Camilla Lackberg Crime Thrillers 4-6: The Stranger, The Hidden Child, The Drowning. Camilla Lackberg

stronger.

      ‘Do you still have the things that were in his room?’ he said impulsively.

      ‘Yes, of course,’ said Eva, getting to her feet. She seemed grateful for the interruption. ‘I’ve left it untouched all this time. It might seem … sentimental, but it’s all I have left of Rasmus. Sometimes I go in and sit down on the edge of his bed and talk to him. Tell him how my day has been, what the weather is like, what’s been happening in the world. Silly old woman, aren’t I?’ she said with a laugh that opened up her whole face.

      Patrik could see that she must have been very pretty when she was young. Not beautiful, but pretty. A photo they passed in the hallway confirmed this. A young Eva holding a baby in her arms. Her face beamed with happiness even though it must have been hard to be on her own with a baby. Especially back in those days.

      ‘Here it is,’ said Eva, showing them into a room at the end of the hall. Rasmus’s room was just as elegant and neat as the rest of the flat. But the room had its own atmosphere. It was obvious that he had furnished it himself.

      ‘He liked animals,’ Eva said proudly, sitting down on the bed.

      ‘Yes, I can see that,’ said Patrik with a laugh. There were pictures of animals everywhere. He had animal pillows, an animal bedspread, and a big rug with a tiger motif on the floor.

      ‘His dream was to work as a zookeeper. All the other boys wanted to be firemen or astronauts, but Rasmus wanted to be a zookeeper. I thought he would grow out of it, but he was very determined. At least until …’ Her voice faded. She cleared her throat and carefully ran her hand over the bedspread. ‘After the accident he still had a strong interest in animals. It was … a godsend that he was allowed to work at the pet shop. He loved his job, and he was good at it too. He was responsible for feeding the animals and cleaning the cages and aquariums. And he took great pride in doing it well.’

      ‘Could we take a look around?’

      Eva got up. ‘Take as long as you like, ask me whatever you like, just so you do your best to give me, and Rasmus, peace.’

      She left the room, and Patrik exchanged a look with Martin. They didn’t need to say a thing. Both of them felt the responsibility that was weighing heavily on their shoulders. They didn’t want to dash Rasmus’s mother’s hopes, but it was impossible to promise that their investigation would lead anywhere. Yet they still intended to do everything they could.

      ‘I’ll look through the drawers, and you can take the wardrobes,’ said Patrik, pulling out the top bureau drawer.

      Martin headed for the wall with the simple white wardrobes. ‘Is there anything in particular we’re looking for?’

      ‘No idea, to be honest,’ Patrik said. ‘Anything that could give us a lead to what sort of connection there might have been between Rasmus and Marit.’

      ‘Okay,’ Martin sighed. He knew that it was hard enough to find something when they knew what they were looking for; searching for something unknown and indeterminable was a virtually impossible task.

      For an hour they carefully went through everything in Rasmus’s room. They found nothing to arouse their interest. Absolutely nothing. Dejectedly they went back to Eva, who was busy cleaning up the kitchen. She met them in the doorway.

      ‘Thanks for letting us look in Rasmus’s room.’

      ‘Not at all,’ she said, looking at them with a hopeful expression. ‘Did you find anything?’ Their silence told her the answer, and hope was replaced by dejection.

      ‘What we’re looking for is a connection with the victim in our district. A woman named Marit Kaspersen. Does that ring a bell? Could Rasmus have met her somewhere?’

      Eva thought about it, but then slowly shook her head. ‘No, I don’t think so. I don’t recognize the name.’

      ‘The only apparent connection we’ve found is that Marit didn’t drink alcohol either, yet she had a great quantity of alcohol in her blood when she died. Rasmus wasn’t a member of some temperance society, was he?’ Martin asked.

      Once again Eva shook her head. ‘No, nothing like that.’ She hesitated for a moment, then said, ‘No, he didn’t belong to any group like that.’

      ‘Okay,’ said Patrik. ‘Thank you for your help, and we’ll be in touch. I’m sure we’ll have more questions.’

      ‘Call me in the evening if you like. I’m always here.’

      Patrik had to resist the urge to take a few steps forward and give the little woman with the sad squirrel-brown eyes a big hug.

      Just as they were about to go out the front door, she stopped them. ‘Wait, there’s one more thing that might be of interest to you.’ She turned on her heel and went into her bedroom. After a moment she returned. ‘This is Rasmus’s knapsack. He always had it with him. He had it when he …’ Her voice broke. ‘I couldn’t get myself to take it out of the bag it was in when I got it back from the police.’

      Eva handed Patrik the transparent plastic bag containing the knapsack. ‘Go ahead and take it with you. Maybe it contains something of interest.’

      When the door closed behind them, Patrik stood with the bag in his hand. He looked at the knapsack. He recognized it from the pictures that were taken at the site after Rasmus died. What hadn’t been visible in the photos, which were taken in the evening, was that it was covered with dark spots. Patrik realized that it was dried blood. Rasmus’s blood.

      She leafed impatiently through the book as she talked on her mobile.

      ‘Sure, I have it here.

      ‘But what are you willing to pay?

      ‘That’s all?’ She frowned in disappointment.

      ‘But this is good stuff. You could run a whole series.

      ‘No, then I’ll call Hänt instead.

      ‘Okay, ten thousand will work. I can deliver it tomorrow. But the money has to be in my account by then, otherwise the deal’s off.’

      Pleased, Tina flipped the lid closed on her mobile. She walked away from the community centre and sat down on a rock to read. She had never got to know Barbie. Had never wanted to either, for that matter. But it felt a bit weird to be getting inside her head after the fact. She turned pages in the diary, reading greedily. She could already picture how the excerpts were going to look in the evening paper, with the best bits underlined. What dismayed her most about the diary was that Barbie wasn’t as stupid as Tina had thought. Her thoughts and observations were well formulated and occasionally even rather witty. But Tina frowned when she got to the part that had made her decide to sell the stuff to the evening papers. She was going to tear out this page first, of course.

      It said, ‘I listened today when Tina performed her song. She’s going to sing it tonight at the community centre. Poor Tina. She has no idea how terrible she sounds. I wonder how that could be; how can something that sounds so bad on the outside sound so good on the inside to the person singing it? Because that’s what the whole Idol concept is based on, so maybe it shouldn’t seem so odd. Clearly it was her mother who put the idea in her head that she could be a singer. Tina’s mum must have been tone-deaf. That’s the only explanation I can think of. But I don’t have the heart to tell Tina. So I play along, even though I basically think I’m doing her a disservice. I talk to her about her music career, all the success she’s going to have, all the concerts, all the tours. But I feel like a shit, because I’m lying to her face. Poor Tina.’

      Angrily Tina ripped out the page and tore it into tiny bits. That fucking bitch! If she’d ever felt the least bit sorry that Barbie died, she certainly didn’t now. That bitch had got what she deserved! She didn’t know what the hell she was talking about. Tina ground the bits of paper into the gravel with her heel.

      Then she turned to the part that had surprised her. On one of the pages, which was written soon after they’d arrived