The Preacher. Camilla Lackberg
someone else, don’t you think?’
‘Well, we’ll assume that the skeleton is Siv’s, but we can’t say that for certain yet. Stranger things have happened.’
Patrik rummaged through the photocopies that Erica had brought home for him and fanned some of them out in front of him on the table. He had also laid out the file that he had dug out of the archive in the cellar, intending to put together all the information they had about the disappearance of the two girls. There was a good deal in the newspaper articles that was not included in the investigative material; both sources were necessary to give them a complete picture of what was known so far.
‘Look here. Siv vanished on Midsummer’s Eve in 1979, and then Mona disappeared two weeks later.’
In order to clarify and give some order to the material, Patrik got up from his desk chair and wrote on the whiteboard on his wall.
‘Siv Lantin was last seen alive as she was bicycling home after a party with friends. The very last witness described how she turned off the main road and rode towards Bräcke. It was two in the morning, and she was seen by a driver who passed her on the road in his car. After that no one saw or heard from her again.’
‘If you disregard Gabriel Hult’s information,’ Martin added.
Patrik nodded in agreement. ‘Yes, if you ignore Gabriel Hult’s testimony, which I think we will for the time being.’ He went on: ‘Mona Thernblad went missing two weeks later. Unlike Siv, she vanished one afternoon in broad daylight. She left her house around three to go out jogging but never came home. One of her jogging shoes was found by the road along her usual route, but nothing more.’
‘Were there any similarities between the girls? Besides the fact that they were about the same age.’
Patrik couldn’t help smiling a little. ‘I can see you’ve been watching that Profiles programme. Unfortunately I have to disappoint you. If we’re dealing with a serial killer, which is what I assume you’re fishing for, there are no obvious external similarities between the girls.’ He fastened two black-and-white photographs to the whiteboard.
‘Siv was nineteen years old. Small, dark and curvaceous. She had a reputation for being rather difficult, and she created something of a scandal in Fjällbacka when she had a baby at the age of seventeen. Both she and the baby lived with her mother, but according to what the newspapers claim, Siv liked to go out partying and wasn’t very fond of staying home. Mona, on the other hand, was described as a real family girl who did well in school, had a lot of friends and was generally popular. She was tall and blonde and worked out a good deal. Eighteen years old but still living at home because her mother was sickly, and her father couldn’t take care of her by himself. Nobody seemed to have anything negative to say about her. So the only thing these girls had in common was that they disappeared without a trace from the face of the earth over twenty years ago. And now they’ve appeared as skeletons in the King’s Cleft.’
Martin was leaning his head on his hand, pondering. Both he and Patrik sat in silence for a while, studying the newspaper clippings and the notes on the whiteboard. They were both thinking of how young the girls looked. They would have had so many years left to live, if something evil hadn’t crossed their paths. And then Tanja, who they didn’t yet have a photo of while she was alive. She was a young girl too, with her whole life ahead of her. But now she was dead too.
‘A massive investigation was launched.’ Patrik took a thick stack of typed pages out of the folder. ‘Friends and family of the girls were interviewed. Officers knocked on every door in the area, and known hooligans were also questioned. A total of about a hundred interviews were done, as far as I can see.’
‘Did they produce anything?’
‘No, not a thing. Not until they got the tip from Gabriel Hult. He rang the police himself and told them that he saw Siv in his brother’s car the night she disappeared.’
‘And? That could hardly have been enough to make him a murder suspect, could it?’
‘No. When Gabriel’s brother Johannes was questioned, he denied having spoken to her or even seeing her, but in the absence of any other leads the police chose to focus on him.’
‘Did they make any progress?’ Martin’s eyes were wide with reluctant fascination.
‘No, nothing else came out. And a couple of months later Johannes Hult hanged himself in his barn. So the trail went very cold, you might say.’
‘It seems odd that he took his life so soon afterwards.’
‘Yes, but if he was guilty then it must have been his ghost that murdered Tanja. Dead men don’t kill people.’
‘And what was the deal with his brother calling in and reporting his own flesh and blood? Why would anybody do that?’ Martin frowned. ‘Wait, how stupid can I be? Hult – our faithful old servant in the thieves’ fraternity. He must be related to Stefan and Robert.’
‘Yes, that’s right. Johannes was their father. After reading about the Hult family, I actually have a little more understanding of why Stefan and Robert visit us so often. They were no more than five or six years old when Johannes hanged himself, and Robert was the one who found him in the barn. You can only imagine how that must have affected a six-year-old boy.’
‘Yes, good Lord.’ Martin shook his head. ‘You know, I need a cup of coffee before we go on. My caffeine level is about to reach empty. Would you like a cup?’
Patrik nodded, and a couple of minutes later Martin returned with two cups of steaming hot coffee. For once the weather was right for hot drinks.
Patrik continued his summation. ‘Johannes and Gabriel are the sons of a man named Ephraim Hult, also called the Preacher. Ephraim was a well-known, or you might say notorious, free-church pastor in Göteborg. He held big meetings at which he had his sons, who were small then, speak in tongues and heal the sick and the lame. Most people considered Ephraim a charlatan and swindler, but even so he hit the jackpot when one of the ladies in his faithful congregation, Margareta Dybling, died and left everything she owned to him. Besides a considerable fortune in ready cash, she left a large forested estate and a magnificent manor house in the vicinity of Fjällbacka. Ephraim suddenly lost all desire to spread God’s word. He moved here with his sons, and the family has been living on the old lady’s money ever since.’
The whiteboard was now covered with notes, and there were papers spread all over Patrik’s desk.
‘Not that it isn’t interesting to have a little family history, but what does this have to do with the murders? As you said, Johannes died more than twenty years before Tanja was murdered, and dead men don’t kill people, as you so eloquently expressed it.’ Martin had a hard time hiding his impatience.
‘True, but I’ve gone over all the old material, and Gabriel’s testimony is actually the only interesting thing I found from the old investigation. I’d also hoped to be able to talk with Errold Lind, who was in charge of the investigation, but unfortunately he died of a heart attack in 1989, so this material is all we have to go on. Unless you have some better suggestions, I propose that we start by finding out a bit more about Tanja, as well as talking with Siv and Mona’s surviving parents. After that we’ll decide whether it’s worth having another talk with Gabriel Hult.’
‘Sure, that sounds sensible. What should I do first?’
‘Start with the investigation about Tanja. And make sure you put Gösta to work on it as of tomorrow. His halcyon days are over.’
‘What about Mellberg and Ernst? What are you going to do about them?’
Patrik sighed. ‘My strategy is to keep them out of it as best I can. That will mean a bigger workload for the rest of us, but I think we’ll come out ahead in the long run. Mellberg will just be glad to get out of doing anything, and besides, he’s basically sworn off this investigation. Ernst will have to keep on doing what he’s been doing, handling as many of the incoming reports as he can. If he needs help we’ll send