to the figure. A pair of pearl earrings and her wristwatch would be her only jewellery, and she let her hair fall loosely over her shoulders. She looked at her profile again in the mirror and held in her stomach as a test. All right – with the combined help of support knickers, pantyhose, and slightly restricted breathing she looked downright acceptable. The extra kilos were not altogether a bad thing, she had to admit. She would have preferred to do without the ones that ended up on her belly, but the one distributed in her breasts made a not entirely uneven cleavage stand out in her décolletage. With a little help from a padded push-up bra, of course, but such aids were virtually universal nowadays. And the bra she was wearing was of the very latest technology, with gel in the cups, which gave her bust a true-to-life movement. Splendid testimony to the advancement of science in the service of humanity.
Trying on all those clothes along with the emotional stress had made her sweat, and with a deep sigh she washed under her arms again. Her make-up took almost twenty minutes to perfect. By the time she was ready, she realized all the primping had taken a bit too long and that she ought to have started cooking long ago. She quickly tidied up the bedroom. It would have taken far too much time to hang up all the clothes, so she simply picked up the whole pile, dumped it on the floor of the wardrobe and shut the door. Just in case, she made the bed and looked round the room to make sure that no unused knickers lay about the floor. A pair of dirty everyday knickers from Sloggi could dampen any man’s desire.
Out of breath she rushed down to the kitchen. All the stress made her feel utterly at a loss. She didn’t have any idea where to start.
Erica forced herself to stand still and take a deep breath. There were two recipes lying on the table in front of her, and she tried to plan the time needed for each of them. She was no master chef, but a fairly decent cook, and she had found the recipes after digging through back issues of Elle Gourmet. The appetizer would be potato pancakes with crème fraiche, lumpfish caviar and finely chopped red onions. For the entree she had planned fillet of pork baked in puff pastry with a port wine sauce and mashed potatoes, and for dessert Gino with vanilla ice cream. Thankfully she’d already prepared it that afternoon, so she could cross that off her list. She decided to start by putting the potatoes on to boil. Then she would grate raw potatoes for the appetizer.
She concentrated on her work for an hour and a half and jumped when the doorbell rang. The time had gone a little too fast, and she hoped that Patrik wasn’t roaring hungry since the food would take a while before it was ready.
Erica was halfway to the door when she noticed that she still had her apron on. The bell rang again as she struggled to undo the granny knot she had tied at her back. She finally got it undone, pulled the apron over her head, and tossed it on a chair in the hall. She ran her hand over her hair, reminded herself to hold in her stomach, and took a deep breath before she opened the door with a smile.
‘Hi, Patrik. Welcome! Come in.’
They hugged briefly and Patrik handed her a bottle of wine wrapped in aluminium foil.
‘Oh, thank you, how nice!’
‘Yes, they recommended this one at the State Liquor Store. Chilean wine. Robust and round with a trace of red berries and a hint of chocolate, supposedly. I’m no wine connoisseur, but they usually know what they’re talking about.’
‘I’m sure it’s excellent.’ Erica gave a warm laugh and put down the bottle on the old hall bureau for a moment so she could help Patrik off with his jacket.
‘Come in. I hope you’re not starving. As usual, my planning was much too optimistic, so it’ll be a while before dinner is ready.’
‘No problem, I’m fine.’
Patrik followed Erica into the kitchen with the wine.
‘Can I help with anything?’
‘Yes, you can take a corkscrew from the top drawer and open a bottle of wine for us. Perhaps we could start by tasting the wine you brought?’
He obeyed willingly. Erica set two large wine glasses for them on the worktop and then began stirring pots and checking the progress of what was in the oven. The fillet of pork had a good way to go, and when she poked the potatoes they were still only half cooked. Patrik handed her one of the wine glasses, now full of deep-red wine. She swirled the glass lightly to release the wine’s aroma, stuck her nose deep into the glass and then inhaled with her mouth closed. The warm oak fragrance of the wine was sucked in through her nostrils and seemed to propagate all the way down to her toes. Delightful. She tasted it cautiously, letting the wine roll round as she sucked in a little air through her mouth. The taste was just as pleasant as the aroma, and she could tell that Patrik had spent a significant sum on this bottle.
Patrik gave her an expectant look.
‘Fantastic!’
‘Yes, I realized last time that you knew about these things. Unfortunately I couldn’t tell the difference between a wine in a box for fifty kronor and a wine that cost thousands.’
‘Sure you could. But it’s all a matter of habit as well. And you have to take the time to really taste a wine instead of guzzling it down.’
Shamefaced, Patrik looked at the glass of wine he had in his hand. A third of it was already gone. He carefully tried to imitate Erica’s method of tasting the wine when she turned her back to check something on the stove. It did seem to taste like a whole new wine. He let a sip of wine roll round in his mouth the same way he had seen Erica do it, and suddenly distinctly different tastes appeared. He even thought he could sense a faint hint of chocolate, dark chocolate, and a rather strong taste of red berries, red grapes perhaps, mixed with a little strawberry. Incredible.
‘How’s it going with the investigation?’ Erica made an effort to ask the question casually, but she waited anxiously for the reply.
‘I think we’re back at square one, so to speak. Anders has an alibi for the time of the murder, and we don’t have a lot else to go on right now. Unfortunately we may have made a classic mistake. We allowed ourselves to feel too certain that we had the right person and stopped investigating other possibilities. Although I have to agree with the superintendent that Anders is perfect in the role of Alex’s killer. A drunk who for some inexplicable reason is having a sexual relationship with a woman who, according to all the rules, should be far, far out of reach of a wino like Anders. A crime of jealousy with the inevitable outcome, when his improbable luck finally runs out. His fingerprints are all over the body and in the bathroom. We even found his footprint in the pool of blood on the floor.’
‘But isn’t that proof enough?’
Patrik swirled his wine and looked thoughtfully down into the red eddies that formed in the glass.
‘If he hadn’t had an alibi it might have been enough. But now he does have one for what we think is the probable time of the murder. And as I said before, it doesn’t prove anything except that he was in the bathroom after the murder. A small but important difference if we want an indictment that will hold up.’
The aroma spreading through the kitchen was wonderful. Erica took the potato pancakes she had sautéed a while ago out of the fridge and put them in the oven to warm up. She set out two appetizer plates, opened the refrigerator again and took out a container of crème fraiche and a jar of lumpfish caviar. The onions were chopped and ready in a bowl on the worktop. She was intensely aware of how close Patrik was standing.
‘So, Erica, have you heard anything more about the house?’
‘Yes,
