narrowing his eyes.
‘We’re talking about letters and phone calls,’ said Martin. ‘Threatening ones.’
‘You think I would do something like that?’ Ola’s eyes opened wide. It was hard to tell whether his surprise was genuine or just play-acting. ‘What sort of relevance does that have now? I mean, Marit’s death was an accident, after all.’
Patrik ignored the remark for the moment. He didn’t want to reveal everything they knew at once, preferring to do so bit by bit.
‘Somebody sent anonymous letters and made anonymous phone calls to Kerstin and Marit.’
‘Well, that’s not surprising, is it?’ said Ola with a smile. ‘Women like that tend to attract that sort of attention. It’s possible that such things are tolerated in the big cities, but not out here in the country.’
Patrik was almost suffocated by all the prejudice radiating from the man sitting in the easy chair. With difficulty he resisted the urge to grab him by the shirt and tell him a few home truths. The only consolation was that Ola was digging himself deeper and deeper into the muck with each sentence he uttered.
‘So you weren’t the one who wrote the letters and kept ringing them?’ said Martin with the same barely concealed expression of distaste.
‘No, I would never stoop to anything like that.’ Ola gave them a supercilious smile. He was so sure of himself, and his home was so spotless and tidy and well-kept. Patrik yearned to shake up his orderly world a little.
‘So you have no objection to letting us take your fingerprints? And compare them with the prints that the crime lab finds on the envelopes?’
‘Fingerprints?’ His smile was suddenly gone. ‘I don’t understand. Why stir up all this now?’ The anxiety was evident on his face. Patrik chuckled to himself; a glance at Martin showed him that his colleague felt the same way.
‘Answer the question first. Can I assume that you will gladly give us your fingerprints so that we can exclude you from the investigation?’
Now Ola was squirming in his leather chair. His eyes shifted from one spot to another and he started to fidget with the things on the glass table. To Patrik and Martin it looked as though the objects already stood in rows as straight as an arrow, but apparently Ola didn’t share their view; he kept moving them a few millimetres in different directions until they were sufficiently aligned to calm his nerves.
‘Well,’ he said. ‘Okay, I suppose I’m going to have to confess.’ His smile had returned. He leaned back and seemed to have regained his equilibrium, which for a moment seemed to have been lost. ‘I might as well tell the truth. I did send some letters and even rang Kerstin and Marit a few times. It was stupid, of course, but I hoped that Marit would realize that their relationship wasn’t going to last. I hoped that she would listen to reason. We had such a good life together. And we could again. If only she gave up those stupid ideas and stopped making a fool of herself. And me. It was even worse for Sofie. Imagine having something like that to carry around at her age. It would make her a real outcast at school. Marit had to realize that. It just wasn’t going to work.’
‘But it had been working for four years, so it didn’t seem that she was in a big hurry to come back to you.’ Patrik kept his expression deceptively neutral.
‘It was just a matter of time.’ Ola was fiddling with the things on the table again. Suddenly he turned to the police officers on the sofa. ‘But I don’t understand what importance all this has now! Marit is gone, and if Sofie and I can just get rid of that person, then we can move on. Why stir up all this now?’
‘Because there are several things indicating that Marit’s death was not an accident.’
A shocked silence descended on the small living room. Ola stared at them. ‘Not an accident?’ He looked from Patrik to Martin. ‘What do you mean? Did someone …?’ He let the sentence die out. If his astonishment was not genuine, he was a damn good actor. Patrik would have given a lot to know exactly what was going on inside Ola’s head at that moment.
‘Yes, we believe that someone else could have been involved in Marit’s death. We’ll know more in a while. But for the time being you … are our prime candidate.’
‘Me?’ said Ola incredulously. ‘But I would never do anything to hurt Marit! I loved her! I just wanted us to be a family again!’
‘So it was this great love that made you threaten her and her girlfriend?’ Patrik’s voice dripped with sarcasm.
Ola’s face twitched at the word ‘girlfriend’.
‘But she didn’t understand! She must have been having some sort of mid-life crisis when she turned forty, and her hormones changed and affected her brain somehow. That must be why she threw everything away. We’d been together for twenty years, can you comprehend that? We met in Norway when we were sixteen, and I thought we’d always be together. We went through a lot of …’ he paused, ‘shit together when we were young, but we finally had everything we wanted. And then …’ Ola had raised his voice. Now he threw out his hands in a gesture that told them he still hadn’t grasped what it was that had happened to his marriage four years earlier.
‘Where were you last Sunday evening?’ Patrik gave him a stern look and waited for an answer.
Ola met his gaze with incredulity. ‘Are you asking me for an alibi? Is that what you’re doing? You want my fucking alibi for Sunday evening? Is that what you mean?’
‘Yes, that’s correct,’ Patrik replied calmly.
Ola looked close to losing his self-control but managed to restrain himself. ‘I was at home all evening. Alone. Sofie was sleeping over at a friend’s house, so there’s nobody to confirm I was here. But it’s the truth.’ His eyes were defiant.
‘Nobody you talked to on the phone? No neighbour who dropped by?’ asked Martin.
‘No,’ said Ola.
‘Well, that doesn’t sound so good,’ said Patrik laconically. ‘That means you will remain a suspect, should it turn out that Marit’s death was no accident.’
Ola gave a bitter laugh. ‘So you’re not really sure. Yet you come here and demand an alibi from me.’ He shook his head. ‘You’re both fucking nuts.’ He stood up. ‘And now I think you should go.’
Patrik and Martin got up too. ‘We were finished here anyway. But we may be back.’
Ola laughed again. ‘Yes, I’m sure you will be.’ He went out to the kitchen without bothering to say goodbye.
Patrik and Martin let themselves out. Closing the front door behind them, they paused for a moment.
‘Well, what do you think?’ said Martin, zipping his jacket all the way up. The real warmth of spring had not yet arrived, and the wind was still chilly.
‘I don’t know,’ Patrik sighed. ‘If we were sure that this was a homicide investigation it would have been easier, but now …’ He sighed again. ‘If only I could remember why this scenario feels so familiar. There’s something that …’ He fell silent and shook his head with a grim expression. ‘No, I can’t think what it is. Maybe the techs have managed to find something from her car.’
