened to them earlier and allowed him to go with them. So, yes, I think she does know now.’
‘Has the boy been found?’ asked Erica hesitantly. She didn’t want to think about what an awful state the child’s body must have been in. It was bad enough that she’d smelled the horrible stench inside the house.
‘No. He disappeared into the sea.’
‘I wonder how she could stand the smell.’ Erica could almost feel it in her nostrils, and she’d been inside for only a brief time. Nathalie had lived there for more than two weeks.